Animals
- Physics
Flying snakes get lift from surrounding air vortices
When a paradise flying snake leaps into and glides through the air, it’s getting lift from small, swirling vortices in the air around it.
- Animals
Peacocks sometimes fake mating hoots
Peacocks may have learned a benefit of deception by sounding their copulation calls even when no peahens are in sight.
- Animals
Algal blooms created ancient whale graveyard
Whales and other marine mammals died at sea and were buried on a tidal flat in what's now in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
- Life
Rivalry helps fruit flies maintain brainpower
In lab tests, males dim mentally after generations without competitors.
- Animals
The mystery of the missing fish heads
When scientists opened up the stomachs of shortfin mako sharks, they found that nearly all of the digesting fish had no heads or tails.
- Animals
Methylation turns a wannabe bumblebee into a queen
Epigenetic changes to bumblebee DNA turns a worker into a reproductive pseudo-queen, suggesting that genomic imprinting could be responsible for the bumblebee social system.
- Animals
A tiny ocean vortex, with pop art pizzazz
Coral polyps kick up a whirling vortex of water by whipping their hairlike cilia back and forth in the photography winner of the 2013 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.
- Animals
We’re only noticing the snowy owls
A lemming boom last summer probably led to rises in populations of several predator species.
- Animals
Fish lose their fear on a denuded reef
Juvenile damselfish lose their ability to smell danger when in a degraded habitat.
- Neuroscience
Like people, dogs have brain areas that respond to voices
MRI study may help explain how pups understand human communication.
- Life
Fins and wings alike share design features
Animals have adapted a number of different ways to swim and fly. But new research suggests that wings, fins and flukes share a couple of basic design parameters.
- Animals
Elephants offer a reassuring touch in stressful times
Elephants seem to comfort their comrades in times of need, hinting that the animals may have the capacity for complicated mental feats such as empathy.
