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Science / Wildlife

Over its two-minute lifetime, the faux rhino (above: The Substitute) adapts “to his environment and moves around. His form and his sound become more lifelike, but ultimately, he is coming to life without any natural context and in this completely digital form," says the museum's curator Andrea Lipps.

The Northern White Rhino Went Extinct, But for Two Minutes at a Time, the Animal Makes a Digital Comeback

An artist’s 3-D recreation of the immense mammal probes the paradox of efforts to bring such animals back in the lab

Swamp wallabies can nourish three separate offspring at once: an older joey that's left the pouch, a young one nursing inside of it, and an embryo that has yet to be born.

Swamp Wallabies Can Get Pregnant While Pregnant

These marsupials can conceive during the final days of an ongoing pregnancy, creating a “backup” embryo ready to take its predecessor’s place

Mo‘omomi Preserve on the north coast of the Hawaiian island of Moloka‘i protects a dune ecosystem that boasts rare coastal species.

Hawai‘i’s Last Dunes Are Home to Species Found Nowhere Else on the Planet

A nature preserve on Moloka‘i reveals rare life forms—some ancient and others just newly established

The first two cheetah cubs born via embryo transfer

In a First, Cheetah Cubs Born Through Surrogacy at the Columbus Zoo

Zookeepers and Smithsonian scientists successfully transferred cheetah embryos, marking a major conservation milestone for the vulnerable species

A female wolverine roams the Arctic tundra at the edge of the Brooks Range, on Alaska’s North Slope. 

Why Wolverines Are the Arctic Animal We Love to Hate

Scientists brave the deep snows and frigid cold of Arctic Alaska to study one of its most furtive and ferocious denizens

An author of blockbuster books and a pioneering photographer, she braved the wilderness to collect these moths and butterflies.

As Popular in Her Day as J.K. Rowling, Gene Stratton-Porter Wrote to the Masses About America’s Fading Natural Beauty

Despite her fame, you wouldn’t know about this beloved writer unless you visit the vanishing Midwestern landscape she helped save

Photographers gather at the eastern edge of El Capitan in February, eager to capture Yosemite's "firefall."

Nine Rare Natural Phenomena Worth Traveling For

You have to be in the right place at the right time to see these awe-inspiring events

Two giraffes

Fourteen Fun Facts About Love and Sex in the Animal Kingdom

Out in the wild, flowers and candy just aren’t gonna cut it

Three Cassiopea, or upside-down jellyfish, seen from above in a lab at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The cloudy matter floating above and to the left of the jellyfish is a mucus that they exude.

These Jellyfish Don’t Need Tentacles to Deliver a Toxic Sting

Smithsonian scientists discovered that tiny ‘mucus grenades’ are responsible for a mysterious phenomenon known as ‘stinging water’

The new dinosaur is called Thanatotheristes degrootorum.

Newly Discovered Tyrannosaur Was Key to the Rise of Giant Meat-Eaters

A partial skull found in Alberta helps put a timer on when the ‘tyrant lizards’ got big

Jackass penguin calls don't sound like human words. But the two forms of communications follow the same linguistic laws.

Jackass Penguin Calls Follow Similar Rules to Human Speech

These birds are nicknamed for donkeys, but structure their calls like words

Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes use a receptor called IR21a to navigate toward warmth, a cue that signals they're near food.

Why Mosquitoes Find Your Warm Blood So Appealing

These bloodthirsty buggers repurposed a gene normally used to sense and avoid high temperatures into a heat-seeking molecular machine

Axolotls can regrow lost limbs, again and again, making them appealing to scientists who want to understand regeneration.

Some Salamanders Can Regrow Lost Body Parts. Could Humans One Day Do the Same?

In recent decades, the idea of human regeneration has evolved from an ‘if’ to a ‘when’

A wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) taking off for flight, carrying a GPS tracker that can detect radar emitted from ships.

Albatrosses Outfitted With GPS Trackers Detect Illegal Fishing Vessels

By utilizing the majestic birds to monitor huge swaths of the sea, law enforcement and conservationists could keep better tabs on illicit activities

A Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicensis), one of the species that contributed to the guano researchers used to study the climates of the past.

Ancient Bat Guano Reveals Thousands of Years of Human Impact on the Environment

Like sediment cores, ice samples and tree rings, bat excrement can be used to study the climate of the past

Coyotes are about to enter South America, a move that could soon make the species, native to North America, one of the most widespread carnivores in the western hemisphere.

Coyotes Poised to Infiltrate South America

The crab-eating fox and the coyote may soon swap territories, initiating the first American cross-continental exchange in more than three million years

A fossil of Parioscorpio venator, a 437-million-year-old scorpion that resembles modern species.

World’s Oldest Scorpions May Have Moved From Sea to Land 437 Million Years Ago

A pair of pristinely preserved fossils suggest scorpions have looked mostly the same since they first crawled onto land

A "living machine" containing frog stem cells in a new configuration designed by a computer algorithm. Parts shown in green are made up of frog skin cells, while parts in red are frog heart cells.

Scientists Assemble Frog Stem Cells Into First ‘Living Machines’

The so-called ‘xenobots’ could replace traditional metal or plastic robots without polluting the planet, but they raise ethical questions

African grey parrots are highly social, and may benefit from establishing reputations for generosity.

Parrots Will Share Currency to Help Their Pals Purchase Food

Animals often share food, but these birds understand that metal rings can be exchanged for treats, and they share the rings with no promise of reward

Cuttlefish are calculating hunters, and need depth perception to efficiently snare their prey.

Scientists Velcroed 3-D Glasses to Cuttlefish to Study Their Depth Perception

The results of the eye-popping study suggest cuttlefish see the world in surprisingly human ways

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