Wild Things
The weird and wonderful in the natural world
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Small sperm whale species share a diet
Dwarf and pygmy species of sperm whales overlap in what they eat, and that could be a problem as the food web changes around them.
- Animals
Young vervet monkeys look to mom when learning
Among vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops), behaviors are passed from mother to child, a new study finds.
- Animals
Pandas enjoy the sweet life
Unlike many of their carnivore relatives, bamboo-loving pandas can taste natural, and some artificial, sugars.
- Animals
As their homes warm, salamanders shrink
Many species of salamanders respond to climate change by getting smaller.
- Animals
Skewed gender ratios turn bird world into a soap opera
Infidelity, divorce and polygamy become more common among birds when one sex is rarer and has more choice in partners.
- Animals
Mama frog’s care includes a gift of poison
Strawberry poison frog tadpoles get defensive chemicals through unfertilized, nutritious eggs provided by mom.
- Animals
How to count a sea turtle
Trends, not absolute numbers, matter more when it comes to conservation efforts for sea turtles.
- Animals
There’s plenty of bling in the natural world
Beetles that look like solid gold are just the start to jewel-like and metallic looks in nature.
- Animals
Amphibian diseases flow through animal trade
Discovery of chytrid fungus and ranaviruses in frogs and toads exported from Hong Kong shows how pathogens may spread.
- Animals
Spotted seals hear well in and out of water
Spotted seals, native to the northern parts of the Pacific, hear frequencies that may mean they are susceptible to the effects of anthropogenic noise.
- Plants
Australian flowers bloom red because of honeyeaters
Many flowering plants converged on similar a color to attract the common birds.
- Animals
Algal blooms created ancient whale graveyard
Whales and other marine mammals died at sea and were buried on a tidal flat in what's now in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
