When it comes to hoisting water, plants are real power lifters. For a tall tree, slurping hundreds of liters of water each day up to its leaves or needles, where…
Category: Life
Meet the fungal friends and foes that surround us
The Hidden Kingdom of FungiKeith SeifertGreystone Books, $27.95 Take a walk through the woods after it rains, and you can catch a glimpse of the incredible diversity of fungi. You…
A clever molecular trick extends the lives of these ant queens
For some ant queens, the secret to long life might be a self-produced insulin blocker. Ant queens are famously long-lived, even though they shouldn’t be. Generally, animals that put lots…
Ancient ‘demon ducks’ may have been undone by their slow growth
Giant flightless birds called mihirungs were the biggest birds to ever stride across what is now Australia. The animals, which weighed up to hundreds of kilograms, died out about 40,000…
This bizarre ancient critter has been kicked out of a group that includes humans
No ifs, ands or butts about it: A teeny roughly 530-million-year-old critter that lacks an anus is not, as previously thought, the oldest member of a wide-ranging animal group that…
This bizarre ancient critter has been kicked out of a group that includes humans
No ifs, ands or butts about it: A teeny roughly 530-million-year-old critter that lacks an anus is not, as previously thought, the oldest member of a wide-ranging animal group that…
COVID-19 gave new urgency to the science of restoring smell
It was the juice that tipped him off. At lunch, Ícaro de A.T. Pires found the flavor of his grape juice muted, flattened into just water with sugar. There was…
How death’s-head hawkmoths manage to fly straight for miles in the dark
Sitting alone in the cockpit of a small biplane, Martin Wikelski listens for the pings of a machine by his side. The sonic beacons help the ecologist stalk death’s-head hawkmoths…
A new seasoning smells like meat thanks to sugar — and mealworms
A spoonful of sugar may help the mealworms go down. Adding sugars to powdered, cooked mealworms creates a seasoning with an appetizing “meatlike” odor, researchers report August 24 at the…
News stories have caught spiders in a web of misinformation
Even spiders, it seems, have fallen victim to misinformation. Media reports about people’s encounters with spiders tend to be full of falsehoods with a distinctly negative spin. An analysis of…
