Animals
- Animals
Great praise for categories, and seeing beyond them
Acting Editor in Chief Elizabeth Quill discusses classification and some of the challenges of putting species in categorical boxes.
- Health & Medicine
Readers intrigued by ancient animals’ bones
Readers had questions about gut bacteria, woolly rhino ribs and ancient horses hooves.
- Animals
This sea slug makes its prey do half the food catching
Nudibranchs’ stolen meals blur classic predator-prey levels.
- Life
Hybrids reveal the barriers to successful mating between species
Scientists don’t understand the process of speciation, but hybrids can reveal the genes that keep species apart.
- Animals
Scary as they are, few vampires have a backbone
Researchers speculate on why there are so few vampires among vertebrates.
- Animals
Here’s the real story on jellyfish taking over the world
In 'Spineless,' a former marine scientist reconnects with the seas and science through her obsession with these enigmatic creatures.
- Animals
Climate change may threaten these bamboo-eating lemurs
Longer dry spells and more nutrient-poor bamboo might eventually doom the greater bamboo lemur, a critically endangered species.
- Paleontology
T. rex’s silly-looking arms were built for slashing
Tyrannosaurus rex may have used its small arms for slashing prey.
- Life
Nanoscale glitches let flowers make a blue blur that bees can see
Bees learn about colorful floral rings faster when nanoscale arrays aren’t quite perfect.
- Life
How bird feeders may be changing great tits’ beaks
Longer beaks may be evolving in U.K. great tits because of the widespread use of bird feeders in the country.
- Genetics
Resurrecting extinct species raises ethical questions
'Rise of the Necrofauna' examines the technical and ethical challenges of bringing woolly mammoths and other long-gone creatures back from the dead.
- Life
The physics of mosquito takeoffs shows why you don’t feel a thing
Even when full of blood, mosquitoes use more wing force than leg force to escape a host undetected — clue to why they’re so good at spreading disease.
