Life

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Life

    California’s goby is actually two different fish

    One fish, two fish: California’s tidewater goby is two species.

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  2. Animals

    Dwarf lemurs don’t agree on sleep

    Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs’ surprising hibernation-sleep doesn’t show up in ground-hibernating relatives.

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  3. Animals

    Bonobos adept at nut cracking

    Bonobos demonstrate their overlooked nut-cracking skills in an African sanctuary.

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  4. Animals

    Bonobos rival chimps at the art of cracking oil palm nuts

    Bonobos demonstrate their overlooked nut-cracking skills in an African sanctuary.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Bacterial weaponry that causes stillbirth revealed

    Vaginal bacteria may cause stillbirth by deploying tiny weapons

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  6. Animals

    In drought, zebra finches wring water from their own fat

    A zebra finch with no water or food can keep itself hydrated by metabolizing body fat.

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  7. Paleontology

    Greenland may be home to Earth’s oldest fossils

    Dating to 3.7 billion years ago, mounds of sediment called stromatolites found in Greenland may be the oldest fossilized evidence of life on Earth.

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  8. Neuroscience

    New Alzheimer’s drug shows promise in small trial

    A much-anticipated Alzheimer’s drug shows promise in a new trial, but experts temper hope with caution.

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  9. Animals

    Tail vibrations may have preceded evolution of rattlesnake rattle

    The rattle on a rattlesnake evolved just once. A new study contends it may have come out of a common behavior — tail vibration — that snakes use to deter predators.

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  10. Animals

    For snowy owls, wintering on the prairie might be normal

    Some snowy owls leave the Arctic for winter. That’s not a desperate move, new study says.

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  11. Humans

    Brain’s blood appetite grew faster than its size

    Over evolutionary time, the energy demands of hominid brains increased faster than their volume, a new study finds.

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  12. Animals

    Dog brains divide language tasks much like humans do

    Dogs understand what we say separately from how we say it.

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