Life
- Animals
Some male hummingbirds wield their bills as weapons
The shape of some hummingbird bills may reflect a trade-off between drinking nectar and fighting off the competition.
- Fossils
This robot shows how an ancient creature might have walked
Scientists used fossils, footprints, a computer models and a life-sized walking robot to find out how an ancient creature moved.
- Chemistry
This houseplant can clean indoor air
Houseplants may be able to help clean up polluted indoor air. Scientists gave this one a boost by givng it a gene from a rabbit.
- Ecosystems
Scientists Say: Niche
An organism’s niche is the role it fills in the community it lives in.
- Genetics
Explainer: What are genes?
Genes are DNA regions that tell cells how to build proteins. But we have many more proteins than genes. And much of our DNA controls when genes turn on and off.
- Ecosystems
Rare-plant hunters race against time to save at-risk species
One in five plants is at risk of extinction. Meet the rare plant hunters who rappel down cliffs and trek through forests to save them.
- Computing
This bionic mushroom makes electricity
What do you get when you combine fungi, graphene, 3-D printing and photosynthetic bacteria? A mushroom that makes electricity.
- Animals
These fuzz-covered flying reptiles had catlike whiskers
New fossils are changing the look of ancient flying reptiles called pterosaurs.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists Say: Metabolism
Metabolism is all the chemical activities that support life in a cell, an organ and a whole organism’s body.
- Animals
To monitor penguin diet from satellites, look to poop
Scientists have figured out what foods dominate an Adélie penguin colony’s diet by looking at Landsat imagery. But to do so, they had to start with penguin poop.
- Animals
How some insects fling their pee
Insects called sharpshooters use a tiny barb on their rear ends to hurl their pee at 20 times the acceleration of Earth’s gravity.
- Animals
Scientists Say: Jellies
Jellies have roamed the seas for 500 million years. Some have stinging tentacles and bell-shaped bodies and are called jellyfish. Others are very different.
