Mantis shrimp are famous for their ultrafast, powerful punches used to dispatch prey. They can land volley after shell-splintering volley, without major injury to their own nerves or flesh. That’s…
Category: Animals
Extinct moa ate purple trufflelike fungi, fossil bird droppings reveal
For the first time, ancient DNA from droppings left by New Zealand’s flightless moa identifies actual species of fungi the doomed birds ate. The snacks, including purple lumps of a…
Will the Endangered Species Act survive Trump?
Now that Donald Trump has reassumed the presidency of the United States, scientists and legal scholars are bracing for his potential dismantling of a host of the country’s most pivotal…
Hotter cities? Here come the rats
If your city is getting rattier, climate change may be partially to blame. In an analysis of 16 cities around the world, those that saw the biggest temperature rises over…
Wild baboons don’t recognize themselves in a mirror
Self-awareness may be beyond primates in the wild. Chimps, organutans and other species faced with a mirror react to a dot on their face in the lab, a widely used…
Feeding sharks ‘junk food’ takes a toll on their health
In general, sharks have a reputation as swimming garbage cans that unflinchingly dine on whatever they can fit in their jaws. But in French Polynesia, blacktip reef sharks that frequent…
Chatty bats are more likely to take risks
All bats are vocal, but some are more vocal than others. This chattiness reveals their individuality, with more talkative bats acting more boldly, researchers report January 29 in Proceedings of…
This drawing is the oldest known sketch of an insect brain
After nearly 350 years, a depiction of a bee’s brain is getting some buzz. A manuscript created in the mid-1670s contains the oldest known depiction of an insect’s brain, historian…
Like flyways for birds, we need to map swimways for fish
For almost a century, migratory flyways have been a cornerstone of bird conservation. Knowing where these aerial highways are helps protect habitats and monitor species through carefully mapped routes that…
Cricket frogs belly flop their way across water
Cricket frogs were once thought to hop on the water’s surface. They actually leap in and out of the water in a form of locomotion called porpoising.
