Life
All Stories
Embark on a journey through one of the most profound ecological transitions in the history of complex life.
Rich data on the global state of our feathered friends presents plenty of bad news — but also some bright spots.
Numerous videos online show that squid undergo a dramatic color-changing effect after being stunned or killed.
The intensely white coloration of the shrimp is a remarkable feat of bioengineering.
The first-of-its-kind approval could change how we think about gene-edited foods.
The “island rule” hypothesizes that species shrink or supersize to fill insular niches not available to them on the mainland.
Billy was a local celebrity in the early 1900s. And he might have been a murderer.
Ocean fertilization is extremely controversial, but if done correctly, it just might work.
The moths in your garden might hear your tomato plant’s pain.
The puzzle of play
The purpose of play — for children, monkeys, rats or meerkats — has proved surprisingly hard to pin down. Scientists continue to toss around ideas.
Bees learn and culturally transmit their communication skills.
The jail environment teaches the animals that approaching humans results in a boring and annoying experience.
At least one of Earth’s creatures is able to survive the vacuum of space.
Civil engineer Martin Lebek has a brilliant plan to redress the world’s phosphorus imbalance.
Deep underwater, temperatures are close to freezing and the pressure is 1,000 times higher than at sea level.
Darwin missed an amazing example of evolution.
According to Peter Ward’s “Medea hypothesis,” photosynthesizing organisms regularly doom most life on Earth by over-consuming carbon dioxide.
Slimy biofilms made up of bacterial and eukaryotic life forms have taken over an abandoned, flooded uranium mine in Germany.
A toxicologist explains the impacts of antidepressants on fish — and no, they’re not getting any happier.
Disease kills off 40% of farmed catfish. This gene protects them.
Each year, several trillion pounds of microscopic silicon-based skeletons fall down the water column to pile up into siliceous ooze.
Communication among cetaceans, like whales and dolphins, looks especially promising.
Don’t worry that your dog’s world is visually drab.
Carnivores, herbivores, omnivores — and now virivores.
In the early 20th century, a young biochemist named Alexander Oparin set out to connect “the world of the living” to “the world of the dead.”
