Over the last several days a consortium of people interested in herpetology, weird animals, animal lore, and special effects have worked together to help resolve an incredible and bizarre `mystery'*...
The evolutionarily unique frogs of Cameroon's Lake Oku have no tongues, claw-tipped toes and 12 full sets of chromosomes. What the Lake Oku clawed frogs (Xenopus longipes) don't have, however, is a lot of habitat in which to live...
A recent article by Samuel Arbesman in the science magazine Nautilus discusses the extraordinary sounding possibility that – just perhaps – a search for extraterrestrial intelligence could be made by looking at our DNA...
One of the coolest—and most stressful–moments of my career took place November 7, 1996, when I was a staff writer for Scientific American.
I'm about as interested in domestic animals as I am in non-domesticated ones. Sheep of various kinds have been discussed on Tet Zoo a few times, and right now I want to say a few brief things about a breed I recently saw on several occasions in Romania - the Turcana or Tsurcana, a highly [...]..
It’s true, Mr. and Ms. Hollywood Producer, Nash, Hawking, Turing were great and all, and their stories brought big bucks and a few Oscars rolling your way, but come on!
As adults, we don't often experience radical violations of our expectations, particularly those that concern core principles of object behavior.
A funny thing happened on the way to the endangered species list. Five years ago the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) petitioned to protect an Appalachian crayfish species under the U.S...
This weird adaptation may have helped cichlids evolve their spectacular diversity of forms
It must be the Year of the Sponge here at The Artful Amoeba, because I can’t seem to write enough posts about sponges and their amazing micro-scale architecture.
Higashijima Island doesn't look like much from the sky. This tiny, uninhabited scrap of land 1,000 kilometers south of the coast of Japan is only a few hectares in size.
Author's note: This is the latest post in the Wonderful Things series. You can read more about this series here. There is a fungus on our planet which is capable of not one, but two audacious and duplicitous acts: it pretends, on separate occasions, to be both to be a flower and a pollen grain, [...]..
How do you transport two young orangutans to a zoo thousands of kilometers away from their native lands? Here's the simple answer: FedEx. Here's the less simple answer: It's a lot of work...
The rise of senior citizens may have played a big role in the success of our species
The delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) may be all but extinct in the wild, but it turns out that hope is not quite lost for this controversial California fish.
An unassuming little fern has left scientists scratching their heads at the feat of reproductive hijinks it apparently represents. The fern, xCystocarpium roskamianum(the prefix ‘x’ indicates it is a hybrid), collected in the French Pyrenees, appeared to be a blend of two ferns they know well...
A hungry polar bear (Ursus maritimus) will eat just about anything. Oh sure, they prefer to dine on nice fatty seals (I mean, what Arctic creature wouldn't?), but when push comes to shove they'll eat caribou, walruses, nuts, birds, and even stinky, rotten whale carcasses...
If ever there was a face that read, "Goddamn it, they found me," this is it. That small, downturned mouth, ever-so-slightly ajar in a moment of panicked contemplation, it really just says it all...
A new out-of-this-world theory links mass extinctions with exotic astrophysics and galactic architecture
As fabulous, fantastical gems of evolution go, seadragons are hard to beat. The weedy seadgragon: “Weedy seadragon-Phyllopteryx taeniolatus” by Sylke Rohrlach – http://www.flickr.com/photos/87895263@N06/11259275943/sizes/l/in/photostream/...
