Biology(Page 9)

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

Latest in Biology

Geckos have a ‘sixth sense’

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a pterosaur with a short tail walking with legs and its wings on the ground

The first true flying vertebrates walked before they could soar

By Laura Baisas

a grayish brown wombat walking next to shrubs

Can wombats kill with their butts? We found the hard truth.

By Laura Baisas

choanoflagellate Choanoeca flexa

We are family: Tracing the evolution of animals

By Amber Dance/Knowable Magazine

a microscope image of a small crustacean with a round body, two large antennae come from its head, and several small legs

Sorry, zooplankton don’t want to eat your poop

By Laura Baisas

a dolphin in a tank with an open mouth

Bottlenose dolphins ‘smile’ to say it’s time to play

By Laura Baisas

3D rendering of all ~140k neurons in the fruit fly brain.

Scientists mapped every neuron of an adult animal’s brain for the first time

Popular Science, December 1943

In 1928, the discovery of ‘mold juice’ would go on to save 500 million lives

By Bill Gourgey

A cell undergoing apoptosis is seen in the center of the image surrounded by other normal cells.Shaded Lighter.

Your cells are dying. All the time.

By Amber Dance/Knowable Magazine

a sea robin fish with wide pectoral fins and six crab-like legs

This fish has 6 legs that act like tongues

By Laura Baisas

a CT scan of two jaw fossils from early mammals

A 225-million-year-old fossilized jaw joint shifts evolutionary timeline

By Laura Baisas

a spook-fish with a narrow snout and large pectoral fins

Boo! New species of ghost shark uncovered in New Zealand

By Laura Baisas

dark and finger-like fungi arise from under a piece of wood

Is this the creepiest fungus in the forest? Yes, definitely.

By Laura Baisas

Close up of memory crystal disc encoded with human genome

In case of extinction, scientists store human genome on a ‘memory crystal’ that lasts billions of years

Biobots could one day be engineered to deliver drugs and clear up arterial plaque.

How biobots arise from the cells of dead organisms

By Peter A Noble and Alex Pozhitkov / The Conversation

a snake with an open mouth and visible fangs

New tool helps scientists identify venomous snakes

By Laura Baisas

a Byrde's whale surfaces to breathe in the Pacific Ocean

Elusive whale’s vocalization could be their version of ‘Marco Polo’

By Laura Baisas

a small baby pygmy hippopotamus sits on the ground

Humans likely wiped out Cyprus’ tiny hippos and elephants in record time

By Laura Baisas

Water anole breathing through air bubble underwater

This lizard’s skin creates an underwater bubble helmet

Concrete material with hollow tube design

Bone-like, hollow concrete design makes it 5.6 times stronger

a red fish with a grumpy expression and large teeth

Seriously grumpy-faced fish discovered in Red Sea

By Laura Baisas

a polar bear cub comes out of a den with its paw up

Polar bears adapted to the Arctic just 70,000 years ago

By Laura Baisas

A Syntretus perlmani wasp larva bursts from a fruit fly’s abdomen.

Gnarly wasp gruesomely rips apart fruit flies from the inside out with its larvae

By Laura Baisas

a reservoir in colombia with very low water levels due to drought

Mega El Niños helped kill 90 percent of life on Earth

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a long gray coelacanth swimming in its native habitat

The ‘living fossil’ that thrived during a mass extinction

By Laura Baisas

neanderthal teeth in a cave

Neanderthals’ social isolation may have sped up their extinction

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a small bird with light brown, black, and white plummage. it has a long beak with sharp teeth

‘Weird’ prehistoric bird had a weaponized beak with teeth

By Laura Baisas

Mini mum is one of the smallest frogs in the world, described by Mark D. Scherz and his colleagues in 2019. These tiny frogs from southeastern Madagascar live in amongst the leaf litter and feed on tiny mites. They are amongst the target species of the GEMINI project, because their closest relatives are ten times larger.

