A soft, thick coat of snow makes a lot of the world seem to slow down or even stop — at least temporarily. The fluffy piles absorb sound and make the world…
Category: Animals
This tool-using cow defies expectations for bovine braininess
Veronika the cow uses a brush as a tool to scratch herself, revealing rare problem-solving skills and expanding what we know of tool use in animals.
This fish may play a hole in its head like a drum
For the rockhead poacher, the noises are all in its head. The fish is a pint-size, unassuming inhabitant of nearshore shallows, but it has a conspicuous divot in the top…
Animal personalities can play a big role in saving species
Citations C. Neto et al. Impact of behavioral differences on white-lipped peccary reintroduction success in the Atlantic forest. Scientific Reports. Vol. 15, March 5, 2025. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-90853-z A. Sih, A.…
How cheetah mummies could help bring the species back to Arabia
The fastest land animal on the planet lies frozen in time beneath blistering desert sands. Researchers have discovered dozens of ancient cheetah skeletons and dehydrated bodies preserved in caves on…
Queen bumblebees are poor foragers thanks to sparse tongue hair
The density of fine hairs on bumblebees’ tongues determines how much nectar they can collect — and workers put queen bees to shame.
Among chimpanzees, thrill-seeking peaks in toddlerhood
Toddlers are the daredevils of the chimp world. Chimps ages 2 to 5 are more likely than older chimps to free-fall from tree limbs in the forest canopies or leap…
An all-female wasp is rapidly spreading across North America’s elms
She’s less than a centimeter long, produces only daughters and is conquering the continent without a single male. Meet the elm zigzag sawfly, named for the delicate zigzag patterns it…
In a Quebec park, a science game brings predator-prey dynamics to life
The predator was closing in, and the prey had to make a potentially life-altering choice: find food or flee? That prey was ecologist David Bolduc. And he was one of…
These sick baby ants sacrifice themselves to protect their colony
Some baby ants don’t ask for help when they contract deadly infections — they ask to be killed. Terminally ill worker ant pupae actively emit a “find me and destroy…
