It’s not easy living the high life. Take it from the Andean leaf-eared mouse, Earth’s highest-dwelling mammal. To tolerate the freezing temperatures atop dormant volcanoes, these mice generate more body…
Category: Animals
Beefalo are bred to be part bison. A new study says most aren’t
People will spend $100 to learn about their genetic ancestry. Some pay even more to learn about their dog’s genes. But how many have questioned the genetic ancestry of their…
The natural history of every U.S. state is on display at a new D.C. exhibit
The Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s latest exhibit, “From These Lands,” connects visitors with America’s natural history.
The animal behind most aggressive wildlife encounters may surprise you
A bear might seem like the scariest thing you could run into in a national park. But a new study suggests maybe you should be more worried about elk. Out of nearly 3,000 wildlife…
Young gulls’ drab plumage may help them avoid adult attacks
While many bird species go from egg to adult in months, some seabirds spend years in a sort of awkward adolescent phase, sporting darker, drabber plumage than the adults. In…
A new species of walking shark has been found in Papua New Guinea
It sounds like a scene out of a horror movie: a shark that can walk. In reality, walking sharks “are the cutest sharks that you’ll ever see,” says marine scientist…
Crabs can’t hide from an octopus with a mirror
Mirrors are tricky. Even humans aren’t born with an intuitive understanding of them; we have to learn how they work. Now, scientists have discovered that the California two-spot octopus (Octopus…
A discovery about this bat’s diet was hiding in a Renaissance painting
Last fall, scientists documented the greater noctule bat snatching songbirds out of the air for a snack. But while this was a finding relatively new to science, a Renaissance artist…
A whopping 14 million species of insects — or more — may roam Earth
A new estimate of insect diversity suggests there are at least 14 million to 20 million species buzzing and crawling around the globe. That’s double or triple other recent estimates,…
Giant, deep-sea roly-polies steal a gene to endure starvation
A kilometer down in the ocean, football-sized roly-polies slowly clamber along the seafloor. Their metabolism is so slow that they can go years between meals. Now, researchers have found a…
