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  • Coral Reefs Are Now Bleaching Too Quickly to Recover

    If you’ve ever seen a piece of coral someone’s brought back as a souvenir from an island vacation, you know what coral looks like when it dies. The process through which coral turns completely white is called bleaching, and it’s the first step toward the death of a reef. Essentially, the coral gets stressed — […] More

  • Strange Blue Moths Pretend They’re Bees To Fool Predators

    A rare Malaysian moth species that was previously known only from a 130-year-old specimen has been rediscovered by Polish researchers. The Oriental blue clearwing (Heterosphecia tawonoides)  doesn’t look much like most moths. It mimics a bee, in both appearance and behavior, to avoid predators. The clearwing has elongated scales on its legs that look like […] More

  • Climate Change Is Making These Arctic Animals Smaller

    In the Arctic, a drastically different climate means glaciers, snowfalls, and ice floes are shrinking. So are the muskoxen. The muskox is a massive creature – between 400 and 900 pounds when fully grown – with a shaggy coat and a big set of horns. Unlike caribou, Arctic muskoxen don’t migrate long distances in search […] More

  • Mosquitoes Learn To Avoid People Who Whack At Them

    According to new research, the easiest way to discourage mosquitoes from biting you is also the simplest: swat ’em. In a paper published in the journal Current Biology, researchers studied mosquitoes’ tendency toward what’s called “aversive conditioning,” and discovered that a turbulent experience — like narrowly missing being squished by a slap — discourages a mosquito […] More

  • Scientists Trained an Orca to Imitate Human Speech

    Wikie the killer whale has a lot to say. She lives at Marineland, an amusement park in the South of France, where she’s been trained to perform tricks for visitors — and now, she’s participating in groundbreaking research. Recently, a team of researchers set out to determine whether orcas, who are famously vocal creatures within […] More

  • Australian Female Jumping Spiders Only Mate Once in Their Lifetime

    It seems the first time’s the charm for the female Australian jumping spider. A recent study by Vivian Mendez and her colleagues at Macquarie University, Australia, found that most female Servaea incana spiders only mate once in their lifetime, after which they become unwilling or even aggressive toward males who try to mate with them. The researchers examined the […] More

  • Sailing Spiders Have Amazing Water-Navigation Abilities

    Spiders are often one of the first species to colonize new habitats, and many species are found in multiple locations — including multiple continents. In other words, spiders get around. Scientists as far back as Charles Darwin have studied an intriguing mode of spider transportation: ballooning, or floating through the air on a thin strand […] More

  • Ducks Grow Longer Penises to Compete With Other Males

    Ducks are one of only two species in the world (the other is the acorn barnacle) that can adjust their penis size to fit a given situation — including competition from other males, according to new research. Duck mating is an uncomfortable subject, to begin with — male ducks have corkscrew-shaped genitalia, often covered in […] More

  • Bonobos Use Sex to Resolve Conflicts, Diffuse Tension

    Bonobos: they’re just like us. Researchers studying the sex habits of bonobos say sexual activity plays a crucial role in the social society of the primates. Bonobo society is a bit more peaceful than that of their cousins, the chimpanzee, but, like in any group that lives closely together, conflicts do arise. When it does, […] More

  • Forget Robot Overlords. These Birds Are Getting Smarter

    Scientists have long known that crows are exceedingly intelligent animals, but new evidence shows they may be getting smarter and evolving right before our eyes. Researchers at University of St. Andrews and University in Edinburgh in the UK tested a group of New Caledonian crows on their ability to make and use tools to acquire […] More

  • Chameleons Have Glow-in-the-Dark Bones

    Well, we know who we’re inviting to our next rave. A recent study found that chameleon bones glow under UV light, in the first known instance of bone-based fluorescence in a vertebrate. A team of German researchers tested the UV light on 31 species of Calumma chameleons, which are native to Madagascar. They observed a bright blue glow […] More

  • Snow Leopards No Longer Endangered, But Still Struggling

    Snow leopards are no longer officially an endangered species — but that doesn’t mean the cat is out of the woods yet. Scientists at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains a “red list” of endangered species around the globe, recently reclassified the leopard species as “vulnerable,” because there are actually more snow […] More

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