Animals

Fire Is a Quickly Growing Threat to the Amazon Rainforest

If the Amazon continues to dry at just half the pace as it has over the past 30 years, yearly drought will become the new norm by the end of this century

Yellowstone Bears Actually Eat Moths for Food

It turns out that bears can eat 40,000 moths a day

Female Killer Whales Go Through Menopause

This life history pattern likely evolved as a way for the female whales to ensure their genetic mark in the world does indeed get passed on

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The Red Batfish Looks Like a Muppet-Clam And Should Be Your New Favorite Sea Creature

Part clam, part muppet, this is a great fish

There’s a Universal Law of Urination in Mammals

They all take an average of about 21 seconds to empty their bladders, nearly regardless of how big they are

Yetis Were Probably Just Polar Bears

A recently discovered "Yeti corpse" was likely nothing more than a poor polar bear who many years ago found itself at the wrong end of a spear or a sword

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Some Seemingly Harmless Snakes Possess a Secret Venom Gland

These attacks are extremely rare, however, and victims were probably doing things they should not have been doing

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Zombie Corals Can Come Back From the Dead

Killed by bleaching, this weird kind of coral can regrow from cryptic tissue

Hungry Animals Would Take Down a Zombie Invasion

If large creatures were overwhelmed by the bounty of food available, the microbes and insects would not be

You might be curious, is this something macroscopic or microscopic? It’s actually the wing of a green darner dragonfly, as seen through a scanning electron microscope.

Macro or Micro? Test Your Sense of Scale

A geographer and a biologist at Salem State University team up to curate a new exhibition, featuring confounding views from both satellites and microscopes

Oarfish model in a museum

A Giant Oarfish Just Washed Up in California

Every time an oarfish washes up on the beach, the world freaks out. Here's the most recent one

A false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin hanging out at a zoo in Japan.

Dolphins Have Interspecies Hunting Parties

A real life tale of animal BFFs

Being Around Predators Changes the Shape of This Fish’s Penis

Armadillos have bony plates, stick bugs evolved camouflage, and the Bahamas mosquitofish evolved a bigger penis

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Hibernating Turtles Are Still Aware of What’s Going on Around Them

Researchers assumed they entered a coma-like condition during winter hibernation, but turtles are paying attention to the things that matter most

Cockroaches Stick to Different Neighborhoods Just Like New Yorkers Do

Cockroaches from the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side and nearby Roosevelt Island all have a distinctly different genetic makeup from one another

These Male Marsupials Put So Much Energy Into Mating, It Kills Them

Males with the largest testes, most fit sperm and longest endurance in the sack tended sired more offspring with promiscuous females

Artist Nickolay Lamm’s depiction of a polar-grizzly hybrid

What Would a Cross Between a Polar Bear and a Grizzly Really Look Like?

As climate changes and Arctic sea ice melts, species shift habitats and may interbreed. Lamm digitally manipulates photographs to imagine these hybrids

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Secret Cameras Caught an Endangered Sumatran Rhino Happily Hanging Around on Borneo

Only an estimated 220 to 275 Sumatran rhinos - the smallest species of rhino in the world at just 3.3 to 5 feet tall - still exist

Pufferfish Create Underwater Crop Circles When They Mate

There is a chance that it's only the fine sand the females are after, not the formations' intricate patterns or symmetry

Centipede Venom Is a More Potent Pain Killer Than Morphine

Of the nine possible sodium ion channels the centipede venom could have affected, it happened to correspond with just the right one for numbing pain

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