It's Alive
-
PlantsThis parasitic plant consists of just flashy flowers and creepy suckers
With only four known species, Langsdorffia are thieves stripped down to their essentials.
-
LifeAlgae use flagella to trot, gallop and move with gaits all their own
Single-celled microalgae, with no brains, can coordinate their “limbs” into a trot or fancier gait.
-
AnimalsTexas has its own rodeo ant queens
New species of rodeo ants, riding on the backs of bigger ants, turned up in Austin, Texas.
-
LifeSaharan silver ants are the world’s fastest despite relatively short legs
Saharan silver ants can hit speeds of 108 times their body length per second.
-
PlantsWhy tumbleweeds may be more science fiction than Old West
A tumbleweed is just a maternal plant corpse giving her living seeds a chance at a good life somewhere new.
-
AnimalsThere’s more to pufferfish than that goofy spiked balloon
Three odd things about pufferfishes: how they mate, how they bite and what’s up with no fish scales?
-
AnimalsParenting chores cut into how much these bird dads fool around
Frantic parenting demands after eggs hatch curtail male black coucals’ philandering excursions the most, a study finds.
-
PlantsShutdown aside, Joshua trees live an odd life
Growing only in the U.S. Southwest, wild Joshua trees evolved a rare, fussy pollination scheme.
-
AnimalsHow nectar bats fly nowhere
Exquisitely sensitive tech makes first direct measurements of the forces of bat wingbeats.
-
AnimalsThese songbirds violently fling and then impale their prey
A loggerhead shrike that skewers small animals on barbed wire gives mice whiplash shakeups.
-
-
AnimalsThese caterpillars march. They fluff. They scare London.
Oak processionary moths have invaded England and threatened the pleasure of spring breezes.