Biology (Page 15)

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

Latest in Biology

a small bird called a chickadee with black, white, and grey feathers stands on a stick

How these feathery ‘memory geniuses’ remember where they stashed their food

By Laura Baisas

a prehistoric tooth in a lab

Rare traces of tooth decay and gum disease found in Bronze Age teeth

By Laura Baisas

A songbird called the Japanese tit (Parus minor) perching on a rock in Thailand.

These birds appear to be signaling ‘after you’

By Laura Baisas

an orange and pink work

Why we die: Lessons on genes from a lowly worm

By Venki Ramakrishnan

A beetle with black and white fuzz sits on a leaf.

New fluffy longhorn beetle discovered in Australia

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of an extinct species of pink river dolphin in murky water

Paleontologists uncover enormous fossilized river dolphin skull in Peru

By Laura Baisas

Kermit the Frog strumming the banjo, along with a fossil skull of Kermitops (left) and a modern frog skull (right). Kermitops’ discovery is filling in some major evolutionary gaps for amphibians.

New proto-amphibian species named after Kermit the Frog

By Laura Baisas

Jackie and Shadow tending to the eggs as snow covers the region on March 7, 2024.

Sadly, these live-streamed bald eagle eggs likely won’t hatch

By Laura Baisas

a close up of the antlers of an irish elk

Ireland was once home to deer with massive 12-foot antlers

By Laura Baisas

A screenshot of one unidentified small hawkmoth unsuccessful visit to an orchid, recorded with a camera trap.

‘Spectacular’ new orchid species is pollinated by moths

By Laura Baisas

two men in scuba gear install a sound system by a coral reef

Healthy reef soundscapes can help degraded coral reefs grow

By Laura Baisas

several small and translucent glass eels on a yellow cloth

How citizen scientists are protecting ‘glass eels’

By Laura Baisas

a group of black and white ring-tailed lemurs sitting in green trees.

Sorry, Darwin: Most male mammals aren’t bigger than females

By Laura Baisas

a cicada in a tree

Cicadas pee in jet streams like bigger animals

By Laura Baisas

A potentially new squid species found off the coast of the South Island of New Zealand.

New squid alert! 100+ species discovered off the coast of New Zealand

By Laura Baisas

two termites trapped in an oval shaped bit of amber

These extinct termites have been stuck in a mating position for 38 million years

By Laura Baisas

rocky cliffs with pockmarks where the fossils were found

World’s oldest known fossilized forest discovered in England

By Laura Baisas

a deep sea worm with feathery appendages

Newly discovered deep-sea worm moves like a ‘living magic carpet’

By Laura Baisas

scans of the anatomy of different animals

Take a look inside 13,000 animals–no scalpel required

By Laura Baisas

A silver gar fish with a long snout.

Meet the new king of the ‘living fossils’

By Laura Baisas

An orca whale hunts a great white shark. Blood is seen near the orca's mouth.

Orca observed hunting and killing a great white shark by itself for the first time

By Laura Baisas

Three eggs in a nest, while a bald eagle attends to it.

Watch: Three bald eagles could hatch any day now

By Laura Baisas

A capuchin monkey with a long tail walking along a tree branch.

Why we don’t have tails

By Laura Baisas

Swarm of invasive Apis cerana in Cairns, North Queensland.

How a single honey bee colony led to a species invasion

By Lauren Leffer

A small translucent fish with its organs visible swims in a tank.

This tiny fish is louder than an airplane taking off

By Laura Baisas

Jellyfish glowing green underwater

Jellyfish-inspired glowing dye can glom onto fingerprints at crime scenes

An orange Chaunacops fish swimming in the waters of Chile’s Nazca-Desventuradas Marine Park.

See the strange new species discovered near Chile—with the help of a deep-diving sea robot

By Laura Baisas

Sea cucumbers and fish feeding at a coral reef.

Sea cucumbers are the ‘scum suckers’ corals desperately need

By Laura Baisas

An eyelash pitviper from the New Wold tropics.

Why are there so many snakes?

By Lauren Leffer

Two sea lampreys. They have circular heads with rows of teeth and a suction cup mouth at the center.

You might have more in common with the sea lamprey than you realize

By Laura Baisas

‘Lost Bird’ not seen in 20 years photographed for the first time

‘Lost Bird’ not seen in 20 years photographed for the first time

By Laura Baisas

A single humpback whale calf swimming in the waters off of French Polynesia.

We finally know how baleen whales make noise

By Laura Baisas

Giant Antarctic sea spiders can grow up to 20 inches wide.

Giant Antarctic sea spiders’ reproductive mystery solved after 140 years of confusion

By Laura Baisas

A purple and white carnivorous plant called Arisaema thunbergii growing in a forest. It has a tube and cup shaped flower and uses a musky odor to lure fungus gnats.

