Animals
- Life
How horses lost their toes
Fossils reveal that as horses evolved to have fewer toes, they also got stronger and faster.
- Paleontology
This ancient sea worm sported a crowd of ‘claws’ around its mouth
A newly discovered species of arrow worm that lived over half a billion years ago had about twice as many head spines as its modern kin.
- Animals
Giant larvaceans could be ferrying ocean plastic to the seafloor
Giant larvaceans could mistakenly capture microplastics, in addition to food, in their mucus houses and transfer them to the seafloor in their feces.
- Animals
These spiders crossed an ocean to get to Australia
The nearest relatives of an Australian trapdoor spider live in Africa. They crossed the Indian Ocean to get to Australia, a new study suggests.
- Life
Polluted water: It’s where sea snakes wear black
Reptile counterpart proposed for textbook example of evolution favoring darker moths amid industrial soot.
- Astronomy
What do plants and animals do during an eclipse?
A citizen science experiment will gather the biggest dataset to date of animal responses to a total eclipse.
- Animals
Why midsize animals are the fastest
New analysis delves into the mystery of why medium-sized animals are speedier than bigger ones.
- Animals
A lot of life on planet Earth is awful and incredible
Acting Editor in Chief Elizabeth Quill discusses how the natural world feeds our sense of wonder.
- Animals
Readers fascinated by critters’ strange biology
Readers responded to fish lips, monkey brains, sunless tanner and more.
- Animals
Ticks are here to stay. But scientists are finding ways to outsmart them
Researchers acknowledge that there’s no getting rid of ticks, so they are developing ways to make them less dangerous.
- Animals
Fossil find suggests this ancient reptile lurked on land, not in the water
An exquisitely preserved fossil shows that an ancient armored reptile called Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi wasn’t aquatic, as scientists had suspected.
- Animals
These record-breaking tube worms can survive for centuries
Deep-sea tube worms can live decades longer than their shallow-water counterparts.
