Dyslexia is typically seen as a reading disorder, but many dyslexics are also known to have trouble processing sensory information. Research now reveals that dyslexics find it especially difficult to shift their attention between visual and audio stimuli. This suggests that brain training with action video games could…
Numerous animals, humans included, have adapted to living in cold climates by increasing their body size. And now, researchers have found that people living in colder regions have more obesity-related gut microbes than their warm-region counterparts. Are bacteria the reason why it's harder to lose weight in the snow?
Losing your sight early in life is often said to heighten other senses, particularly hearing. A new study now shows that even a short, weeklong stint in complete darkness can result in superhuman hearing, at least temporarily. This suggests that a kind of darkness therapy may help restore hearing to adults suffering…
For the first time, scientists have shown that they can predict when people will make risky decisions based on brain activity patterns. Could this lead to a world where we consult brain scans to predict whether we're making a risky choice or not?
The rainforests of the world are rapidly disappearing due to a range of issues, including illegal logging and cattle ranching. Now, researchers have pinpointed another surprising factor in the destruction of the rainforests in Central America: Drug trafficking.
Centuries ago, scientists relied on paintings and illustrations of animals to learn more about their anatomy. Today, that biology-art bond is as strong as ever. This is Carly Tribull, a PhD student studying the evolution of parasitic wasps, who uses her scientific knowledge and artistic talent to create fun…
Once a week, three-toed sloths slowly descend from the leafy forest canopy to poop on the ground. Why do these sluggish mammals go on such a long and potentially dangerous journey instead of just letting it fly from the treetops? Scientists now believe the answer has to do with the odd, symbiotic relationship between…
Small flying robots often take design cues from the flapping wings of insects and birds. But this robot prototype, pictured above, doesn't move like any wind-loving creature here on Earth — instead, it flies like the jellyfish swims. And the story of its invention is pretty weird.
Scientists had long thought that hind legs only evolved after animals crawled up on land. But a new fossil discovery has turned that idea on its head. We're getting closer to fully understanding the evolutionary steps that led animals out of the sea and onto four legs.
One popular idea to explain the current obesity epidemic proposes that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had a fat-storing adaptation, which allowed them to survive frequent famines. Today, with our overabundance of food, this adaptation is causing us to get fat. There's just one problem with this idea — research now…
How people develop long-lasting taste aversions has intrigued scientists for decades. Surprisingly, research now shows this phenomenon doesn't occur in the brain area involved in taste perception, as previously believed — this discovery could not only help us better understand our taste system, but also why people eat…
Throughout the tropical forests of the world, there's a parasitic fungus that turns unwitting ants into "zombies." Just how the fungus is able to control the brains of its insect slaves is unknown, but Charissa de Bekker, a post-doctoral researcher at Penn State University, is determined to find out. We caught up with…
Our galaxy is filled with massive planets known as super-Earths. But what these planets are like has been anyone's guess. Now, for the first time, astronomers have determined that a super-Earth 42 light years away is incredibly cloudy – and that could affect our search for life on these potentially habitable worlds.
Unlike all other primates, clawed New World Monkeys almost always give birth to twins. But why? It turns out these animals have a unique set of adaptations that make it possible — and could prove useful to humans as well.
Meet the tobacco hornworm, a caterpillar that regularly eats tobacco leaves loaded with nicotine. Research now shows this little bugger has a strange and unique defense against hungry spiders: It "puffs out" nicotine, creating a kind of toxic bad breath.
It's easy to think that Neanderthals were dumb brutes, incapable of complex speech like us. But it turns out that a Neanderthal's hyoid — a small bone in the neck that supports the tongue and is crucial for speech — worked in a very similar way to your own hyoid. Does this mean they could talk like (and with!) humans?
Plenty of social animals have ways to police each other's behavior — so that if an animal enters the wrong territory or reproduces when it's not supposed to, it's punished. But researchers have found that banded mongooses have a more repressive system, which forces all females to give birth at the same time. Or else.
Humans often rear their children with help from family and friends. But why would such a strategy evolve? What could we possibly get out of rearing somebody else's child? Now, scientists believe that they've unraveled this mystery — at least when it comes to birds. In some species, birds temporarily forgo having…
For some male spiders, sex can come with a very high price: Death. How, then, do they get it on without becoming their cannibalistic mate's snack? Scientists have found that male orb-web spiders save their skin by performing a smooth move called the "shudder," which has the amazing ability to reduce female aggression.
Researchers studying a 5,000-year-old archaeological site in China have discovered that wildcats first came to ancient villages to feed on rodents, which were stealing farmers' grains. The research shows, for the first time, how the process of cat domestication started.
