Octopuses living in the deep sea off the coast of California are breeding far faster than expected. The animals lay their eggs near geothermal springs, and the warmer water speeds…
Category: Life
How lizards keep detachable tails from falling off
Lizards are famous for losing their tails, but perhaps the bigger question should be: How do their tails stay on? The answer may lie in the appendage’s internal design. A…
A diamondlike structure gives some starfish skeletons their strength
Some starfish made of a brittle material fortify themselves with architectural antics. Beneath a starfish’s skin lies a skeleton made of pebbly growths, called ossicles, which mostly consist of the…
Deep-sea Arctic sponges feed on fossilized organisms to survive
In the cold, dark depths of the Arctic Ocean, a feast of the dead is under way. A vast community of sponges, the densest group of these animals found in…
The first step in using trees to slow climate change: Protect the trees we have
Between a death and a burial was hardly the best time to show up in a remote village in Madagascar to make a pitch for forest protection. Bad timing, however,…
How Romanesco cauliflower forms its spiraling fractals
The swirling green cones that make up the head of Romanesco cauliflower also form a fractal pattern — one that repeats itself on multiple scales. Now, the genes that underlie…
A widely studied lab plant has revealed a previously unknown organ
A common lab plant that’s been poked and put under microscopes for decades may seem unlikely to keep secrets. But in widely studied Arabidopsis thaliana, scientists have identified the “cantil”…
These ferns may be the first plants known to share work like ants
High in the forest canopy, a mass of strange ferns grips a tree trunk, looking like a giant tangle of floppy, viridescent antlers. Below these fork-leaved fronds and closer into…
‘Tree farts’ contribute about a fifth of greenhouse gases from ghost forests
If a tree farts in the forest, does it make a sound? No, but it does add a smidge of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. Gases released by dead trees…
Catnip repels insects. Scientists may have finally found out how
A whiff of catnip can make mosquitoes buzz off, and now researchers know why. The active component of catnip (Nepeta cataria) repels insects by triggering a chemical receptor that spurs…
