Why Do High Heels Make Women Seem More Attractive?
On a trip to Italy a few years ago, my partner and I peered into the faraway distance at that famously angled phallus that is the Leaning Tower of Pisa, when suddenly we became aware of a small scene unfolding before us.
Hit by Climate Change, Dwindling Antarctic Seal Population Grows More Diverse
As sea waters in the South Atlantic warm, the amount of krill available for seals drops, leading to a smaller yet more genetically varied population
Female Octopus Strangles Mate, Then Eats Him
Octopuses do the darndest things. Like kill their mate during mating—by strangling him with three arms, according to new observations from the wild.
World's Largest Aquatic Insect Reportedly Found in China
Hello, giant friend, and welcome. Please step through the hallowed gates of "World's Biggest" and join your freakishly long, abnormally bulky peers.
Scopes Monkey Trial: Guilty
July 21 is verdict day in the infamous Scopes "Monkey" Trial of 1925. The verdict came in from a jury in Dayton, Tenn., that John Thomas Scopes had committed the crime of teaching evolution to students at his high school, for which transgression he was fined $100.
Spider Gene Study Reveals Tangled Evolution
A new arachnid family tree suggests that many spider species evolved away from web-weaving
Bread Wheat Genome Contains "Shocking" Plot Twist
“Wheat P1210892” by Copyright © 2007 David Monniaux – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Yesterday scientitsts announced in a quartet of papers in the journal Science that the draft genome of bread wheat — Triticum aestivum — had been decoded and mapped.
Give Us This Day the Bread Wheat Genome
A preliminary map of the bread wheat genome includes the locations of more than 75,000 genes. Cynthia Graber reports
Cheese Rinds Help Researchers Study Microbial Ecosystems
Microbes live in dense and diverse communities. There are billions of bacteria from thousands of species living together in your gut or in the soil.
Wild Sex: Beyond the Birds and the Bees
Joy Reidenberg, comparative anatomist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, talks about her new PBS series Sex in the Wild, about the sex lives of elephants, orangutans, kangaroos and dolphins. The series debuts July 16, 2014
Tiger Skins Are Like Fingerprints; Could That Help Stop Smugglers and Poachers?
Last month forest rangers in India arrested a 21-year-old engineering student and his friend who had been caught carrying a tiger skin that they intended to sell for nearly $25,000.
Killing Big Animals Allows Rodents (and Their Fleas) to Flourish
Conservation may be important for human health