Animals
- 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.
- Particle Physics
Readers question photons colliding, black sea snakes and more
Readers had questions about brain flexibility, black sea snakes and photon collisions.
- Animals
Being a vampire can be brutal. Here’s how bloodsuckers get by.
Blood-sucking animals have specialized physiology and other tools to live on a diet rich in protein and lacking in some nutrients.
- Oceans
Here’s a breakdown of the animals that crossed the Pacific on 2011 tsunami debris
Hundreds of marine animals from Japan have washed up on U.S. beaches since the destructive 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
- Animals
To understand the origins of pain, ask a flatworm
A danger-sensing protein responds to hydrogen peroxide in planarians, results that hint at the evolutionary origins of people’s pain sensing.
- Animals
Surgeon aims to diagnose deformities of extinct saber-toothed cats
Using CT scans, one orthopedic surgeon is on a quest to diagnose deformities in long-dead saber-toothed cats.
- Animals
New deep-sea sponge could play a starring role in monitoring ocean health
A new species of sponge that dwells on metal-rich rocks could help scientists track the environmental impact of deep-sea mining.
- Animals
Ancient whale turns up on wrong side of the world
A Southern Hemisphere whale species was briefly a northern resident.
- Agriculture
Much of the world’s honey now contains bee-harming pesticides
A controversial group of chemicals called neonicotinoids has a global impact, tests of honey samples show.
