Courtship dazzle in spiders can lose some zing in uncertain climates. Males in places with hard-to-predict rain and temperatures devolve into suitors who woo mostly with cheap, useless gifts. Researchers…
Category: Animals
New videos reveal the hidden lives of Andean bears
Camera collar footage is unveiling the secret lives of Andean bears (Tremarctos ornatus), South America’s only surviving ursid. A wild Andean bear in Peru was caught eating soil or clay, courting…
Ethiopian wolves are the first large carnivores found to slurp nectar
Some wolves have a taste for dessert. In the highlands of Ethiopia, carnivorous Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis) dine almost exclusively on rodents. But the predators also have a sweet tooth,…
Giant hornets have been sighted in Europe for the first time
A species of enormous hornets has found its way to Europe for the first time. The southern giant hornet (Vespa soror) is native to a broad swath of tropical Asia,…
Videos capture orcas’ tricks for taking down the largest fish on Earth
Video from excited ecotourists shows how orcas manage an unlikely feat of predation: killing a massive whale shark. And that’s just one of the killer whales’ conquests. Four videos of…
This ‘hidden figure’ of entomology fought for civil rights
On the drive to school, at the first sign of trouble, “she made me get on the floorboard,” says the older son of pioneering Black entomologist Margaret S. Collins. He’s…
For adult chimps, playing may be more important than previously thought
You are never too old to play — a maxim that even adult chimpanzees seem to follow. Young chimpanzees are already known to get many benefits from playing. But it…
Clams use fiber optics to channel sunlight to symbiotic algae
In a discovery that blurs the line between biology and technology, scientists have found that heart-shaped clams use fiber optic–like structures to channel sunlight through their shells in much the…
Stray DNA is all around us. It could revolutionize conservation
On a warm, sunny day in April, biologists David Duffy and Jessica Farrell prepare to motor down the Matanzas River on a small boat to catalog the area’s aquatic life.…
A twisted protein sheds light on chronic wasting disease in deer
The misfolded proteins responsible for a fatal neurological illness in deer have a twist. The first detailed structure of an infectious prion that causes chronic wasting disease, or CWD, reveals…
