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Matt Chase / The Atlantic; source: Getty A Cognitive Revolution in Animal Research
Animal ‘personalities’ are forcing scientists to rethink basic research.
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Stephan Raats / Alamy Evolution Didn’t Wire Us for Eight Hours of Sleep
Chimps sleep nine hours a night. Cotton-top tamarins sleep about 13. What happened to humans?
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Simon Gingins / Courtesy of Quanta A Classic Test of Animals’ Minds Has a Fish Problem
An intelligent fish has stirred up a debate about how to measure self-awareness among animals—and what self-awareness even is in the first place.
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Volodymyr Goinyk / Shutterstock / Arsh Raziuddin / … The Case for Treating Climate Change Like a Joke
Studies have shown that when it comes to relaying scientific messages, satire can be more effective than sincerity.
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New England Aquarium Baleen Holds Secrets to Whales’ Lives—and Deaths
A new forensic tool could help scientists figure out what kills the animals.
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Javier Carrascosa The Bloody Pirate Life of One of the Ocean’s Most Elusive Creatures
A rare sighting hints that giant squid use a devious technique to get food.
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Andrew Peacock / National Park Service The Lonely Lives of Dolphin Lice
Crustacean parasites are common on whales, but how they survive on smaller, speedier ocean animals is a mystery.
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Christin Khan / NEFSC / NOAA The Mystery of Off-The-Grid Whale Moms
Some right whales disappear for years, only to reemerge in strange places with a baby.
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Ian Wade Photography / Getty Who's Peeing in the Global Pool?
A giant database of the underwater excretions of fish, frogs, and other creatures could help scientists understand the effects of fishing and climate change.
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Courtesy of Jim Van Belzen Under the Sea in a Ragworm's Garden
A leggy marine creature may be a one-of-a-kind underwater planter.
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Reed Saxon / AP A Robot Buoy That Saves Whales From Boat Strikes
A new surveillance system off the coast of New York aims to help keep the creatures out of harm’s way.
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Tina Berning / Spectrum Magazine Making Room for Autism in the Workplace
Virtual job interviews and office support groups are bucking the trend of underemployment for people on the spectrum.
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Michael Spooneybarger / Reuters How Lasers Can Help Clean Up Beach Trash
New 3-D modeling technology has the power to scan coastlines for garbage much faster than humans can.
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David Gruber Scientists Have Developed Shark Vision
And with it, they’re learning how the predators see each other.
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Carlos Jasso / Reuters How Bad Is Ocean Garbage, Really?
A new paper sifts through past research on marine debris to assess the true extent of the environmental threat.
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Elizabeth Preston Eating Iguana at the Explorers Club
The exclusive annual dinner hosted by a legendary society of scientists is for adventurous eaters only.
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Jeffrey L. Rotman / Corbis Solving an Undersea Mystery With CT Scans
Using 3-D imaging, researchers have finally discovered how brittle stars—tiny starfish-like creatures—can carry so many babies inside their bodies at once.
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NOAA Fisheries / Christin Khan (collected under research … Making Facebook for Whales
Marine biologists have crowdsourced a facial-recognition algorithm to help them identify the animals on the spot.
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Elizabeth Preston Recalculating: The Mind and the Map
Not everyone's brains have the same sense of direction, even with the help of GPS.
