A common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) isn't as scary as its name might suggest.

Halloween

Seven Vampires That Aren’t Bats (Or Bela Lugosi)

From flying frogs to deep-sea squid, meet some of the other nosferatu of the animal kingdom

Introducing Rana kauffeldi, a newly recognized New York City resident.

New Research

New Leopard Frog Found in New York City

The unique species, discovered near the Statue of Liberty, is the first amphibian found in the region in 150 years

Bubbles from the divers' breathing aparatus collect on the belly of the ship.

Bermuda

What’s So Important About the Bottom of a Cargo Ship? A Smithsonian Dive Team Explains

Smithsonian photographer Laurie Penland details the exhausting, but rewarding, work of scraping invasive species off the hull of a boat

Crop irrigation in arid regions, such as California’s San Joaquin Valley, can lead to overly salty soils.

Anthropocene

Earth’s Soil Is Getting Too Salty for Crops to Grow

Buildup of salts on irrigated land has already degraded an area the size of France and is causing $27.3 billion annually in lost crops

A "Sea Devil" as depicted by Conrad Gessner in Historia Animalium, 2nd ed, 1604.

Halloween

Five “Real” Sea Monsters Brought to Life by Early Naturalists

From kraken to mermaids, some monsters are real—if you know how to look for them

A group of great tit birds (Parus major) perch on a dead tree stump during a snowfall in Poland.

Anthropocene

Ten Species That Are Evolving Due to the Changing Climate

From tropical corals to tawny owls, some species are already being pushed to evolve—but adaptation doesn’t guarantee survival

Geese lift off a lake in front of a sun pillar at Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge near Mound City, Missouri.

American South

The Best Places in America to See Fall Bird Migrations

All across the country, birds are making the trek south for the winter—here are some of the best places to witness their journey

A chimp steals a glance at a photographer in Uganda's Kibale National Park.

Chimps Caught in First Known Nighttime Crop Raids

“The nightlife of chimpanzees has been neglected,” say researchers who filmed wild animals using a fallen tree as a bridge into protected cornfields

To be or not to be human? That's a question some scholars still feel is up for debate when it comes to Homo floresiensis.

Ten Years On, the Flores “Hobbit” Remains an Evolutionary Puzzle

Why was the 2004 unveiling of a small hominin dubbed Homo floresiensis such a big deal?

Curiosity is able to take pictures of itself on Mars using a camera mounted to its robotic arm. This mosaic was made from 55 snapshots taken in October 2012.

An Insider’s Biography of a Celebrity Mars Rover

The chief engineer for Curiosity offers a peek at the NASA rover’s tumultuous rise to stardom in a new tell-all book

A pair of fuzzy alpaca.

New Research

Why the Alpaca Has No Humps

The camel cousin evolved fluff instead of fat because it was able to linger in an evolutionary slow lane, suggest newly sequenced genomes

Google's newest Street View collection takes users to Gombe Stream National Park, where Jane Goodall pioneered her chimpanzee behavioral research. "Don't forget to look up," a Google project manager says.

Exclusive: The Chimpanzees of Gombe National Park Make Their Street View Debut

For its latest collection, Google traveled to the African rainforest where Jane Goodall pioneered her groundbreaking chimp research

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Art Meets Science

Gorgeous Portraits of Spineless Sea Creatures

In a new book, San Francisco-based photographer Susan Middleton captures the curious gestures and expressions of marine invertebrates

2014 Ingenuity Awards

How One Physicist’s Pursuit of the Cosmos Took Off in Antarctica

Francis Halzen’s amazing experiment heralds the beginning of a new era in astronomy

2014 Ingenuity Awards

Meet the Two Scientists Who Implanted a False Memory Into a Mouse

In a neuroscience breakthrough, the duo pioneered a real-life version of Inception

The giant Herschel Crater gives Saturn’s moon Mimas an ominous look.

A Mysterious Force is Acting on Saturn’s “Death Star” Moon

Tiny, cratered Mimas is wobbling way more than it should be, hinting that it might contain either an oddly shaped core or a subsurface ocean

This F3 twister in Kansas was part of a mini-outbreak of tornadoes in 2004.

Tornadoes Are Now Ganging Up in the United States

Twisters are not increasing in numbers but they are clustering more often, a bizarre pattern that has meteorologists stumped

A hazmat crew cleans the steps outside the Dallas apartment of a health care worker who tested positive for Ebola.

How Do You Clean Up an Ebola Patient’s Home?

Decontaminating biohazard sites can be a tough job, but the hardest microbe to wash away may not be what you think

It took scientists 150 years to finally complete the fossil of Basilosaurus, an early whale. But even then, no one could agree on a name: it was first called Basilosaurus, or "king lizard," then later Hydrarchos, or "giant sea serpent." Its bones were seen as having been part of a long-extinct flightless giant bird. Today the complete fossil that we know to be the intermediary between older land mammals and modern limbless whales is hanging in the Ocean Hall in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

A History of Life In 10 Fossils

From their new book A History of Life in 100 Fossils, Paul Taylor and Aaron O’Dea share the story of 10 incredible fossils

Dinosaur bone fossils at the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah.

The Best Places in America to See Fossils

October 14 is National Fossil Day—here are some of the best places in America to take a trip back in geological time

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