Animals

Genetics

Here’s why some pigeons do backflips

Meet the scientist homing in on the genes involved in making parlor roller pigeons do backward somersaults.

Neuroscience

Chickadees use memory ‘bar codes’ to find their hidden food stashes

Unique subsets of neurons in a chickadee’s memory center light up for each distinct cache, hinting at how episodic memories are encoded in the brain.

Neuroscience

Here’s how magnetic fields shape desert ants’ brains

Exposure to a tweaked magnetic field scrambled desert ants’ efforts to learn where home is — and affected neuron connections in a key part of the brain.

Animals

By fluttering its wings, this bird uses body language to tell its mate ‘after you’

New observations suggest that Japanese tits gesture to communicate complex messages — a rare ability in the animal kingdom and a first seen in birds.

Neuroscience

Dogs know words for their favorite toys

The brain activity of dogs that were expecting one toy but were shown another suggests canines create mental concepts of everyday objects.

Animals

American bullfrogs may be threatening a rare frog species in Brazil

A search for environmental DNA from critically endangered Pithecopus rusticus frogs turned up DNA from invasive American bullfrogs instead.

Animals

Daddy longlegs look like they have two eyes. That doesn’t count the hidden ones

Despite its two-eyed appearance, Phalangium opilio has six peepers. The four optical remnants shed light on the arachnids’ evolutionary history.

Animals

Male dragonflies’ wax coats might protect them against a warming climate

The reflective wax, which cools males on sunny courtship flights, may also armor them against the effects of climate change.

Animals

Male mammals aren’t always bigger than females

In a study of over 400 mammal species, less than half have males that are, on average, heavier than females, undermining a long-standing assumption.

Animals

A decades-old mystery has been solved with the help of newfound bee species

Masked bees in Australia and French Polynesia have long-lost relatives in Fiji, suggesting that the bees’ ancestors island hopped.

Animals

Big monarch caterpillars don’t avoid toxic milkweed goo. They binge on it

Instead of nipping milkweed to drain the plants’ defensive sap, older monarch caterpillars may seek the toxic sap. Lab larvae guzzled it from a pipette.

Life

This is the first egg-laying amphibian found to feed its babies ‘milk’

Similar to mammals, these ringed caecilians make a nutrient-rich milk-like fluid to feed their mewling hatchlings up to six times a day.