Biology Popular Science

Frogs are often thought of as animals with a two-part life: they hatch as tadpoles, then undergo metamorphosis into four-limbed adult frogs. Yet in the evolutionary history of Anura, many frogs have taken a different route. They have removed the tadpole stage from their life cycle, allowing the embryo to develop directly inside the egg into a small frog. This pattern is known as direct development. It is typically characterized by eggs laid in terrestrial environments. In som

Every movement an animal makes contains a wealth of quantifiable detail: the position of the nose, the angle of the limbs, the swing of the tail, shifts in the body's center of mass, and each episode of rearing, running, exploration, or stillness. All of these can serve as clues for understanding the nervous system, disease, animal welfare, and ecological adaptation. In the past, accurately tracking animal movement from video usually required researchers to select images, man

As more and more studies and observations have been conducted, scientists have discovered that many animals possess cognitive abilities far beyond what people once believed. Among the most remarkable examples are elephants. Not only do they possess complex social structures, but they also display many unusual behaviors. Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), for instance, have even been observed burying and mourning dead calves. These findings have led scientists to wonder what o

Pachylus is a Neotropical South American genus of harvestmen, named as early as 1839 and classified in the order Opiliones, family Gonyleptidae, subfamily Pachylinae. (Figure 1) Male Pachylus crassus（Image source：gatofans(ika)， CC BY-NC 4.0 ） Members of the genus are now regarded as largely restricted to central Chile. Earlier records had suggested that they also occurred in Argentina and Uruguay, but those reports were later shown to be erroneous. Shared features of Pachylus

The flight of winged reproductive termites, known as alates, marks a critical moment in the life of a colony. At a particular season, mature alates leave their original nest, fly to new locations, find mates, and attempt to establish new colonies. Many termites choose to undertake this risky journey during the rainy season or shortly after rainfall. The reason is practical: rain softens the soil, making it easier for newly landed alates to dig into the ground and begin life i

Many animals rely on visual information to interpret their surroundings, including detecting predators, locating prey, and identifying conspecifics. The extent to which sightlines can extend depends on habitat structure, including vegetation density, tree distribution, and topographic variation. Visibility can be defined as the spatial extent of all unobstructed sightlines originating from a given vantage point. This spatial extent determines both the amount and direction of

Honey bees are insects that collect nectar from flowers. They bring the nectar back to the hive, where it undergoes a series of processes and is ultimately converted into honey—a sweet food widely enjoyed by humans. Honey bees typically form large colonies, living together within a hive. Within the colony, different individuals perform different tasks, and naturally, a group of bees is responsible for nectar foraging. Bee（Image source：Gideon Pisanty (Gidip) גדעון פיזנטי， CC B

The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), one of the largest living lizards, can reach a body mass of around 80 kilograms and inhabits several islands in Indonesia. Its prey includes large mammals such as deer and wild pigs. Its predatory ability does not rely solely on body size or bite force. Instead, its teeth are ziphodont, with serrated edges that effectively tear through skin and muscle, inflicting extensive soft tissue damage. Komodo dragon（Image source：Jakub Hałun， CC

In social groups formed by highly social animals, hierarchical structures are often present. Individuals compete with one another to defend or improve their status, and the winners are able to maintain or elevate their rank within the group. As a result, dominant positions in social groups are usually occupied by young and healthy individuals. However, exceptions do exist. For example, researchers once observed a male chimpanzee that had lost one arm due to polio, yet still a

When people first encounter accounts of feral children, what tends to seize their attention most readily are the outwardly strange details: children running with a wolf-like gait, communicating through barking, eating raw food, avoiding human company, and lacking language. These images are undeniably striking, yet they also invite misunderstanding. They can make the study of feral children seem like little more than a collection of bizarre tales from places where civilization

In polar ice fields or forested landscapes, when a bear weighing several hundred kilograms approaches—an animal whose sense of smell and physical strength far exceed those of humans—the effectiveness of any defensive measure can determine whether a person survives. For a long time, human responses to bears have relied on experience, anecdotes, and survival strategies passed down through word of mouth. Some suggest climbing trees, others recommend slowly backing away to avoid

Snakebite envenomation, when viewed on a global public health scale, is a major yet persistently underestimated problem. Each year, tens of thousands of people die, and millions suffer varying degrees of envenomation, particularly in regions with limited access to healthcare. Once venom enters the human body, it can trigger a cascade of effects involving the nervous system, hematologic system, kidneys, and even the entire life-support system. （Image source：Jasper Nance， CC B

When people watch swifts slicing across the sky, they rarely imagine that this flight represents a lifestyle that is almost completely detached from the ground. Swifts (family Apodidae) and swallows of the order Passeriformes are evolutionarily distant and belong to entirely different groups of birds. Swifts are highly adapted to an aerial lifestyle: their food consists mainly of airborne insects, and even nest material is typically collected while in flight. During the non-b

Albatrosses of the family Diomedeidae are long-lived birds, many of which commonly survive for more than 50 to 60 years. They breed at a low frequency, lay only a single egg at a time, and invest several months in chick rearing. Raising each chick is therefore extremely costly, and much of parental behaviour revolves around two central questions: how long the brood-guarding period should last, and when it is appropriate to leave the chick unattended for extended periods. When

In 1987, researchers in Texas, USA, observed something astonishing inside the nests of the Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio): live Texas blind snakes (Rena dulcis). These snakes had been brought directly into the nest by the adult owls, yet they were not eaten by the nestlings. Instead, they remained alive, moving and burrowing through the nest material and debris as if they were another resident of the nest. Decades later, in 2025, a similar phenomenon was documented agai

For a long time, the Eurasian Scops Owl ( Otus scops ) has generally been known as an insect-eating owl during the breeding season, with a particular reliance on Orthoptera such as bush-crickets and grasshoppers. However, the finer details of its chick provisioning behavior have remained difficult to document. In this study, conducted in a peri-urban Mediterranean forest in northeastern Spain, researchers used a high-resolution night-vision camera to continuously record the p

Biodegradable plastics are increasingly being viewed as a potential solution to plastic pollution in the environment, as they are expected to shorten the residence time of these materials in natural systems and ultimately allow microorganisms to convert them into carbon dioxide and biomass. （Courtesy of Foster MJ et al. (2026) ） Among the many biodegradable plastics currently in use, aromatic aliphatic copolyesters combine two distinct chemical features within the same materi

As the most abundant and functionally diverse group of animals on Earth, insects form a fundamental part of ecosystem functioning, and the way they distribute their activity across the 24-hour cycle is central to that role. As early as the 19th century, naturalists had already noticed the differences between organisms active during the day and those active at night, and they also recognized the striking rise in biodiversity and vitality when moving from temperate regions towa

When animals are invaded by pathogens, the immune system initiates a series of coordinated responses involving behavioral, physiological, immunological, and metabolic adjustments, collectively known as the acute phase response (APR). While this response helps combat infection, it also incurs substantial energetic costs, increasing metabolic demands by approximately 5–15%. For free-living animals with unpredictable food resources, such energy expenditure can represent a signif

As octopuses navigate their surroundings, they extend their arms into crevices, burrows, and coral gaps, exploring environments where visibility is limited. Distributed across the suckers on their arms are dozens of chemotactile receptors (CRs), which allow them to "taste by touch." By contacting the surfaces of prey or other objects, octopuses probe the microbial signals present and use this information to guide subsequent behavioral decisions. Study organism: the California