Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Nov 30, 2017

Can Animals Count?

The ability to solve complex math problems is one thing that sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Despite this fact, some animals do seem to have at least one basic mathematical ability — they can, in a sense, count. In the early 1900s, the horse Clever...

Nov 30, 2017

The Life of a Baby Tardigrade

It started as a speck of a speck, a bundle of nerves and immature tissues curled up inside an egg, bunched up against its siblings. The small clutch of embryonic water bears was immobile, silent, unseeing and possibly unfeeling. Locked away inside their mother's ovaries, they waited to be born....

Nov 30, 2017

Bison vs. buffalo: What's the difference?

Burly, shaggy bison (Bison bison), the North American hoofed mammals that, for many people, embody the American West, are often referred to as buffalo. But even though they are in the same family group as Old World buffalo species — the Asian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) and the African cape...

Oct 31, 2017

Gay Lions? Not Quite

A photograph of two male lions seemingly in an amorous embrace has some humans clutching their pearls. After the release of the photograph, taken in August at Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve, Ezekiel Mutua, the chief executive of the Kenya Film Classification Board, blamed humans (or maybe demons) for the...

Oct 31, 2017

Photos: Is ice age cat mummy a lion or a lynx?

Incredible find (Image credit: Courtesy of Anastasia Koryakina)A man hunting for mammoth tusks in Eastern Siberia came across an unexpected find in the permafrost: the mummy of a cat that lived during the last ice age. It's not yet clear whether the ancient kitty is a cave lion or a...

Oct 31, 2017

Photos: The Poisonous Creatures of the North American Deserts

Earth's deserts (Image credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)Geographers tell us that slightly over 20 percent of the Earth's land surface is classified as a desert. Such a classification is given when the land region receives an annual precipitation of no more than 10 inches (25 cm). Somewhat over one-tenth...

Sep 30, 2017

Why Don't Hippos Get Cholera?

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The short answer is that cholera has evolved to infect humans, not hippos. Cholera is a disease caused by a curved rod-shaped bacterium called Vibrio cholerae. The disease is...

Sep 30, 2017

Man Nearly Dies After Live Fish Jumps Down His Throat

There may be such a thing as fish that is too fresh — a man in England nearly lost his life after an entire live fish jumped down his throat. The 28-year-old man in Bournemouth, England, caught a Dover sole while fishing, and decided to kiss his catch, which is...

Sep 30, 2017

Sea Lilies on Twitter Are Mesmerizing … And Not What They Seem

See more Odd-looking and gracefully mesmerizing plant-animal creatures are having a moment on Twitter: Some look like swimming feather dusters or fluffy, undulating mops. Others look like seaweed or the kind of plastic plants that decorate the aquariums in dentists' waiting rooms. But what they are is much, much weirder....

Aug 31, 2017

Why Protecting a Shark Nursery in the Patagonia Sea Is Crucial

Juan Martín Cuevas is a marine conservationist with the Argentina program at WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society). Since late 2015, he has been working to develop and implement a conservation plan for sharks and rays in the Patagonian Sea. Cuevas contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights....

Jul 31, 2017

Animal Sex: How Red-Eared Sliders Do It

The aptly-name red-eared slider is an easily recognizable semiaquatic turtle that's popular in the global pet trade. These animals are considered one of the top invasive species of the world, and it's really no wonder when you consider their mating habits. Red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans), which have a red...

Jul 31, 2017

Ginormous, 70-Ton Titanosaur Is the Largest Dinosaur on Record

About 100 million years ago, when flowering plants had diversified into an array of blossoms, the largest known land animal — a massive, long-necked titanosaur — stomped around, searching for plants it could eat to fuel its enormous body. The newly identified titanosaur was so immense — 69 tons (62...

Jul 31, 2017

The Solar Eclipse Had a Spooky Effect on Nature

From flowers spontaneously shutting their petals to hundreds of thousands of salmon washing ashore, the eclipse yesterday (Aug. 21) had a downright spooky impact on nature, according scientists observing the effects. Several experimental projects were aimed at recording the responses of animals to the eclipse, including the iNaturalist app, which...

Jun 30, 2017

11 Animals Named After US Presidents

Presidential species (Image credit: Vazrick Nazari/Zookeys under CC by 4.0; Trump: LOC)The study of taxonomy is often a slog. There are measurements to take, technical descriptions to write and databases to parse — all tasks that require nothing short of meticulous, tireless precision. The naming of a new species, on...

Jun 30, 2017

Cecil the Lion's Son Shot Dead, 2 Years After His Father

The 6-year-old son of Cecil the Lion was shot and killed on July 7 just outside Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, meeting the same end his father did in 2015, according to news reports. The young lion, Xanda, was the pride male of a group that included two lionesses and...