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Having to cross the Sahara in the middle of migration means a bird can't count on food for some 5 nights of flying. So, how does a first-timer know to [...]

Scientists have found a second bacterial infection that can cause an insect version of virgin births. And this one can do a new trick. Not only does this bacterium cause [...]

A bird with toxic feathers may have taken on the colors of a poisonous neighbor, according to a new genetic analysis. Plenty of butterflies have evolved copycat warning colors, but [...]

Like children begging treats from indulgent grownups at a party, meerkat pups get fatter when they have more adult meerkats to pester for food. That conclusion arises from a bit [...]

A series of staged insect spats reveals the first known acoustic duels of caterpillars. Larvae of the hook-tip moth, a common resident of birch and alder trees in the northeastern [...]

A much-anticipated report from a consortium of U.S. and Canadian scientists states that the most commonly planted forms of genetically engineered Bt corn pose only a 'negligible' risk to monarch [...]

A right whale may weigh some 70 tons, but unlike other marine mammals studied so far, it tends to float rather than sink at great depths. Electronic monitoring of 95 [...]

Whether the so-called mimic octopus could impersonate Madonna or President Bush remains unclear, but researchers say the long-armed wonder does a great sea snake and lionfish. The octopus, too recent [...]

Fluttering streamers could save seabirds from fatal encounters with many longline fishing boats, according to a big study. The streamers could also save part of the U.S. fishing fleet from [...]

Fighter-pilot dogfights no longer blaze across the night skies of Europe, but other fliers may still duel to the death up there. Researchers in Spain propose that bats hunt down [...]

Females become less picky about mates as their first reproductive peak wanes, according to a new analysis of cockroach sex. The females thus become more like their male partners, who [...]

Amid all the panting, a dog at play makes a distinctive, breathy exhalation that can trigger playfulness in other dogs, says a Nevada researcher. Yes, it might be the dog [...]

In the hotly debated matter of bird-tail aerodynamics, the first wind tunnel measurements indicate that the prevailing theory may be wrong. The basic avian tail has the triangular shape of [...]

A rare kind of desert tree can manage a bit of sexual wizardry that scientists have never seen before in a plant, reports an international research team. An Algerian cypress [...]

For the first time, biologists have found an animal, a gender-bent mite, living and procreating quite well despite the supposed handicap of carrying genes from just one parent. Among other [...]

A kind of ear new to science, a swiveling structure that picks up odors as well as sounds, enables fruit flies to sense sounds. 'It's rather elegant,' says Daniel Robert [...]

Infrared photography has revealed that European catfish can stalk prey by tracking underwater wakes much as hunters on land follow footprints. This laboratory demonstration marks the first time that scientists [...]

The largest report yet on wild-parrot nests has found poaching to be alarmingly common. The report also argues, however, that at least one protection measure has chilled illegal trade in [...]

The slavery racket in the ant world is more violent in New York than in West Virginia, even though the same species are involved. That's the conclusion of the first [...]

Ants that grow their food have to weed, too. Now, the first detailed study of ants tending fungus gardens shows that whether the gardener has two legs or six, the [...]

The National Zoo's research center in Front Royal, Va., survived a near-death experience last weekend, saved by an outcry of public support. Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small had planned to close [...]

What looks like the ultimate bad choice in romance--a mate from a different species--in some conditions may not be so dumb after all, according to a new analysis of flycatchers. [...]

A bleary mom staggering into the nursery at 2 a.m. can tell her troubles to the honeybees. Foraging worker bees are the first insects known to have a social trigger [...]

Seniors of the elephant matriarchy, females at least 55 years old, turn out to be far better at telling friends from strangers than are pipsqueak 35-year-olds. The quality of this [...]

Researchers wielding artists' paintbrushes have tickled some insects and come up with a new insight into how a plague of locusts gets started. Left to itself, the desert locust of [...]

By comparing female baboons' rumps, a male can spot those potential mates best suited for motherhood, say researchers in England. In females of about 10 percent of primate species, bare [...]

