In most North American hummingbirds, males court females by diving at them head on — but Costa’s hummingbirds (Calypte costae) perform their courtship dives off to the side. Researchers now find that this strategy allows […]
Birds that lived at the time of the dinosaurs might have been too heavy to sit on clutches of eggs without breaking them, according to an analysis of primitive avian fossils. The findings suggest that […]
How is it that fertilized chicken eggs manage to resist fracture from the outside, while at the same time, are weak enough to break from the inside during chick hatching? It’s all in the eggshell’s […]
Designer RNA molecules delivered through the nose show early promise for treating West Nile fever, trials in mice show. No effective therapies exist for the illness caused by a mosquito-borne virus, which can invade the […]
Birds share more readily after being given the avian equivalent of oxytocin, a hormone linked with social bonding and maternal behaviour in mammals. The hormone mesotocin boosts gregariousness in birds. To see what other powers […]
Maybe their moms told them nobody likes a showoff. That would explain why many species of chameleon are hiding fluorescent bone bumps on their heads that scientists only just discovered. Chameleons also have independently moving eyeballs, […]
Nearly 2,000 years ago, Pliny the Elder reported that hippopotamuses find relief from overeating by piercing their skin in a hippo version of bloodletting. Eventually, scientists learned that the oozing red stuff Pliny described isn’t […]
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