Animals

From a snake's venomous fangs to the sharp spines that cover a cactus, puncture tools can be found right across the animal kingdom. While they come in all shapes and sizes, there's a fascinating force driving their diverse designs.

About a kilometer deep beneath the ocean surface, where sunlight disappears and food becomes scarce, lives a giant creature that can wait out starvation and survive more than five years without eating.

An international team of scientists led by researchers at Virginia Tech has completed the millipede family tree for the first time.

Why does the "poop emoji" look the way it does? Physics has the answer: as most animals defecate downward, each new coil falls a shorter distance, naturally forming the familiar tapered swirl.

One of the world's oldest turds has been given the royal science treatment, with ancient Arctic ground squirrel droppings offering a smorgasbord of DNA from other animals and plants dating back up to 700,000 years.

Domesticated from a now-extinct ox species around 10,500 years ago, cows have become a major source of protein, dairy, and leather worldwide. A study has now shown that cows can differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar faces.

Advances in understanding of neuron activity and adaptation during squirrel hibernation could help inform stroke treatment and recovery.

One of the world’s most dangerous birds may carry signals invisible to the human eye. Scientists have found that the helmet-like casque atop a cassowary’s head fluoresces under UV light, revealing striking patterns that differ between species.

When escaped domestic pigs bred with wild boar after the Fukushima evacuation, researchers gained a rare chance to observe large-scale hybridization. The result offers a new lens on how fast-breeding traits can quietly reshape wildlife genetics.

The earliest ancestors of all backboned animals, including humans, may have viewed the world with four eyes, not just two, according to a new study. The remnants of those extra eyes persist deep in the human brain today as the pineal organ.

For more than a century, biologists assumed that the bony plates found in the skin of lizards – nature's chain mail – were an ancient feature that some lineages inherited and others later lost. But new evidence suggests this is entirely wrong.

Spelling F-O-O-D or O-U-T might only get you so far around your dog if he or she is considered a Gifted Word Learner. Researchers have just figured out that even when you're not talking to them directly, they're still acquiring new terms.