201 results
- Animals
Study ranks Greenland shark as longest-lived vertebrate
Radiocarbon in eye lenses suggests mysterious Greenland sharks might live for almost 400 years.
- Animals
Animals get struck by lightning, too
Scientists found a group of sea lions apparently dead from a lightning strike. But those animals certainly aren’t the first animals to die that way.
- Animals
Africa’s poison arrow beetles are key in traditional hunting method
In the Kalahari of Namibia, some San people still hunt with a traditional method — arrows laced with poison taken from beetle larvae.
- Animals
Sneaky little giraffe weevils beat big rivals
A little stealth gives smaller giraffe weevil males a leg up when competing with big ones for mates.
- Animals
Early research asked whether cats dream
Early research asked whether cats dream; researchers still don’t know definitively.
- Animals
African herbivores share space but not diet
Large herbivorous mammals on the plains of Kenya have distinctive diets, a new study finds.
- Animals
Why was Marius, the euthanized giraffe, ever born?
The problem of ‘surplus’ zoo animals reveals a divide on animal contraceptives.
- Animals
Ivory listings found on Craigslist as elephant poaching continues
Elephants are hunted by the thousands to meet demand for ivory products.
- Life
The eyes have it: Long lashes not so lovely
Eyelashes can’t be too short or too long without ruining their aerodynamic protection.
- Animals
The giraffes that sailed to medieval China
Chinese exploration of the world is often left out of Western textbooks (at least it was left out of mine), but for a brief period, from 1405 to 1433, the Chinese under Ming emperor Yongle sent out numerous trade missions that reached as far as present-day Kenya. During the fourth expedition, which left China in 1413, part of the fleet led by commander Zheng He sailed to Bengal in India, where in 1414 they met envoys from the African coastal state of Malindi (now part of Kenya). The men from Malindi had brought with them as tribute giraffes, and they gave one of those giraffes to the Chinese, who took it home.
- Paleontology
Earliest tree-dweller, burrower join mammal tree of life
Fossils show mammal ancestors did a lot more than cower in dinosaurs’ shadows.
- Life
The tree of life gets a makeover
Biology’s tree of life has morphed from the familiar classroom version emphasizing kingdoms into a complex depiction of supergroups, in which animals are aligned with a slew of single-celled cousins.
