Nature and ecology
Natural History is Science Blog's desk for the living world. Animals, evolution, and ecology, reported from the field science and the papers rather than the press releases.
A roughly 200-fish shoal of juvenile arapaima repeatedly compressed scores of individually necessary trips to the surface into sub-second group events, while models explored how different private breathing rhythms could align.
Aug 25, 2026
Female Cope's gray treefrogs became slower, less accurate and more likely to defer a choice as recorded mate calls increased from two to eight, even when researchers separated the number of options from chorus noise.
Aug 24, 2026
One isolated population of humpbacks—trapped in the Arabian Sea for 70,000 years and genetically unique—has failed to recover even as its cousins worldwide bounced back from the brink of extinction.
Aug 24, 2026
A 491-species comparison links documented same-sex sexual behavior in primates with ecological pressure, long life histories and complex social systems, while leaving substantial room for underreporting and multiple evolutionary mechanisms.
Aug 24, 2026
Twelve photoreceptor classes did not give one mantis shrimp species fine wavelength discrimination. The barcode model explains why, but newer work points to a hybrid visual system.
Aug 23, 2026
Jetting raises pressure inside a common octopus's mantle enough to interrupt venous return and briefly pause its systemic heart. Crawling avoids that circulatory conflict.
Aug 23, 2026
Large kangaroos recycle landing energy through long ankle tendons, helping explain why their oxygen use changes little across fast hopping speeds and why their energy cost per meter can fall.
Aug 23, 2026
Size matters far less than ingenuity when a capuchin monkey tackles a problem that should require a body twice its weight.
Aug 23, 2026
Bumblebees combined separately learned facts to reposition a ball beneath an unreachable reward, including when the goal location was hidden.
Aug 22, 2026
Reindeer seasonally retune a collagen reflector behind the retina, increasing winter sensitivity while sacrificing some spatial precision.
Aug 22, 2026
Bilateral neural recordings show submillisecond coordination during zebra-finch song but largely independent replay of vocal fragments during sleep.
Aug 21, 2026
Field observations of juvenile reef octopuses separate short defensive clashes with territorial fish from longer encounters with nonterritorial followers.
Aug 21, 2026
In a controlled study, dormant common eastern bumblebee queens survived up to seven days underwater, though later colony founding was not tested.
Aug 21, 2026
Solitary trees that appear to thrive after clearings are often silently dying from severed root networks and lost forest protection.
Aug 21, 2026
