Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Maybe what Polly wants is a new toy
Changing the toys in a parrot's cage may ease the bird's tendency to fear new things.
- Animals
Some female birds prefer losers
When a female Japanese quail watches two males clash, she tends to prefer the loser.
- Animals
The secret appetite of cleaner wrasses
The little reef fish that nibble parasites off bigger fish that stop by for service actually prefer to nibble the customers.
- Animals
City Song: Birds sing higher near urban traffic
Birds in noisier city spots tend to sing at a higher pitch than do members of the same species in quieter neighborhoods.
- Plants
Stout Potatoes: Armed with a new gene, spuds fend off blight
Splicing a gene from a blight-resistant wild potato into varieties used for consumption could lead to blight immunity for all spuds.
- Paleontology
Learning from the Present
New field studies of unfossilized bones, as well as databases full of information about current fossil excavations and previous fossil finds, are providing insights into how complete—or incomplete—Earth's fossil record may be.
- Paleontology
Secrets of Dung: Ancient poop yields nuclear DNA
Researchers have extracted remnants of DNA from cells preserved in the desiccated dung of an extinct ground sloth.
- Animals
Killer sex, literally
Videotapes of yellow garden spiders show that if a female doesn't murder her mate, he'll expire during sex anyway.
- Plants
Crop genes diffuse in seedy ways
A study of sugar beets in France suggests that genes may escape to wild relatives through seeds accidentally transported by humans rather than through drifting pollen.
- Animals
Flight burns less fuel than stopovers
The first measurements of energy use in migrating songbirds confirms that birds burn more energy during stopovers along the way than during their total flying time.
- Life
All the World’s a Phage
There are an amazing number of bacteriophages—viruses that kill bacteria—in the world.
- Animals
Sumo wrestling keeps big ants in line
In a Malaysian ant species, the large workers establish a hierarchy by engaging in spectacular shaking contests.
