Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Familiar face calms stressed-out sheep
The sight of the face of a familiar sheep seems to reduce stress in troubled sheep.
- Animals
When bluebirds fight, bet on the bluest
The male bluebirds with the bluest (and most ultraviolet) plumage turned out to be the toughest competitors in a study of who won the rights to prime nest boxes.
- Paleontology
Early Bird: Fossil features hint at go-get-’em hatchlings
A well-preserved, 121-million-year-old fossilized bird embryo has several features that suggest that the species' young could move about and feed themselves very soon after they hatched.
- Plants
Green Red-Alert: Plant fights invaders with animal-like trick
Mustard plants' immune systems can react to traces of bacteria with a burst of nitric oxide, much as an animal's immune system does.
- Animals
Bird Calls
The Macaulay Library at Cornell University has the largest collection of animal sounds in the world. More than 67 percent of the world’s birds are represented in the center’s 160,000 recordings, along with sounds made by insects, fish, frogs, and mammals. The Library also archives and preserves a sampling of the behaviors of different animal […]
- Animals
Separate Vacations: Birds winter apart but return in sync
Mated pairs of black-tailed godwits may fly off to winter refuges a thousand kilometers apart but can still arrive back at their breeding site the next spring within a few days of each other.
- Animals
Beat Goes On: Carp heart keeps pace when fish lacks oxygen
Without oxygen, a Scandinavian fish not only can survive but also maintains a normal heartbeat for days.
- Plants
Morphinefree Mutant Poppies: Novel plants make pharmaceutical starter
A Tasmanian company has developed a poppy that produces a commercially useful drug precursor instead of full-fledged morphine, and a research team now reports how the plant does it.
- Paleontology
Big Gulp? Neck ribs may have given aquatic beast unique feeding style
The fossilized neck bones of a 230-million-year-old sea creature have features suggesting that the animal's snakelike throat could flare open and create suction to pull in prey.
- Animals
Pirates of the Amphibian: Males fertilize eggs of another guy’s gal
For the first time among amphibians, scientists have found frogs that sneak their sperm onto egg clutches left by another mating pair.
- Plants
A new, slimy method of self-pollination
When all else fails for pollination, a Chinese herb in the ginger family resorts to something botanists say they haven't seen before: a do-it-yourself oil slick.
- Animals
Super Bird: Cooing doves flex extra-fast muscles
Muscles that control a dove's cooing belong to the fastest class of muscles known.
