Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Walking sticks mimic two leafy looks and split their species
A species of walking stick may be evolving into two species by adapting to different environments.
- Animals
Mole-rats: Kissing but not quite cousins
Damaraland mole-rats live underground in rodent versions of bee hives, but a genetic analysis of these colonies finds that kinship isn't very beelike.
- Animals
Gator Feelings: Tough faces, more sensitive than ours
Alligator and crocodile faces carry pressure receptors so responsive that they can detect ripples on the water's surface from a single falling drop.
- Animals
No Tickling: Common caterpillars deploy defensive hair
The caterpillars of the European cabbage butterfly have a chemical defense system that scientists haven't documented before.
- Animals
Dogged Dieting: Low-cal canines enjoy longer life
The first completed diet-restriction study in a large animal shows that labrador retrievers fed 25 percent less food than those allowed to eat as much as they desired tend to live longer and suffer fewer age-related diseases.
- Paleontology
Ancient Whodunit: Scientists indict wee suspects in ancient deaths
Evidence locked in 180,000-year-old sediments suggests that a toxic algae bloom was the cause of death for a large group of mammals that were fossilized intact on an ancient lake bottom.
- Animals
Rebranding the Hyena
Zoologists are hoping that long-term ecological studies of the spotted hyena will assist in dispelling the animal's undeservedly bad reputation.
- Animals
Big-Eyed Birds Sing Early Songs: Dawn chorus explained
Researchers report a strong relationship between eye size and the light intensity at which birds start to sing in the morning.
- Paleontology
Older Ancestors: Primate origins age in new analysis
A controversial new statistical model concludes that the common ancestor of primates lived 81.5 million years ago, about 16 million years earlier than many paleontologists have estimated.
- Animals
Maneless lions live one guy per pride
The male lions of Tsavo National Park don't grow manes but they're no wimps—they're the only male lions found so far that rule big prides of females alone, without help from some buddies.
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- Ecosystems
Deprived of Darkness
From anecdotal reports of little-studied phenomena, researchers suspect that artificial night lighting disrupts the physiology and behavior of nocturnal animals.
