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?
Nature
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.