Desert ants’ survival strategy emerges from millions of simple interactions
Ants’ frenzied movements may seem aimless and erratic to a casual observer, but closer study reveals that an ant colony’s collective behavior can help...
Dog burial as common ritual in Neolithic populations
Coinciding with the Pit Grave culture (4200-3600 years before our era), coming from Southern Europe, the Neolithic communities of the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula started...
No-touch sensor measures vital signs of small animals
Measuring the vital signs of small conscious animals with feathers, fur or scales is no easy task, but Cornell researchers have come up with...
The role of the rolling jaw in early mammals
A new study has given scientists more to chew on regarding the evolution and inner workings of the mammalian jaw. Researchers at Yale, Brown, Harvard,...
A clam in pinstripes that eats wood
When Reuben Shipway gently drew the thin, slimy creature from its burrow in a piece of driftwood, he knew right away that he had...
Natural selection and spatial memory link shown in mountain chickadee research
Chickadees with better learning and memory skills, needed to find numerous food caches, are more likely to survive their first winter, a long-term study...
Gory, freaky, cool: Marine snail venom could improve insulin for diabetic patients
Although moderately mobile, marine cone snails have perfected several strategies to capture prey. Some fish-hunting species release venom into the surrounding water. Within the...
Unusual microbes from the deep-sea hold clues to early life
A new study has revealed how a group of deep-sea microbes provides clues to the evolution of life on Earth, according to a recent paper in The...
Moving toward automated animal identification in wildlife research
A new automated method to prepare digital photos for analysis will help wildlife researchers who depend on photographs to identify individual animals by their...
On the land, one-quarter of vertebrates die because of humans
Humans have a "disproportionately huge effect" on the other species of vertebrates that share Earth's surface with us, causing more than 25 percent of...
