Pocket gophers certainly don’t qualify as card-carrying 4-H members, but the rodents might be farming roots in the open air of their moist, nutrient-rich tunnels. The gophers subsist mostly on…
Category: Animals
This octopus-inspired glove helps humans grip slippery objects
A new high-tech glove totally sucks — and that’s a good thing. Each fingertip is outfitted with a sucker inspired by those on octopus arms. These suckers allow people to…
Tardigrades could teach us how to handle the rigors of space travel
No beast on Earth is tougher than the tiny tardigrade. It can survive being frozen at -272° Celsius, being exposed to the vacuum of outer space and even being blasted…
Flower shape and size impact bees’ chances of catching gut parasites
Bees that land on short, wide flowers can fly away with an upset stomach. Common eastern bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) are more likely to catch a diarrhea-inducing gut parasite from…
The flowery scent of a Zika or dengue infection lures mosquitoes
Some mosquito-borne viruses turn mice into alluring mosquito bait. Mice infected with dengue or Zika viruses — and people infected with dengue — emit a flowery, orange-smelling chemical that tempts…
Ed Yong’s ‘An Immense World’ reveals how animals perceive the world
An Immense WorldEd YongRandom House, $30 Emerald jewel wasps know what cockroach brains feel like. This comes in handy when a female wasp needs to turn a cockroach into an…
Here’s how sea anemones launch their venomous stingers
A new look at the starlet sea anemone’s stinger gets right to the point. Live-animal images and 3-D computer reconstructions have revealed the complex architecture of the tiny creature’s needlelike…
Here’s how sea anemones launch their venomous stingers
A new look at the starlet sea anemone’s stinger gets right to the point. Live-animal images and 3-D computer reconstructions have revealed the complex architecture of the tiny creature’s needlelike…
Megatooth sharks may have been higher on the food chain than any ocean animal ever
Whenever paleontologist Dana Ehret gives talks about the 15-meter-long prehistoric sharks known as megalodons, he likes to make a joke: “What did megalodon eat?” asks Ehret, Assistant Curator of Natural…
50 years ago, eels’ navigation skills electrified scientists
Does the eel use electric fields to navigate? — Science News, June 24, 1972 Many species of ocean fish [such as American eels] migrate over large distances. Some of them…
