Animals
- Health & Medicine
Scientists Say: Apoptosis
When it’s time for cells to die, they need to do it carefully, so they don’t harm other cells.
- Plants
Please do not touch the Australian stinging tree
Stinging-tree leaves look soft and inviting, but one touch delivers agony. Structurally, the plant's painful chemical looks a lot like spider venom.
- Animals
The diabolical ironclad beetle is nearly unsquishable
The diabolical ironclad beetle is an incredibly tough little creature. A peek inside its exoskeleton reveals what makes it virtually uncrushable.
- Animals
This snake rips open a living toad to feast on its organs
A particularly gruesome way to kill may help small-banded kukri snakes avoid a deadly poison secreted from the neck and backs of some toads.
- Genetics
Scientists Say: Evolution
Evolution is how species change over time. Individuals in the group vary, and some will pass on their genes. Over time, the whole species changes.
- Animals
Analyze This: Ropes restore a gibbon highway through a rainforest
When endangered Hainan gibbons started making risky leaps across an area mowed down by a landslide, researchers provided them a rope bridge.
- Animals
Attack of the inner-cannibal mega-shark
The outsized megalodon was a fierce terror that chewed its way across the oceans. It learned to kill even before it was born.
- Environment
Jumping ‘snake worms’ are invading U.S. forests
These bad-news invaders are spreading across the United States. As they turn forest debris into bare ground, soils and ecosystems are changing.
- Health & Medicine
When physicians and veterinarians team up, all species benefit
When doctors for people and those for animals share their expertise, they can discover new ways to take better medical care of all species.
- Animals
A whale’s nearly four-hour-long dive sets a new record
Cuvier’s beaked whales may rely on large stores of oxygen, a slow metabolism and the ability to tolerate lactic acid to go for hours without surfacing for air.
- Environment
Polluting microplastics harm both animals and ecosystems
Researchers are beginning to uncover the real-world impacts of polluting microplastic bits on animals and the ecosystems they inhabit.
- Animals
Learning what stresses queen bees could save their hives
Beehives often die off after the queen gets too stressed to make enough babies. New tests could identify what stressed her — and point to solutions.
