Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
A bird flu outbreak is sweeping the globe. Its long-term effects are unclear
A reporter’s recent trip to the Galápagos offered a chance to reflect on the bird flu outbreak, which has killed millions of birds and other animals.
- Life
Some honeybees in Italy regularly steal pollen off the backs of bumblebees
New observations suggest that honeybees stealing pollen from bumblebees may be a crime of opportunity, though documentation of it remains rare.
- Plants
This first-of-its-kind palm plant flowers and fruits entirely underground
Though rare, plants across 33 families are known for subterranean flowering or fruiting. This is the first example in a palm.
- Life
These snails give live birth, and it’s the babies that may do the labor
Protecting eggs in mom’s body may have given rough periwinkle snails an advantage over egg-laying cousins, letting them spread to far more coastline.
- Life
Megalodon, the largest shark ever, may have been a long, slender giant
The ancient shark is typically imagined with the scaled-up stout frame of a modern great white. But in life, the giant may have been more elongated.
- Life
How disease-causing microbes load their tiny syringes to prep an attack
Tracking individual proteins in bacterial cells reveals a shuttle-bus system to load tiny syringes that inject our cells with havoc-wreaking proteins.
- Chemistry
Here’s how tardigrades go into suspended animation
A new study offers more clues about the role of oxidation in signaling transitions between alive and mostly dead in tardigrades.
- Animals
A new exhibit invites you into the ‘Secret World of Elephants’
As elephants face survival threats, the American Museum of Natural History highlights their pivotal role in shaping landscapes — and their resilience.
- Animals
Some mysteries remain about why dogs wag their tails
Wagging is a form of communication, with different wags meaning different things, but scientists know little about the behavior’s evolution in dogs.
- Climate
Numbats are built to hold heat, making climate change extra risky for the marsupials
New thermal imaging shows how fast numbats’ surface temperature rises even at relatively reasonable temperatures.
- Paleontology
The oldest known fossilized skin shows how life adapted to land
The nearly 290 million-year-old cast belonged to a species of amniotes, four-legged vertebrates that today comprises all reptiles, birds and mammals.
- Genetics
How ancient herders rewrote northern Europeans’ genetic story
New DNA analyses show the extent of the Yamnaya people’s genetic reach starting 5,000 years ago and how it made descendants prone to diseases like MS.
