All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Defenseless moths do flying impressions of scary bees and wasps
Faking that erratic bee flight or no-nonsense wasp zoom might save a moth’s life.
- Plants
New genetic details may help roses come up smelling like, well, roses
A detailed genetic look at China roses and an old European species shows that there’s a built-in trade-off between color and scent.
- Animals
Male fruit flies enjoy ejaculation
Red light exposure made some genetically engineered fruit flies ejaculate, spurring a surge of a brain reward compound — and less desire for booze.
- Animals
These hummingbirds aim their singing tail feathers to wow mates
Acoustic cameras reveal how male Costa’s hummingbirds can aim the sound produced by fluttering tail feathers during courtship dives.
- Animals
How honeybees’ royal jelly might be baby glue, too
A last-minute pH shift thickens royal jelly enough to stick queen larvae to the ceiling of hive cells.
- Animals
Toxins from the world’s longest animal can kill cockroaches
Bootlace worms can stretch up to 55 meters long and ooze toxins that can kill cockroaches and green crabs.
- Animals
Some frogs may be bouncing back after killer chytrid fungus
Frogs in Panama may be developing defenses against a fatal skin disease, a new study suggests.
- Animals
In a pack hunt, it’s every goatfish for itself
Pack hunting among goatfish is really about self-interest.
- Animals
It’s official: Termites are just cockroaches with a fancy social life
On their latest master list of arthropods, U.S. entomologists have finally declared termites to be a kind of cockroach.
- Animals
A new species of tardigrade lays eggs covered with doodads and streamers
These elegant eggs hint that a tardigrade found in a Japanese parking lot is a new species.
- Animals
This scratchy hiss is the closest thing yet to caterpillar vocalization
A new way that caterpillars make noise may involve (tiny) teakettle‒style turbulence.
- Plants
The flowers that give us chocolate are ridiculously hard to pollinate
Cacao trees are really fussy about pollination.
