Animals
- Animals
Rebel honeybee workers lay eggs when their queen is away
A honeybee queen’s absence in the colony triggers some workers to turn queen-like and lay eggs, sometimes in other colonies.
- Environment
An acid found in soil may make a disease killing deer less infectious
An incurable neurodegenerative disease crippling North American deer, elk and moose may be thwarted by an organic soil compound.
- Animals
A jumping spider mom nurses her brood for weeks on milk
Even after spiderlings start hunting for themselves, they come to mom for milk.
- Ecosystems
Beavers are engineering a new Alaskan tundra
Climate change has enabled the recent expansion of beavers into northwestern Alaska, a trend that could have major ecological consequences for the region in the coming decades.
- Animals
Mosquitoes may surf winds above Africa more than we realized
More than 40 meters up, balloon traps in Mali caught females of malaria-spreading mosquito species.
- Animals
How locust ecology inspired an opera
When an entomologist decides to write a libretto, you get an operatic elegy to locusts.
- Paleontology
This huge plant eater thrived in the age of dinosaurs — but wasn’t one of them
A newly named plant-eater from the Late Triassic was surprisingly hefty.
- Animals
Hemp fields offer a late-season pollen source for stressed bees
Colorado’s legal fields of low-THC cannabis can attract a lot of bees.
- Animals
Wombats are the only animals whose poop is a cube. Here’s how they do it.
The elasticity of wombats’ intestines helps the creatures shape their distinctive poops.
- Animals
Sound-absorbent wings and fur help some moths evade bats
Tiny ultrathin scales on some moth wings absorb sound waves sent out by bats on the hunt.
- Animals
Climate change may have made the Arctic deadlier for baby shorebirds
What were once relatively safe havens in the Arctic are now feasting sites for predators of baby birds.
- Animals
50 years ago, atomic testing created otter refugees
Nuclear testing on the island of Amchitka caused hundreds of otters to be rehomed 50 years ago. Those hundreds have grown into thousands.
