Life

Climate

Climate closing the gender gap for this mountain flower

Among valerian plants, males like it hotter than the females do. So a warming climate has been speeding their migration up once-cool mountainsides.

Animals

Frigate birds spend months without landing

Frigate birds can fly non-stop for months. They stay in the air with the help of upward-moving airflows, a new study finds.

Animals

Scientists Say: Venomous

A poison-arrow frog is poisonous, but a rattlesnake is not. What’s the difference? It’s how their poisons are delivered.

Fossils

Parasites wormed their way into dino’s gut

Tiny burrows crisscross the stomach of a 77-million-year-old dinosaur fossil. These may be tracks left behind by slimy parasitic worms.

Animals

Current coral bleaching event is the longest known

Heat stress has led to the longest coral bleaching event on record. Scientists now worry that global warming may make such prolonged crises more frequent.

Brain

Hormone affects how teens’ brains control emotions

Using scans of brain activity, scientists show that surging hormones drive where emotions get processed in a teen’s brain.

Brain

Gasp! At the movies, your breaths reveal your emotions

Researchers took air samples as they screened movies. What people exhaled were linked to film scenes’ emotional tone, they found.

Health & Medicine

Zika vaccines look promising

As a Zika epidemic surges through Brazil and northward, scientists are looking for drugs to keep more people from becoming infected. Several vaccines show promise in early tests — but none has yet been tried in people.

Animals

This mammal has the world’s slowest metabolism

A sloth species manages to exist with a super-slow metabolism by moving little and using its environment for heating and cooling its body.

Animals

Singing lemurs sync up — until one goes solo

The indri lemurs of Madagascar sing in chorus to mark their territory. But young males sometimes solo, which may help them attract a mate.

Animals

Snout goo may help sharks sense prey

Scientists may be one step closer to understanding how sharks sense their prey. Pores on their snout and face are lined with a gel that may help relay electrical currents created by prey’s movements.

Animals

Leapin’ eels! Video shows they attack with zaps

When a predator threatens an electric eel from above, the animals leap up to deliver a shocking defense.