Ed Yong
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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Daniel W. Clark, U.S. Navy This Tiny Songbird Rolls Its Head to Break Its Victim’s Neck
The loggerhead shrike is a hawk trapped in the body of a finch.
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Mike Bossley A Once-Captive Dolphin Has Introduced Her Friends to a Silly Trend
“What we had here was an example of dolphin culture being established.”
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Ricardo Moraes / Reuters What Was Lost in Brazil’s Devastating Museum Fire
Two hundred years of work—and millions of priceless specimens—have been destroyed in a preventable tragedy.
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Tengku Bahar / Getty The Very Hot, Very Hungry Caterpillar
Climate change will mean more insects, and less food for humans.
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Keith A. Ellenbogen / AP When Conservation Backfires
Ironically, the creation of huge marine reserves can temporarily worsen the problems they are designed to address.
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Joe Raedle / Getty Online Bettors Can Sniff Out Weak Psychology Studies
So why can't the journals that publish them?
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Pascal Rossignol / Reuters Scientists Finally Crack Wheat’s Absurdly Complex Genome
Their efforts will make it much easier to breed new varieties of the world’s most important crop.
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Radu Sigheti / Reuters Elephants Have a Secret Weapon Against Cancer
The biggest animals should have the highest risks of developing tumors, but they don’t.
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Chase Dekker Wild-Life Images / Getty What a Grieving Orca Tells Us
People know a famous community of killer whales as individuals, with their own names, families, and personalities—which has made their woes even harder to take.
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Kerstin Meyer / Getty An Ancient Genetic Quirk Could Doom Whales Today
After losing an unnecessary gene millions of years ago, marine mammals are now uniquely vulnerable to pesticides that have only existed for a century.
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Alan Bennett / UC Davis The Wonder Plant That Could Slash Fertilizer Use
An indigenous Mexican corn gets its nitrogen from the air.
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Rubberball / Getty Women More Likely to Survive Heart Attacks If Treated by Female Doctors
And male doctors do better when they have more female colleagues.
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Sue Ogrocki / AP / The Atlantic Trump Finally Picks a Science Adviser—And People Are Delighted
His nominee, Kelvin Droegemeier, is an accomplished meteorologist who studies storms and other extreme weather.
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Ed Yong A Behind-the-Scenes Peek at the Smithsonian’s New Dinosaur Hall
The museum is giving its ancient animals a modern makeover.
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Matt Kasson This Parasite Drugs Its Hosts With the Psychedelic Chemical in Shrooms
It also makes their butts fall off.
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Colin Donihue After Last Year's Hurricanes, Caribbean Lizards Are Better at Holding on for Dear Life
A stunning case of natural selection in action
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Carolyn Elya Is This Fungus Using a Virus to Control an Animal's Mind?
An unusual detective story
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Robert Benson / Getty Images An Enormous Study of the Genes Related to Staying in School
Researchers have found 1,271 gene variants associated with years of formal education. That’s important, but not for the obvious reasons.
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Thomas Mukoya / Reuters Humans Have Unleashed a ‘Landscape of Fear’
By killing the biggest animals, we’ve allowed smaller and more vulnerable species to remodel the terrain.
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Luiz Rocha / California Academy of Sciences There Is No Escape for Corals
Deep waters have long been seen as potential refuges for endangered corals, but a new study suggests that they offer no sanctuary.
