Biology (Page 5)

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

Latest in Biology

Cute labradoodle puppy dog laying down looking sad or thoughtful

Cockapoos, doodles, and other crossbreeds have behavioral problems, too

The bark of birch trees has been used to produce tar for more than 150,000 years. The center photo shows birch bark tar condensed onto a rock that borders a hearth. When scraped off the rocks, the viscous tar can be used as both an adhesive and antibiotic.

Neanderthals used antibiotics, new experiment suggests

By Laura Baisas

Adult bull shark ‘Chunky’ (foreground) parallel swimming with subadult female ‘Lady Lazarus’ (background).

Bull sharks make ‘friends’—and prefer females to males

By Laura Baisas

An adult male blue crab attempts to cannibalize a smaller blue crab on a tether.

Blue crabs have a serious cannibalism problem

By Laura Baisas

a blue whale swimming

Marine biologists spot rare blue whales off Massachusetts coast

By Margherita Bassi

A conceptual photograph of a young woman with light-colored hair and a tattoo on her forearm, wearing a white t-shirt against a plain white background. The image uses a multiple-exposure effect to create several overlapping, translucent silhouettes of her figure, conveying a sense of disorientation, dizziness, or blurred vision. She has a pained or nauseated facial expression and is resting her head against her hand.

Why some people get motion sickness—and others don’t

By Laura Kiniry

a bird chick sits on a nest

The world’s oldest wild bird has a new grandchick

By Margherita Bassi

several birds flying overhead while a bird sits on its nest with a chick

11 wild photos show the Amazon River in its glory

By Popular Science Team

A wolf chases magpies and ravens from an elk carcass near Soda Butte.

Yellowstone’s ravens may memorize wolf hunting hotspots—to feast

By Nidhi Sharma

A close-up photograph of a Halobates, an ocean water strider, resting on the surface of the water. The insect has a long, slender dark body and very thin, wire-like legs that create slight indentations on the water's surface tension. Its reflection is visible on the surface, and the background is a soft, out-of-focus light blue and white.

Do any bugs live in the ocean? Short answer: Not really.

By Andrew Coletti

Illustration showing ancient hominid drinking water at river's edge with crocodile lurking nearby in the water

An odd-nosed crocodile ate our prehistoric ancestors

a screenshot of a website showing a human brain, heart, colon, lung, kidney, prostate, placenta, and liver

Explore the human body in stunning, 3D detail with a new online tool

By Laura Baisas

a grizzly bear stands on a bison carcass

Yellowstone’s first grizzly bear of 2026 emerges from his den

By Laura Baisas

A close-up photograph of a young child with blonde hair smiling broadly, revealing several missing front baby teeth. The child is playfully covering their eyes with both hands, with a plain grey wall in the background.

Why do we even have baby teeth?

By Sarah Lindenfeld Hall

Scientists suggest modifying cars to hit fewer hedgehogs

By Margherita Bassi

A newly described African species in the magic mushroom family confirms its evolutionary origin. Psilocybe ochraceocentrata is found growing on cattle dung in the grasslands of southern Africa and Zimbabwe.

New psychedelic fungus rewrites origins of magic mushrooms

An Ixodes tick (left). An Asian tiger mosquito. (right)

What a cold winter means for ticks and mosquitoes

By Laura Baisas

a black bird sits on a tree

These birds listen to their parents to avoid being eaten

By Margherita Bassi

Two photos next to each other. One is a man laying on grass next to longest snake in the world for scale reference. The other is a with portion of the world's longest snake draped over his shoulder in the jungle

Longest snake ever measured is over 23.5 feet long

a turtle wearing a 3D printed wheel chair

A 3D-printed wheelchair is helping this turtle walk again

By Mack DeGeurin

yellow flowers blooming near hills

Best superbloom since 2016 fills Death Valley with wildflowers

By Laura Baisas

trees and shrubs are surrounded by a bright yellow weed

Weed that smells like paint thinner takes over Arizona

By Laura Baisas

purple crystals

Humans’ love of crystals goes back at least 6 million years

By Laura Baisas

Illustration showing Tanyka amnicola in life, eating underwater plants.

Bizarro salamander ancestor was an evolutionary oddball

Screenshot of final boss from original Doom

Computer run on human brain cells learned to play ‘Doom’

a horse standing in a green field with its mouth open

Horse whinnies are weirder than they sound

By Margherita Bassi

a woman holds a large lizard. it has black and white scales and is sticking out a red tongue tipped black

Frostbitten lizard found in Rhode Island is healing

By Margherita Bassi

Two dogs sitting in half open door looking curiously to the left

Dogs act like toddlers when trying to help humans

a polar bear mother closes her eyes while laying down with two cubs. one cub is biting the other's cheek

11 cool photos to celebrate International Polar Bear Day

By Popular Science Team

a large goat with grey fur and large horns

Ireland’s native goats date back to Bronze Age

By Laura Baisas

Close-up of aedes aegypti mosquito sucking blood from human skin, transmitting dangerous diseases like dengue fever, zika virus, and chikungunya, Chumphon in thailand.

