1,405 results
1,405 results for: Whales
- Animals
Retaking Flight: Some insects that didn’t use it didn’t lose it
Stick insects may have done what biologists once thought was impossible: lose something as complicated as a wing in the course of evolution but recover it millions of years later.
- Paleontology
Sea Dragons
About 235 million years ago, as the earliest dinosaurs stomped about on land, some of their reptilian relatives slipped back into the surf, took on an aquatic lifestyle, and became ichthyosaurs—Greek for fish lizards.
- Life
All the World’s a Phage
There are an amazing number of bacteriophages—viruses that kill bacteria—in the world.
- Animals
Oops. Woodpecker raps were actually gunshots
The knock-knock noises recorded last winter that raised hopes for rediscovering the long-lost ivory-billed woodpecker in Louisiana turn out to have been gunshots instead of bird noises.
- Animals
Even deep down, the right whales don’t sink
A right whale may weigh some 70 tons, but unlike other marine mammals studied so far, it tends to float rather than sink at great depths.
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Minke whales make Star Wars noises
Researchers have identified the dwarf minke whales of Australia as the source of an odd sound like the firing of a Stars Wars laser gun.
- Anthropology
A Fair Share of the Pie
A cross-cultural project suggests that people everywhere divvy up food and make other economic deals based on social concepts of fairness, not individual self-interest.
- Earth
Ocean View
Ocean observatories have revealed unexpected discoveries, and now scientists want to widen the lens.
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- Earth
Deep-sea gear takes wild ride on lava
When a set of instruments monitoring an underwater volcano got trapped in an eruption in early 1998, the scientists who had deployed the sensors ended up with more data than they bargained for.
- Paleontology
Study picks new site for dinosaur nostrils
A new analysis of fossils and living animals suggests that most dinosaurs' nostrils occurred at locations toward the tip of their snout rather than farther up on their face, a concept that may change scientists' views of the animals' physiology and behavior.
- Anthropology
Chimps grasp at social identities
Researchers contend that neighboring communities of wild chimpanzees develop distinctive styles of mutual grooming to identify fellow group members and foster social solidarity.
