Biology(Page 7)

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

Latest in Biology

A Sombrero ground lizard (Pholidoscelis corvinus) photographed on Sombrero Island in June 2021. This species is endemic to the Carribbean island.

Population of nearly extinct lizard grows 16X in only six years

By Laura Baisas

An Andean bear at the nature reserve Bioparque Wakata, in Briceno municipality near Bogota, Colombia, on June 21, 2023.

Shy ‘Paddington’ bears need more plants to survive

By Laura Baisas

a squirrel sits eating a vole, pulling its meat with its teeth

‘Shocking:’ These squirrels are hunting and eating other rodents

By Laura Baisas

a turtle swims in a tank wearing a black weighted harness on its side

Sea turtle with ‘bubble butt syndrome’ gets a 3D-printed custom harness

By Laura Baisas

A reconstruction of the oldest known gorgonopsian in life.

This dog-like predator is the oldest known mammal ancestor

By Laura Baisas

a small blue-colored penguin called a little penguin swims in the ocean

Turtles and penguins have a swimming sweet spot that reduces drag

By Laura Baisas

Striated frogfish (Antennarius striatus), also known as the hairy frogfish.

Anglerfish use ‘extremely rare’ mechanism to control their lures

red brain neurons

Why is deep sleep so important to memory? It’s about time.

By Laura Baisas

A juvenile Nile crocodile. It is small with pointed teeth

Why are crocodiles so bumpy? A dermatological mystery has been solved

By Laura Baisas

a new shrimp-like crustacean. it is white with two protruding tusk-like appendages at its head, at least 8 legs, and two tail-like appendages at the back

New predator uncovered 25,000+ feet under the Pacific

By Laura Baisas

a microscopic zooplankton

Microscopic ‘eating and pooping machines’ are great at sucking up carbon

By Laura Baisas

Frozen surface of Lake Enigma

Life discovered lurking under Antarctica’s frozen Lake Enigma

Two views of a slingshot spider (Theridiosoma gemmosum) web. The right image shows the web’s cone shape with a spider at the tip.

Watch a slingshot spider deploy a perfectly-timed trap

By Laura Baisas

a siberian husky sits in the snow. it has piercing blue eyes and its ears are perked up

Humans gave dogs treats 12,000 years ago, new archeological evidence suggests

By Laura Baisas

The anglerfish species Lophius piscatorius.

Anglerfish are so much more than just their dangly bioluminescent lures

By Laura Baisas

brain scans in pink, blue, and yellow

Humans may have big brains thanks to our gut

By Laura Baisas

old photo of man with text

The man who lived with no brain

By Popular Science Team

an orca whale dorsal fin coming out of the water

Orcas observed preying on massive whale sharks

By Laura Baisas

Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel in grass, Leelanau State Park, Michigan.

How hibernating squirrels go more than six months without water—and don’t get thirsty

By Lauren Leffer

a long piece of fossilized dinosaur poop on the ground

200-million-year-old dinosaur poop and vomit reveal a lost Jurassic world

By Laura Baisas

a more colorful dominant male fish next to a more muted subordinate fish

Stress is warping these fish brains

By Laura Baisas

A still showing the jet ejected from a squirting cucumber, which carries its seeds distances of up to 32 feet away from the mother plant.

High-speed camera catches cucumber squirting seeds at 65 feet-per-second

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of the amygdala, shown in red. It is a part of the brain’s limbic system and plays a key role in processing emotions.

‘Was I awkward?’ What overthinking after a party has to do with your ‘lizard brain’

By Laura Baisas

a body on a morgue table with only the feet showing and a toe tag on the big toe

What happens when you donate your body to science?

By RJ Mackenzie

a scan of a zebrafish with its eye highlighted in green and other parts of its anatomy stained red and blue

Mapping the shifting gaze of ‘fishlets’

By Laura Baisas

A mother and calf West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) in Crystal River, Florida.

Florida’s famous manatees were originally tourists

By Laura Baisas

Marine fossils found at Neanderthal cave site

Neanderthals may have enjoyed collecting tchotchkes—just like us

stone walls separating several small houses in ireland

Scottish, Irish, and Northern English better at detecting fake accents

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of two Skiphosoura bavarica in flight.

New pterosaur species sliced through the air with a sword-like tail

By Laura Baisas

This fluorescence image shows chloroplasts (magenta colored) successfully incorporated into the hamster cells, with other features of the animal cell also highlighted (nuclei in light blue and organelles in yellow-green).

