Biology(Page 13)

A guide to life, on Earth and beyond, including the top news about plants, animals, and physiology.

Latest in Biology

A tarantula with a mostly black body, but bright blue legs and pincers. Chilobrachys natanicharum is the first tarantula species found in Thailand’s mangrove trees. CREDIT: Yuranan Nanthaisong/ZooKeys.

Meet the first electric blue tarantula known to science

By Laura Baisas

Rafflesia kemumu in the rainforest of Sumatra.

Earth’s stinkiest flower is threatened with extinction

By Laura Baisas

A high-density field of corals, including the spiraling Iridogorgia magnispiralis. Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2016 Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas.

The deepest known ocean virus lives under 29,000 feet of water

By Laura Baisas

Internet data server farm with green and pink glowing LED lights

Nature generates more data than the internet … for now

Yellow pollen spring out from a coniferous tree. The pollen that makes us sneeze every spring, may have helped lay the groundwork for the migration of our very distant ancestors into Eurasia.

Pollen could hold clues to mysteries of early human migration

By Laura Baisas

A Caribbean box jellyfish on a black background. It has a round, bell shaped body, with about 11 visible tentacles. It also has four parallel brain-like structures with roughly 1,000 nerve cells in each.

These 24-eyed jellyfish learn from their mistakes

By Laura Baisas

A black and white French bulldog puppy sits in a garden with green grass and orange flowers. In an experiment where dogs had to find food hidden in a box, flat-faced dogs were more likely to look back at people than a breed with a mid-length muzzle.

Humans might just love French bulldogs because they remind them of babies

By Laura Baisas

Multiple reddish pink parasitic plants called balanophora growing in a forest. Balanophora shed one third of its genes as it evolved into a very streamlined parasitic plant.

These parasitic plants force their victims to make them dinner

By Laura Baisas

A pied tamarin monkey sits on a large rope. Pied tamarin monkeys live in a small geographic range in Brazil, where they eat fruits, flowers, and various tree gums and saps.

As humans get louder, monkeys mark more territory

By Laura Baisas

A dissected ant and where you can see the encapsulated parasites (white oval structures) spilling out of the hind body.

This parasite deploys mucus slime balls to make ‘zombie ants’

By Laura Baisas

An Australian lungfish named Methuselah swims in a tank at the Steinhart Aquarium. The fish has a flat snout, olive-green scales, and a long torpedo-shaped body.

World’s oldest living aquarium fish could be 100 years young

By Laura Baisas

A giant panda eats a green plant.

‘Jet lag’ could be messing with pandas’ natural mating behaviors

By Laura Baisas

Can animals give birth to twins?

Can animals give birth to twins?

By Michael Jaffe and Tracy Jaffe/The Conversation

A beagle running through grass.

Why your pet might need a glucose monitor

By Gwendolyn Rak

A gray tufted titmouse perches on a scientist's hand.

What songbirds can teach us about being smart

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

Microraptor wearing helmet is shot out of a circus cannon to represent how dinosaurs evolved to fly. Illustration in red, yellow, blue, and green.

We still don’t know how animals evolved to fly

Virgin Galactic spacecraft in suborbital flight above Earth

Virgin Galactic’s latest cargo? Ancient human bones

two jackdaws (Corvus monedula) on a branch

These crow relatives put food over friendship

By Sara Kiley Watson

An orca whale swims around an ice flow with a crabeater seal and penguin on the ice.

New series offers an intimate look into how climate change impacts the lives of wildlife

By Laura Baisas

How an internet sleuth rekindled hope for the survival of the clown wedgefish

How an internet sleuth rekindled hope for the survival of the clown wedgefish

By Brian Howey/Hakai Magazine

3D printer making algae-based water decontaminate

‘Living material’ water filter uses bacteria to neutralize water pollutants

Kidney transplant sensor on researcher fingertip

This organ-failure detector is thinner than a human hair

An artist’s illustration of the 25 million year old Ditjimanka Lumakoala blackae, featuring (left to right) the wallaby-sized herbivore Muramura williamsi, an extinct koala relative named Madakoala devis,i and the calf-size lizard called Ilaria lawsone.

