Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Jun 30, 2019

Tiny Fighting Worms Make One of the Loudest Sounds in the Ocean

Tiny, feisty worms that live off the coast of Japan fight by headbutting each other — and they aren't quiet about it. During these feuds, the worms emit one of the loudest sounds in the ocean, according to a new study. The source of the underwater hullabaloo is a nearly...

May 31, 2019

Why Do Skulls Have So Many Bones? (It's Loads More Than You Think)

How many bones are in your skull? You might guess that animal skulls are made up of two bones: the upper region of the skull and the lower jaw. But skulls are actually far more complex — and have a lot more bones — than you may expect. Some animals...

May 31, 2019

Dogs Evolved Sad Eyes to Manipulate Their Human Companions, Study Suggests

About 30,000 years ago, a wolf decided to give up the wild life, commit to a steady relationship and become the first dog. Today, dogs and humans are the undisputed best friends of the animal kingdom — and, according to a new study, that comraderie may have been propelled by...

May 31, 2019

Flushed Goldfish Grew to Be Kitten-Size in Niagara River

A monstrously huge goldfish was recently captured in the Niagara River in New York. The goldfish was presumably a discarded house pet that may have been illegally released or survived a traumatic flush down a toilet. Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper (BNW), a nonprofit working to protect and restore the Niagara River...

May 31, 2019

The Biggest Dinosaur to Ever Walk the Earth Just Wants to Text You

The biggest dinosaur ever discovered just wishes you'd drop him a line. In a new program launched by Chicago's Field Museum, the cast skeleton of the titanosaur dubbed Máximo will text you back answers to questions about the dinosaur's life in prehistoric Patagonia — or anything else you'd like to...

Apr 30, 2019

Car-Size 'Sea Monster' Terrorized Triassic Oceans

Researchers excavated the remains of four of these now-extinct sea monsters from the rocky slopes of the Austrian Alps. But even at 13 feet long (4 meters), these creatures — known as phytosaurs — weren't fully grown. The phytosaurs were only about 8 years old when they died, and they...

Apr 30, 2019

This Bird Evolved into Existence Twice — Thousands of Years Apart

On a ring-shaped reef in the Indian Ocean, a species of bird evolved to be flightless — twice. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, white-throated rails (Dryolimnas cuvieri) flew from their native home in Madagascar to the Aldabra atoll, a ring-shaped reef among the Seychelle Islands. The reef, free of...

Apr 30, 2019

Botswana Just Lifted Its Ban on Elephant Hunting. Conservationists Are Appalled.

Botswana has lifted its elephant hunting ban, after a five-year probation period. The country's officials said that the reversal of the ban followed extensive consultations with all the stakeholders, in a statement published yesterday (May 22) by Botswana's Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism. The move was deeply...

Apr 30, 2019

Why These Human-Sized Beavers Suddenly Died Out 10,000 Years Ago

Giant beavers the size of black bears once roamed the lakes and wetlands of North America. Fortunately for cottage-goers, these mega-rodents died out at the end of the last ice age. Now extinct, the giant beaver was once a highly successful species. Scientists have found its fossil remains at sites...

Mar 31, 2019

Why Some Evangelical Christians See This Pet Technology as the Work of the Antichrist

An almost invisible electronic device used all over the world — best known to much of the public for helping reunite lost pets and their owners, but also found in subway cards, electronic tolling, luggage tags, passports and warehouse inventory systems — has alarmed some evangelical Christian communities, who see...

Mar 31, 2019

If the Animals from 'Game of Thrones' Houses Battled, Which One Would Win?

For nearly a decade, would-be kings and queens in HBO's Game of Thrones have stabbed, slashed and poisoned their way toward a seat on the Iron Throne. And the fierceness of the human combatants mirrors the ferocity of the animals displayed on these leaders' banners. Each of the show's dominant...

Feb 28, 2019

Why Are There So Many Marsupials in Australia?

Australia is the kingdom of marsupials, home to furry kangaroos, koalas and wombats. The continent has so many marsupials, it raises the question: Did these pouch-bearing mammals arise Down Under? The answer is an unqualified (or un-koalafied) no. Marsupials were around for at least 70 million years before they made...

Feb 28, 2019

The Megalodon Spent Tens of Millions of Years Honing Its Lethal, Knife-Like Teeth

But nature didn't just hand these instant-killing weapons to these prehistoric sharks, called megalodons. Rather, it took millions of years for the teeth to evolve into their final, lethal form, according to a new study published on March 1 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. To understand the evolution of...

Feb 28, 2019

Do Any Animals Know Their Grandparents?

Grandparents are revered in many human societies. But telling stories about old times and overfeeding grandchildren seem like distinctly human traits. Are these classic grandparent behaviors really limited to Homo sapiens? Do any animals know their grandparents the way people do? For most species on Earth, the answer is an...

Feb 28, 2019

Mammoth DNA Briefly 'Woke Up' Inside Mouse Eggs. But Cloning Mammoths Is Still a Pipe Dream.

A handful of 28,0000-year-old woolly mammoth cell parts were recently woken up for a short time in a new experiment, but cloning the ice age beasts is still a long way off. In the experiment, the researchers extracted cells from Yuka, a woolly mammoth mummy (Mammuthus primigenius) whose remains were...