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Animals

A páramo ecosystem in the Andes.

This Spot in the Andes May Be the Fastest-Evolving Place on Earth

Like isolated islands, evolution in these mountainous, unique environments seems to be ticking away at a faster beat than run-of-the-mill habitats

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This Scientist Let a Flea Live Inside Her In Order to Study It

To what lengths would you go for science?

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Watch a Cougar Grab a Salmon off a Zipline

More food should be delivered by zipline

Porcupines can be vicious killers. But not this one. This one is adorable.

Porcupine Quills Can Kill

Researchers in Italy watched porcupines corner a dog and stab it to death

African elephants in Kruger National Park

Elephants Never Forget When You Slaughter Their Family

Culling an elephant pack can destroy the survivors’ social skills

Snakes’ Vision Sharpens When They’re Under Stress

This likely allows them to optimize their vision for situations that require the most attention to detail, and in the meantime save that visual energy

Okeanos: A Performance Where Dancers Move Like Octopuses and Seahorses

Jodi Lomask, director of the dance company Capacitor, has choreographed an ocean-inspired show, now at San Francisco’s Aquarium of the Bay

A Rare Pliosaur Bone Sat in a British Shed for 16 Years

Mysteriously, as far as experts know, pliosaurs only lived in waters around Africa, Australia and China, not Great Britain

Move Over Panda Cam, It’s Time for the Polar Bear Migration

In November, polar bears will be carrying on their annual migration, taking them right past the northerly Canadian town of Churchill

Your Dog’s Trying to Tell You Something by the Way He Wags His Tail

The tail wag is a complicated form of communication—left and right matter

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What the Buffalo Tells Us About the American Spirit

Playwright David Mamet writes that whether roaming free or stuffed, this symbol of the West tells a thousand stories

Damming and dredging a California river for gold

The Gold Rush Left Behind Mercury That’s Still Contaminating California

Leftover mercury will continue to flush through the environment, eventually making its way into the San Francisco bay, for the next 10,000 years

Reindeer Eyes Change Color to Match the Season

Reindeers’ wintery blue eyes are about 1,000 times more sensitive to light than their summery gold ones

Screenshot from Un Chien Andalou, the Surrealist film that Dalí collaborated on with Luis Buñuel

Salvador Dali Suffered From the Irrational Fear That Insects Were Crawling All Over His Skin

The condition is almost always accompanied by tactile hallucinations of crawling sensations and visual hallucinations of the non-existent insects

Our Brains Evolved to Recoil at the Sight of Snakes

Around 60 million years ago, our primate ancestors figured out that the sight of a snake meant trouble

Horseshoe crab

Animal Specimens, From Fish to Birds to Mammals, Get Inked

Inspired by Japanese fish rubbings, two University of Texas biologists make spectacular prints of a variety of species at different stages of decay

A fake mastodon fights for survival in a display at the La Brea tar pits.

Animals Trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits Would Take Months to Sink

New research shows that animals trapped in the tar would linger for months on end

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Hibernation Doesn’t Have to Be Cold

Hibernation tends to go hand-in-hand with cold temperatures, but the greater mouse-tailed bat hibernates at a comfortable 68-degrees Fahrenheit

Photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher uses a powerful scanning electron microscope to capture all of a bee’s microscopic structures in stunning detail. Above: a bee’s antennae sockets, magnified 43 times.

What Does A Bee Look Like When It’s Magnified 3000 Times?

Photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher uses a powerful microscope to capture all of a bee’s microscopic structures and textures in stunning detail

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The Most Isolated Tree in the World Was Killed by a (Probably Drunk) Driver

The acacia was the only tree for 250 miles in Niger’s Sahara desert and was used as a landmark by travelers and caravans

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