Animals
Young gulls’ drab plumage may help them avoid adult attacks
Fake, painted decoys suggest immature coloring acts as a social signal, reducing aggression from territorial nesting gulls.
Animals
More Stories in Animals
- Animals
A whopping 14 million species of insects — or more — may roam Earth
New calculations suggest that the insect species inhabiting our planet may be double or triple previous estimates.
- Science & Society
A discovery about this bat’s diet was hiding in a Renaissance painting
Renaissance painter Jan Brueghel the Elder painted a bat eating a bird — 400 years before scientists would document the behavior.
- 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.
