Cocaine in the Water Nearly Doubled How Far Wild Salmon Swam
Cocaine and its byproducts are showing up in waterways worldwide. For juvenile salmon, the behavioral cost is not small.
Nature
Three Monkeys Walked Into a Virtual Forest
Monkeys navigated virtual worlds using intention alone. Imagine a future where people with paralysis could control everyday objects this way.
Every Tree in Every Forest Has Been Doing This During Storms. We Just Couldn't See It.
Scientists suspected it for 70 years. A storm-chasing minivan with a DIY UV telescope just proved forests silently shimmer with electricity every time a thunderstorm rolls through.
Sperm Whales Have Been Using Something Like Vowels for a Very Long Time
They didn't borrow our vowels. They built their own. What does it mean when two species land on the same communication structure independently, from opposite ends of evolution?
Deep-Sea Creature Has No Place on the Tree of Life
A pale, soft-bodied deep-sea animal that kind of looks like a sea slug, but isn't was spotted at 9100m. The deep ocean has secrets.
The Death Ball Is a Sponge. It Earned the Name.
A newly discovered sponge from the Southern Ocean has tiny hooks instead of filter pores. It doesn't wait for food to drift by. What else is down there hunting in the dark?
A Spider That Dressed Up as a Zombie. The Costume Is Working.
A new Amazon spider wears a zombie fungus costume so convincing a field researcher grabbed it before realizing it was alive. What is nature even doing?
Every Person Who Eats This Mushroom Sees Tiny People
A mushroom sold in Chinese markets sends hundreds to the hospital each year with Lilliputian hallucinations.
Neighbors Turned Killers: The Chimpanzee Civil War
They shared food, groomed each other, patrolled the same forest. Then, without ideology or grievance, they started killing. What broke 200 chimps into enemies?
The World's Largest Spiderweb Has 111,000 Residents. They Shouldn't Be Sharing.
111,000 spiders. One cave. Two species that should be eating each other. What exactly convinced them to cooperate instead?
A Fungus at Chernobyl Is Eating the Radiation
A black fungus at Chernobyl grows toward radiation, not away from it. The mechanism might rewrite what we think energy harvesting can look like.
An Octopus Arm Can Navigate a Mate's Internal Organs and Deliver Sperm. The Rest of the Octopus Barely Notices.
Scientists just found that one octopus arm navigates in total darkness by tasting female hormones — and keeps working even after it's been cut off.