Animals
- Animals
Giraffes inherit their spots from mom
Africa’s tallest creatures inherit their characteristic patterns of spots from their mothers, a new study finds.
- Animals
Chigger ‘bites’ may trigger an allergy to red meat
Some people develop a food allergy to red meat, and researchers suspect chiggers bites are to blame.
- Animals
These songbirds can fling and shake mice to death
Loggerhead shrikes skewer small animals on barbed wire and give mice a serious shake-up.
- Animals
This penguin prey knows how to fight back
Scientists attached cameras to gentoo penguins off the Falkland Islands. The video revealed that their tiny prey can sometimes win in a fight.
- Animals
Eating queen’s poop makes naked mole rats babysit her kids
Hormones in the poop of a naked mole rat queen turns other females into babysitters for her young.
- Animals
Parasitic worms sicken people in the mainland United States
A worm native to Asia has sickened at least 12 people in eight continental U.S. states since 2011, a new report finds.
- Animals
Scientists Say: Larva
Many insects, amphibians and fish have a life stage after they hatch that looks very different from the animal’s adult form. This life stage has its own name.
- Animals
Cool Jobs: Sucking up science with mosquitoes
Mosquitoes are tiny, but the illnesses they spread can be deadly. To fight these germ spreaders, scientists need to get to know mosquitoes better — much better.
- Animals
Nine big stories you may have missed this summer
We hope you enjoyed time off from school this summer. But you may have missed some scientific developments, from mega-eruptions to Martian lakes.
- Animals
Where did all of those king penguins go?
Île aux Cochons in the southern Indian Ocean was once home to the largest known colony of king penguins. Most of those birds are now gone and no one knows why.
- Animals
What ‘The Meg’ doesn’t quite get right about megalodon sharks
A paleobiologist helps separate shark fact from fiction in the new Jason Statham film The Meg.
- Animals
Scientists Say: Nematocyst
Nematocysts are special cells in some ocean critters, such as jellyfish, sea anenomes and corals. They have a barb coated in venom that shoots out at their prey.
