Animals
- Life
Polluted water: It’s where sea snakes wear black
Reptile counterpart proposed for textbook example of evolution favoring darker moths amid industrial soot.
- Astronomy
What do plants and animals do during an eclipse?
A citizen science experiment will gather the biggest dataset to date of animal responses to a total eclipse.
- Animals
Why midsize animals are the fastest
New analysis delves into the mystery of why medium-sized animals are speedier than bigger ones.
- Animals
A lot of life on planet Earth is awful and incredible
Acting Editor in Chief Elizabeth Quill discusses how the natural world feeds our sense of wonder.
- Animals
Readers fascinated by critters’ strange biology
Readers responded to fish lips, monkey brains, sunless tanner and more.
- Animals
Ticks are here to stay. But scientists are finding ways to outsmart them
Researchers acknowledge that there’s no getting rid of ticks, so they are developing ways to make them less dangerous.
- Animals
Fossil find suggests this ancient reptile lurked on land, not in the water
An exquisitely preserved fossil shows that an ancient armored reptile called Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi wasn’t aquatic, as scientists had suspected.
- Animals
These record-breaking tube worms can survive for centuries
Deep-sea tube worms can live decades longer than their shallow-water counterparts.
- Animals
How spiders mastered spin control
Scientists reveal a new twist on the unusual properties of spider silk.
- Animals
One creature’s meal is another’s pain in the butt
Kelp and dolphin gulls in Patagonia have found a new food source. But they accidentally injure fur seal pups to get it.
- Paleontology
Giant armored dinosaur may have cloaked itself in camouflage
An armored dinosaur the size of a Honda Civic also wore countershading camouflage, a chemical analysis of its skin suggests.
- Life
Light pollution can foil plant-insect hookups, and not just at night
Upsetting nocturnal pollinators has daylight after-effects for Swiss meadow flowers.
