Ancient Europeans may have evolved an ability to digest milk thanks to periodic famines and disease outbreaks. Europeans avidly tapped into milk drinking starting around 9,000 years ago, when dairying…
Category: Life
Moths pollinate clover flowers at night, after bees have gone home
Bees aren’t the only insects pollinating red clover. Moths do about a third of the flower visits after dark, new research suggests. The findings, detailed in the July Biology Letters,…
Ancient DNA links an East Asian Homo sapiens woman to early Americans
A previously undetected Homo sapiens population inhabited what’s now southwestern China around 14,000 years ago and contributed to the ancestry of ancient Americans. This far-ranging Asian group’s evolutionary identity has…
Herminia Pasantes discovered how taurine helps brain cells regulate their size
When Herminia Pasantes Ordóñez was about 14 years old, in 1950, she heard her mother tell her father that she would never find a husband. Pasantes had to wear thick…
Native Grass Alternatives to Lawns
By Audrey Pongs There are few things more American than the concept of expansive lawns. We love our dutiful blades of grass, all lined up and trimmed, just waiting to…
50 years ago, the dinosaurs’ demise was still a mystery
What did in the dinosaurs: Warm blood or soft eggs? — Science News, July 22, 1972 Dinosaurs might have been endothermic, or warm-blooded…. The combination of large size, endothermy and…
Mammal ancestors’ shrinking inner ears may reveal when warm-bloodedness arose
Hot or not? Peeking inside an animal’s ear — even a fossilized one — may tell you whether it was warm- or cold-blooded. Using a novel method that analyzes the…
These huntsman spiders do something weird: live together as a big, happy family
How descendants of cannibals evolved abilities to share a home mostly without killing each other — never mind the rare oopsie snack — resonates after several pandemic years. Among the…
The top side of an elephant’s trunk stretches more than the bottom
On a sunny day at Zoo Atlanta in 2020, Kelly the African bush elephant reached for a snack and revealed something strange. High-speed cameras tracking her movements suggested that the…
Do gophers farm roots? It’s not as clear as viral articles claim
Pocket gophers certainly don’t qualify as card-carrying 4-H members, but the rodents might be farming roots in the open air of their moist, nutrient-rich tunnels. The gophers subsist mostly on…
