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Animals

Lab-grown beef—it could be dinner.

Five Animal Products Scientists Can Now Grow In a Lab

In early experiments, scientists are growing meat in vitro and bioengineering yeast for dairy

New Research

By Absorbing Smells From Its Food, This Fish Gets Scent Camouflage

The harlequin filefish is a master of camoufalge

The Shape of Things to Come, Antarctic Sound, February 2010: "As we sailed with the land to our backs, I saw this bright, jagged iceberg with a dark-blue sea," writes Seaman.

Art Meets Science

These Photos Capture a Decade of Change at Earth’s Poles

From courting penguins to moody icebergs, photojournalist Camille Seaman shares her personal journey through polar habitats

A bleached coral reef

New Research

Listen to the Sounds of a Dying Coral Reef

Healthy coral reefs produce a medley of sounds that ocean creatures use as homing beacons

New Research

Bats Have Specific Brains Cells for Tracking Their Location While in Flight

Humans likely carry the same kind of cells in our own brains

Thanks to millions of microscopic hair-like structures, a gecko's foot can resist pulling forces up to 20 times the lizard's own weight.

New Research

Geckos Have a Surprisingly Strong Death Grip

Gecko toes remain firmly stuck in place even after the animal dies, implying that the lizards do not actively control their clinginess

This Plant-Based Gel Stops Bleeding in Seconds

A salve that seals severe wounds is making its way to veterinary clinics. Military and trauma testing may soon follow

A brown bear in a private park near Brasov.

The Deadly Dilemma Facing Romania’s Brown Bears

Around the Carpathian Mountains, frustrated farmers and high-paying sport hunters are helping to set the highest bear hunting quotas yet allowed

The quantum realm can seem to defy common sense.

Five Practical Uses for “Spooky” Quantum Mechanics

Fifty years after Bell’s Theorem, tools that harness the weird properties of quantum mechanics are at work all around you

Cool Finds

Lemmings Do Not Explode Or Throw Themselves Off Cliffs

A popular myth about these arctic rodents has its roots in faked documentary footage from Disney

2014 Holiday Gift Guide

Best Gifts of 2014 for Nature Lovers

Smithsonian editors, gardeners and scientists offer ideas to give the gifts that keep wildlife thriving

A rufous hummingbird.

Cool Finds

One Hummingbird’s Unusual Flight: From Minnesota to Texas, on a Plane

Rufous hummingbirds have no business being in St. Paul amid freezing temperatures

Cool Finds

The Black Sea Devil, a Rare Deep-Sea Anglerfish, Filmed for the First Time

Fewer than half a dozen anglerfish have ever been recorded swimming in their undersea habitat

False-color micrograph of Caenorhabditis elegans

Cool Finds

We’ve Put a Worm’s Mind in a Lego Robot’s Body

A wheeled Lego robot may not look like a worm, but it “thinks” like one after programmers gave it the neuron connections in a C. elegans roundworm

Pacific bluefin tuna populations have declined by up to 33 percent over the last 20 years.

Trending Today

300+ Species Just Joined the List of Threatened Plants And Animals

Overfishing, overhunting and habitat loss drove many of the new additions

New Research

Antarctic Seals Keep Trying to Have Sex With Penguins

This isn’t the first time a fur seal has attempted to copulate with a king penguin and scientists think that more seals are learning the behavior

Around 1,400 chimps might lose their home in Congo.

Cool Finds

How a Misdrawn Map Put 1,400 Chimps and a Rare Plant in Peril

Miners and farmers are moving into a protected forest in Congo thanks in part to an administrative blooper

New Research

Bullying Pays Off For Chimp Dads

For male chimps, the meaner you are, the more offspring you have

Everglades National Park is in critical condition due to poor water management, according to the IUCN.

A Third of Natural World Heritage Sites Are in Danger

From the Florida Everglades to Africa’s first national park, many crucial protected areas are in serious trouble

Cool Finds

Giant, Slow-Moving Sharks Are Secretly Everywhere

We know very little about Greenland sharks, including the extent of their range, but what we do know is intriguing

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