Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Animals
Ant Traffic Flow: Raiding swarms with few rules avoid gridlock
The 200,000 virtually blind army ants using a single trail to swarm out to a raid and return home with the booty naturally develop three traffic lanes, and a study now shows that simple individual behavior makes the pattern.
- Animals
Ant Traffic Flow: Raiding swarms with few rules avoid gridlock
The 200,000 virtually blind army ants using a single trail to swarm out to a raid and return home with the booty naturally develop three traffic lanes, and a study now shows that simple individual behavior makes the pattern.
- Paleontology
New fossil weighs in on primate origins
A 55-million-year-old primate skeleton found in Wyoming indicates that the common ancestor of modern monkeys, apes, and people was built primarily for hanging tightly onto tree branches.
- Paleontology
New fossil weighs in on primate origins
A 55-million-year-old primate skeleton found in Wyoming indicates that the common ancestor of modern monkeys, apes, and people was built primarily for hanging tightly onto tree branches.
- Ecosystems
Trust That Bird? A bit of future-think lets jays cooperate
A blue jay will cooperate with a buddy for mutual gain in food despite opportunities to betray the partnership.
- Animals
Frogs Play Tree: Male tunes his call to specific tree hole
Borneo's tree-hole frog may come as close to playing a musical instrument as any wild animal does. [With audio file.]
- Animals
Hawkmoths can still see colors at night
For the first time, scientists have found detailed evidence than an animal—a hawkmoth—can see color by starlight.
- Paleontology
Forged fossil is a fish-eating fowl
Detailed analyses of Archaeoraptor, a forged fossil once thought to be a missing link between dinosaurs and birds, reveal that the majority of that fake comes from an ancient, fish-eating bird.
- Animals
Mad Deer Disease?
Chronic wasting disease, once just an obscure brain ailment of deer and elk in a small patch of the West, is turning up in new places and raising troubling questions about risks.
- Ecosystems
Worm Attacks: Invading earthworms threaten rare U.S. fern
An unusual study of the effects of invading earthworms on North American plants finds that the exotics might be on the way to killing off a rare fern.
- Animals
Ear for Killers: Seals discern foes’ from neighbor-whales’ calls
Harbor seals eavesdrop on killer whales and can tell the harmless neighborhood fish eaters from roving gangs with a taste for fresh seal.
