Life

Animals

Hour of Babble: Young birds sing badly in the morning

Young zebra finches do badly at song practice for the first few hours after they wake up but then recover, and even improve, their musical skills.

Animals

Oops! Grab That Trunk: High-diving ants swing back toward their tree

Certain tree-dwelling ants can direct their descent well enough to veer toward tree trunks and climb back home.

Paleontology

Groovy Bones: Mammalian ear structure evolved more than once

Fossils of an ancient egg-laying mammal indicate that the characteristic configuration of the bones in all living mammals' ears arose independently at least twice during the group's evolution.

Animals

Bad Breath: Insects zip air holes to cut oxygen risks

The need to avoid overdosing on oxygen may drive certain insects to shut down their breathing holes periodically.

Plants

In a Snap: Leaf geometry drives Venus flytrap’s bite

Behind a Venus flytrap's rapid snap lies an extraordinary shape-changing mechanism.

Ecosystems

Bivalve Takeover: Once-benign clams boom after crab influx

European green crabs invading a California bay have triggered a population explosion of a previously marginal clam.

Paleontology

Pieces of an Ancestor: African site yields new look at ancient species

Fossils unearthed at sites in eastern Africa provide a rare look at Ardipithecus ramidus, a member of the human evolutionary family that lived more than 4 million years ago.

Animals

Crow Tools: Hatched to putter

The New Caledonian crow is the first vertebrate to be shown definitively to have an innate tendency to make and use tools, according to researchers who doubled as bird nannies.

Paleontology

Reptilian Repast: Ancient mammals preyed on young dinosaurs

Two nearly complete sets of fossilized remains from 130-million-year-old rocks are revealing fresh details about the size and dietary habits of ancient mammals, hinting that some of these creatures were large enough to feast on small dinosaurs.

Animals

Sparrows learn song from pieces

Young white-crowned sparrows don't have to hear a song straight through in order to learn it; playing the song in mixed-up paired phrases will do.

Animals

Mixing Genes: Bird immigrants make unexpected differences

A pair of decades-long studies of birds moving into other birds' neighborhoods show that immigration can have a quirkier effect than predicted by the usual textbook view.

Ecosystems

Fallout Feast: Vent crabs survive on victims of plume

Researchers in Taiwan propose an explanation for how so many crabs can survive at shallow-water hydrothermal vents.