Category Science

There’s no obvious reason crabs should move the way they do. Most animals move forward. Crabs don’t. They move sideways, slipping across the sand without turning, in a motion that…

Atlantic salmon are born in freshwater rivers, migrate to the ocean, and then return with unerring accuracy to their spawning rivers to breed. All that travel is tiring, but it…

Black bears can tell us a lot about the environment, just by the microbial communities living in their guts. The gut microbiome in black bears is largely a direct reflection…

There are more extinct volcanoes across the world than active ones, with hundreds across the United States alone. One of them, Greece’s Methana volcano, seemed to be asleep for more…

Only two northern white rhinos remain on Earth, and both are female. With no way to reproduce naturally, the subspecies now depends entirely on assisted reproduction to survive. At the…

In the British TV drama Downton Abbey, many viewers were introduced to eclampsia, a life-threatening pregnancy complication, when Lady Sybil had a violent seizure after giving birth. The show brought…

Rising dramatically from the Southern Ocean along Australia’s famous Great Ocean Road, the Twelve Apostles have long been one of the country’s most photographed natural landmarks. Although beautiful, they are…

From Madagascar’s “forest of knives” to the interlocking basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway, Earth is replete with jaw-dropping geology. But so are the other planets and moons with which…

Despite nature’s endless creativity in devising defense mechanisms tailored to different ecosystems, it doesn’t always reinvent the wheel. Many successful strategies get reused, appearing across a wide range of environments.…

Language is one of the things that makes modern humans modern. Since the start of our species, we’ve communicated complex ideas in complex ways, with structured systems of rules related…