Animals

  1. Ecosystems

    Flowers may be big antennas for bees’ electrical signals

    The finding suggests a way for plants to share information about nearby pollinators and communicate when to trigger nectar production.

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  2. Animals

    Eavesdropping on fish could help us keep better tabs on underwater worlds

    Scientists are on a quest to log all the sounds of fish communication. The result could lead to better monitoring of ecosystems and fish behavior.

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  3. Genetics

    Here’s why some pigeons do backflips

    Meet the scientist homing in on the genes involved in making parlor roller pigeons do backward somersaults.

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  4. Neuroscience

    Chickadees use memory ‘bar codes’ to find their hidden food stashes

    Unique subsets of neurons in a chickadee’s memory center light up for each distinct cache, hinting at how episodic memories are encoded in the brain.

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  5. Neuroscience

    Here’s how magnetic fields shape desert ants’ brains

    Exposure to a tweaked magnetic field scrambled desert ants’ efforts to learn where home is — and affected neuron connections in a key part of the brain.

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  6. Animals

    By fluttering its wings, this bird uses body language to tell its mate ‘after you’

    New observations suggest that Japanese tits gesture to communicate complex messages — a rare ability in the animal kingdom and a first seen in birds.

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  7. Neuroscience

    Dogs know words for their favorite toys

    The brain activity of dogs that were expecting one toy but were shown another suggests canines create mental concepts of everyday objects.

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  8. Animals

    American bullfrogs may be threatening a rare frog species in Brazil

    A search for environmental DNA from critically endangered Pithecopus rusticus frogs turned up DNA from invasive American bullfrogs instead.

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  9. Animals

    Daddy longlegs look like they have two eyes. That doesn’t count the hidden ones

    Despite its two-eyed appearance, Phalangium opilio has six peepers. The four optical remnants shed light on the arachnids’ evolutionary history.

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  10. Animals

    Male dragonflies’ wax coats might protect them against a warming climate

    The reflective wax, which cools males on sunny courtship flights, may also armor them against the effects of climate change.

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  11. Animals

    Male mammals aren’t always bigger than females

    In a study of over 400 mammal species, less than half have males that are, on average, heavier than females, undermining a long-standing assumption.

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  12. Animals

    A decades-old mystery has been solved with the help of newfound bee species

    Masked bees in Australia and French Polynesia have long-lost relatives in Fiji, suggesting that the bees’ ancestors island hopped.

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