Scientists discover a cat-sized ancient koala in Australia

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s illustration of Fujianvenator prodigiosus, an avialan theropod who lived during the Late Jurassic period and had a lower leg that was twice as long as its thigh.

Leggy dinosaur species could be the latest feathery clue to bird evolution

By Laura Baisas

Two monkeys sitting in a forest. Dartmouth researchers report that apes and early humans evolved more flexible shoulders and elbows than monkeys to safely get out of trees. For early humans, these versatile appendages would have been essential for gathering food and deploying tools for hunting and defense.

Our tree-climbing ancestors evolved our abilities to throw far and reach high

By Laura Baisas

Fiver different types of paper cups sitting are sitting on a table. Some have eco-friendly labeling and one warns of plastic chemical leaching. Paper cups are replacing plastic cups on the market, but paper cups can also be toxic to living organisms, shows a new study from the University of Gothenburg.

Paper cups still use plastic—and it’s a problem for the planet

By Laura Baisas

A couple standing on the beach in warm sunlight.

Couples often share more common traits than we might think

By Laura Baisas

A kākāpō sitting in its burrow. They can live up to 90 years and forage on the ground for food since they are flightless birds.

The next frontier in saving the world’s heaviest parrots: genome sequencing

By Laura Baisas

Two Atlantic puffins stand on a white rock above the ocean, with another group of puffins in the background, Atlantic puffins are sometimes nicknamed “sea parrots,” and their chicks hatch in Maine in early July.

Maine’s puffins show another year of remarkable resiliency

By Laura Baisas

A manatee swims through blue water, surrounded by a school of fish

Florida’s aquatic animals prepare early for storms like Hurricane Idalia

By Helen Bradshaw

An artistic reconstruction of Kylinxia, a relative of present day insects and crustaceans. It has two extended forelimbs, a round and segmented body, and three eyes on its head.

A three-eyed organism roamed the seas half a billion years ago

By Laura Baisas

A magnetic resonance image of the patient’s brain by fluid-attenuated inversion recovery showing an enhancing right frontal lobe lesion (left). A live third-stage larval form of Ophidascaris robertsi removed from the patient’s right frontal lobe (right).

‘Alive and wriggling’ worm survived in woman’s body and brain for at least a year

By Laura Baisas

A close-up astronaut outside the ISS above a blue slice of Earth.

This is how space might disturb our immune systems

By Briley Lewis

Lush and green mint leaves growing in a garden. To keep disruptive “jumping genes” quiet, some plant species use a process called methylation, which adds regulatory markers to the specific sites in the DNA and can be passed down through epigenetic memory.

We’re finally figuring out how plants pass on genetic memories

By Laura Baisas

A large group of white and gray fossils laid out on a blue tarp.

Fossils of 10 unknown species found by sewage plant

By Laura Baisas

Famous, debunked black and white 'Surgeon's Photo' of Loch Ness Monster

The largest search of Loch Ness in more than 50 years will deploy drones and hydrophones

Purple and blue visualizations of human chromosomes.

The final missing piece of the human genome has been decoded

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

A hogfish swims near the Florida Keys. It has spikes on top and a pointy snout.

Hogfish ‘see’ using their skin

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of a sabertooth tiger in a grassland. Sabertooth tigers went extinct between about 8,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Mighty sabertooth tigers may have purred like kittens

By Laura Baisas

A coral reef just off of an island in Palau. Coral reefs in Palau provide critical habitats for a number of species and provide a storm barrier.

Some Pacific coral reefs can keep pace with a warming ocean

By Laura Baisas

Artist's interpretation of Venetoraptor gassenae in a Triassic landscape.

