Animals

Animals

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Cultural lives of birds Wednesday, February 16, 2022: 9 AM PT

The cultural lives of birds

VIDEO: Culture was once thought to be uniquely human, but scientists are finding evidence that many birds are also cultural creatures. What does avian culture look like? And why does it matter?

A propeller-driven model of a falcon flies through the air. It has a camera on its back, giving a remote pilot a birds-eye view.

Living World

Wild robots: Five ways scientists are using robotics to study animal behavior

Biomimetic bots can teach researchers a lot about how creatures interact in the natural world

A close-up photo shows a small fuzzy spider looking out from atop a person’s fingertip. The spider is black with white spots and green pedipalps, and smaller than the width of the fingernail.

The Mind

Spiders are much smarter than you think

Cognition researchers are discovering surprising capabilities among a group of itsy-bitsy arachnids

Photo of a chimp sitting on grass facing the camera. Three more chimps crouch in the background alongside a building.

Living World

Protecting great apes from the unknown effects of Covid-19

Humans can transmit many diseases to chimps, orangutans and their kin. People who study and care for the creatures are taking lockdown-style measures to limit the risk.

Photo tracks the flight patterns of a flock of jackdaws, each flight path shown as a black ribbon, with the ribbons folding and turning in parallel. Oscillations in the ribbons reflect the wingbeats of each bird.

Living World

Collective behavior: How animals work together

Studies of birds, fish and ants reveal the hidden ways groups coordinate movement, which might influence engineers designing drone armadas and efficient information flow

A view from the ground of several bats flying in a clear blue sky. Their dark bodies and delicate wing bones stand out against their cream-colored wings.

Health & Disease

Bats cope with myriad viruses, including the one causing Covid-19, with few ill effects. Scientists are probing their immune systems to fathom how they do it. The answers might help infected people, too.

images of three fish — one too large on the left crossed out, one too small on the right crossed out and one in the middle just right given a green checkmark

Living World

How humans shift fish evolution | Things to Know

VIDEO: By targeting larger individuals, intense fishing may lead to a fishery dominated by the small

Photograph of the deck of a large commercial fishing vessel. Fish are falling from a massive net and piling on the deck floor, as fishermen look on.

Food & Environment

The human hand in fish evolution

Fishery practices that go for the big ones may be counterproductive when mostly the small survive

Photograph of cupped, gloved hands holding about half a dozen black- and yellow-patterned frogs.

Living World

An amphibious rescue mission

On the edge of extinction, rare frogs and toads need more than a little love to reproduce. High-tech help, from IVF to hormone therapy, may save them.

An animation showing a tiger walking. In place of many of its black stripes are black double helices to depict DNA.

Living World

From tiger scat to DNA to — hopefully — survival

Researchers dig out the elusive cats’ genetic material where they can, to guide efforts at conservation and diversity

Fatu, born in 2000, is one of the world’s last two surviving northern white rhinos. A 2013 photograph shows her hanging out with southern white rhinos at Kenya’s Pejeta Nature Conservancy.

Living World

At San Diego’s Frozen Zoo, a chance for animal immortality

The cryobank is a rich source of genetic knowledge of hundreds of creatures. It may one day be used to bring endangered species back from the brink and deepen the gene pool of wild populations.