Life

Animals

A sparrow song remix took over North America with astonishing speed

A variation on the white-throated sparrow’s song spread 3,300 kilometers in just a few decades.

Life

Here’s how flying snakes stay aloft

High-speed cameras show that paradise tree snakes keep from tumbling as they glide through the sky by undulating their bodies.

Life

Fish eggs can hatch after being eaten and pooped out by ducks

In the lab, a few carp eggs survived and even hatched after being pooped out by ducks. The finding may help explain how fish reach isolated waterways.

Health & Medicine

Strokes and mental state changes hint at how COVID-19 harms the brain

In a group of people severely ill from the coronavirus, strokes, psychosis, depression and other brain-related changes come as complications.

Animals

Dolphins can learn from peers how to use shells as tools

While most foraging skills are picked up from mom, some bottlenose dolphins seem to look to their peers to learn how to trap prey in shells.

Paleontology

Fossil discoveries suggest the earliest dinosaurs laid soft-shelled eggs

Finding soft-shelled dinosaur eggs in the fossil record for the first time has scientists rethinking how dinosaur eggs evolved.

Tech

Bubble-blowing drones may one day aid artificial pollination

Drones are too clumsy to rub pollen on flowers and not damage them. But blowing pollen-laden bubbles may help the machines be better pollinators.

Neuroscience

How to make a mouse smell a smell that doesn’t actually exist

The ability to create a perception might lead to a deeper understanding of how the brain makes sense of the world.

Genetics

DNA from a 5,200-year-old Irish tomb hints at ancient royal incest

Ruling families in Ireland may have organized a big tomb project, and inbred, more than 5,000 years ago, a new study suggests.

Animals

Barn owlets share food with their younger siblings in exchange for grooming

Scientists weren’t sure why elder barn owlets would give away meals to their younger kin, a rare example of sibling cooperation in birds.

Animals

Larvaceans’ underwater ‘snot palaces’ boast elaborate plumbing

Mucus houses have valves and ducts galore that help giant larvaceans extract food from seawater.

Life

Fossil footprints show some crocodile ancestors walked on two legs

The 106-million-year-old tracks suggest that other puzzling nearby fossils were also likely made by a bipedal croc ancestor, not a giant pterosaur.