The 2026 Nikon Small World in Motion competition drew 347 entries from 40 countries. After a late disqualification, a roundworm and a single-celled predator now hold first place. Meet the top three.
Two giant Australian stick insect species have just been named, one of them with eggs unlike any stick insect on record. The find shows how much insect biodiversity may still be hiding in plain sight.
We tend to think of "bioplastic" as a modern invention, something engineered in a lab to solve a very human problem. It turns out microbes got there first, by a few hundred million years. Many bacteria and archaea produce natural... Continue Reading →
Pollen has always looked like the perfect food for bees, but according to a new study led by the University of Oxford, that assumption doesn't quite hold up. It turns out pollen isn't really "for" bees at all: it's a... Continue Reading →
If you've ever sat on a porch with friends and ended up the only one covered in bites, you're not imagining it. For decades, the leading theories were folk wisdom, sweet blood, blood type, eating garlic or bananas. Recent lab... Continue Reading →
Anyone who's ever managed a team knows how hard it is to keep tasks organized. Now imagine doing it with no manager, no meetings, and no memos, just tens of thousands of workers instinctively knowing what to do. That's exactly... Continue Reading →
Octopuses are solitary, secretive animals. So how does one find a mate in the vast, dark ocean? Harvard biologists just found the answer, and it's wonderfully strange: they taste their way to love.
Every summer, the same folk wisdom resurfaces: triangular head, bad; round head, fine. Vertical pupils, run; round pupils, relax. It's tidy advice and it's dangerously unreliable. Herpetologists have been trying to kill this myth for decades, because acting on it... Continue Reading →
Octopuses have long been known as escape artists and problem-solvers, but a new Dartmouth study adds a striking skill to their résumé: they can use mirrors to locate prey hidden out of their line of sight, a form of spatial... Continue Reading →