Evolutionary Biology1968 articles archived since 1845

Pixie Camera Captures Precious Pixels

A camera that could literally balance on the head of a pin could find use in research, robotics and medicine. Cynthia Graber reports

Readers Respond to "Ruled by the Body"--and More

Letters to the Editor about the March/April 2011 issue of Scientific American Mind

What Is It?

Charlotte's ancestor

Squid studies: Southward-bound; "We had all felt the pattern of the Gulf...."--J. Steinbeck and E. F. Ricketts, Sea of Cortez (Viking, 1941)

Brain on Beauty Shows the Same Pattern for Art and Music

The search for beauty has spurred great works of art and music, lengthy philosophical treatises and decades of dense cultural criticism. So, is beauty in the object?

The Third-Hand Illusion

Could you use an extra hand? The brain's body plan might not be limited to two arms

Tiny Insect Makes Biggest Noise

The miniscule water boatman makes the loudest sound for body size in the animal kingdom. Cynthia Graber reports

Jaws did not dominate early oceans

Deep in the Silurian seas, some 420 million years ago, a strange structure had just emerged in the bodies of many new vertebrates. Some fish began developing a defined upper and lower jaw that allowed them to devour large and hard-shelled organisms...

The Sleepy Gene

Scientists pinpoint a key to sleepiness in fruit flies

Dinosaur Egg Clutches, Not as Simple as Chicken Eggs

How Physics Limits Intelligence [Podcast]

Award-winning author Douglas Fox talks about his cover story in the July issue of Scientific American about the limits of intelligence, placed there by the laws of physics

Flight Insurance: What Is Being Done to Protect Migratory Birds?

Chief among environmental threats to migratory birds is habitat destruction

How the Brain Understands Food and Appetite [Excerpt]

In his new book, neuroscientist David Linden explores the biological basis of food, sex and the other things in life that bring us pleasure

Squid Studies: "A Dream Hangs over the Whole Region, a Brooding Kind of Hallucination"--J. Steinbeck and E. F. Ricketts, Sea of Cortez

Editor's Note: William Gilly, a professor of biology at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, embarked on new expedition this month to study jumbo squid in the Gulf of California on the National Science Foundation–funded research vessel New Horizon ...

French Bug Plays 100-Decibel Mating Call on Genitalia

Whales can boom their songs across thousands of kilometers of ocean, and elephants' low-frequency calls can be heard by other pachyderms several kilometers away.

Terrorists Get Better with Practice: New Mathematical Model Shows How Fatal Attacks Escalate Over Time

Scientists enlist physics, math and evolutionary biology to tackle the seemingly impossible challenge of finding patterns in the chaos of modern war

Recommended: The Book of Fungi: A Life-Size Guide to 600 Species from Around the World

Books and recommendations from Scientific American

Laureate urges next generation to address population control as central issue

LINDAU, Germany—A 93-year-old Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine received a standing ovation from hundreds of scientists on June 30 at the end of a speech in which he urged the world's young people to take measures to control runaway population growth in order to resolve related ills that have resulted from humans' remarkable evolutionary success as a species...

Nobelist Christian de Duve Compares Good and Better Brains

At the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany, Christian de Duve posed a challenge to researchers to explain how small changes in development and size lead to the massively disparate brains of humans versus related apes...

Emergency Action Plan Aims to Help the World's Most Endangered Chimpanzee