Animals

Your Dog's Interest in You Might Be Genetic

Beagles who sought out human interaction in a laboratory study showed more activation in certain genomic regions.

Why Do Alligators Fall Asleep if You Rub Their Bellies?

Don't try this at home.

10 Big-Mouthed Facts About Basking Sharks

The second-largest living fish is a gentle giant with some peculiar habits and a knack for instigating cryptozoological debates.

Steven G. Johnson via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0

Invasive Comb Jellies Crowd the Adriatic Sea

Commerical fish populations are under threat.

Angsar Walk via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0

Whaling Voyages Also Devastated Walruses and Many Other Animals

A forthcoming study by a class of undergraduate scientists explores the widespread and surprising ecological costs of the 19th-century whaling boom in the United States.

15 Amazing Animal Reunions

If these long-lost animals could talk, they’d have quite a story to tell.

What Can Urban Wildlife Teach Us About Pollution?

Pigeons are like urban canaries in a coal mine. But they're not the only ones cluing us in.

Triclops200 via Wikimedia // CC BY-SA 3.0

Alien ‘Dragon Boogers’ Are Clogging Californian Waters

They don't actually come from outer space, although they look like it.

DNA of Ancient Cats Traces the Path of Their Global Conquest

Cats have been using humans for thousands of years.

Conservationist Recruits RC Cars to Protect the Desert Tortoise

Each "Guardian Angel" rover can be controlled from the web.

Pigeons Can Distinguish Written Words From Nonsense

These common birds are masters of the four-letter word.

If you lived in Holmfirth, England, in the 1940s, there's a good chance you would've found a tiger like this one wandering around town.

The Tiger Who Came to Tea … In the Middle of Rural Yorkshire

Long before the reign of the Tiger King, the Overend family owned Fenella, a tame tiger was permitted to run wild in the fields around the English village of Holmfirth.

Water Bears’ DNA Makes Them Practically Indestructible

A new study suggests we could someday borrow the tardigrade’s resilience to use in our own flimsy bodies.

Denali National Park Has a 24/7 Sled Dog Puppycam

You can check in on Happy, Party, Piñata, Cupcake, and Hundo all day, every day.

Tool-Using Hawaiian Crows Join Bird Version of MENSA

The rare ‘Alalā species is only the second known crow species to use tools.

Do Dolphins Carry On Conversations?

A much-hyped new paper claims to have found evidence of human-like speech patterns in bottlenose dolphins, but other researchers are skeptical, to say the least.