Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Science / Wildlife

The pigeon will see you now.

New Research

Pigeons Can Spot Breast Cancer in Medical Images

After just a few weeks of training, the brainy birds rivaled human levels of accuracy in their diagnoses

A blue whale’s tale waits for student volunteers to begin cutting away blubber and flesh from the bones. The complete skeleton will eventually be displayed in Newport, Oregon.

What a Dead Blue Whale Can Teach Us About Life in the Ocean, and About Ourselves

Scientists and spectators gathered on an Oregon beach for the rare, messy, mesmerizing sight of a whale being carefully dismantled for museum display

There's a dinosaur in every chicken.

New Research

Genetic Tweaks Are Revealing the Dinosaur Traits in Living Chickens

A Yale paleontologist is blending fossil studies and bird genes to trace the ways dinosaurs transformed into today’s feathered flocks

Bees are not so picky when they stop for a snack.

New Research

Ancient Bees Were Voracious Snackers on Their Pollen-Gathering Treks

Fossils from Germany could help researchers better understand modern bee eating habits and better protect the beloved pollinators

That cockroach has a nasty bite.

New Research

A Cockroach Can Bite With a Force 50 Times Its Body Weight

Adding to their supervillain-esque powers, roaches can gnaw through tough materials with surprisingly strong jaws

A large display case holds the fossil of a plesiosaur at the Natural History Museum in London.

New Research

A Long-Necked Marine Reptile Is the First Known to Filter Feed Like a Whale

The bizarre Mortuneria used sieve-like teeth to strain tasty morsels from the muddy Cretaceous seafloor

The Dakotaraptor fossil, next to a paleontologist for scale.

New Research

New Winged Dinosaur May Have Used Its Feathers to Pin Down Prey

Meet “the Ferrari of raptors,” a lithe killing machine that could have taken down a young T. rex

The weasel-like fisher, an already at-risk animal, faces threats of poison from pot farms.

New Research

Illegal Pot Farms Are Killing Rare Animals With Bacon-Scented Poison

Marijuana plots hidden in California’s forests are inadvertently poisoning protected mammals called fishers

The fossil of Jane, a definitive young Tyrannosaurus rex, stands in the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Illinois.

New Research

Tiny Terror: Controversial Dinosaur Species Is Just an Awkward Tween Tyrannosaurus

Fossil analysis supports the argument that the proposed Nanotyrannus is not its own unique species after all

Electric eels are really shocking biologists.

New Research

Electric Eels Curl Up to Double Their Shock Value

The predators take down difficult prey by curling up their bodies to create a powerful electric dipole field

Chelonoidis donfaustoi was named after Ecuador’s oldest park ranger.

New Research

New Species of Galapagos Tortoise Found on Santa Cruz Island

The newly recognized reptile was thought to be part of a more populous species of tortoise sharing the island

Behold the Blobfish

How a creature from the deep taught the world a lesson about the importance of being ugly

A tiny camera is embedded in the horn of a black rhino.

How Technology May Help Save the Rhino From Extinction

Horns grown in a laboratory and hidden cameras could be the key to tackling this conservation challenge

Did Diplodocus walk with a spring in its neck?

New Research

How Long-Necked Dinosaurs Pumped Blood to Their Brains

Well-preserved fossils include spring-like neck bones that may have helped the giants get blood from their hearts to their heads

The black-footed ferret's tale of near-extinction is just one of many stories of endangered animals.

Age of Humans

How We Decide Which Animals Become Endangered

It wasn’t too long ago that the idea of “endangered animals” didn’t even exist.

By the time the Salt River reaches downtown Phoenix, it is a river in name only. Some scientists think that is why a non-native plant, the salt cedar, is thriving while native flora are suffering.

Age of Humans

How We Created a Monster In the American Southwest

The salt cedar is often seen as an un-killable invader. But are humans the real reason this unwanted plant is thriving?

The wings of the Arctic fritillary butterfly have decreased in size since 1996.

Age of Humans

Greenland’s Butterflies Are Shrinking as Temperatures Rise

In the high Arctic, hotter summer weather may be taxing insect metabolism

Baby tree saplings, cloned from giant redwoods in California, chill out in the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive's propagation area.

Age of Humans

The Race to Save the World’s Great Trees By Cloning Them

A nonprofit dedicated to preserving old, iconic trees is cloning them in hopes of preserving them for the future

A young chimpanzee sets out for a stroll in Tanzania's Mahale Mountains National Park.

New Research

Walking Chimps Move in Surprisingly Similar Ways to Humans

Motion-sensor studies showing how chimpanzees walk upright could help scientists better understand the evolution of bipedalism

Page 75 of 142