Evolutionary Biology

Chimps choose an overnight camp site based on the likelihood of finding calorically rich food nearby. Karen Hopkin reports

“To honor a fallen peer and adjust to life outside the war zones, four men linked by combat journey by foot from Washington, D.C., to Pennsylvania.” That is how HBO describes Sebastian Junger’s new documentary, The Last Patrol, which HBO is airing Monday night.

Scientists recently confirmed what anglers have known for centuries—there's something special about a big mama fish. The bigger the fish, the better the bragging rights—and often, the bigger paycheck or prize.

Mexican free-tailed bats make calls that interfere with fellow bats’ echolocation, causing them to miss their insect targets. Christopher Intagliata reports

The homes that animals build are just as much a product of evolution as the creatures themselves

The arguments over an ancient skeleton just won’t die 

How should you treat your ducks? The answer is mired in duckling politics

Something ghostly and hungry flies the skies of northern Australia. Its massive white wings stand out against the darkness as it circles, searching for prey.

The ability to engage in extended hibernation might be what saved ancestral mammals from extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period. Karen Hopkin reports

It defies belief, but a 180 million year old fern fossil unearthed in Sweden is so exquisitely preserved that it is possible to see its cells dividing.

We know that octopuses have awesome visual systems and super-sensitive suckers. We have even learned that they can hear. But little scientific attention has been paid to their sense of smell.

Is complex life rare in the cosmos? The idea that it could be rests on the observation that the existence of life like us – with large, energy hungry, complicated cells – may be contingent on a number of very specific and unlikely factors in the history of the Earth.