Biology (Page 21)

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

Latest in Biology

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

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

A gloved hand holds police tape in a crime scene investigation.

How DNA evidence could help put the Long Island serial killer behind bars

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

large dinosaur skull sits in storage area

Museums are filled with fake dinosaur fossils. See what it takes to make those replicas.

By Riley Black, Theo Stroomer

A bee on a peach rose. Understanding how flowering plants and bees evolved together can help inform conservation efforts for pollinators and how to keep their populations healthy.

The world’s earliest bees may have called Gondwana home

By Laura Baisas

A scanning electron picture of a female Panagrolaimus kolymaensis nematode.

Recently awoken 46,000-year-old nematodes already have 100 generations of babies

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s impression of Solnhofia parsonsi’s environment in an Upper Jurassic lagoon 150 million years ago in what is now Lower Bavaria. The turtle swims in a shallow body of water, with fish swimming near it and pterosaurs flying above.

150 million-year-old turtle ‘pancake’ found in Germany

By Laura Baisas

Giganotosaurus vs. T. rex in a screenshot from Jurassic World Dominion

Giganotosaurus vs. T. rex: Who would win in a battle of the big dinosaurs?

By Eva Botkin-Kowacki

A pink river dolphin, or boto, displaying aerial behavior in the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve.

Eavesdropping on pink river dolphins could help save them

By Laura Baisas

An aerial view of Mont Saint-Michel in northern France. The Paris Basin region is known for prehistoric funerary sites archaeologists use to study early neolithic settlements.

Scientists build intricate Neolithic family tree from 7,000-year-old DNA

By Laura Baisas

Dead elkhorn coral at Sombrero Reef in the Florida Keys. The white areas are bleached coral, the brownish orange patches are "tissue slough", coral tissue that has died before it has a chance to bleach.

Mass coral reef bleaching in Florida as ocean temperatures hit 100 degrees

By Laura Baisas

A kākāpō chick. The birds are are large flightless parrots from New Zealand who are masters of camouflage and known for a booming call.

A flightless parrot is returning to mainland New Zealand after a 40-year absence

By Laura Baisas

deep sea bubbles

The key to bringing deep sea samples up to the coast? An underwater freezer.

By Annie Roth / Hakai Magazine

American actor Richard Dreyfuss (left) (as marine biologist Hooper) and British author and actor Robert Shaw (as shark fisherman Quint) look off the stern of Quint's fishing boat the 'Orca' at the terrifying approach of the mechanical giant shark dubbed 'Bruce' in a scene from the film 'Jaws' directed by Steven Spielberg, 1975.

Why the creators of ‘Jaws’ regretted making sharks the monsters

By Laura Baisas

parasitic horsehair worm

‘Brainwashing’ parasites inherit a strange genetic gap

By Maddi Langweil

A car passenger appears to feel nauseous with her hand to her mouth.

What causes motion sickness—and how to avoid it

A saber tooth cat fossil is displayed during a press preview of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History on June 4, 2019.

Paleontologists discover two new sabertooth cat species

By Laura Baisas

Study author shows off the compressed mycelium sheets she created for the project

This fungi-based substance might protect homes from ever-worsening wildfires

By Sara Kiley Watson

An artistic reconstruction showing how this 300,000 year-old stick would have been thrown on a hunt. Two men stand in a shallow body of water, with one aiming the stick towards three birds.

A javelin-like stick shows early humans may have been keen woodworkers

By Laura Baisas

Illustration showing Repenomamus robustus as it attacks Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis moments before a volcanic debris flow buries them both about 125 million years ago.

This badger-like mammal may have died while trying to eat a dinosaur

By Laura Baisas

full venus flytrap on black background

These meat-eating plants are masters of deception

By Ali Blumenthal, Ellen Airhart

A green sea turtle swims in the ocean.

Hungry green sea turtles have eaten in the same seagrass meadows for about 3,000 years

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s illustration of Alligator munensis, which is skimming the water with its eye out and surrounded by lush green trees. The large tooth sockets towards the back of its mouth suggest this extinct gator could crush shells and may have snacked on hard-shelled prey like snails.

Extinct snub-nosed gator had big teeth for crushing snails

By Laura Baisas

Red pieces of CRISPR-edited wood against the paler natural type.

Genetically modified trees could mean more sustainable wood

By Jocelyn Solis-Moreira

A dire wolf reconstruction on exhibit at the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum.

Mighty saber-toothed cats and dire wolves probably had achy joints

By Laura Baisas

A banded sea snake swimming freely

Some sea snakes may not be colorblind after all

By Laura Baisas

Influenza Ward No. 4 showing Partitions thru the Ward, U.S. Army Camp Hospital Number 45, Aix-les-Bains, France, 1914-1918

How the 1918 pandemic changed what we knew about viruses

By Richard Conniff/MIT Press Reader

A large group of shells on a beach. Organisms with hard, durable parts, like shells, are more likely to be preserved as fossils than organisms composed entirely of soft tissue.

The fossil record holds clues about modern-day marine ecology

By Laura Baisas

Oldest tunicate on record from the Cambrian explosion, illustrated on the ocean floor

A 500-million-year-old sea squirt is the evolutionary clue we need to understand our humble beginnings

By Maddi Langweil