Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Platypus fur has a surprising feature seen only in bird feathers
Platypuses are the first mammals known to have hollow melanosomes, pigment-bearing structures found in the hair of many animals.
- Animals
Wild monkeys invaded Florida. Should people protect them?
A colony of African vervets in Dania Beach raises big questions about how humans can and should manage nonnative species.
- Neuroscience
Yaks may hint at a way to treat brain diseases like MS
A genetic mutation tied to keeping the brain healthy at high altitudes may point to a way to repair nerve damage, experiments in mice show.
- Paleontology
A large fossil leg bone hints at T. rex’s origins, but scientists disagree
A new analysis of a large fossil shinbone suggests T. rex ancestors came from North America instead of Asia. Not everyone agrees.
- Genetics
Why African striped mice can be the best of dads — or the worst
Environmental cues can flip a molecular switch in the brain, turning males from caregivers to killers.
- Space
One possible recipe for life on Titan is a bust
An experiment mimicking conditions on the Saturn moon suggests that cell-like bubbles don’t form in methane lakes, puncturing hopes for alien life.
- Genetics
The Amazon molly — a sex-skipping fish — hacks evolution
The Amazon molly reproduces without sex. A genomic copy-and-paste trick called gene conversion may explain how it avoids evolutionary meltdown.
- Animals
Submerged bumblebee queens breathe underwater
Submerged bees breathe and use strategies that don’t require oxygen, lab tests show. In nature, that trick could help the bees survive floods.
- Plants
Tree tops sparkle with electricity during thunderstorms
Ultraviolet cameras captured faint electrical flashes from leaves and branches as storm charges built up in the atmosphere.
- Neuroscience
The remarkable brains of ‘SuperAgers’ hold clues about how we age
A new study reports signs that nerve cells in the brain keep dividing over the decades. It’s not so simple.
- Animals
A koala population’s rapid rebound may let it escape inbreeding’s perils
As koalas in southern Australia have grown from a few hundred to almost half a million, the marsupials show signs of regaining lost genetic variation.
- Plants
Chickpeas can grow in moon dirt and make seeds
Chickpeas produced seeds in simulated lunar soil, offering clues for future space farming.
