Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Flesh Eaters: Bees that strip carrion also take wasp young
A South American bee that ignores flowers and collects carrion from carcasses has an unexpected taste for live, abandoned wasp young.
- Paleontology
Early Flight? Winged insects appear surprisingly ancient
New analyses of a fossil suggest that winged insects may have emerged as early as 400 million years ago.
- Animals
How blind mole rats find their way home
The blind mole rat is the first animal discovered to navigate by combining dead reckoning with a magnetic compass.
- Animals
Where’d I Put That?
Birds that hide and recover thousands of separate caches of seeds have become a model for investigating how animals' minds work.
- Ecosystems
Mangrove Might: Nearby trees boost reef-fish numbers
Coastal mangroves give an unexpectedly important boost to reef fish.
- Animals
Fish in the dark still size up mates
Female cave fish still have their ancestral preference for a large male, even though it's too dark to see him.
-
- Animals
Wasps drive frog eggs to (escape) hatch
A tree frog's eggs can match their response to the degree of danger: all-out mass action for snakes but less activity for one wasp.
- Animals
Vanishing Vultures: Bird deaths linked to vet-drug residues
The recent puzzling crash in vulture populations in Pakistan comes not from some new disease but from exposure to veterinary drug residues in livestock carcasses.
- Plants
Dawn of the Y: Papaya—Glimpse of early sex chromosome
Genetic mappers say that the papaya plant has a rudimentary Y chromosome, the youngest one in evolutionary terms yet found, offering a glimpse of the evolution of sex chromosomes.
- Paleontology
L.A.’s Oldest Tourist Trap
Modern excavations at the La Brea tar pits are revealing a wealth of information about local food chains during recent ice ages, as well as details about what happened to trapped animals in their final hours.
- Animals
Beetle fights bass in mouthwash duel
A whirligig beetle duels with a hungry fish by dribbling out a repulsive chemical while the fish tries to rinse it off.
