Biology (Page 20)

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

Latest in Biology

The cast of a Neanderthal skull on display at the Chemnitz State Museum of Archaeology in Germany on January 24, 2023.

How Neanderthal genetic material could influence nose shapes to this day

By Laura Baisas

A honeybee pollenating a yellow flower.

What busy bees’ brains can teach us about human evolution

By Laura Baisas

Amazonian dark earth (ADE) is a nutrient rich dark soil that could play a role in reforestation.

How 2,000-year-old soil could be a lifeline for the Amazon rainforest

By Laura Baisas

Robot plants could be used to grow infrastructure in space from scratch

Robot plants could be used to grow infrastructure in space from scratch

By Dario Floreano and Nicola Nosengo/MIT Press Reader

Roses blooming in a garden.

Chemists finally unlock the secret to a rose’s iconic aroma

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

Woolly mammoth tusks in dawn light on Wrangel Island, northeast Siberia, where the female mammoth tusk used in the testosterone study had been found several years earlier.

Male woolly mammoths had hormone-fueled bouts of aggression

By Laura Baisas

Man prepping person for fMRI scan.

This AI-powered brain scanner can paraphrase your thoughts

An illustration of the organisms that lived in the Castle Bank community.

Fossil trove in Wales is a 462-million-year-old world of wee sea creatures

By Laura Baisas

Red cherry shaped as butt on orange and purple ombre background

A scientific exploration of big juicy butts

By Rachel Feltman

The oldest chili pepper specimen may be from present-day Colorado

The oldest chili pepper specimen may be from present-day Colorado

By Sara Kiley Watson

How deadly amphibians survive their own poisons

How deadly amphibians survive their own poisons

By Geoffrey Giller/Knowable Magazine

A bartender pours a light beer into a large glass.

Inventing lager was a huge mistake

By Laura Baisas

An adult male and adult female California sea lion sit on a beach surrounded by pups.

Male California sea lions have gotten bigger and better at fighting

By Laura Baisas

Balto's taxidermy on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

How different is Balto, the heroic sled dog, from today’s Siberian huskies?

By Laura Baisas

Evolution of human brain size shown with brass sculptures at a kids science museum in China

We probably have big brains because we got lucky

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

A mushroom called coprophilous grows in woods.

What prehistoric poop reveals about extinct giant animals

By Laura Baisas

Two mudskippers fighting in the mud, with eyes and pectoral fins exposed.

Mudskippers blink—and that’s a huge evolutionary clue

By Laura Baisas

A male chimpanzee named Frodo frowns.

Nice chimps finish last—so why aren’t all of them mean?

By Laura Baisas

A carnivorous Sarracenia plant growing in the wild.

Carnivorous pitcher plants may use tempting aromas to lure prey to their death

By Laura Baisas

Giving drones inflatable suits could help them survive crash landings

Giving drones inflatable suits could help them survive crash landings

By Sara Kiley Watson

A forest elephant with a raised trunk surrounded by greenery. Forest elephants are much smaller in size compared to savanna elephants, and their ears are an oval shape.

Elephants and humans share surprising similarities. A new docuseries dives deep into that relationship.

By Laura Baisas

Gray hair growing on a male's head.

What’s at the root of gray hairs?

By Laura Baisas

African penguins standing on a sandy beach.

How African penguins continue to survive changes in climate

By Laura Baisas

Cannabis plant under purple weed grow light

On 420, learn more about weed with these carefully cultivated science stories

By Jamie Helmick

Brown garden snail eating a strawberry on a white table

Experience the uncomfortable weirdness of a snail eating fruit

By Laura Baisas

A polar bear standing on ice.

Why the biggest animals move so slowly

By Laura Baisas

An orb weaver spider spins a web in a forest.

Spider glue might evolve faster than the spiders themselves

By Laura Baisas

Examples of floating plastics collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre during The Ocean Cleanup’s 2018 expedition.

Some coastal critters are thriving in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

By Laura Baisas

Person in a dark room watering a houseplant with a beam of light. Illustrated.

How to grow plants in the dark

By Ellen Airhart

The mysterious ‘Tully monster’ didn’t have a spine after all

The mysterious ‘Tully monster’ didn’t have a spine after all

By Jamie Helmick

People walk in a field with blooming poppy flowers near the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve following an unusually wet winter on April 14, 2023 near Lancaster, California. Historic levels of rainfall fell in some parts of California, amid a barrage of atmospheric river winter storms, which has led to a 'super bloom' of wildflowers in certain parts of the state this spring.

California’s eye-popping super bloom is one for the books

By Laura Baisas

A xenobot, or a living robot, in culture, under a microscope.

Meet xenobots, tiny machines made out of living parts

By Charlotte Hu

What happens when a tree dies?

What happens when a tree dies?

By Camille Stevens-Rumann/The Conversation

An artistic rendering of the open woodland habitat reconstruction at Moroto II with Morotopithecus bishopi vertically climbing with infant on back and Mount Moroto, an active, in background.

