Life
- Animals
This tiny animal is apocalypse-proof
Microscopic animals called water bears can survive nearly any kind of apocalypse, from asteroids and nuclear war to exploding stars.
- Animals
Humpbacks flap their flippers like underwater birds
Surprising new video shows humpback whales flapping their front flippers to move their massive bodies toward their prey.
- Animals
Could a dragonfly’s wings be alive — and breathing?
Highly magnified image showing what looks like breathing tubes suggests the morpho dragonfly’s wings may be unexpectedly alive.
- Genetics
Scientists hide a real movie within a germ’s DNA
A gene-editing technology called CRISPR helped scientists encode a short movie in the DNA of E. coli bacteria.
- Genetics
Explainer: How CRISPR works
Scientists are using a tool called CRISPR to edit DNA in all types of cells.
- Animals
Night lights have a dark side
Artificial light at night not only affects our view of the night sky, but also has the ability to impair animal behaviors — and probably our health.
- Animals
Analyze This! Mosquito repellents that work
Spray-on repellents are generally the best at keeping those blood suckers from making you their next meal, new data show.
- Agriculture
Scientists Say: Domestication
Domestication is the process of deliberately taking a wild organism — a plant or animal for instance — and making it a part of our daily lives.
- Animals
Wildebeest drownings feed a river ecosystem for years
Hundreds or thousands of wildebeests can drown at a time in the Mara River. Those carcasses, however, will feed a succession of other animals.
- Health & Medicine
Explainer: What is a vaccine?
Vaccines give the body’s natural defense system a boost against infectious disease.
- Animals
Evolving for flight may have changed the shapes of bird eggs
Birds that are strong fliers tend to have stretched-out or asymmetrical eggs. This might reflect how their bodies evolved for flight.
- Life
Scientists Say: Biofilm
When times get tough, some microbes like to stick together. They form a mass stuck to a surface, called a biofilm.
