Animals
- Animals
Sumo wrestling keeps big ants in line
In a Malaysian ant species, the large workers establish a hierarchy by engaging in spectacular shaking contests.
- Animals
Moonlighting: Beetles navigate by lunar polarity
A south African dung beetle is the first animal found to align its path by detecting the polarization of moonlight.
- Animals
Strange Y chromosome makes supermom mice
An otherwise rare system of sex determination has evolved independently at least six times in one genus of South American mice.
- Animals
African cicadas warm up before singing
The first tests of temperature control in African cicadas have found species with a strategy that hogs energy but reduces the risk of predators.
-
- Animals
Snake Pits: Viper heat sensors locate cool spots
Scientists who glued aluminum foil and plastic balls to live rattlesnakes say that snakes use their heat-sensing organs for more than hunting prey.
- Animals
Skin Scam: Parasite’s host provides an insect hideaway
A group of parasitic insects called Strepsiptera can hide inside their victim by making the host form a protective bag of its own skin.
- Animals
Ballistic defecation: Hiding, not hygiene
Evading predators may be the big factor driving certain caterpillars to shoot their waste pellets great distances.
- Animals
Toothy valves control crocodile hearts
The odd cog teeth of the crocodile heart may be the first cardiac valve known to control blood flow actively.
- Animals
Chicks open wide, ultraviolet mouths
The first analysis of what the mouths of begging birds look like in the ultraviolet spectrum reveals a dramatic display that birds can see but people can't.
- Animals
Slavemaker Ants: Misunderstood Farmers?
A test of what once seemed too obvious to test—whether ant colonies suffer after being raided by slavemaker ants—suggests that some of the raiding insects have been getting unfair press.
- Animals
Fishy Paternity Defense: Bluegill dads: Not mine? Why bother?
Bluegill sunfish have provided an unusually tidy test of the much-discussed prediction that animal dads' diligence in child care depends on how certain they are that the offspring really are their own.
