Animals

  1. Ecosystems

    Pigeons usually let best navigator take the lead

    One bird usually leads the flock, but sometimes another gets a turn at the helm.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Cats attracted to ADHD drug, a feline poison

    Since 2004, drugs designed for use by people have been the leading source of poisonings among companion animals, according to the national Animal Poison Control Center in Urbana, Ill. And among cats, Adderall – a combination of mixed amphetamine salts used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – has quickly risen to become one of the most common and dangerous of these pharmaceutical threats.

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  3. Life

    Evolutionary genetic relationships coming into focus

    Researchers have filled in about 40 percent of the tree of life for mammals and birds, but other vertebrates lag behind.

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  4. Earth

    Green-ish pesticides bee-devil honey makers

    Pesticides are agents designed to rid targeted portions of the human environment of undesirable critters – such as boll weevils, roaches or carpenter ants. They’re not supposed to harm beneficials. Like bees. Yet a new study from China finds that two widely used pyrethroid pesticides – chemicals that are rather “green” as bug killers go – can significantly impair the pollinators’ reproduction.

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  5. Earth

    Fowl surprise! Methylmercury improves hatching rate

    A pinch of methylmercury is just ducky for mallard reproduction, according to a new federal study. The findings are counterintuitive, since methylmercury is ordinarily a potent neurotoxic pollutant.

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  6. Animals

    Whale hunts: Discussions on lifting the ‘ban’

    The International Whaling Commission will formally address its future, next week, at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Fla. Once comprised of whaling nations, the IWC now includes member states just as likely to condemn any hunting of cetaceans. That internal tension is guiding the meeting’s agenda. On it’s plate: whether to overturn the organization’s long-standing moratorium on commercial whaling.

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  7. Earth

    Florida’s big chill may have hammered corals near shore

    January cold snap caused rare wintertime coral bleaching and die-offs for Florida’s coral reefs.

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  8. Humans

    Pet tarantulas can pose a hairy threat

    A new medical case report reaffirms why even largely non-venomous tarantulas can make questionable pets. Some respond to stress by expelling a cloud of barbed hairs that can lodge in especially vulnerable tissues. Like your eyeball.

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  9. Earth

    For coots, hatching order is crucial ID

    When birds sneak eggs into others' nest, mom and dad can learn to find their own.

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  10. Life

    Bird feeding, migration could be splitting a species

    German birds that spend the off-season at U.K. birdfeeders now look slightly different from neighbors that migrate to Spain

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  11. Animals

    Little push turns snail lefties to righties

    Bumping an early embryo’s cells can switch the direction of its spiral.

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  12. Life

    Fecal architecture is beetle armor

    Predators have a hard time getting through the layers of excrement some beetle moms give their young.

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