Bug-munching plant turns insect nurseries into death traps

By Laura Baisas

Fire in a forest

Fire is driving animals’ evolution

By Kylie Mohr / High Country News

An array of the best sex toys for couples on a white fuzzy carpet.

The best sex toys for couples, tested and reviewed

A clear glass tea cup with steaming brown tea sits on a table next to a green tea leaves.

The ingredients for a tastier, stronger tea could be in the soil

By Laura Baisas

Two lionesses. One tilts her head towards the left, while the other sticks out her tongue.

Captive big cats can tell voices apart

By Laura Baisas

A Skywalker gibbon in a green and leafy forest. Distinguishing characteristics of Skywalker hoolock gibbons compared to other gibbons include thinner eyebrows, a black or brown beard instead of a white one, and incomplete white face rings on the females, like this adult.

Scientists tracked the love songs of Skywalker gibbons to find them

By Laura Baisas

A smiling bonobo in a body of water.

Primates have been teasing each other for 13 million years

By Laura Baisas

The first published photographs of bacteria.

Charles Darwin’s eclectic personal library is now online

By Laura Baisas

A mother and calf humpback whale swim underwater.

Close to half of migratory species are in serious decline: UN report

By Laura Baisas

pleurocystitid soft robot

A sea creature extinct for half a billion years inspired a new soft robot

An illustration of an ancient shark called Glikmanius careforum swimming. It was about 10 to 12 feet long and had a powerful bite.

Three new ancient shark species discovered in Alabama and Kentucky

By Laura Baisas

A bunch of wet blueberries.

Why blueberries aren’t technically blue

By Laura Baisas

Desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria)

Cyborg locusts may one day help search-and-rescue missions

Eight gray seals and four wild horses stand on a sandy beach.

See wild horses and gray seals mingle on Sable Island

By Laura Baisas

The St. George’s Cross medusa is about four inches wide, three inches long, and has about 240 tentacles. It has a red cross on its body when viewed from above.

New jellyfish discovered near Japan may contain multitudes of venom

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s illustration of the new pterosaur species Ceoptera evansae. Several of the winged reptiles fly over trees and grass in Jurassic-era Scotland.

New pterosaur species discovered in Scotland

By Laura Baisas

Illustration of 3D printed brain tissue culture with 25nm scale

Scientists have 3D bioprinted functioning human brain tissue

An ermine moth with white wings and black spots sits on a yellow dandelion.

Moths fight against echolocating bats with sounds of their own

By Laura Baisas

Three common clownfish with orange coloring and white stripes swimming in a sea anemone.

Can clownfish count?

By Laura Baisas

Screenshot showing shaded rendering of Doom via E. Coli bacteria display

Running ‘Doom’ on E. coli cells… very, very slowly

Green dots representing spores are dispersed from a leaf.

Watch ‘tiny tornadoes’ spread plant pathogens

By Laura Baisas

Two long stone tools from the Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician (LRJ) culture uncovered at Ranis. Item 1 is a partial bifacial blade point characteristic of the LRJ. Item 2 also contains finely made bifacial leaf points.

Neanderthals and modern humans intermingled in Europe 45,000 years ago

By Laura Baisas

A multiple-exposure photograph of insects circling an artificial light at night. The light can mess with a moth’s sense of what direction is up and which way is down.

Why artificial light—and evolution—trap moths

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s reconstruction of the locomotor behavior and paleoenvironment of Lufengpithecus. Six primates that resemble chimpanzees are in a wooded area. Some are walking upright on two legs, while others are on all fours.

Extinct ape’s inner ear holds clues to how humans learned to walk upright

By Laura Baisas

A great white pup swimming in the Pacific Ocean. In July 2023, wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and University of California, Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes took footage of what could be the first newborn great white shark ever recorded.

This could be the first newborn great white shark ever captured on camera

By Laura Baisas

Biohybrid robot legs in underwater container

Watch this cool, useless biohybrid robot take a stroll

This photograph shows a male dusky antechinus in a naturalistic enclosure located in Cape Otway, Australia.

Sex is more important than sleep for these marsupials

By Laura Baisas

A colony of Emperor penguins in Antarctica. The larger black, white, and yellow adult penguins are standing behind the small and fuzzy black, white, and grey chicks.

Poop stains reveal four previously unknown Emperor penguin colonies

By Laura Baisas

A blue bottle fly.

How bug ‘wranglers’ help document the lives of flies, dung beetles, and more

By Laura Baisas

A brownish-gray tardigrade swimming. These microscopic invertebrates have eight limbs and shriveled skin.

We may know what makes tardigrades so darn tough

By Laura Baisas

A mako shark swimming in the ocean.

The ‘meg’ may have been longer and less chonky than previously thought

By Laura Baisas