This flightless pterosaur ancestor had enviable claws and a raptor-like beak

By Laura Baisas

Members of the Dutch Tall Ship Oosterschelde wave goodbye from the quay in Rotterdam on August 4, 2023. The Rotterdam ship departs for a two-year world tour that scientist Charles Darwin made two centuries ago.

Mission to recreate Darwin’s scientific Beagle voyage sets sail

By Laura Baisas

Artist impression of the stem pinniped Potamotherium valletoni swimming in his natural, freshwater environment. Grasses and plants grow below the animal, that has whiskers, legs, and flippers.

Hungry seals may have begun following their whiskers 23 million years ago

By Laura Baisas

White dog inhaling colorful waves that represent smells. Illustrated.

Why your dog needs to smell the world

By Brandon Keim

A new snake species named Tachymenoides harrisonfordi was discovered during an expedition in Peru in May 2022. The copper scaled snake is seen here coiled on some brown grass.

Harrison Ford’s latest namesake is an Andean snake species

By Laura Baisas

Three human skulls sitting on a shelf. Cranial modification has been used for millennia to reshape the human skull.

Japan’s Hirota people intentionally reshaped their skulls more than 1,000 years ago

By Laura Baisas

Four bivalve species found along the Maine coast, including the Northern Quahog, Eastern Oyster, a steamer clam, and a blue mussel presented together in a bed of seaweed at low tide.

Popular shellfish resist extinction in surprising ways

By Laura Baisas

Talpa hakkariensis, found in the Hakkari region of southeastern Turkey, was identified as a new species of mole, highly distinctive in terms of both its morphology and DNA. The mole is peeking out of an underground burrow.

These moles may have been hiding for 3 million years

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of an ancient whale against a sea-blue background.

This tiny, 8-foot long whale swam off Egypt’s coast 41 million years ago

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

Our galaxy, the Milky Way.

How might life migrate through the universe?

By Roberto Battiston/MIT Press Reader

Archaeologists dig in the dirt with a brush and scraper.

Mysterious skull points to a possible new branch on human family tree

By Laura Baisas

Hands passing out blue medical masks.

What to know about the newly dominant ‘Eris’ COVID variant

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

A man is looking in a glass case of coprolites collected in Nong Yakong village, Chaiyaphum Province, Thailand.

Rare parasites found in 200 million-year-old reptile poop

By Laura Baisas

Microscopic image of individual cell tattooed with gold array

Why medical engineers tattooed a single cell with gold

taxidermied two-headed goat kid

Life after death never looked so beautiful

By Ted Cavanaugh, Sara Kiley Watson

A hair whorl is a patch of hair growing in a circular pattern around a single point that is determined by the orientation of hair follicles.

The swirls and whorls of your hairline come from multiple genes

By Laura Baisas

Reconstruction of Hupehsuchus about to engulf a shoal of shrimp. The ancient lizard widely opens its skinny snout and large mouth to swallow a large ball of shrimp.

The planet’s first filter feeder could be this extinct marine reptile

By Laura Baisas

A Heliconius butterfly with black, orange, and white on its wings.

Butterflies can remember specific flower foraging routes

By Laura Baisas

A long and skinny silver trumpetfish uses a colorful parrotfish as camouflage.

Trumpetfish use other fish as camouflage

By Laura Baisas

Two astronauts walking in spacesuits in a desert

How do you keep a spacesuit clean? One answer is antimicrobial fabric.

An artist's rendition of the Perucetus colossus.

This giant sea cow-like whale may have been the heaviest creature to ever live on Earth

By Sara Kiley Watson

Fluorescent dye shows the growth of teeth and bones.

Glowing dye lets us peek inside growing bones and teeth

A moth called a tobacco budworm on a green leaf. Moths like the tobacco budworm use pheromone signaling to find mates.

How male tobacco budworm moths found their perfect cologne

By Laura Baisas

Artistic reconstruction of a group of Burgessomedusa phasmiformis swimming in the Cambrian sea.

Jellyfish may have been roaming the seas for at least 500 million years

By Laura Baisas