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We summarize the week's science breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Ecosystems

    Famine reveals incredible shrinking iguanas

    Marine iguanas in the Galápagos Islands are the first vertebrates known to reduce their size during a food shortage and then regrow to their original body lengths.

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  2. Animals

    Male bats primp daily for odor display

    For the first time, scientists have described the daily routine of male sac-winged bats gathering to freshen the odor pouches on their wings.

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  3. Animals

    Sniff . . . Pow! Wasps use chemicals to start ant brawls

    Wasps sneak around in ant colonies thanks to chemicals that send the ants into a distracting frenzy of fighting among themselves.

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  4. Animals

    Walking sticks mimic two leafy looks and split their species

    A species of walking stick may be evolving into two species by adapting to different environments.

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  5. Animals

    Mole-rats: Kissing but not quite cousins

    Damaraland mole-rats live underground in rodent versions of bee hives, but a genetic analysis of these colonies finds that kinship isn't very beelike.

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  6. Animals

    Gator Feelings: Tough faces, more sensitive than ours

    Alligator and crocodile faces carry pressure receptors so responsive that they can detect ripples on the water's surface from a single falling drop.

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  7. Animals

    No Tickling: Common caterpillars deploy defensive hair

    The caterpillars of the European cabbage butterfly have a chemical defense system that scientists haven't documented before.

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  8. Animals

    Dogged Dieting: Low-cal canines enjoy longer life

    The first completed diet-restriction study in a large animal shows that labrador retrievers fed 25 percent less food than those allowed to eat as much as they desired tend to live longer and suffer fewer age-related diseases.

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  9. Paleontology

    Ancient Whodunit: Scientists indict wee suspects in ancient deaths

    Evidence locked in 180,000-year-old sediments suggests that a toxic algae bloom was the cause of death for a large group of mammals that were fossilized intact on an ancient lake bottom.

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  10. Animals

    Rebranding the Hyena

    Zoologists are hoping that long-term ecological studies of the spotted hyena will assist in dispelling the animal's undeservedly bad reputation.

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  11. Animals

    Big-Eyed Birds Sing Early Songs: Dawn chorus explained

    Researchers report a strong relationship between eye size and the light intensity at which birds start to sing in the morning.

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  12. Paleontology

    Older Ancestors: Primate origins age in new analysis

    A controversial new statistical model concludes that the common ancestor of primates lived 81.5 million years ago, about 16 million years earlier than many paleontologists have estimated.

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