Life
- Animals
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.
- Life
Ogre-faced spiders listen closely to snatch bugs from the air
Ogre-faced spiders can hear prey sneaking around behind them. Low frequencies can trigger a blind, backwards attack.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists Say: Apoptosis
When it’s time for cells to die, they need to do it carefully, so they don’t harm other cells.
- Plants
Please do not touch the Australian stinging tree
Stinging-tree leaves look soft and inviting, but one touch delivers agony. Structurally, the plant's painful chemical looks a lot like spider venom.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists Say: Puberty
Puberty is a time when hormones surge and people develop the ability to have children. But it’s so much more than that.
- Animals
The diabolical ironclad beetle is nearly unsquishable
The diabolical ironclad beetle is an incredibly tough little creature. A peek inside its exoskeleton reveals what makes it virtually uncrushable.
- Genetics
Scientists Say: Evolution
Evolution is how species change over time. Individuals in the group vary, and some will pass on their genes. Over time, the whole species changes.
- Animals
This snake rips open a living toad to feast on its organs
A particularly gruesome way to kill may help small-banded kukri snakes avoid a deadly poison secreted from the neck and backs of some toads.
- Brain
Kids use more of the brain than adults do to process language
The brain continues to grow and mature throughout childhood. One big change occurs in which parts of the brain turn on as someone processes language.
- Animals
Analyze This: Ropes restore a gibbon highway through a rainforest
When endangered Hainan gibbons started making risky leaps across an area mowed down by a landslide, researchers provided them a rope bridge.
- Animals
Attack of the inner-cannibal mega-shark
The outsized megalodon was a fierce terror that chewed its way across the oceans. It learned to kill even before it was born.
- Environment
Jumping ‘snake worms’ are invading U.S. forests
These bad-news invaders are spreading across the United States. As they turn forest debris into bare ground, soils and ecosystems are changing.
