Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Bird hormone cuts noise distractions
A jolt of springtime hormones makes a female sparrow's brain more responsive to song.
- Animals
Grammar’s for the Birds: Human-only language rule? Tell starlings
A grammatical pattern called recursion, once proposed as unique to human language, turns out to fall within the learning abilities of starlings.
- Paleontology
Dinosaur neck size reaches new extreme
Scientists have unearthed remains of a massive, plant-eating dinosaur whose neck may have been twice as long as its body.
- Animals
Worm can crawl out of predators
A parasitic worm can wriggle out through a predator's gills or mouth if the predator eats the worm's insect host. With video.
- Ecosystems
Antarctic birds are breeding later
Rising global temperatures are causing Arctic birds to breed earlier in the spring, but for Antarctic birds, the reverse is true.
- Animals
Into Hot Water: Lab test shows that worms seek heat
Worms from deep-sea vents prefer water at temperatures near the upper limit of what animals are known to survive.
- Animals
Foodfree growth
Rattlesnakes undergo a hibernation-like state to survive long periods of famine, while continuing to grow longer.
- Animals
Hummingbirds can clock flower refills
Hummingbirds can keep track of when a particular flower has replenished its nectar and is worth visiting again.
- Plants
They’re All Part Fungus
Hidden deep in their tissues, all plants probably have fungi that don't make them sick but still may have a big influence.
- Animals
Sharpshooter threatens Tahiti by inedibility
A North American insect is menacing Tahitian ecosystems by getting itself killed and proving surprisingly toxic to its predators.
- Animals
Wary male spiders woo lifelessly
When trying to court a cannibalistic female spider, males of a certain species play dead.
- Animals
Hairy crab lounges deep in the Pacific
A newly discovered deep-sea creature has the body of a crab, but with long, fluffy, blonde hair covering its legs.
