In most animal societies, members of one sex dominate those of the other. Is this, as widely believed, an inevitable consequence of a disparity in strength and ferocity between males and females? Not necessarily. A new study on wild...
Genetically engineered microbes such as bacteria and yeasts have long been used as living factories to produce drugs and fine chemicals. More recently, researchers have started to combine bacteria with semiconductor technology that, similar to solar panels on the...
"Add 'skull-collecting ant' to the list of strange creatures in Florida," says Adrian Smith a scientist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University. His new research describes the behavioral and chemical strategies of...
Wherever there's water, there's bound to be bubbles floating at the surface. From standing puddles, lakes, and streams, to swimming pools, hot tubs, public fountains, and toilets, bubbles are ubiquitous, indoors and out.
A new MIT study shows how bubbles...
The African elephantnose fish generates weak electrical pulses to navigate its environment. This localization sense apparently shows an astonishing similarity to vision, as a study by the University of Bonn now shows. The study demonstrates that different objects have...
During the late Cretaceous period, more than 65 million years ago, birds belonging to hundreds of different species flitted around the dinosaurs and through the forests as abundantly as they flit about our woods and fields today.
But after the...
A 37-year survey of monarch populations in North Central Florida shows that caterpillars and butterflies have been declining since 1985 and have dropped by 80 percent since 2005.
This decrease parallels monarchs' dwindling numbers in their overwintering grounds in Mexico,...
The bending of a hook into wire to fish for the handle of a basket is surprisingly challenging for young children under eight years of age. Now, cognitive biologists and comparative psychologists led by Isabelle Laumer and Alice Auersperg...
Scientists have shown that a bird found in Pennsylvania is the offspring of a hybrid warbler mother and a warbler father from an entirely different genus -- a combination never recorded before now and which resulted in a three-species...
The bending of a hook into wire to fish for the handle of a basket is surprisingly challenging for young children under eight years of age. Now cognitive biologists and comparative psychologists from the University of Vienna, the University...
Goffin's cockatoos can tear cardboard into long strips as tools to reach food—but fail to adjust strip width to fit through narrow openings, according to a study published November 7, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by A.M.I....
