All Stories by Susan Milius
- Animals
Here’s a spider whose barf is worse than its bite
These critters, which often make their homes on houseplants, don’t bother injecting venom. The spiders just vomit it all over their tied-up prey.
- Animals
Frogs evolved a wide variety of vocal sacs to amplify their ribbits
Maybe you've seen frogs with ballooning throats, but what about pop-out poofs and fat ear bumps?
- Animals
Tick, tick, tick. In a first, a shark is heard making noise
The undersea world can host a symphony of fish grunts, hums and growls. Now add tooth-clacking sharks to the score.
- Animals
A surprising number of animals eat poop
A new tally finds more than 150 vertebrate species willing to snack on feces. Eating poop offers nutrients and other benefits.
- Animals
Putting vampire bats on treadmills revealed an energy-burning quirk
A mini gym for bats shows that vampire bats burn amino acids, rather than the carbs or fats other mammals rely on during exercise.
- Microbes
What the weird world of protists can teach us about life on Earth
Microbes vastly outnumber multicellular life on Earth. A close-up look at protists highlights how much we don't know about the microscopic world.
- Plants
Mimosa plant ‘muscles’ fold tickled leaves fast
A mimosa plant uses special cells to close leaflets when bumped and then reopen them — again and again.
- Animals
Sleeping glass frogs go into stealth mode by hiding red blood cells
Glass frogs snoozing among leaves blend in by hiding almost all their red blood cells in their liver.
- Animals
Some young fruit flies’ eyeballs literally pop out of their heads
The first published photo shoot of developing Pelmatops flies shows how their eyes rise on gangly stalks in the first hour of adulthood.
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A sea slug’s head can crawl around and grow a whole new body
Some chopped-up flatworms can regrow whole bodies from bits and pieces. But a sea slug head can regrow fancier organs such as hearts.
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Tiny spider uses silk to lift prey 50 times its own weight
Dropping the right silk let’s a spider haul mice, lizards and other giants up off the ground.
- Plants
‘Vampire’ parasite challenges the definition of a plant
Langsdorffia are stripped down to their essentials. Lacking green leaves for photosynthesis, they steal energy and nutrients from other plants.
