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Science / Wildlife

It's all about the sunflowers at Sun & Green

Go Waist Deep Into the Largest Sunflower Farm in Northern Taiwan

Sunflower season is in full bloom in Taoyuan

Hello, I am goat.

What Living Like Goats and Badgers Can Teach Us About Ourselves

Two Englishmen won the Ig Nobel Prize for eating grass, earthworms and worse in the name of science

Ask Smithsonian: When Did People Start Keeping Pets?

The human-pet timeline is still being put together, but turns out man’s best friend might also be his oldest

A reef off the coast of Bonaire

Jacques Cousteau’s Grandson Is 3D Printing Coral Reefs

Fabien Cousteau, descendant of the famous sea explorer, is working on a project to bring 3D printed coral reefs to the Caribbean island of Bonaire

A sun-bleached skull is evidence of the first recorded jaguar predation on a black bear, linked to the big cat roaming this terrain.

The Return of the Great American Jaguar

The story of tracking a legendary feline named El Jefe through the Arizona mountains

To Save the Woodrat, Conservationists Have to Deal With an Invasive Species First: House Cats

On an island in Florida, a rare wild rodent faces a dangerous, feline threat

The male brown widow spider may not be as unlucky in love as we once thought.

Male Widow Spiders Prefer Younger Ladies—So They Don’t Get Eaten

This strategy means they live to mate again, upending assumptions about these arachnids

Do outdoor cats need to die?

The Moral Cost of Cats

A bird-loving scientist calls for an end to outdoor cats “once and for all”

Some hybrid thrushes varied their routes, suggesting that different genes may influence fall and spring migration.

Migratory Birds May Come Programmed With a Genetic Google Maps

These hybrid avians inherit some mixed directional messages

A hammerhead caught on a longline.

Is It Too Late to Save Red Sea Sharks?

With anti-fishing laws virtually unenforced, sharks off the coast of Saudi Arabia are being fished to death

Researchers fear that these normal monk seal encounters could soon grow deadly.

Why Rare Hawaiian Monk Seals Are Lining Up to Get Their Shots

Fearing devastating disease, researchers are vaccinating a wild marine mammal for the first time

The lowly urban rat deserves our attention.

In Defense of Studying City Rats

By placing a taboo on researching these “disease sponges,” we leave ourselves at their mercy

After just moments in the air, flight 1549 collided with a flock of geese.

Smithsonian Expert Fills in the Missing Science Behind the Movie “Sully”

Forensic ornithologist Carla Dove shares her story of analyzing the bird remains or “snarge” scraped from the engines of flight 1549

Like humans, captive Komodo dragons tend to impose their microbes upon their environments.

Captive Komodo Dragons Share Their Teeming Microbiome with Their Environment, Just Like Us

Komodos could be the perfect model for studying host-microbe interactions

Dennis Wiist inspects an eagle's foot at the National Eagle Repository in Commerce City, Colorado.

Inside a Remarkable Repository that Supplies Eagle Parts to Native Americans and Science

The repository, which has long provided feathers to tribes for traditional uses, also helps bird conservation researchers

These glow-in-the-dark roaches have the goods.

I Am Officially in Love With Cockroaches

And after you read this, you will be too

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