Native to the Brazilian Amazon, pied tamarins have always used vocal calls to communicate. But noise pollution from car traffic and other human activity are forcing some tamarins to complement…
Category: Animals
The right bacterial mix could help frogs take the heat
Some of a green frog’s heat tolerance might come from its microbiome. Put a wood frog tadpole and a green frog tadpole in water and turn up the heat. The…
A one-of-a-kind trilobite fossil hints at what and how these creatures ate
A mysterious, prehistoric marine creature has spilled its guts. For the first time, scientists have unearthed a fossilized trilobite whose final meals were preserved within its digestive system. Paleontologist Valéria…
Seen Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster? Data suggest the odds are low
There were drones, there were boats. There were spotters on land and a hydrophone listening for suspicious sounds underwater. In what may have been the biggest search of its kind…
These brainless jellyfish use their eyes and bundles of nerves to learn
For Caribbean box jellyfish, learning is literally a no-brainer. In a new experiment, these animals learned to spot and avoid obstacles despite having no central brain, researchers report September 22…
For the first time, researchers decoded the RNA of an extinct animal
For the first time, researchers have successfully extracted and decoded RNA from an extinct animal. The thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, was a wolflike marsupial that went extinct…
A catalog of all human cells reveals a mathematical pattern
The human body is made up of a complex community of trillions of cells of diverse shapes and sizes, all working together to keep you alive. The smallest of these…
Some cannibal pirate spiders trick their cousins into ‘walking the plank’
A Costa Rican pirate spider lives up to the family name: It tricks closely related orb weaver spiders into “walking the plank,” right to their doom. The world’s many pirate…
A little snake’s big gulp may put all other snakes to shame
Hulking hunters like Burmese pythons may be famous for scarfing up deer, alligators and other enormous prey (SN: 11/25/15). But one unassuming little African snake may take the title for…
Wild male palm cockatoos rock out with custom drumsticks
Like teenage Romeos toting sticker-plastered guitar cases, male palm cockatoos show that romancing a crush with a love song isn’t just about music — it’s also about style. Wild palm…
