Mental Floss

BIOLOGY













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Bats are the masters of late-night snacking thanks to echolocation, and use ultrasonic chirps and the resulting echoes to find their prey in the dark. The bio-sonar has one big drawback, though. It’s vulnerable to interference.

Matt Soniak




South Africa’s samango monkeys live on what ecologists call a “vertical axis of fear.” They live and eat in trees, and if they climb too high looking for food, they’re liable to get attacked and eaten by an eagle. If they venture too low, it’s leopards an

Matt Soniak

The red shiner is just a few inches long, and has no big scary fangs, no claws, no stinger and no poisonous spines. The little minnow probably isn’t an animal that would ever strike fear in anyone’s heart, but it’s a fierce conqueror.

Matt Soniak
Sarah Knutie, University of Utah

In the 1990s, the fly Philornis downsi was accidentally introduced to the Galapagos Islands, probably in a shipment of fruit. The adult flies are harmless enough as invaders go, but their kids are a real problem for the islands’ native birds, some of whic

Matt Soniak