The Bat That Hunts Birds on the Wing
A bat that normally eats insects went after birds bigger than itself. What it did with the ones it caught, the footage never showed.
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.
Bats Likely Took Their First Flight in Europe
Three continents had a claim on the first bat. A mountain of genomes and fossils points somewhere else, and roughly half of every bat family's past is still missing.
Zombies of the Sea: This Creature's Severed Body Parts Live On
Severed. Alone. Still running an immune system three years later. Still very much alive.
Lizzie the Fossil Reptile Was Hiding a Set of Gills
Claws were supposed to mean an animal lived on land. A gilled swimmer broke that rule, and some very old footprints may need new owners.
A Butterfly Flew Up. Its Wings Said Down.
What if the stripes on a butterfly were never meant to hide it? Something in the pattern only switches on once the wings start moving.
The Earliest Known Lighter Ran on Fool's Gold
The people who struck these sparks were not our species. When ours first learned the trick is anyone's guess.
500 Jars on the Seafloor, 2,100 Years Waiting for Someone to Look
A Roman cargo ship went down off Sicily and just stayed there, loaded and perfectly still, while an entire civilization rose and fell above it.
A Drug Habit Older Than Farming Is Carved Into Two Sets of Teeth
Teeth dug up on Sulawesi have deep grooves and drug residue inside them. Whatever started the habit, the teeth suggest it made things considerably worse.
This Cicada's Love Song Sounds Like a Jet at Takeoff
Get close and this insect is one of the loudest land invertebrates. Get too close and something else happens.
These Seabirds Chase Hurricanes
When researchers laid the birds' GPS tracks over hurricane maps, they checked the data three times. The tracks were right.
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.
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.