Researchers want to unlock genetics of the world’s tiniest animals

Electrostatic hydraulic robot leg

Oil-filled ‘muscles’ give this robot leg a spring in its step

an x-ray image of an eel escaping from a fish's stomach

Watch an eel escape a fish’s stomach through its gills

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a striped tasmanian tiger with sharp teeth eating the body of a wombat-like creature

New bone-crushing Tasmanian tiger species dug up by paleontologists

By Laura Baisas

a pterosaur speices flaps its wings to fly, while another uses them to soar

‘Remarkable’ fossils offer clues to perplexing pterosaur question

By Laura Baisas

several loaves of golden rustic looking bread on a table

How farming helped humans evolve to get more energy from carbs

By Laura Baisas

Illustration of Sasayamagnomus saegusai

Tiny triceratops ancestor named after gnomes

a northern elephant seal with wide eyes looks into a camera next to an underwater acoustic monitoring device

Northern elephant seals know a ‘dinner bell’ when they hear one

By Laura Baisas

a pregnant porbeagle shark swims under water with two tags. one is on her dorsal fin and the other is on her back

Who ate the pregnant porbeagle shark?

By Laura Baisas

Histones, best known for acting as scaffolding support for DNA and for regulating gene activity, turn out to also play critical metabolic roles in the cell.

These proteins have been secretly managing your cells

By Viviane Callier / Knowable Magazine

a huge swarm of thousands of mosquitoes

Mosquitoes can barely see–but a male’s vision perks up when they hear a female

By Laura Baisas

an orange starfish with four arms of similar size and one shorter arm sits on some rocks

How starfish lose limbs (on purpose) and survive

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a crocodile biting an ancient seacow with a shark lurking behind it

Crocodile attacks sea cow. Tiger Shark picks apart sea cow.

By Laura Baisas

a small white and red squid

New images of deep sea wonders are surprisingly adorable

By Laura Baisas

a moth with a yellow body, pink legs, and pink and yellow wings sits on a green leaf

The ‘disco’ gene could help moths tell time

By Laura Baisas

an infrared image of a human head, showing warm areas in shades of orange and yellow, and cooler areas in blue and green

Mosquitoes can sense our body heat

By Laura Baisas

stages of a plant's development

Yes, plants go through ‘puberty’

By Laura Baisas

an insect lays on its back with its abdomen and legs in the air. it is playing dead to trick predators

Antlion larvae can ‘play dead’ for more than an hour–then, things get random

By Laura Baisas

a green parrot with an open beak and orange and black eye

These parrots have accents

By Laura Baisas

several white circles surround a humpback whale with an open mouth

Humpback whales use bubble-nets as ‘tools’

By Laura Baisas

A freshly-collected batch of venomous cone snails.

Precise, lethal sea snail toxin could one day lead to better medicines

By Laura Baisas

a python with a wide open mouth swallows a white rat whole

How pythons can eat such giant meals

By Laura Baisas

Anatomically accurate sculpture of a dodo

The dodo was faster and smarter than you think

a spider traps a glowing firefly in its web

Spiders may be hacking firefly signals to trap dinner

By Laura Baisas

This eyeless cavefish grows extra taste buds on its head

a bunch of yellow bananas

Bananas are at risk of extinction, but scientists have a plan

By Laura Baisas

a group of earthworms in rich, dark soil

Hear the ‘rave’-like sounds of a healthy soil

By Laura Baisas

a large, domed rock formation

Geologists find solid evidence of ancient ‘snowball Earth’

By Laura Baisas

Port Jackson sharks sleeping on the seafloor at Beagle Marine Park.

Watch a huge ‘No Boys Allowed’ shark slumber party

By Laura Baisas

A transparent zebrafish in a tank in a laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Paris on June 20, 2023.

Zebrafish regenerate their spinal cords in a surprising way

By Laura Baisas

Specimen photographed with autofluorescence under confocal microscope at 639 nm; different colors indicate z-depth, with violet to red gradient representing the shallowest to deepest planes, respectively.

Extremely rare tardigrade fossils seen in unprecedented detail

a close up of a burmese python.

The 2024 Florida Python Challenge begins

By Laura Baisas

a lemur in an enclosure stares into a takeout container

Lemurs use smell, social cues, and superior memories to find treats

By Laura Baisas

four different types of corn. one is long and yellow, the other is shorter and yellow. the other two are shorter and black

Love corn? Thank interbreeding

By Laura Baisas

two sea lions swim in blue water, with their heads above the water

Sea lion camera crews help scientists map unexplored seabeds

By Laura Baisas

human bones belonging to an small, extinct, early human secies

New ‘Hobbit’ fossils discovered on Indonesia’s Flores island

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a small penguin with light black, yellow, and white feathers on a new zealand beach

Tiny fossil reveals when penguins evolved their surprisingly useful wings

By Laura Baisas