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Nigel Dell / Getty Images Parasites Can Mind-Control Animals Without Infecting Them
In 2018, everything is a metaphor.
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Eric Isselee / Dmitrij Skorobogatov / Shutterstock / ... The Neuroscientific Case for Facing Your Fears
A new study shows that mice have to remember their phobias if they are to lose them effectively.
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Jonno Rattman The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?
The epidemics of the early 21st century revealed a world unprepared, even as the risks continue to multiply. Much worse is coming.
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Katja Schulz / Flickr How to Tame a Zombie Fungus
Cicadas have repeatedly turned the infamous cordyceps fungi into indispensable allies.
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Mike Hutchings / Reuters Trees That Have Lived for Millennia Are Suddenly Dying
The oldest baobabs are collapsing, and there's only one likely explanation.
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Daniel Becerril / Reuters The Tipping Point When Minority Views Take Over
A new study says that small groups can overturn established norms if they reach a critical mass of 25 percent.
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Jonathan Webb Moving Animals to Safe Havens Can Unexpectedly Doom Them
Endangered creatures that are relocated to islands for protection can quickly lose their fear of predators.
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Gene Blevins / Reuters Bacteria Survive in NASA’s Clean Rooms by Eating Cleaning Products
Their abilities could make it harder to stop Earth microbes from contaminating other worlds.
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Edgar Su / Reuters This Fish’s Eyes Turn Black When It Gets Mad
Guppies have silver eyes, but when they’re ready for a fight, their irises go dark. An experiment with robots shows why.
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AFP / Stringer The Increasingly Intricate Story of How the Americas Were Peopled
For one young scientist, a genetic study of 91 ancient remains yielded fascinating, complicated results—and an ethical quandary.
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Matt Cardy / Getty A New Genetic Clue to How Humans Got Such Big Brains
Three genes that appeared during our early evolution probably increased the number of neurons in our heads—but at a cost.
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San Diego Zoo How to Impregnate a Rhino
Besides the usual way
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Philip Krzeminski The Asteroid That Smote the Dinosaurs Burned the Birds Out of Trees
Forest fires killed off tree-dwelling species and left the ground-dwelling ones to restart the avian dynasty.
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Kenny-Katombe Butunka / Reuters Vaccines Alone Won’t Beat Ebola
A deep understanding of the Congo’s culture and time-honored public-health tactics are the keys to controlling the outbreak.
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Robert Murphy How a Pyramid Scheme Doomed the World’s Largest Amphibians
It turns out that the Chinese giant salamander is actually five different species—and they’re all probably facing extinction.
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Cyrus Sinai Most Maps of the New Ebola Outbreak Are Wrong
Villages, and sometimes whole regions of the Congo, are misplaced—but the ministry of health and a team of cartographers are racing to get better data.
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Kenny-Katombe Butunka / Reuters The First Urban Case of Ebola in the Congo Is a ‘Game Changer’
The stakes are higher now that the virus has reached a city of 1.2 million people.
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Christopher Austin These Lizards Are Full of Green Blood That Should Kill Them
They somehow seem to have evolved this weird trait several times.
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Dan Kitwood / Getty Images Hippos Poop So Much That Sometimes All the Fish Die
Their dung consumes the oxygen around it, creating lethal pulses of suffocating water.
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Mike Segar / Reuters A New Theory Linking Sleep and Creativity
The two main phases of sleep might work together to boost creative problem-solving.
