The Bullfrog Brain Doesn't Wait for a Rescue. It Builds One.
Most brains wait for the liver to send emergency fuel. After a winter underwater, the bullfrog's brain stops waiting.
Out of Bounds
Endurance coach in Bend, Oregon, and virtual contributor at YGBFKM. Has run, climbed, or hiked on five continents and covers History and Nature with the same intensity. Hopes to complete an Iron Man someday, because it sounds like a fun afternoon.
Complex Life Had a Heat Limit. The Fire Amoeba Crawled Past It.
Complex cells were supposed to fall apart at this temperature. One tiny blob in a California hot spring keeps eating, moving and multiplying anyway.
Glowing Blob’s Nervous System May Have a Separate Origin Story
Some of the comb jelly's neurons are fused instead of connected. It's either a shortcut or evidence nature had to invent nervous systems more than once.
The Beetle That Turned Itself Into a Flower
These larvae aren't wearing any single flower's scent. They built their own from scratch, and the bees can't tell the difference.
A Tooth Pinpoints T. rex’s Body Temp
For 66 million years, the answer sat locked inside fossilized enamel. Now one T. rex tooth has given scientists a number they never had before.
The Tasmanian Tiger Hunted Like a Crocodile, Not a Wolf
Its skull didn't match any living predator on Earth. What does that mean for the story we told ourselves, and acted on, before we checked?
A 245-Million-Year-Old Reptile Went Into the Rock and Kept Its Lunch
A quarter-billion-year-old fossil still had a liver, and it was still red. What else survived besides the bones?
The La Brea Tar Pits Have Been Hiding a Toad Since the 1950s
Only two Ice Age amphibians have ever been found in North America. One is a tree frog from Florida. The other turned up in a drawer in Los Angeles.
An Octopus Totes a Coconut Fortress for Trouble It Hasn't Met
A cephalopod hauls a portable panic room across the seafloor in two pieces, fully exposed. The shells are completely useless the entire time it's moving. So why bother?
A Single-Celled Organism Ran a Cable to Its Neighbors
One-celled life isn't supposed to share resources with anything outside itself. So what is this species doing building physical tunnels to pass cargo to the cell next door, and why does it build more of them under stress?
Humpback Whale Songs Are a Dive Chart
A 40-ton animal has spent 16 hours performing the same routine, and it lines up with his body's position in the water almost to the second. What does it mean when the music and the movement turn out to be the same thing?
The Insect That Rebuilt Its Lungs Into a Submarine
The rule was simple: deep water pressure destroys anything that breathes air. One larva in an African lake never got the memo, and what it grew instead has researchers rethinking the ocean's biggest mystery.
Clams Are Pretty Good Parents
A baby shellfish's first move after birth is riding a fish like a school bus. This has been the care plan for 125 million years.
A Frozen Rat's Chromosome Woke Up Inside a Mouse. It Glowed.
The chromosome came from a rat frozen for over a year. The mouse it woke up inside never noticed the difference.
A Predator's Genes Jumped Into Its Prey Mid-Kill
A predatory bacterium kills its prey, then its own genes jump into the corpse. Evolution using a murder scene as a delivery vehicle was not in the model.
100 Million Years Ago, Mites Were Already Better at Group Travel Than Most Hiking Parties
They were only 200 micrometers long, marching in a single-file line, tethered together by silk they made themselves. What amber just preserved should not be possible to know.
A Plant With No Leaves, No Chlorophyll, and Apparently No Shame
It can't photosynthesize. It can't survive on its own. So this plant went underground, tapped into a host, and started rewriting its own DNA with borrowed code.
Sleeper Sharks From Thousands of Miles Away Feast on a Sunken Cow
Scientists dropped a cow a mile underwater to study deep-sea scavengers. Sharks that belong 4,000 miles north showed up instead. And they weren't alone.