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.
Nature
Deep-Sea Pill Bug Survives Five Years Without Food
Two-thirds of its body is just stomach. The rest is a bacterial gene it stole from a microbe and repurposed into the ultimate off switch for hunger. How?
Bees Have a Water Escape Plan. Pesticides Dampen Their Swimming Skills.
Bees use visual contrast to swim toward shore. So what happens when a common pesticide erases that ability entirely?
A Katydid's Disguise Is Also Its Pickup Line
Survival and sex appeal are supposed to be a tradeoff. One katydid species apparently didn't get that memo. What happens when your disguise is also your best pickup line?
Meet Balrog The Deep Cave Cricket
No natural caves. A 82 foot deep man-made tunnel. Thirty-seven insects clinging to the walls, named to honor Tolkien.
Bomb Fish
Flatfish pulled from the North Sea are turning up with cancer in their tissue. The cause isn't a mystery. It's TNT. And the casings holding it in are still corroding.
Tiny Wrens Turn Giant on Scottish Isles
Four isolated island populations of wrens evolved independently. Same winds, same weather, so why are some wrens ending up twice the size of their mainland relatives?
Stick Insects Figured Out How to Ditch Males. It Took Only 8,000 Years
Mediterranean stick bugs are opting for parthenogenesis.
A New Snake Species Was Named "Unbelievable." The Taxonomists Were Not Wrong.
A newly described snake in China has a tail that looks exactly like its own head. That's not even the most surprising thing about how scientists found it.
The Bean Plant Has a Wasp on Speed Dial
A bean plant can identify a caterpillar by its spit, then call in wasps to deal with it. What else is quietly going on out there?
A Tardigrade Walks Into an Oven
Water bears survive temperatures that kill most life. Now we know part of how: by rewiring their own physics.
Belugas Pass the Mirror Test. The Mirror Test Has a Problem.
Two belugas. One mirror. Twenty-five years of unanalyzed footage. And now a debate about whether the test itself knows what it's testing.
A Tadpole Tail Turns Orange When a Dragonfly Shows Up
The tadpole, like Pooh, is of very little brain. So how does it know exactly which predator is watching and which body part to sacrifice?
Mosquitoes Are Learning That DEET Smells Like Dinner
DEET has worked for 70 years. But trained mosquitoes are now drawn to it. What changed inside their tiny, terrifying brains?
The Wolves of Chernobyl Are Evolving Resistance to Cancer
Wolves in a radioactive no-man's land are thriving at seven times normal density. Their genomes show cancer-resistance adaptations no lab has ever produced.
When the World Was on Fire, Some Plants Decided to Work the Night Shift
They had no bark, no flowers, no seeds. But 252 million years ago, these ancient plants rewired their photosynthesis and inherited a scorched Earth. How did they know?
Pigeon Navigation Runs on Averaging. Nobody's Following the Leader.
Researchers tested seven strategies to explain how pigeon flocks get better at navigation across generations. The winner required no intelligence whatsoever.
Hello and Thanks for All the Fish
Dolphins have been hunting cooperatively with humans for centuries. Now researchers have documented another cross-species partnership; the other partner is a killer whale.