Life
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AnimalsSocial Cats
Who says cats aren't social? And other musings from scientists who study cats in groups.
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Animals
Even deep down, the right whales don’t sink
A right whale may weigh some 70 tons, but unlike other marine mammals studied so far, it tends to float rather than sink at great depths.
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Animals
It’s a snake! No, a fish. An octopus?
An as-yet-unnamed species of octopus seems to be protecting itself by impersonating venomous animals from sea snakes to flatfish.
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Paleontology
New fossil sheds light on dinosaurs’ diet
Vestiges of soft tissue preserved in a 70-million-year-old Mongolian fossil suggest that some dinosaurs could have strained small bits of food from the water and mud of streams and ponds, just like some modern aquatic birds do.
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Paleontology
Completing a titan by getting a head
When paleontologists unearthed the skeleton of a 70-million-year-old titanosaur in Madagascar in the late 1990s, they also recovered something that had been missing from previous such finds: a skull that matched the body.
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Paleontology
That’s no footprint, it’s got no toes
The impressions near Isona, Spain, long thought to be fossilized dinosaur footprints may actually record the feeding behavior of stingrays.
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Animals
Big woodpeckers trash others’ homes
Pileated woodpeckers destroy in an afternoon the nesting cavities that take endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers 6 years to excavate.
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Animals
When rare species eat endangered ones
To cut down on their salmon smolt catch, Caspian terns were encouraged to move from one island to another in the Columbia River.
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Animals
Oops. New feathers turn out lousy
Going to the trouble of molting doesn't really get rid of a bird's lice after all.
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Animals
Stinking decorations protect nests
The common waxbill's habit of adorning its nests with fur plucked from carnivore scat turns out to discourage attacks from predators.
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Animals
20/20 lenses coat body of sea creature
The skeleton of brittlestars doubles as an array of optically precise lenses that rival plastic microlenses designed by engineers.
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Ecosystems
Streamers could save birds from hooks
A test on active longline fishing boats finds that an inexpensive array of streamers can reduce accidental deaths of seabirds by more than 90 percent.