Some female hummingbirds don flashy feathers to avoid being bothered by other hummingbirds, a new study suggests. Male white-necked jacobin hummingbirds (Florisuga mellivora) have bright blue heads and throats. Females…
Category: Life
An incredibly resilient coral in the Great Barrier Reef offers hope for the future
A coral the size of a carousel is the widest known in the Great Barrier Reef. Found just off the coast of Goolboodi Island in Northeast Australia, this reef-building Porites…
An extinct rat shows CRISPR’s limits for resurrecting species
Before the early 1900s, if it walked like a Christmas Island rat and talked like a Christmas Island rat, it probably was a Christmas Island rat. But if one of…
Genetically modified mosquitoes could be tested in California soon
Genetically modified mosquitoes might soon be whining on both U.S. coasts. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved two more years of testing Oxitec’s genetically modified mosquitoes as living pest…
Mirror beetles’ shiny bodies may not act as camouflage after all
This is a story about camouflage, but forget mud-blob brown, mealy beige and somber green. Here scientists study mirror glitz and the paradoxical notion that there’s a shiny side to…
Scientists are arguing over the identity of a fossilized 10-armed creature
An ancient cephalopod fossil may be about to rewrite octopus history, but it depends on who you ask. At the very least, it’s offering up a lesson in how hard…
Culturally prized mountain goats may be vanishing from Indigenous land in Canada
For thousands of years, members of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation in Canada have prized the mountain goats that roam the craggy peaks of British Columbia’s central coast. The animals have…
Invasive grasses are taking over the American West’s sea of sagebrush
No one likes a cheater, especially one that prospers as easily as the grass Bromus tectorum does in the American West. This invasive species is called cheatgrass because it dries…
Rice feeds half the world. Climate change’s droughts and floods put it at risk
Under a midday summer sun in California’s Sacramento Valley, rice farmer Peter Rystrom walks across a dusty, barren plot of land, parched soil crunching beneath each step. In a typical…
Here’s the chemistry behind marijuana’s skunky scent
Scientists have finally sniffed out the molecules behind marijuana’s skunky aroma. The heady bouquet that wafts off of fresh weed is actually a cocktail of hundreds of fragrant compounds. The…
