Animals

Early trauma can shorten a red squirrel’s lifespan

Red squirrels living in Canada’s Yukon territory can have a pretty hard knock life. Bitterly cold winters, resource scarcity, intense...

Why animals run faster than their robot doppelgängers… for now

Modern robotics is awash with human-made machines mimicking the animal world. From stadium-surveying robot dogs to daddy long-legs-inspired exploration bots...

This 400-pound prehistoric salmon had tusks like a warthog

About five million years ago, the North American Pacific Northwest was teeming with some pretty big fish that would have...

These birds help humans hunt for honey—but it’s not as sweet as you might think

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer...

Bioluminescence may have evolved 300 million years earlier than scientists previously thought

Many marine organisms–including sea worms, some jellyfish, sea pickles, and more–can emit ethereal glow through a process called bioluminescence. The...

Lampreys offer clues to the origin of our fight-or-flight instinct

Lampreys look like something out of a horror movie, with their sucky mouths chock full of teeth, eel-like bodies, and...

Enormous snake in ancient India was longer than a school bus

Another day in science, another massive, ancient snake discovery. Paleontologists in India have unearthed fossilized vertebrae from a snake that...

Daddy long-legs-inspired robot could one day squirm through Martian caves

Robotic engineers are no stranger to turning to nature for inspiration. In recent years, birds, dogs, extinct sea creatures, and...

New species of extinct marine reptile found with help from 11-year-old child

Paleontologists already know that the extinct marine reptile ichthyosaurs were enormous. Some newly described jawbone fossils uncovered in England represent...