Evolutionary Biology

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

The miraculous recovery of a coral and the gargantuan range of a lichen may both result from the surprising evolutionary advantages their "alternative" lifestyles give them

A new study suggests that chimps have the cognitive skills necessary for cooking—such as patience—even if they don't control fire. Christopher Intagliata reports

Call it the "grolar bear" dilemma: Are hybrids caused by climate change bad for species?

Books and recommendations from Scientific American

A nutritionist boils a mountain of conflicting diet advice down to a few simple principles

Science has identified four steps to losing weight that can improve the odds of success

A team of deep divers plunges into the “twilight zone,” a little-explored region of depth between 200 and 500 feet below the surface, with two goals: "catch fish" and "stay alive".

Factors that drove the evolution of our intellectual capacity are also implicated in the memory disorder

The four-year study took thousands of samples at hundreds of sites

Genetic information from a 35,000-year-old wolf bone found below a frozen cliff in Siberia is shedding new light on humankind's long relationship with dogs

The skin of a California octopus species has a molecular light-sensing mechanism that allows it to change color to match its surroundings with no input from the creature's eyes or brain. Dina Fine Maron reports