Animals
Explainer: Insects, arachnids and other arthropods
Arthropods are all around us, but identifying them can be hard. To start, look at the four main groups: chelicera, crustaceans, myriapods and insects.
Featured Articles in this Issue
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Cover Story
Easy for you, tough for a robot
Robots still can’t do many things that we find easy. Can engineers reduce how klutzy robots are and boost their common sense?
Explainer
Technically Fiction
Genetics
What would it take to make a unicorn?
Onward’s dumpster-diving unicorns seem like an impossibility. But scientists have some ideas about how unicorns could become real.
Profile
Animals
How an encounter with this odd-looking bird inspired a career
Kevin Burgio overcame many hardships to become a scientist. Now he studies how animals like the Carolina parakeet and Tasmanian tiger went extinct.
Features
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Easy for you, tough for a robot
Robots still can’t do many things that we find easy. Can engineers reduce how klutzy robots are and boost their common sense?
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Around the world, birds are in crisis
Human activities around the world are threatening bird species. Numbers of even some of the most common species are starting to fall.
More Stories from the August 1, 2022 issue
- Chemistry
Extreme pressure? Diamonds can take it
Diamond retains its structure even at extreme pressures, which could reveal how carbon behaves in the cores of some exoplanets.
- Brain
Nodding off may turn your creativity on
In an experiment, people who fell into a shallow sleep were more likely than non-sleepers or deep sleepers to discover a sly math trick.
- Life
These rabbits can’t hop. A gene defect makes them do handstands
Mutations in a gene that helps nerve cells work properly rob rabbits of their ability to hop. Instead, the animals use their front paws to move.
- Humans
Testing the power of touch
We pet dogs with our fingers, not our arms or backs. Our fingers are more sensitive to touch. But how do we know? Here's how you can test that.
- Tech
This artificial skin feels ‘ghosts’ — things you wish were there
Engineers have developed a wearable device that simulates the sense of touch. It may benefit robotic surgery and deep-sea exploration.
- Space
Some of the sun’s iconic coronal loops may be ghostly illusions
Wrinkles in the sun’s outer atmosphere might trick the eye into seeing glowing arches, scientists now report.
