Biology

Dinosaurs may be long extinct, but 2025 made it clear that they’re anything but settled science. New fossils, reanalyses of famous specimens and increasingly sophisticated tools have helped us learn more about how they lived, moved, fed and evolved.

Deep underground in a dark, sulfuric cave, scientists have made an incredible discovery – a giant communal spider web spanning more than 1,000 square feet, home to an estimated 110,000 spiders that defy nature to coexist in harmony.

From fleas to mosquitoes, there's no shortage of organisms we consider pests. But thanks to new genetic detective work, scientists have named and shamed the resilient, highly adaptive – and frustratingly hard to kill – bug that got to us first.

Our taste for bread and pasta wouldn’t be the same if not for our ability to break down starch, a talent Peru’s Andean populations have taken to the extreme by evolving a unique profile of genes.

RNA can make copies of itself, and also catalyze its self-replication. But how could such a complex molecule in simple organisms copy itself without any mutations? And how did these complex molecules emerge before advanced life forms?

New research links fructose malabsorption — affecting more than half of healthy adults — to gut microbiome disruption, low-grade inflammation, and heightened anxiety, suggesting diet may play a larger role in mental health than previously recognized.

A recently published marine biology study shines a light on yet another damaging effect of the global illegal drug trade. Cocaine dumped in rivers can alter the behavior of fish in those waters, causing them to venture out more than usual.

When a behavioral ecologist gazed towards a group of emperor chichlids in Zambia recently, the fish seemed to be more alert and aggressive. That got him investigating whether they could really tell when they were being stared at.

The community of bacteria living in the intestines could be one of the drivers of memory loss in old age, says a new study. The finding could lead to new strategies to protect gut-brain communications and slow cognitive decline.

For decades, scientists believed that associative learning – understanding that two events are linked to each other – required at least some form of neural machinery. But now, a unicellular creature with no gray matter may upend this assumption.

The warm waters of Mexico and Texas are home to a small fish that has produced nothing but daughters for over 100,000 years. The offspring are the exact genetic copy of their mother, with no father involved. This is the amazing Amazon molly.

In 2023, a great white shark was caught off Spain, leading researchers to analyze historical data. They suggest these rare sightings aren't random anomalies but evidence of a "ghost" population persisting in the Mediterranean over centuries.

In January 2023, an infant monkey made a bad choice at snack time. In a rare discovery, researchers found that by eating a rodent known as a fire-footed rope squirrel, the primate unwittingly spread monkeypox to nearly a third of its troop.

Baby caterpillars have figured out how to get themselves the royal treatment in certain ant colonies – getting carried around like precious cargo, fed on demand, guarded and being rescued from danger – by posing as queen ants.

Researchers have identified a hybrid photoreceptor in the eyes of fish that carries traits of both rods and cones – a combination that doesn’t fit either category. It suggests the retina may be far more flexible than scientists have long assumed.

Some of us get bitten far more often than others – but it seems we each also appear tasty to different species of mosquito. New research illuminates what's making a given individual attractive, and to which mosquitos.

Sometimes, the most important paleontological discoveries may come from the most disgusting materials. A fossilized vomit sample dating back nearly 300 million years revealed how an ancient mammal gorged on all manner of prey.

Male nipples. Whale pelvic bones. Vestigial hind limbs in snakes. Evolution is full of features that look purposeful but are actually by-products with no explicit function. New research suggests the human chin may be one such evolutionary side effect.