To watch the uncanny synchronization of a starling flock in flight is to wonder if the birds aren’t actually a single entity, governed by something beyond the usual rules of biology. New research suggests that’s …

While the oil disaster’s terrible toll on birds and turtles will at least be measured, less charismatic creatures tend to be ignored. That’s why conservationists are organizing a citizen science project to count the Gulf …

In the popular imagination, the colossal squid is fast and terrifying, able to dispatch whales and submarines with ease.
But the image of the squid as a nasty predator of the deep is probably more mythology …

The wings were willing, but the feathers were weak. Delicate, thin-shafted plumage would have made flapping difficult if not impossible for two prehistoric birds, a new analysis of fossil feathers suggests.
sciencenews Their feathers probably would …

After ravens see a friend get a beat down, they approach the victim and appear to console it, according to new research.
Orlaith Fraser and her co-author Thomas Bugnyar watched the aftermath of 152 fights over …

From wings to low-density bones to echolocation, the evolution of flight in bats required many radical changes. But the most important change may have been metabolic.
A genetic comparison of dozens of mammal species shows that …

In the muck of the deep Mediterranean seafloor, scientists have found the first multicellular animals capable of surviving in an entirely oxygen-free environment.
Some types of bacteria and other single-celled organisms can live without oxygen, but …

Birds, bats and lizards may play an important role in Earth’s climate by protecting plants from insects that forage on foliage. A new study suggests that preserving these animals could be a low-tech way to …

Bats are nocturnal, but some need sunlight to set their internal compass.
“Recent evidence suggests that bats can detect the geomagnetic field,” wrote Max Planck Institute ornithologists Richard Holland, Ivailo Borissov and Bjorn Siemers in an …

Bats can subtly adjust the frequency of the sounds they use to do echolocation to adjust to particularly cluttered terrain.
In a laboratory testing room filled with dangling plastic chains, bats wearing tiny, half-gram microphones were …

Geologists have turned a series of 200 million-year-old lake-bed sediments into an epic narrative of the dinosaurs’ journey from ecological obscurity to Earthly supremacy, a mystery that has lingered even as their disappearance is explained.
The …

A bitter controversy is brewing over a captive colony of endangered Virginia big-eared bats, founded in November as a hedge against disease driving the species to extinction in the wild.
Of 40 bats put in the …

A one-of-a-kind killer whale population appears to be threatened by human appetites for Antarctic toothfish, better known to restaurant-goers as Chilean Sea Bass.
As fishing fleets patrol their waters, catching what was their primary source of …

The connection between gut bacteria and obesity has gained some weight, with new findings demonstrating links in mice among immune-system malfunction, bacterial imbalance and increased appetite.
Mice with altered immune systems developed metabolic disorders and were …

Scientists have discovered 243-million-year-old fossils of dinosaurs’ closest relatives, pushing back the origin of dinosaurs by at least 10 million years.
The dinosaur-like creature, Asilisaurus kongwe, was about the size of a Labrador retriever and had …

How all-female species avoid the shrinkage of their gene pool is among the animal kingdom’s great mysteries. Now biologists think they’ve discovered the trick.
According to a study published Sunday in Nature, egg-producing cells in a …

Scientists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved spider fossil in China dating back to the middle Jurassic era, 165 million years ago. The fossilized spiders, Eoplectreurys gertschi, are older than the only two other specimens …

With feathers that resonate at precisely 1,500 hertz, the male club-winged manakin is perhaps the bird world’s most perfectly tuned example of sexual selection.
By pinning down the frequency, researchers have completed a long investigation into …