Extra “eyes” on top of bee heads help them see colours the same way under all light conditions. And it’s an approach that could help us design better cameras.
Being blue is risky for superb fairy-wrens: males become more cautious when their plumage turns blue, and other wrens take advantage by using them as colourful decoys.
What can a single person’s flu infection tell you about how the virus changes around the world?
Xue and Bloom
Thirty years after the Supreme Court ruled that creationism cannot be required in schools, ‘creation science’ is still taught in some schools. What are the implications for climate education?
Out of all these ideas, will one rise to the top?
KlingSup/Shutterstock.com
We don’t know much about the origins of most human achievements – scientific and otherwise. Like evolution, does progress occur as random insights are selected for or against?
Here’s the fossil… what can you tell about how this animal lived?
Matteo De Stefano/MUSE-Science Museum
With no identifiable body parts, it’s hard to know how these fossilized creatures lived. A new approach models how the ocean’s water would interact with their unique shapes – hinting at their lifestyle.
I promise, it’s good for your brain.
Tambako The Jaguar/flickr
The theory that New Caledonia was a piece of land that separated from the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana was a seductive one. But then a cockroach rose up to challenge it.
Maëlle, 7, wants to know why some shells are smooth, while others are corrugated. It turns out that while corrugated shells are strong, smooth shells can move fast.
Local people at Tendaguru (Tanzania) excavation site in 1909 with Giraffatitan fossils.
Wikimedia Commons/Public domain
Africa has one of the world’s richest fossil records, and evidence suggests that amateurs collected really important fossils long before professionals arrived on the scene.
Twenty years after Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess, artificial intelligence can make games more fun, and perhaps even endlessly enjoyable, if it learns to adapt.
The stone flakes are flying, but what brain regions are firing?
Shelby S. Putt
We can’t observe the brain activity of extinct human species. But we can observe modern brains doing the things that our distant ancestors did, looking for clues about how ancient brains worked.
Did Puss in Boots have it all wrong?
Flickr/zaimoku_woodpile
Cats evolved in hot desert regions where there were lots of small animals to eat. So they evolved feet that are perfect for pouncing on prey, climbing, scratching and jumping from great heights.