Biology(Page 9)

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

Latest in Biology

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

a musuem exhibit with a dinosaur skeleton. a picture of actor jeff goldblum saying "that is a one big pile of poop" is in the lower left.

The Poozeum: Fossilized bug farts, T. rex poop, and more ancient coprolites

By Laura Baisas

An illustration showing an imposing fully-grown male Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus wandering India’a Kashmir Valley, 400,000 years ago, towering over a herd of Central Asian red deer. In the distance, a small band of prehistoric humans set up a campfire to cook their meal.

Mysterious elephant species uncovered with 87 prehistoric stone tools

By Laura Baisas

a small frog with light green coloring and dark spots sits on a green leaf

Seven new frog species named for their ‘Star Trek’-esque calls

By Laura Baisas

Fungi growing on circle and cross arrangement wood blocks

A simple experiment revealed the complex ‘thoughts’ of fungi

a lion skull with a close up on its teeth. one of the bottom teeth has a large black cavity.

These lions devoured 28 humans, wildebeest, and more in 1898

By Laura Baisas

a finch with a sharp beak and dark plumage holds a round seed in its beak

Scientists simulate calls of ‘future finches’

By Laura Baisas

an illustration of a large hawk-like bird carrying a long tailed rodent in its claws

With fearsome feet, hawk-sized Cretaceous birds could scoop up baby dinos

By Laura Baisas

five toothbrushes in a cup on a bathroom sink

The next lifesaving antibiotic might be a virus on your toothbrush

By Laura Baisas

Spicy foods: The unlikely new frontier in placebo research

two oval comb jellyfish fusing together as one

Two comb jellies can fuse together into one–and keep both butts

By Laura Baisas

This picture shows many tiny cells in which DNA is abundantly included inside the cells.

Oldest living microbes found in 2-billion-year-old rock

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