Stories by Karen Hopkin

Many red-colored birds have to convert yellow pigments in their food into the red pigments that make their feathers and beaks so brilliant.

Lemurs sometimes mix their smelly secretions to produce a bouquet of stank—which may boost the perfume’s staying power. Karen Hopkin reports.

An individual's unique brain response to images of a celebrity and a food could be used to create an ID procedure at high-security sites.  

Mountain-climbing bears transport cherry tree seeds, internally at first, to cooler, higher altitudes where the trees can survive as temperatures rise.

Researchers have uncovered the chemistry that makes the urine of bearcats smell like freshly cooked popcorn.

About 47,000 years ago, newcomer humans to Australia helped to wipe out an enormous flightless bird by collecting and cooking its eggs.

A public health advocate determined how much exercise is required to burn off various typical big game foods.

Bears’ gut summer bacteria are more diverse and include species that tend to promote energy storage than are the bacteria that live in them during their hibernation.

When food is plentiful and chimps are more chummy, they harbor an increased number of different bacterial species in their bellies.

Signs that say "Share the Road" with bicycles may have far less influence over motor vehicle driver behavior than would signs saying "Bicycles May Use Full Lane."

Scientific papers with shorter titles receive more citations than those with long-winded headings

Indoor climate control systems are based on 1960s standards that envisioned the typical office worker to be a 40-year-old, 68-kilogram man  

A single-point mutation in corn's ancestor teosinte got rid of the hard shell that used to encase every kernel 

An analysis of the acoustical characteristics of screams found that the sounds are unusually rough, that is, they rapidly change in frequency, which has an alarming effect on the listener's brain 

Nematode worms hitch rides inside the guts of slugs and other invertebrates, and emerge alive and well after exiting with the rest of the digestive track's products. Karen Hopkin reports

Mexican Jays compare peanuts to determine which one has the most meat inside before choosing one for a meal. Karen Hopkin reports

Researchers were surprised to find that cyclists rode faster while taking on easy mental tasks.

—Karen Hopkin, Eliene Augenbraun

Test subjects rode stationary bikes 25 percent faster when they simultaneously tackled some relatively easy cognitive challegnes. Karen Hopkin reports

In west Africa researchers observed wild chimps seek out and drink fermented tree sap left outside by humans. Karen Hopkin reports

People tend to remember a color they saw, for example green-blue teal, as being closer to a more stereotypical variant, such as straight blue or green. Karen Hopkin reports

It might take practice to get to Carnegie Hall but scientists found that it takes a set of dozens of genes in the brain working together to make that practice pay off.

Get a glimpse of how cells swap signals with their neighbors via marvels of cellular engineering called gap junctions

Blood tests on 10 professional musicians before and after playing showed that specific genes got turned on by performance, some of which are also active in songbirds. Karen Hopkin reports
 

Two studies, one with bees and one with mice, show that the brain can be manipulated into having a memory of an occurrence that did not in reality happen. Karen Hopkin reports