Animals

Animals

Analyze This: How sea slugs get their flashy colors

Crystals beneath the skin of nudibranchs, also called sea slugs, allow the creatures to make an array of intense hues with just one material.

Animals

King cobras may be riding trains across India [COMIC]

The snakes may be tempted onboard by tasty rodents — but train rides can carry cobras far from their forest habitats.

Animals

Chatty cats and talking dogs could one day ‘speak’ in our language 

Scientists are making advances in decoding animal sounds. That might someday make animal translators a possibility.

Microbes

Fuzzy microbes may fuel cows’ methane burps

Production of this potent greenhouse gas is triggered by a newfound feature of these microbes — one with a funny name: hydrogenobody.

Animals

Here’s how ‘singing’ mice belt out their tiny tunes

Balloon-like air sacs in the mice's throats create whistling songs. No other animal is known to make calls in this way.

Animals

Giant school bus–sized octopuses may have once ruled the oceans

Some of these predators were as long as whales. Roaming the seas more than 72 million years ago, the octopuses appear to have been the largest invertebrates ever known.

Animals

Mosquitoes may learn to like DEET, a common insect repellent

In lab tests, mosquitoes exposed to DEET while feeding learned to associate the chemical with food.

Animals

This tree is the number one choice for forest mammals going number two

The strangler fig provides food and shelter for animals in the tropics. For at least 17 mammal species, it also serves as a toilet.

Animals

The dawn of animal evolution saw a bizarre array of sea creatures

Newfound fossils turned up a strange zoo of often-complex creatures, including some suggesting that evolution of left-right symmetry occurred earlier than once though.

Animals

Meet Bruce, the disabled kea parrot who is the boss of his flock

With half a beak, Bruce has developed a unique fighting style that has won him top status in his flock, videos and documented interactions reveal.

Animals

Like living mood rings, these bees change color when it turns humid

Humidity makes North American sweat bees change color. This trait could be widespread among shiny insects, some biologists now suspect.

Oceans

Explainer: What are corals?

Though they can look like rocks or plants, corals are animals. Most are made up of colonies of individuals called polyps.