Animals – latest news.
Enlarge / A painted lady butterfly lands on a flower. The bright iridescent colors in its wings don’t come from pigment molecules but from how the wings are structured. Chitin scales essentially form a diffraction grating tuned to specific wavelengths of light. (credit: Mark Rightmire / Getty Images) One of the best-known poems by Gerard […]
Johns Hopkins University researchers discovered precisely how spiders build webs by using night vision and artificial intelligence to track and record every movement of all eight legs as spiders worked in the dark. Ovid’s Metamorphoses speaks of the orb-weavers, said to be descendants of Arachne, a figure in Greek mythology who wove beautiful tapestries and […]
Wellesley College researchers have identified a sound that Asian honeybees use to warn the hive of a “murder hornet” attack. Asian honeybees (Apis cerana) produce a unique alarm sound to alert hive members to an attack by giant “murder hornets,” according to a new paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. For the […]
Yesterday, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) called upon Major League Baseball to stop using the term “bullpen.” Read more…
Enlarge Once upon a time, during the Cretaceous period, a tiny crab wandered out of the water onto land and somehow got trapped in amber, which preserved it for 100 million years. At least that’s what a team of scientists hypothesize might have happened in a new paper announcing their discovery of the oldest known […]
Well, that’s one way to get your head in the game. Earlier today, Minnesota Timberwolves’ center Karl-Anthony Towns said his new pregame ritual to get him pumped up before games is to watch videos of gorillas… fighting to the death?! Read more…
Enlarge / A recently discovered species: the Galapagos Ghost Hagfish (Myxine phantasma). (credit: Tim Winegard) Meet the humble hagfish, an ugly, gray, eel-like creature affectionately known as a ” snot snake , ” because of its unique defense mechanism. The hagfish can unleash a full liter of sticky slime from pores located all over its […]
Enlarge / Male musk duck (Biziura lobata) captured in camera chillaxing in the wild in Sandford, Tasmania, Australia. Not the same duck recorded 30 years ago saying “You bloody fool!” (credit: JJ Harrison /CC BY 3.0) Back in 1987, a researcher in Australia recorded a male musk duck named Ripper producing a vocalization that sounded […]
Enlarge / An interdisciplinary team of roboticists, engineers and biologists modeled the mechanics of the mantis shrimp’s punch and built a robot that mimics the movement. (credit: Second Bay Studios and Roy Caldwell/Harvard SEAS) The mantis shrimp boasts one of the most powerful, ultrafast punches in nature—it’s on par with the force generated by a. […]
Enlarge / A cuttlefish leisurely hanging out in a tank. A new study found that cuttlefish can remember specifics of place and time for receiving their favorite yummy food rewards. (credit: University of Cambridge) Can you remember what you had for dinner last weekend? That ability is a function of episodic memory, and how well […]