Animals
- Animals
Shrimps spew bubbles as hot as the sun
With the snap of a claw, a pinkie-size ocean shrimp generates a collapsing air bubble that's hot enough to emit faint light.
By Peter Weiss - Animals
Meerkat pups grow fatter with extra adults
Meerkat pups growing up in large, cooperative groups are heftier because there are more adults to entreat for food.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Shhh! Is that scrape a caterpillar scrap?
A series of staged conflicts reveals the first known acoustic duels in caterpillars.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!
Hungry chicks cheeping in their nest have inspired a whole branch of scientific inquiry.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Social Cats
Who says cats aren't social? And other musings from scientists who study cats in groups.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Even deep down, the right whales don’t sink
A right whale may weigh some 70 tons, but unlike other marine mammals studied so far, it tends to float rather than sink at great depths.
By Susan Milius - Animals
It’s a snake! No, a fish. An octopus?
An as-yet-unnamed species of octopus seems to be protecting itself by impersonating venomous animals from sea snakes to flatfish.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Big woodpeckers trash others’ homes
Pileated woodpeckers destroy in an afternoon the nesting cavities that take endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers 6 years to excavate.
By Susan Milius - Animals
When rare species eat endangered ones
To cut down on their salmon smolt catch, Caspian terns were encouraged to move from one island to another in the Columbia River.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Oops. New feathers turn out lousy
Going to the trouble of molting doesn't really get rid of a bird's lice after all.
By Susan Milius - Animals
Stinking decorations protect nests
The common waxbill's habit of adorning its nests with fur plucked from carnivore scat turns out to discourage attacks from predators.
By Susan Milius - Animals
20/20 lenses coat body of sea creature
The skeleton of brittlestars doubles as an array of optically precise lenses that rival plastic microlenses designed by engineers.