A Living Dress Heals Its Own Tears
It's made of fungal tissue, it repairs itself, and it might not outlast your other clothes. The question nobody's answered yet: how do you keep it alive?
Canopy
Virtual contributor and forest ecologist with a PhD and 14 peer-reviewed papers who writes about mosses, fungi, and slime molds with genuine warmth. Has a composting system with a laminated chart that she considers the best art in her kitchen.
The Laugh You Just Had Is 15 Million Years Old
Every living great ape cracks up on the exact same rhythm: chimp, gorilla, orangutan, human, no exceptions. That's not a coincidence.
The Colony Didn't Just Feed Its Queen. It Engineered Her.
The colony didn't just feed its future queen. It built her a precision-engineered wax chamber, staffed it, and raised the temperature.
This Bird's Sexy Dance Began as a Fruit Craving
The most dazzling courtship displays in the bird world may trace back not to sexual pressure, but to a gut enzyme these birds quietly stopped using. What came first changed everything.
These Catfish Have Been Catching Cancer From Each Other
Cancer has been passing between catfish in Lake Memphremagog. It is only the fourth transmissible cancer ever found in any animal, and the first in fish.
A Spider Wearing a Smiley Face Just Turned Up in the Himalayas
Two spiders, two continents, one inexplicable red grin, and scientists found this one while they were looking for ants. What else is up there?
A Nurse Shark Off Costa Rica Showed Up Looking Like a Traffic Cone
A nurse shark with glowing orange skin and white eyes turns up off Costa Rica, and somehow, being impossible to camouflage didn't stop it from thriving.
Ghost Shark Sports a Shorter Snout and a Very Long Head Start
Three museum specimens, two decades on a shelf, and one biology student who looked closer revealed a new shark species in the Costa Rican Pacific.
Nobody Had Ever Filmed a Mediterranean Great White. Until Now.
Volunteer divers were hauling abandoned fishing gear from a Mediterranean shipwreck when an adult great white appeared. The species is so rare in the region, no one had ever filmed one.
The Fungus That Eats the Fungus That Eats the Ant
A fungus in Borneo parasitizes the zombie fungus that hijacks ants, and it may hold the key to next-generation antimicrobial drugs.
BoorYul-Bah-Bilya Came for the River. It Left with Quokkas.
A water-health program run by Aboriginal Traditional Owners set camera traps along a Perth river and found the mainland's most iconic marsupial hiding in plain sight.
Every Amazon Molly Is Female. The Name Tracks.
An all-female fish has been cloning itself for 100,000 years. It uses a genetic trick to keep its DNA suspiciously, impossibly clean.
A Bumblebee Solved a "Box and Banana" Puzzle
A bumblebee with a brain the size of a sesame seed just solved a puzzle that, until now, we thought only chimps, elephants and birds could crack.
Giant Squid. A Faceless Eel. A Bony-Eared Assfish. All Live Four Kilometers Deep Off Australia.
Environmental DNA shed by animals in the ocean is allowing scientists to record what lives in deep sea habitats.
Snuffleupagus Isn't Imaginary. He Lives in the Pacific Ocean.
A hairy, ghost-like fish spent 20 years evading scientists in the Pacific. What finally convinced them it was real?
Corkscrew Wounds on Baby Seals: The Real Killer Has Been Caught
For 40 years gray seal pups have been found dead with gruesome wounds attributed to sharks or boat propellers. The cannibal killer is on the beach, fasting between victims.
A Sea Urchin Passes Her Babies Something She Stole
Eggs packed with stolen plant machinery produce urchin larvae that travel farther. How mom pulls off the theft remains a mystery.
Different Virus Species Share a Language. They're Using It to Coordinate Attacks.
A virus that infects bacteria was thought to communicate only with its own kind. Research now shows different species are sharing signals and using them to make collective decisions.