Animals

Ecosystems

Moonlight shapes how some animals move, grow and even sing

The moon’s light influences lion prey behavior, dung beetle navigation, fish growth, mass migrations and birdsong.

Animals

Some ancient crocodiles may have chomped on plants instead of meat

Fossil teeth of extinct crocodyliforms suggest that some ate plants and that herbivory evolved at least three times in crocs of the Mesozoic Era.

Archaeology

Peru’s famous Nazca Lines may include drawings of exotic birds

Pre-Inca people depicted winged fliers from far away in landscape art.

Life

These fungi drug cicadas with psilocybin or amphetamine to make them mate nonstop

Massospora fungi use a compound found in magic mushrooms or an amphetamine to drive infected cicadas to mate and mate and mate.

Archaeology

Capuchin monkeys’ stone-tool use has evolved over 3,000 years

A Brazilian archaeological site reveals capuchins’ long history of practical alterations to pounding implements, researchers say.

Animals

Parasites ruin some finches’ songs by chewing through the birds’ beaks

Parasitic fly larvae damage the beaks of Galápagos finches, changing their mating songs and possibly causing females to pick males of a different species.

Animals

U.S. honeybees had the worst winter die-off in more than a decade

Colonies suffered from parasitic, disease-spreading Varroa mites. Floods and fire didn’t help.

Genetics

DNA confirms a weird Greenland whale was a narwhal-beluga hybrid

DNA analysis of a skull indicates that the animal had a narwhal mother and beluga father.

Paleontology

Hyenas roamed the Arctic during the last ice age

Two teeth confirm the idea that hyenas crossed the Bering land bridge into North America, a study finds.

Astronomy

Readers boggled by black hole behemoth

Readers had questions about the first image of a black hole and a chytrid fungus.

Animals

Bats are the main cause of rare rabies deaths in the U.S.

In the United States, bats are mostly to blame for rabies deaths, while rabies transmitted by overseas dogs comes in second.

Animals

Worms lure two new species of hopping rats out of obscurity

In the Philippines, scientists have identified two new species of shrew-rat, an animal whose limited habitat plays host to remarkable biodiversity.