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…
Category: Life
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…
How scientists are shifting their search for links between diet and dementia
The internet is rife with advice for keeping the brain sharp as we age, and much of it is focused on the foods we eat. Headlines promise that oatmeal will…
Feathers may have helped dinosaurs survive the Triassic mass extinction
Widespread volcanic eruptions around 202 million years ago had a profound effect on Earth’s climate, triggering a mass extinction event that killed off three-fourths of the planet’s species, including many…
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…
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…
Earth’s oldest known wildfires raged 430 million years ago
Bits of charcoal entombed in ancient rocks unearthed in Wales and Poland push back the earliest evidence for wildfires to around 430 million years ago. Besides breaking the previous record…
This giant bacterium is the largest one found yet
There’s a new record holder for biggest bacterium — and you don’t need a microscope to see it. The newfound species, Thiomargarita magnifica, is roughly a centimeter long, and its…