Mosquitoes have been sucking our blood for 1.8 million years

green spruce needless with blue halos on top

Leaf tips glow blue in thunderstorms

By Laura Baisas

a dolphin swims in venice, italy

Humans pose the biggest risk to Venice’s celebrity dolphin

By Laura Baisas

a chimpanzee laying on its back in a forest

Chimpanzees love alcohol and their pee proves it

By Laura Baisas

The Adorant figurine from Geißenklösterle Cave, approximately 38,000 years old, consists of a small ivory plate bearing an anthropomorphic figure and multiple sequences of notches and dots. The application of these marks suggests a notational system, most notably in the rows of dots on the back of the plate.

Earliest known writing dates back over 40,000 years

A great white shark swims near Guadalupe Island in Mexico.

Great white sharks don’t always flee after orca attacks

By Margherita Bassi

a monkey with white and black fur and a blue-ish face sits in a tree

Blue-faced, puffy-lipped monkey scores a rare conservation win

By Margherita Bassi

a woman scratches an uncomfortable itch on her forearm

How your body knows when to stop scratching

By Laura Baisas

a parrot with mostly green feathers and yellow feathers on the neck

The parrots having human-like conversations

By Margherita Bassi

Spinosaurus mirabilis illustration

New dinosaur discovered in Sahara desert was a horned ‘hell heron’

a large group of yellow bananas

New discovery could help stop banana extinction

By Laura Baisas

a large bird called a wood stork stands in a wetland. it has long legs, white feathers, and a long beak

Wood storks to be removed from federal Endangered Species List

By Laura Baisas

African striped mouse and pups

Biologists discover gene that may determine ‘good’ and ‘bad’ dads

Artistic reconstruction of a Late Pleistocene cave lion overlooking Mount Fuji, Japan. Credit: Velizar Simeonovski

Prehistoric Japan was home to cave lions—not tigers

5,000-year-old bacteria thawed in Romanian ice cave

By Laura Baisas

a hamster asleep in the gloved hand of a scientist

How hibernating hamsters could help astronauts

By Margherita Bassi

live black scorpion (Emperor Scorpion)

Deadly scorpions are picky about their soil

a litter of naked mole rats

4 wild ways animals breed

By Laura Baisas

Example of paired images used during free-view eyetracking study. These image pairs focused on participant reactions to spider versus other arthropods – (A) spider versus butterfly, (B) spider versus insect, (C) spider eyes versus insect eyes, (D) spider versus non-spider arachnid, and (E) spider versus myriapod. We also included a paired image of (F) scorpion versus non-scorpion arachnid to gain insight into whether participants respond differently to spiders versus scorpions (e.g., d vs. f).

Psychologists made people look at spiders. They didn’t like it.

Close up of man's hand on chin while he's thinking

Humans really don’t need chins

a zookeper places a piece of apple inside of an elephant's trunk

Elephants are smart. So are their whiskers.

By Laura Baisas

a whale swimming

The oldest-known humpback whale recording was hiding in an archive

By Laura Baisas

a monkey standing up on two legs in a forest

9 rare animals caught on camera in the ‘Amazon of Asia’

By Popular Science Team

Wild boars killed by a pellet gun is seen inside a booby trap at a residential area near Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Tomioka town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, March 30, 2017. (Photo by Richard Atrero de Guzman/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Nuclear hog hybrids are breeding at breakneck speed in Japan

a new species of lady bug. it is black and the size of a grain of sand

New ladybug species is the size of a grain of sand

By Margherita Bassi

a sea turtle swimming with a boat in the distance

The world’s smallest sea turtle lives in a noisy ocean

By Margherita Bassi

a cold-stunned green iguana likes on its back on the ground in florida

Florida euthanizes 5,195 frozen iguanas

By Laura Baisas

a whale fluke with hills in the distance

The lobstermen teaming up with scientists to save endangered whales

By Valerie Shively

Hands warming near a bonfire at night

Fire may have altered human DNA

a white dog with ears perked up and wide eyes against a blue background

Cortisol could impact your dog’s behavior

By Laura Baisas

A hummingbird’s wings on a micro-CT scanner.

How do you check a hummingbird for broken bones? Very carefully.

a small chick sits on a nest with its parent behind, cleaning its feathers with its beak

Watch an albatross give its brand-new chick a very careful cleanup

By Laura Baisas

a dog sits next to a no dog poop sign

Poop DNA tests and AI dog surveillance: The tech changing pet care.

By Mack DeGeurin

Artist illustration of Archaeopteryx

Weird bird mouths go all the way back to the first avian dinosaur