It has long been known that owls have extremely mobile necks. The birds have been recorded turning their heads entirely upside down, for instance, or rotating them through 270 degrees while keeping their bodies stationary. But some researchers suspect an owl’s neck is more flexible still.
Read More
Sharks benefit from some shuteye, and biologists in Australia and New Zealand think they’ve begun to understand why. Image: Darren Shilson
Read More
Our primate ancestors might have become “protomusical” to advertise their ability to perform death-defying leaps from tree to tree. Image: muhawi001
Read More
At the summit of Llullaillaco, a volcano in the Andes that rises 6739 metres above sea level, lives a mouse. It is the highest dwelling mammal in the world – and how it survives in an environment so hostile that it has been compared to Mars has left scientists baffled. Image: Dick Culbert
Read More
As recently as 110 years ago, Aboriginal Australian hunters enlisted help from an unlikely source. They used dingoes, difficult-to-train canines halfway between wolves and dogs, to help trap and kill kangaroos and emus. This might provide us with new insights into how and why humans domesticated dogs thousands of years ago. Image: esia_one
Read More
Hagfish literally tie themselves in knots to escape a tricky situation – and that includes tying their bodies into complicated three-twist knots. Image: Haney and Uyeno
Read More
More than half a billion years ago, a strange, worm-like creature died as it crawled across the muddy sea floor. Both the organism and the trail it left lay undisturbed for so long that they fossilized. Now, they are helping to revise our understanding of when and how animals evolved. Image: Dr. Zhe Chen at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology
Read More
A study published on 4 April in Scientific Reports suggests that at least some modern housecats can distinguish their names from similar-sounding words, although they register recognition with the merest twitch of the head or ear. Image: Eugene Morozov
Read More
Some hermit crabs have unusually large penises, and now we might know why. A long penis allows a male crab to have sex without leaving the shell he calls home, reducing the risk it will be stolen while he is busy. Image: Vanessa Pike-Russell
Read More
Was it a fight to the death? Little Foot, an ancient hominin who lived in what is now South Africa 3.67 million years ago, may have died in a battle for food with a large male baboon-like monkey after falling down a hole. Image: Karmor
Read More
Fearsome sabre-toothed cats may have had a tender side. The prehistoric predators risked damaging their powerful jaws and teeth during hunts, but a study of their fossils suggests injured individuals could then rely on their peers for food. Image: tabitum
Read More
In what could be a case of remarkably fast animal evolution, the crickets of Hawaii have begun to purr. The discovery is the latest twist in a decades-long battle between crickets and a parasitic fly that is attracted by their songs. Image: LeGrimlin
Read More
