Animals

  1. Animals

    Nasty-tasting cane toads teach crocodiles a lifesaving lesson

    After tasting nausea-inducing toad butts, crocodiles in Australia learned to avoid the poisonous live version. Crocodile deaths dropped by 95 percent.

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  2. Animals

    A risk-tolerant immune system may enable house sparrows’ wanderlust

    Birds that are willing to eat seed spiked with chicken poop have higher expression levels of a gut immunity gene, a new study finds.

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  3. Animals

    A frog’s story of surviving a fungal pandemic offers hope for other species

    Evolving immunity to the Bd fungus and a reintroduction project saved a California frog. The key to rescuing other species might be in the frog’s genes.

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  4. Animals

    Hundreds of snake species get a new origin story

    Elapoid snakes, including cobras, mambas and sea snakes, may have evolved in Asia, not Africa as many researchers once thought.

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  5. Animals

    Why a small seabird dares to fly toward cyclones

    Tracking data show that Desertas petrels often veer toward cyclones and follow in their wake, perhaps to catch prey drawn to the surface.

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  6. Animals

    Pheromone fingers may help poison frogs mate

    Specialized glands in the fingertips of some males may produce seductive chemical signals.

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  7. Animals

    Static electricity may help butterflies and moths gather pollen on the fly

    Electrostatically charged lepidopterans could draw pollen out of flowers without touching the blooms, computer simulations suggest.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Getting drugs into the brain is hard. Maybe a parasite can do the job

    Researchers want to harness the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis to ferry drugs, but some question if the risks can be eliminated.

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  9. Animals

    Komodo dragon teeth get their strength from an iron coat

    Studying the reptile’s ironclad teeth in more detail could help solve a dinosaur dental mystery.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    Bird flu has been invading the brains of mammals. Here’s why

    Although H5N1 and its relatives can cause mild disease in some animals, these viruses are more likely to infect brain tissue than other types of flu.

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  11. Genetics

    Freeze-drying turned a woolly mammoth’s DNA into 3-D ‘chromoglass’

    A new technique for probing the 3-D structure of ancient DNA may help scientists learn how extinct animals functioned, not just what they looked like.

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  12. Animals

    Tiny saunas help frogs fight off chytrid fungus

    Balmy shelters could bolster resistance to the deadly fungus in amphibian populations, but experts caution they won’t work for all susceptible species.

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