
Marine Microbe Performs Animal Trick
A cup of cells can both bend and “see,” feats rarely seen outside of animals
Jennifer Frazer, an AAAS Science Journalism Award–winning science writer, authored The Artful Amoeba blog for Scientific American. She has degrees in biology, plant pathology and science writing. Follow Jennifer Frazer on Twitter @JenniferFrazer Credit: Nick Higgins
A cup of cells can both bend and “see,” feats rarely seen outside of animals
Stunning new fossil reveals that at least one Cretaceous slime mold—an “intelligent” giant amoeba—looks identical to one alive today
Live fast, die young and leave a good lookin’ stump
The leafy lichens seem to have picked up where a lot of incinerated plants left off
Like lichens, these animals mine stone. What they do with it is another question
Unassuming tree has unusual sex life
Be glad human STDs do not include this one
Are they the first animal embryos? 20 years post-discovery, these and other fossils from the 600-million-year-old Doushantuo Formation remain frustratingly enigmatic
Ocean microbes long thought to depend exclusively on eating turn out to have a solid, if sinister, Plan B
Fire chaser beetles' ability to sense heat borders on the spooky
First ever high-speed video of interaction contains big surprises
No other placental mammals have ever shown this ability—perhaps because we haven't looked
Whatever made these structures lived 1.4 billion years before the first animals
What separates a lethal prion from a dementia-associated amyloid plaque? Maybe not much
Mostly dead is slightly alive
Discovery suggests worrying transmission possibilities
Necessity is the mother of invention
Because if you can grow a square watermelon…, why not E. coli?
Seven complete specimens of 100-million-year-old flower found preserved in amber
For that matter, so did most natural recreational drugs
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