Escape artists: Birds learn to avoid flashy, hard-to-catch butterflies and their lookalikes
The showy colors of some butterflies could advertise their speed and nimbleness, much like a coat of bright yellow paint…
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Rise of marine predators reshaped ocean life as dramatically as mass extinctions
Evolutionary arms races between marine animals overhauled ocean ecosystems on scales similar to the mass extinctions triggered by global disasters,…
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Human eye beats machine in archaeological color identification test
A ruler and scale can tell archaeologists the size and weight of a fragment of pottery – but identifying its…
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Shark attack numbers remained ‘extremely low’ in 2020, but fatalities spiked
Shark attacks decreased for the third consecutive year, falling to 57 unprovoked bites worldwide in 2020, compared with 64 bites…
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Rare lichen unique to Florida discovered in museum collections, may be extinct
Scientists have found a new species of fleshy verdigris lichen, thanks to DNA analysis of museum specimens. Misidentified by its…
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New genus of tiny, iridescent snake from Philippines found in collection
To be fair, the newly described Waray dwarf burrowing snake is pretty great at hiding. In its native habitat on…
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Ancient DNA retells story of Caribbean’s first people
The history of the Caribbean’s original islanders comes into sharper focus in a new Nature study that combines decades of…
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Top killers of Florida birds: Trauma on land, starvation at sea
An analysis of birds that died at Florida wildlife rehabilitation clinics found songbirds and other land-dwelling species were most often…
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Remote Hawaiian island harbors last land snails of their kind
The island of Nihoa, a slice of jagged rock that juts out of the Pacific Ocean, is the sole refuge…
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Earliest example of a rapid-fire tongue found in ‘weird and wonderful’ extinct amphibians
Fossils of bizarre, armored amphibians known as albanerpetontids provide the oldest evidence of a slingshot-style tongue, a new Science study…
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