Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

May 31, 2008

Birds Kill Siblings, Hormones Blamed

If you ever felt at least metaphorically like you wanted to kill your brother or sister, your sibling is lucky you're not a booby. A Nazca booby, a Galápagos Island seabird, is eager and able to kill a sibling in the nest. A new study links the murderous behavior to...

May 31, 2008

Creature Sets Record for Living Fast, Dying Young

You think kids today are immature? A species of chameleon in Madagascar spends most of its lifespan incubating inside its shell. After four or five months out in the world, it dies. Total pre-hatching and post-hatching existence: about 1 year. In fewer than 60 days, body size for males can...

Apr 30, 2008

Birds Babble Like Babies

Baby birds are like baby humans on at least one score: they both babble. But as songbirds grow up, they make the switch from babbling to singing by flipping to a different brain circuit, new research finds, suggesting a new view of human infant behavior. We should toss out the...

Apr 30, 2008

Slow Down: Whale Crossing

The thirteen buoys of the Right Whale Listening Network listen for endangered right whales crossing shipping channels, and provide a warning to ships to slow down. The smart buoys were developed at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The busy shipping lanes in Massachusetts Bay (and...

Apr 30, 2008

Frogs Go Ultrasonic for Sex

Keep the racket down, I’m trying to find a mate! That could be the plea of nocturnal Chinese tree frogs, which have developed unique, high-frequency vocal skills to make themselves heard by potential mates in their noisy habitat. The frogs' sounds are no mere ribbits, but ultrasound squeaks designed to...

Apr 30, 2008

Huge Flying Reptiles Ate Dinosaurs

With a name like T. rex, you'd expect to be safe from even the fiercest paleo-bullies. Turns out, ancient, flying reptiles could have snacked on Tyrannosaurus Rex babies and other landlubbing runts of the dinosaur world. A new study reveals a group of flying reptiles that lived during the Age...

Mar 31, 2008

How Humans Outlive Rats

Humans are built to last. Rats, not so much. A newly discovered body clock apparently ticks much faster in rats, snuffing out their lives tens of years earlier than humans. This biological rhythm, which tends to cut short the lives of smaller animals and let big creatures live longer, should...

Mar 31, 2008

X-ray Vision Spies Dinosaur-Era Bugs

Hundreds of fossilized creatures from the Age of Dinosaurs have been discovered inside a type of amber into which scientists have now glimpsed for the first time. The trove of ancient animals was found in pieces of opaque amber, the secretive sister of the more familiar translucent amber gemstone. Though...

Mar 31, 2008

Grand Canyon Possibly Old as Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs roaming the American Southwest 65 million years ago may have teetered on the edges of an ancient version of the awe-inspiring cliffs and gorges we see today in the Grand Canyon, a new study suggests. The mile-deep canyon in Arizona was formed as the Colorado River scoured through ancient...

Feb 29, 2008

In Photos: Endangered and Threatened Wildlife

Bighorn Sheep (Image credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)First listed on March 18, 1998. Range: California. Black-footed Ferret (Image credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)First listed on March 11, 1967. It is currently designated as endangered across its range, except where listed as an experimental population. Range: Arizona, Colorado, Montana,...

Feb 29, 2008

Pint-Sized Primates Were First in North America

Leaping, furry mini-monkeys that were as small as mice crossed the Bering land bridge long before humans, representing North America's oldest known primates. This new claim is based on the fossils of at least three individuals of this previously unknown species of extinct primate uncovered at a site near Meridian,...

Feb 29, 2008

Movie Review: 10,000 B.C.

Who doesn’t like historical epics? Costume dramas that give you an up-close-and-personal look at some musty but meaningful period when life was tough, but big things were happening? Well, give director Roland Emmerich credit for attempting a new record in rewinding the clock. He’s dared to take us back to...

Feb 29, 2008

Some Crabs Crabbier Than Others

Is one crab more crabby than another? It could be true. Crabs apparently can have different personalities from one another, the first discovery of personality in crustaceans. People consistently differ from one another in behavior, differences known as personalities. The same is known to hold true in many other animals,...

Feb 29, 2008

Breeding the Overfished Bluefin Tuna

The Atlantic bluefin tuna is so prized for gourmet sushi that it has been overfished to the brink of commercial collapse. Now scientists are studying how to breed these giants in captivity, which could reduce the pressure on wild tuna. Not everyone supports the research, which recently scored its first...

Feb 29, 2008

Fastest Evolving Creature is 'Living Dinosaur'

Scientists have pinned down the fastest-known evolving animal — a living dinosaur called a tuatara. The tuatara, Sphendon punctatus, resembles a lizard and is found only in New Zealand. It is the only surviving member of a reptilian order Sphehodontia that lived alongside early dinosaurs and separated from other reptiles...