Life
- Animals
Sibling Desperado: Doomed booby chick turns relentlessly violent
The first known case among nonhuman vertebrates of so-called desperado aggression—relentless attacks against an overwhelming force—may come from the underling chick in nests of brown boobies.
- Animals
He and she cooperate on anti-aphrodisiacs
Scientists have for the first time identified a chemical that serves as a butterfly anti-aphrodisiac.
- Animals
Better Than Real: Males prefer flower’s scent to female wasp’s
In an extreme case of sex fakery, an orchid produces oddball chemicals to mimic a female wasp's allure so well that males prefer the flower scent to the real thing.
- Animals
One-Two Poison: Scorpion starts with a cheap shot
A South African scorpion economizes as it stings, injecting a simple mix first, followed by a venom that's more complicated to produce.
- Paleontology
Wings Aplenty: Dinosaur species had feathered hind limbs
A team of Chinese paleontologists has discovered fossils of a small, feathered dinosaur that they say had four wings.
- Animals
Retaking Flight: Some insects that didn’t use it didn’t lose it
Stick insects may have done what biologists once thought was impossible: lose something as complicated as a wing in the course of evolution but recover it millions of years later.
- Ecosystems
Why didn’t the beetle cross the road?
Beetle populations confined to specific forest areas by roads seem to have lost some of their genetic diversity.
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- Paleontology
Overlooked fossil spread first feathers
A new look at a fossil that had been lying in a drawer in Moscow for nearly 30 years has uncovered the oldest known feathered animal.
- Animals
Stalking Larvae: How an ancient sea creature grows up
Scientists have finally observed living larvae of a sea lily, an ancient marine invertebrate related to starfish.
- Animals
Camelid Comeback
The future of vicuñas in South America and wild camels in Asia hinges on decisions being made now about their management.
- Animals
Homing Lobsters: Fancy navigation, for an invertebrate
Spiny lobsters are the first animals without backbones to pass tests for the orienteering power called true navigation.
