Sarah Zielinski

Sarah Zielinski

Editor, Print at Science News Explores

Sarah Zielinski wanted to be a marine biologist when she was growing up, but after graduating from Cornell University with a B.A. in biology, and a stint at the National Science Foundation, she realized that she didn’t want to spend her life studying just one area of science — she wanted to learn about it all and share that knowledge with the public. In 2004, she received an M.A. in journalism from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and began a career in science journalism. She worked as a science writer and editor at the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the American Geophysical Union’s newspaper Eos and Smithsonian magazine before becoming a freelancer. During that time, she started her blog, Wild Things, and moved it to Science News magazine, and then became an editor for and frequent contributor to Science News Explores. Her work has also appeared in Slate, Science, Scientific AmericanDiscover and National Geographic News. She is the winner of the DCSWA 2010 Science News Brief Award and editor of the winner of the Gold Award for Children’s Science News in the 2015 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards, “Where will lightning strike?” published in Science News Explores. In 2005, she was a Marine Biological Laboratory Science Journalism Fellow.

All Stories by Sarah Zielinski

  1. Animals

    Pup kidnapping has a happy ending when a seal gets two moms

    A female fur seal kidnapped another seal’s pup. But this turned out to be a positive the young seal, scientists found.

  2. Oceans

    Sea ice algae drive the Arctic food web

    Even organisms that don’t depend on sea ice depend on sea ice algae, a new study finds. But Arctic sea ice is disappearing.

  3. Animals

    Tiny ants move a ton of soil

    For the first time, scientists have quantified how much soil ants move underground.

  4. Animals

    For jaguars, armored prey is no obstacle

    With big heads, thick teeth and strong muscles, jaguars have evolved to take on dangerous prey, often animals covered with thick armor.

  5. Animals

    What animals’ life spans can tell us about how people age

    The animal world can offer insights into human longevity.

  6. Animals

    When bird populations shrink, females fly away

    In small and shrinking populations of willow warblers, males outnumber females. That’s because girls choose to join bigger groups, a new study finds.

  7. Animals

    Beetles that battle make better moms than ones that never fight

    Female burying beetles that have to fight before reproducing spend more time caring for offspring than beetles with no fighting experience, a new study finds.

  8. Animals

    Lionfish invasion comes to the Mediterranean

    Scientists had thought that the Mediterranean was too cold for lionfish to permanently settle there. But now they’ve found a population of the fish off Cyprus.

  9. Animals

    Sneaky male fiddler crabs entrap their mates

    Some male banana fiddler crabs get a female to mate with them by trapping her in their burrow, a new study finds.

  10. Animals

    Bacteria make male lacewings disappear

    Scientists have tracked down why some green lacewings in Japan produce only female offspring: Bacteria kill off all the males early in life.

  11. Animals

    Three-toed sloths are even more slothful than two-toed sloths

    The three-toed sloth Bradypus variegatus has the lowest field metabolic rate ever recorded, a new study finds.

  12. Animals

    That ‘Dory’ for sale may have been poisoned with cyanide

    Preliminary results from a new study show that over half of aquarium fish sold in the United States may have been caught with cyanide.