Grunts, barks, screams and pants ring through Taï National Park in Cȏte d’Ivoire. Chimpanzees there combine these different calls like linguistic Legos to relay complex meanings when communicating, researchers report May 9 in
Athletic, crocodile-like reptiles with bladed teeth made their last stand in the Caribbean as recently as 4.5 million years ago. New fossils unearthed in the Dominican Republic suggest the reptile group went extinct
Millions of years ago in Nebraska, chunky, stumpy-legged rhinoceroses were party animals, crowding together in huge herds at watering holes and rivers. Chemical signatures in the fossilized teeth of the extinct, corgi-shaped beasts
For Gila monsters that live in the warming Mojave Desert, relocating to beat the heat may not be so simple. While climate change might create some better habitats, the lizards could be left
Some of Sydney’s koalas are facing an uncompromising dilemma. The koalas living in one corner of Australia’s largest city are perilously inbred, researchers report February 26 in Conservation Genetics. But the solution —
Scaly sailors may have made a record-setting oceanic voyage. Tens of millions of years ago, iguanas in North America floated across the Pacific Ocean. Clinging to vegetation washed into the sea, they traveled
Zebra stripes? Leopard print? Neither were in vogue among the earliest mammals during the Age of Dinosaurs. Early mammals and their close relatives probably sported dark, drab coats from snout to tail, researchers
Hawaii’s male crickets can’t hide from their buzzing boogeymen for long. In just a handful of years, cricket-killing parasitic flies have evolved hearing that’s more sensitive to their prey’s new, covert love songs,
Mantis shrimp are famous for their ultrafast, powerful punches used to dispatch prey. They can land volley after shell-splintering volley, without major injury to their own nerves or flesh. That’s because the exoskeleton
In general, sharks have a reputation as swimming garbage cans that unflinchingly dine on whatever they can fit in their jaws. But in French Polynesia, blacktip reef sharks that frequent places where tourists
