Biology

On a remote reef, endless streams of bubbles rise from cracks in the seabed into the shallow water, fed by an underground volcanic system. For scientists, this phenomenon has become a kind of crystal ball, revealing the changes that await marine life.

We'd like to welcome this curious armless burrowing lizard into the New Species Hall of Fame. Despite being built for life underground, in the end this slider skink was no match for scientists who had searched for a decade to confirm its existence.

You may be sitting on – so to speak – a very valuable asset that scientists would love to get their hands on: your poop. As well as blood, plasma and organs, you can now donate fecal samples to stool banks for research and use in transplants.

Inside the Exclusion Zone surrounding the Chornobyl nuclear plant, thousands of animals now roam freely. Among them are the stray dogs – around 900 descendants of the pets left behind, living in the shadow of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

Using advanced chemistry and AI, a team of Carnegie researchers uncovered new chemical traces of Earth's earliest life in 3.3‑billion‑year‑old rocks, and evidence that oxygen‑producing photosynthesis began over 800 million years earlier than thought.

As our evolution slows and industrialization and technology accelerates, research suggests that human biology is struggling to keep pace. A new study investigated whether rapid and extensive environmental shifts have compromised the fitness of Homo sapiens.

A stealthy parasite queen can turn an ant colony against itself. The invading queen has been found to sneak into an ant colony, creep towards the resident ant queen, and spray a chemical that tricks ants into slaughtering their own mother.

In a first, scientists believe they have confirmed we have another sense – a “remote touch” that we share with others in the animal kingdom, like some shorebird species that can sense prey beneath sand without seeing or touching it first.

At the bottom of the ocean, where metal-rich hydrothermal vents exhale poison, a bright yellow worm has mastered an impossible art: turning lethal elements into armor. Meet Paralvinella hessleri, the deep-sea super-worm that turns arsenic into crystal.

A new species of jellyfish, named after a samurai warrior, has been identified off the coast of Japan and its discovery is more than just a biological curiosity. It reveals ocean currents changing and marine migration routes shifting.

You won't find us endorsing aggression towards animals very often, however, scientists have discovered that raising your voice to seagulls – especially if you're male – will make them think twice about stealing your food. It's simply science.

An ambitious plan to generate sequence genomes for 1.85 million species on our planet is underway. It's a major undertaking that'll dramatically enhance our understanding of biology, and inform conservation efforts. Thankfully, AI is lending a hand.

Don't be fooled by that soft-looking down and pretty faces – woodpeckers are tough, tree-pounding beasts who simultaneous harden their whole bodies like a hammer and grunt as they drill away with force of up to 30 times their weight.

Spots and stripes serve many purposes in nature, but how they form has been more of a mystery. Now, researchers have advanced their breakthrough theory – and it could help us design materials that can respond to the environment and change color on demand.

Ultra-slow-motion footage has revealed that snake strikes aren’t the simple, lightning-fast stabs we imagine. Instead, each deadly family has evolved its own sinister, precision method for delivering venom in just milliseconds.