It's Alive
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PlantsRats with poisonous hairdos live surprisingly sociable private lives
Deadly, swaggering rodents purr and snuggle when they’re with mates and young.
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AnimalsA face mask may turn up a male wrinkle-faced bat’s sex appeal
The first-ever scientific observations of a wrinkle-faced bat’s courtship shows that, when flirting, the males raise their white furry face coverings.
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PlantsThis parasitic plant consists of just flashy flowers and creepy suckers
With only four known species, Langsdorffia are thieves stripped down to their essentials.
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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.
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AnimalsTexas has its own rodeo ant queens
New species of rodeo ants, riding on the backs of bigger ants, turned up in Austin, Texas.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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PlantsShutdown aside, Joshua trees live an odd life
Growing only in the U.S. Southwest, wild Joshua trees evolved a rare, fussy pollination scheme.
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AnimalsHow nectar bats fly nowhere
Exquisitely sensitive tech makes first direct measurements of the forces of bat wingbeats.
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AnimalsThese songbirds violently fling and then impale their prey
A loggerhead shrike that skewers small animals on barbed wire gives mice whiplash shakeups.