Researchers at John Innes Centre have shed light on how catnip—also known as catmint—produces the chemical that sends cats into a state of wanton abandon.
The remarkable effect catnip has on cats is well known thanks to the scores on...
Thyalacoleo carnifex, the "marsupial lion" of Pleistocene Australia, was an adept hunter that got around with the help of a strong tail, according to a study released December 12, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Roderick T....
The venom of insects such as wasps and bees is full of compounds that can kill bacteria. Unfortunately, many of these compounds are also toxic for humans, making it impossible to use them as antibiotic drugs.
After performing a systematic...
A team of researchers from France, Sweden, and Denmark have identified a new strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes plague, in DNA extracted from 5,000-year-old human remains. Their analyses, publishing December 6 in the journal Cell, suggest...
Geckos are renowned for their acrobatic feats on land and in the air, but a new discovery that they can also run on water puts them in the superhero category, says a University of California, Berkeley, biologist.
"They can run...
An active protein component of royal jelly helps honeybees create new queens. Stanford researchers have identified a similar protein in mammals, which keeps cultured embryonic stem cells pluripotent.
A mammalian protein similar in structure to the active component of honeybee...
Lonesome George's species may have died with him in 2012, but he and other giant tortoises of the Galapagos are still providing genetic clues to individual longevity through a new study by researchers at Yale University, the University of...
Scientists studying the digestive system of a curious wood-eating crustacean have discovered it may hold the key to sustainably converting wood into biofuel.
Gribble are small marine invertebrates that have evolved to perform an important ecological role eating the abundant...
Some lizards in the eastern U.S. have adapted to invasive fire ants -- which can bite, sting, and kill lizards -- reversing geographical trends in behavioral and physical traits used to avoid predators. A new study describing this reversal...
Rivaling the evolution of feathers in dinosaurs, one of the most extraordinary transformations in the history of life was the evolution of baleen -- rows of flexible hair-like plates that blue whales, humpbacks and other marine mammals use to...
Ancient wildfires played a crucial role in the formation and spread of grasslands like those that now cover large parts of the Earth, according to scientists at Penn State and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
A new study...
