Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Sneaky male fiddler crabs entrap their mates
Some male banana fiddler crabs get a female to mate with them by trapping her in their burrow, a new study finds.
- Science & Society
Empathy for animals is all about us
We extend our feelings to what we think animals are feeling. Often, we’re wrong. But anthropomorphizing isn’t about them. It’s about us.
- Health & Medicine
This week in Zika: vaccine progress, infection insights
Vaccine candidates for Zika virus take a step forward, birth defects span spectrum of problems and doubts about Zika’s link to microcephaly may be extinguished by new reports from Colombia.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccines could counter addictive opioids
Scientists turn to vaccines to curb the growing opioid epidemic.
- Paleontology
Parasites wormed way into dino’s gut
Tiny slimed tunnels in the guts of a 77-million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur fossil offer the first hard evidence that dinosaurs may have been infected by parasitic worms, paleontologists say.
- Materials Science
Shark jelly is strong proton conductor
A jelly found in sharks and skates, which helps them sense electric fields, is a strong proton conductor.
- Animals
Two newly identified dinosaurs donned weird horns
Two newly discovered relatives of Triceratops had unusual head adornments — even for horned dinosaurs.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum fragility may help birds navigate
Birds’ internal compasses may rely on the delicate nature of the quantum world.
- Plants
‘Lab Girl’ invites readers into hidden world of plants
In Lab Girl, geobiologist Hope Jahren reveals secret lives of plants — and scientists.
- Life
Cities create accidental experiments in plant, animal evolution
To look for evolution in human-scale time, pick a city and watch a lizard. Or some clover.
- Animals
Reptile scales share evolutionary origin with hair, feathers
Hair, scales and feathers arose from same ancestral appendage.
- Animals
Insect debris fashion goes back to the Cretaceous
Ancient insects covered themselves in dirt and vegetation just as modern ones do, fossils preserved in amber suggest.
