Ed Yong
No One Is Prepared for Hagfish Slime
It expands by 10,000 times in a fraction of a second, it’s 100,000 times softer than Jell-O, and it fends off sharks and Priuses alike.
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Jorge Gonzalez Who’s the Cutest Little Tyrannosaur? Is It You?
A diminutive new species, only six feet long, fills an important gap in the origin story of the famed T. rex.
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Tim Caro The Surprising Reason Zebras Have Stripes
By putting black-and-white coats on horses, a new study shows that the pattern discourages biting flies from landing.
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Chris McLoughlin / Getty Is the Insect Apocalypse Really Upon Us?
Claims that insects will disappear within a century are absurd, but the reality isn’t reassuring either.
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Hinterhaus Productions / Getty Small Teams of Scientists Have Fresher Ideas
A new study shows that little teams are more likely to take their research in radically new directions.
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Bettmann / Getty The Women Who Contributed to Science but Were Buried in Footnotes
In a new study, researchers uncovered female programmers who made important but unrecognized contributions to genetics.
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Marvin Recinos / Getty A New Way to Keep Mosquitoes From Biting
An appetite-suppressing drug makes them act as if they’ve already feasted on blood.
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This Dinosaur Had a Mohawk of Horns
A pair of two-foot-long spines, running down the neck of Bajadasaurus, might have presented a “disturbing fence” to lurking predators.
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Rowan Barrett The Wild Experiment That Showed Evolution in Real Time
By placing wild mice in large outdoor enclosures, an ambitious team of scientists has illustrated the full process of natural selection in a single study.
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Ed Jones / AFP The Special Sleep That Kicks In During a Sickness
By studying flies, researchers have identified a gene that induces sleepiness—and protects against infections.
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Ed Gullekson A Starfish-Killing Disease Is Remaking the Oceans
The voracious sunflower starfish was once as common as a robin, but a new disease has almost wiped it out—with wide-ranging consequences.
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Annemieke Milks When Modern Men Throw Ancient Weapons
Scientists have shown that Neanderthals’ spears weren’t half bad, in capable hands.
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AFP Why Whales, Seals, and Penguins Like Their Food Cold
In frigid waters, their ability to keep their bodies warm gives them an edge over sharks and fish.
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Wong Maye-E / AP The Worst Case for Scientific Ethics
As more details come out about the CRISPR baby scandal, the scenario looks bleak.
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Tim Wheeler The Overlooked Organisms That Keep Challenging Our Assumptions About Life
Gorgeous and weird, lichens have pushed the boundaries of our understanding of nature—and our way of studying it.
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Barcroft Media / Getty Images Young Trans Children Know Who They Are
A new study shows that gender-nonconforming kids who go on to transition already have a strong sense of their true identity—one that differs from their assigned gender.
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Sue Ogrocki / AP What Happens When the President Doesn’t Have a Science Adviser
Trump left a key position vacant for 19 months.
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Darren Staples / Reuters Plants Can Hear Animals Using Their Flowers
And they react to the buzzing of pollinators by sweetening their nectar.
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Natasha Mhatre The World Shifts When a Black Widow Squats
By changing its posture on its web, the arachnid can tune vibration in its legs to different frequencies.
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Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters Animals Keep Creating Mysteries by Sounding Weird
The Cuban cricket crisis is the latest in a long history of human-animal misunderstandings.
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Okinawa Churashima Foundation Unborn Baby Shark Filmed Swimming Around Inside Its Mother
The embryo was caught moving from one uterus to another, likely in search of snacks.
