Animals

  1. Life

    Spiders love sweet smell of blood perfume

    For on spider species, feeding on blood-gorged mosquitoes adds charm to a mate

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  2. Animals

    Ancient giant beavers did not chow on trees

    The now-extinct animals had a hippo-like diet

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  3. Life

    Fossil find sparks debate on primate origins

    A 37-million-year-old jaw suggests the famous fossil Darwinius does not, as had been suggested, fill a gap in human evolution.

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  4. Animals

    Junk food turns rats into addicts

    Bacon, cheesecake and Ho Hos elicit addictive behavior in rats similar to the behavior of rats addicted to heroin.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Pigs use mirrors

    After some time to play around with a mirror, pigs figure out what to do when they glimpse a reflection of food.

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  6. Animals

    Spider men weave silken tapestry

    It took herculean effort, but Madagascar crafters created an extraordinary piece of woven art from spider silk.

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  7. Animals

    Ants in the pants drive away birds

    Yellow crazy ants can get so annoying that birds don’t eat their normal fruits, a new study finds.

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  8. Animals

    Vultures get their day

    Hurray for avian garbage collectors.

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  9. Animals

    Play that monkey music

    Man-made music inspired by tamarin calls seems to alter the primates’ emotions, a new study suggests.

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  10. Earth

    Oh, rats — there go the snails

    A food fad among introduced rats has apparently crashed a once-thriving population of Hawaii’s famed endemic tree snails.

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  11. Animals

    Oops, missed that fossil iridescence

    Nanostructures on a preserved feather offer the first fossil evidence of bird colors not from pigments, a new study says.

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  12. Animals

    Fruity whiff may inspire new mosquito repellents

    Odors from ripening bananas can jam fruit flies’ and mosquitoes’ power to detect carbon dioxide, a new study finds.

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