All Stories by Susan Milius
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- Animals
Snake Pits: Viper heat sensors locate cool spots
Scientists who glued aluminum foil and plastic balls to live rattlesnakes say that snakes use their heat-sensing organs for more than hunting prey.
- Plants
Sun-tracking dads make better pollen
In one of the first tests of paternal behavior in plants, snow buttercups that were allowed to follow their natural tendency to track sun movement made more-viable pollen than did tethered blooms.
- Animals
Skin Scam: Parasite’s host provides an insect hideaway
A group of parasitic insects called Strepsiptera can hide inside their victim by making the host form a protective bag of its own skin.
- Agriculture
Mad Cow Future: Tests explore next generation of defenses
As Canadian health officials investigate mad cow disease within the country's borders, researchers are already working on the next generation of defenses.
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Bad Dancers: Childhood chills give bees six left feet
Honeybees kept just a bit cool when young grow up looking normal but dancing badly, which impedes their ability to communicate with other bees.
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Troubling Treat: Guam mystery disease from bat entrée?
A famous unsolved medical puzzle of why a neurological disease spiked on Guam may hinge on the local tradition of serving boiled bat.
- Animals
Ballistic defecation: Hiding, not hygiene
Evading predators may be the big factor driving certain caterpillars to shoot their waste pellets great distances.
- Plants
Any Hope for Old Chestnuts?
Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the discovery of chestnut blight in the United States, but enthusiasts still haven't given up hope of restoring American chestnut forests.
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Fig-Wasp Upset: Classic partnership isn’t so tidy after all
Genetic analysis suggests that a textbook example of a tight buddy system in nature—fig species that supposedly each have their own pollinating wasp species—may need to be rewritten.
- Animals
Chicks open wide, ultraviolet mouths
The first analysis of what the mouths of begging birds look like in the ultraviolet spectrum reveals a dramatic display that birds can see but people can't.
- Animals
Fishy Paternity Defense: Bluegill dads: Not mine? Why bother?
Bluegill sunfish have provided an unusually tidy test of the much-discussed prediction that animal dads' diligence in child care depends on how certain they are that the offspring really are their own.