A plant-based diet full of leaves may have helped apes stand upright

By Laura Baisas

An adult Pygmy Zebra Octopus

Pygmy zebra octopus stripe patterns are as unique as human fingerprints

By Jamie Helmick

Skeleton of paratype of Icaronycteris gunnelli, the oldest bat skeletons ever found.

Oldest bat skeleton ever found by paleontologists finally has a name

By Laura Baisas

Luna moth resting on a tree.

The alluring tail of the Luna moth is surprisingly useless for finding a mate

By Jamie Helmick

A black sea cucumber on the floor of the Indian Ocean.

Sea cucumbers have a Spiderman-esque superpower—and it involves their butts

By Laura Baisas

A bird called an American Redstart sits on the branch of a tree.

Delaying departure may help birds migrate around climate change

By Laura Baisas

A juvenile elephant named Ko Raya (left) with Pang Pha (right) at the Berlin Zoo. Scientists believe that Pang Pha taught herself how to peel bananas.

Pang Pha the elephant learned to peel bananas by mimicking humans

By Laura Baisas

Woolly mammoths evolved tiny ears over 700,000 years in Siberia

Woolly mammoths evolved tiny ears over 700,000 years in Siberia

By Laura Baisas

A close-up of extended polyps of an apparently healthy great star coral colony on a reef near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The tentacles surrounding the mouth of each polyp help trap food particles for the coral to eat.

Caribbean coral is getting sick and dying. A probiotic could help.

By Laura Baisas

A purple hand reaching to touch a green tongue of an orange person with their mouth open frowning because they're tasting something digsuting

Why food tastes wildly different to different people

By Julia Craven

A snailfish that lives over 20,000 feet deep in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench in the northern Pacific Ocean.

Say hello to the deepest-dwelling fish ever caught on camera

By Laura Baisas

An adult elephant walks with two juvenile elephants.

Scientists may have figured out why elephants exhibit complex emotions

By Laura Baisas

A capuchin monkey in a tree looking at the camera.

Do magic tricks work on monkeys? Only if they have opposable thumbs like us.

By Laura Baisas

A woman holds an ultrasound photo of a baby.

Nearly 18 percent of the global population struggles with infertility

By Laura Baisas

An ostrich inspects eggs in a nest.

Troodons laid eggs in communal nests just like modern ostriches

By Laura Baisas

Scientists are finally getting into the rhythm of sea creatures’ lunar cycle

Scientists are finally getting into the rhythm of sea creatures’ lunar cycle

By Virat Markandeya/Knowable Magazine

Otters are back, but that doesn’t mean our rivers are safe

Otters are back, but that doesn’t mean our rivers are safe

By Carin Leong/Hakai Magazine

A juvenile Edmontosaurus disappears into the enormous, lipped mouth of Tyrannosaurus.

Scaly lips may have hidden the T-rex’s fearsome teeth

By Laura Baisas

Pincushion cactus with pink flowers on a sunny windowsill

Dying plants are ‘screaming’ at you

Lab mouse on table in front of lab flasks and beakers in blue lighting

What video game-playing mice taught neuroscientists about memory-making

Polycirrus onibi, a newly discovered marine worm that glows in the dark, was named after a creature from Japanese folklore.

These newly discovered bioluminescent sea worms are named after Japanese folklore

By Laura Baisas

A baby song thrush bird looks up from the forest floor.

Postmortem poop can teach us a lot about the avian gut microbiome

By Laura Baisas

The parking lot outside a Buc-ee’s store in Temple, Texas.

A 15-million-year-old beaver was just named after an iconic convenience store

By Laura Baisas

Ilinizas Volcanoes under the Quilotoa lagoon in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador. Scientists recently discovered two new carnivorous plant species in the rugged high Andes.

Two newly discovered Andes Mountain plant species have an appetite for insects

By Laura Baisas

Desert daisy tricks male flies with sexy evolutionary deception

Desert daisy tricks male flies with sexy evolutionary deception

By Laura Baisas

A white-tailed jackrabbit in it's winter white fur.

Jackrabbit’s color-changing fur may prepare them for climate change

By Laura Baisas

A curled lock of composer Ludwig van Beethoven's hair with an inscription from the hair's former owner, Ignaz Moscheles.

We now have a full composition of Beethoven’s DNA

By Laura Baisas

Ankylosaur in blue floatie and life vest riding the ocean waves. Prehistoric trees and a full moon are in the background. Illustrated.

Why dinosaurs were terrible swimmers

It’s still a mystery how snails ended up scattered around the globe

It’s still a mystery how snails ended up scattered around the globe

By Thom van Dooren/MIT Press Reader

A bug on a green leaf feeding on a caterpillar.

Save caterpillars by turning off your outdoor lights

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of Thylacosmilus atrox, an extinct marsupial with giant canine teeth,

With bulging eyes and a killer smile, this sabertooth was an absolute nightmare

By Laura Baisas