Animals

Environment

Human-built ‘beaver’ dams help save struggling streams

To help restore streams, ecologists and other scientists are taking tips from the rodents — and hoping some beavers also join in.

Animals

Let’s learn about the platypus

Every new discovery about platypuses reveals them to be even odder than we thought.

Animals

Wind won’t keep hungry yellow jackets away from your picnic

Hungry yellow jackets are really good at tracking attractive odors. Even in windy and difficult conditions, they can find your barbecue.

Fossils

Fossil vomit shows what one 290-million-year-old predator dined on

Bones in the barfed-up material, which dates to a time before the dinosaurs, offer a rare peek into the diet of a prehistoric hunter.

Animals

Intricate silk helps net-casting spiders trap prey in webs

Rufous net-casting spiders can adjust the stiffness and stretchiness of their webs thanks to looping strands of silk.

Animals

A bonobo’s imaginary tea party hints that apes can pretend

Kanzi would sometimes play with imaginary juice and grapes, just as humans might. The bonobo's ability challenges old ideas about how animals think.

Animals

Let’s learn about animals that can regrow body parts

Animals that regenerate limbs, eyes and other body parts may hold clues to superhuman healing.

Animals

Analyze This: Primates may have evolved in the cold

Scientists thought the ancestor of humans and apes lived in the tropics. A new study points to a chilly location instead for primate evolution.

Animals

Animals’ personalities can affect a species’ survival

From bold foxes to shy parrots, animals’ personalities are increasingly being seen as key to saving species.

Animals

Brazilian monkeys offer lessons on how to return species to the wild

Efforts included letting golden lion tamarins roam free in urban U.S. parks. Restoring natural behaviors was key to their survival in the wild.

Animals

Mummies suggest a way to help reintroduce cheetahs to Arabia

DNA from Arabian cheetah remains reveals that these now-extinct populations might be replaced by rewilding close cheetah relatives from northwest Africa.

Physics

Could a person ever wield lightning as a weapon? 

From the shocking powers of electric eels to laser-guided lightning, aiming electricity is more real than it sounds.