Bioengineers made mutant, solar-powered hamster cells

a tick half embedded in human skin

How hitchhiking ticks are bringing diseases to new places

By Laura Baisas

a molting penguin with a mixture of feathers

Famously extra large penguin Pesto is molting

By Laura Baisas

a female mountain lion walks at night with some kittens behind her

Mountain lions in Los Angeles become night owls to avoid humans

By Laura Baisas

a small bird with black, gray, and white, plumage solves a puzzle in a lab

Immigrating great tits learn from their new neighbors

By Laura Baisas

a colorful coral reef with fish swimming above it

Chlorine and cocoa butter may help disease-ridden corals

By Laura Baisas

x-ray scans of early human skulls. the teeth are colored red, green, orange, blue, and purple to show the differences among them

These 1.77-million-year-old teeth could help demystify human childhoods

By Laura Baisas

a small baby gibbon with large eyes sits on its mother

Endangered newborn siamang gibbon is a ‘sign of hope’

By Laura Baisas

a new mollusc with a hood over its head

New deep-sea slug catches crustaceans like a Venus fly trap

By Laura Baisas

Close up of blooming corpse flower

Scientists crack the mystery of why the corpse flower smells like death

a yellow dog shakes excess water off of its fur

Why wet dogs shake so much

By Laura Baisas

an elephant in a zoo enclosure holds a yellow hose in its trunk and uses the hose as a shower

Watch a clever elephant use a hose to get clean

By Laura Baisas

Chimpanzee playing a number-based game on a touch screen

Like humans, chimps often perform tasks differently when crowds are watching

a lone coyote in a forest looks into a camera lense

Coyotes appear to be thriving under pressure

By Laura Baisas

Astrocytes; neuroglial cells, 250X at 35mm.

‘Swiss army knife’ of the brain: How star-shaped cells reshape our understanding of memory

brain scans of people watching clips from movies

MIT maps how the brain experiences movies

By Laura Baisas

Human tissue sample created in 3D bioprinter

Bioprinting breakthrough uses acoustic waves to create lab-grown human tissue

Illustration of a terror bird standing by river

Meat-eating terror birds could grow up to 12 feet tall

a small bat glides over water

How these tiny bats use a sound map to navigate

By Laura Baisas

a white fungus with large red droplets that look like blood

That’s not blood, it’s a fungus oozing excess juice

By Laura Baisas

a tadpole swimming

A rock in Argentina turns out to be the oldest tadpole fossil ever found

By Laura Baisas

Thalattosuchian skulls. Showing the semi-aquatic species (A and B), and the fully aquatic metriorhynchid (C).

Why don’t we have deep sea crocodiles?

a large rat wearing a red vest holds a dark, round, ball

Giant three-pound rats trained to sniff out illegal poaching

By Laura Baisas

a brown and black spider money sits in a green and leafy tree with a large, round, yellow fruit in its mouth

‘Drunk’ animals might be more common

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of Lomankus edgecombei. This arthropod lived about 538 to 485 million years ago in dark and low-oxygen environments.

450-million-year-old arthropod found preserved in fool’s gold

By Laura Baisas

Silhouette of a loving couple hugging and kissing at sunset on the beach.

The origins of kissing may have a lot to do with body hair

Hydra vulgaris.

Are any animals truly ‘immortal’? These creatures defy biological time.

By Lauren Leffer

a rider in a headless horseman costume rides by yellow fall leaves

The Headless Horseman shares her secrets

By Laura Baisas

Tardigrades were exposed to heavy doses of gamma rays—high-energy photons that are one form of ionizing radiation—and researchers then studied how their systems responded.

Researchers start to unravel the secrets of tardigrade radiation resilience

yellow pollen shooting out of a red flower

Plants could be manipulating sperm in completely new ways

By Laura Baisas

two stalk-eyed flies fight on a stick. these flies have long antennae with eyeballs on the tips

Flies with shorter eye-stalks act aggressively because females are less attracted to them

By Laura Baisas

a close up of four pieces of sliced bread

Our love of delicious carbs may go back 800,000 years

By Laura Baisas

A photograph showing two big and two little Pyrocystis noctiluca.

Why these plankton puff up to 6x bigger than normal

By Laura Baisas

surgical equipment on table

Autopsy of 78-year-old man reveals he had three penises

a blue whale skeleton on display at a museum

Blue whale skeleton still leaking oil, 26 years after death

By Laura Baisas