Kate Morgan

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  • Giant Isopods Are the Animals Time Forgot

    If you’ve ever poked a pillbug (or roly polie, if you prefer) and watched it curl up in a ball, you’ve encountered an isopod. They’re not actually bugs; they’re crustaceans. And while the terrestrial kind are small and relatively harmless, their deep-sea cousins are a little more… let’s say… intense. There are about 20 species […] More

  • These Spiders Attack with World’s Fastest Spin

    Best of luck to any insect trying to sneak past this spider. This eight-legged predator will have its meal in the blink of an eye. Actually, less. According to a study in the Journal of Experimental Biology, “flattie spiders” from the family Selenopidae can use their long legs to spin around nearly three times faster than the human eye can […] More

  • These Deep-Sea ‘Zombie Worms’ Want Bones, Not Brains

    Zombies are real, and they’re living at the bottom of the ocean. Don’t worry though, they’re not coming for your brains. They’re only a few inches long and they actually prefer bones. Scientists discovered tiny marine worms from the genus Osedax inside the bones of a gray whale corpse on the sea floor in 2002. Today, there […] More

  • Hummingbirds Use Complex Brains to Power Their Impressive Movements

    Hummingbirds may have tiny brains, but they’re unusually powerful. A new study, published in Current Biology, says the way the tiny birds fly — flitting abruptly in every direction and using rapidly-beating wings to hover — requires a lot of brain power. Hummingbirds are the only species of bird that’s able to truly hover, and to do […] More

  • These Ancient Crocodiles Had a Taste for Human Flesh

    Millions of years ago in East Africa, gruesome predators hunted our human ancestors on land and in the water. A new study published by researchers at the University of Iowa announced the discovery of two ancient species of giant dwarf crocodile that roamed the African continent between 15 and 18 million years ago. “Giant dwarf” […] More

  • Secret Super Colony of Penguins Spotted from Space

    The number of Adélie Penguins, the species most common on the Antarctic Peninsula, has been steadily declining for several decades. At least, that’s what scientists thought, until researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NASA discovered something interesting in satellite imagery of the Danger Islands, off the peninsula’s northern coast. The images revealed guano (bird […] More

  • World’s Tiniest Monkeys are the Size of a Large Tomato

    The world’s tiniest monkeys are actually not one, but two separate species, researchers using the latest genomics techniques learned recently. First discovered by a German researcher named Johann Spix in 1823, the itty bitty creatures, which average 0.2 pounds in weight, were named Cebuella pygmaea. Now, researchers have discovered there are actually two tiny species of marmoset […] More

  • These Falcons Imprison Other Birds Before Eating Them

    It turns out falcons in Morocco could be the ultimate bad guys. On the Essaouira archipelago, researchers witnessed a species of bird called the Eleonora’s falcon capturing smaller birds and holding them captive for days before killing them. In Alauda, a French ornithology journal, Abdeljebbar Qninba of Mohammed V University reported the predatory behavior he […] More

  • Sea Turtles Are Surprisingly Good at Using Their Flippers Like Hands

    Sea turtles are specially designed for swimming: their flippers are incredibly good at dispersing water, propelling them through the water for miles at a time. However, those fingerless limbs typically don’t help much when it comes to handling their food … or so scientists thought until now. While they typically rely on just their mouths, […] More

  • 500 Million-Year-Old Fossilized Brains Discovered

    Scientists have gained new insight into the evolutionary development of brain and nervous system tissue, after examining fossilized brain tissue from a Cambrian sea creature that lived in modern-day Greenland half a billion years ago. The extinct species, Kerygmachela kierkegaardi, was a predator with a long, spiny tail and front appendages used to grab prey. At […] More

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