One of the most dramatic sexual conflicts documented so far, that in Tanzanian cockroaches, turns out to have yet another bizarre twist. Females are most attracted to low-status males, and [...]

Merely walking up to a plant and handling its leaves, which is routine for any researcher collecting data, may skew outcomes in studies of predators attacking plants, ecologists suggest. For [...]

Giving antibiotics to tiny wasps to cure them of a sex-related disease reveals the best evidence yet that infections can help make new species, say researchers in New York. Each [...]

A carnivorous water plant with tiny traplike bladders dotting its leaves may not deserve its reputation as a relentless predator, says a Florida scientist. A survey of bladderwort plants in [...]

In a new twist on zombie botany, Harvard University physiologist have found that the pipes in a plant's water plumbing can regulate the flow speed, despite the disability of being [...]

Oregon researchers' triumph in slipping a bit of another creature's genome into a monkey has proved that the feat's possible, but even the bioengineers themselves caution that their technique may [...]

Was coral ecologist John R. M. Chisholm losing his mind? Lumps of coral, with the ambulatory power of your average rock, somehow kept changing places in his aquarium overnight. Chisholm, [...]

Some newly discovered ants aren't exactly vandals sacking Rome, but they pillage valuable real estate nonetheless. The new species, in the genus Megalomyrmex, specializes in raiding the nest gardens of [...]

A preference for big-city living or small-town life may depend in part on inheritance, at least for cliff swallows. Five-day-old nestlings that researchers switched to a colony of a different [...]

Federal researchers have added new evidence to the growing case that agricultural pesticides blowing into California's wilderness areas have played a role in mysterious declines in frog populations. Traces of [...]

Some of the giant silk moths of North America are taking a beating because an early 20th-century attempt to control another insect went bad, researchers in Massachusetts suggest. Cecropia moths, [...]

Biologists say the way to stop killing sprees by male juvenile delinquents is to bring in older males, at least if you're dealing with elephants. Until recently, the orphan male [...]

Field biologists say they've found a case of the much-debated possibility that plants of different species communicate in the wild. When researchers clip sagebrush, nearby tobacco plants seem to boost [...]

Owls and cats turn out to have a not-so-charismatic rival in their much-admired ability to pinpoint a sound's origin: a sound-tracking parasitic fly. The flies are too tiny for the [...]

Fish don't have to filter the chatter of cocktail parties to hear the latest about Al vs. W, but they do have to distinguish important ripples in water from noise. [...]

If you can't look brilliant, forget halfway-decent looks. Go for total loser. That fashion tip works--in male lazuli buntings--because their blue plumage shows signs of a rarely documented evolutionary pattern [...]

Ifrita kowaldi, a blue-capped handful with the tree-poking habits of a nut-hatch, concentrates in its feathers and skin the same alkaloids that defend poison dart frogs. This explains why the [...]

Tree frog embryos plop out of their eggs in moments of danger, and now a researcher has found that their responses are proportional to the threat. That an embryo can [...]

A whirligig beetle seeps white goo when pestered, and that slow ooze--instead of a big squirt--gives the beetle a chance in a life-or-death contest inside a fish's mouth, say Cornell [...]

Arizona scientists propose a new scenario to explain why perfectly good, everybody's-equal, bisexual flowers evolve forms with different genders. A genetic goof that adds extra sets of chromosomes, or polyploidy, [...]

High-speed video and fancy math have overturned an old theory about how snapping shrimp make such a racket. By quickly closing oversized claws while defending their territory, clusters of certain [...]

Battles between the sexes have been much more important in creating species than scientists have realized, say Swedish researchers. Lineages of insects rife with sex conflict have split into at [...]

Normal-looking, furry, scurrying South American mice of several natural species appear, upon molecular examination, to violate most of the standard rules of mammalian sex determination. In at least eight species [...]

An international team has succeeded in cloning one of tea's genes for making caffeine--a step toward creating decaf tea and coffee plants. The gene, TCS1, codes for caffeine synthase, the [...]