Animals
- Life
Piranhas and their plant-eating relatives, pacus, replace rows of teeth all at once
Piranhas and pacus both lose and replace all teeth on one side of their mouths in one go, which may help to distribute wear and tear.
- Life
Aye-ayes just got weirder with the discovery of a tiny, sixth ‘finger’
Aye-ayes have a sixth “finger,” or pseudothumb, that may compensate for other, overspecialized fingers by helping the lemurs grip things.
- Animals
White bellbirds have the loudest known mating call of any bird
White bellbirds have the loudest mating call, according to scientists who compared the songs of bellbirds and screaming pihas in the Brazilian Amazon.
- Life
A peek inside a turtle embryo wins the Nikon Small World photography contest
The annual competition highlights the wonders to be found when scientists and photographers zoom in on the world around us.
- Animals
New books explore why dogs and humans have such a special bond
‘Dog Is Love’ and ‘Our Dogs, Ourselves’ delve into the complicated, sometimes contradictory relationship that we have with our canine companions.
- Health & Medicine
These tiny aquatic animals secrete a compound that may help fight snail fever
A newly identified molecule from rotifers paralyzes the larvae of worms that cause schistosomiasis, which affects over 200 million people worldwide.
- Animals
Humpback whales use their flippers and bubble ‘nets’ to catch fish
A study reveals new details of how humpback whales hunt using their flippers and a whirl of bubbles to capture fish.
- Life
How tardigrades protect their DNA to defy death
Tardigrades encase their DNA in a cloud of protective protein to shield from damage by radiation or drying out.
- Ecosystems
Burrowing birds create pockets of rich plant life in a desert landscape
Mounds of sand dug out by birds are hot spots for plants in Peru’s Atacama Desert, possibly providing a sheltered and moist area for seed germination.
- Life
Gene editing can make fruit flies into ‘monarch flies’
Just three molecular changes can make fruit flies insensitive to milkweed toxins.
- Climate
Malin Pinsky seeks to explain how climate change alters ocean life
As global temperatures rise, Malin Pinsky’s research attempts to understand how marine ecosystems are changing and why.
- Genetics
Dog behaviors like aggression and fearfulness are linked to breed genetics
A study looking at how 101 dog breeds behave finds a strong association between genetics and 14 personality traits.
