Animals
Crabs can’t hide from an octopus with a mirror
New experiments show that octopuses can understand where an item is based solely on its reflection.
Animals
More Stories in Animals
- Animals
Giant, deep-sea roly-polies steal a gene to endure starvation
The enormous deep-sea cousins of your garden’s pill bugs can go five years without food. A gene they pilfered from bacteria may be part of the secret.
- Health & Medicine
The New World screwworm has returned to the U.S. Now what?
At least a dozen animals have been found with the flesh-eating maggots. It could take more than a year to eradicate the parasite again, experts warn.
- Animals
Sea cucumbers harbor ‘zombie’ tissues that won’t die
Detached tissues from the sea cucumber's tube feet and feeding tentacles survived for more than three years, a find that could shape the study of aging.
- Paleontology
A textbook assumption about early land vertebrates may be wrong
Three species that lived about 308 million years ago challenge the idea that the first land vertebrates underwent amphibian-like metamorphosis.
- Health & Medicine
A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading
It’s just a matter of time before Sporothrix brasiliensis reaches the U.S. a CDC expert says.
- Science & Society
How real is the Cyclops in The Odyssey?
The iconic one-eyed monster coming to movie screens in July in The Odyssey might have more in common with tiny water critters than with humans.
- Animals
Songs prep the brains of finches yet to hatch for a hot world
Adult finches make "heat calls" as the temperature rises. Exposure to the song prepares their unhatched young's brains for the heat.
- Paleontology
Frozen squirrel poop hints at sights and smells of Ice Age ecosystems
DNA preserved in ancient scat reveals what Yukon ground squirrels ate and what animals shared their world.
- Animals
These birds clack their wing bones together to woo mates at night
During courtship, male scissor-tailed nightjars crack their wings together to make a sharp snapping sound. It's the result of colliding arm bones.
