In a new paper appearing this week in Science, a group of biologists have shown that females themselves can also limit the evolution of increased elaboration. [...more]
What does it take to care for a pride of lions? Go behind the scenes with Great Cats Curator Craig Saffoe as he works with animal keepers and veterinarians to prepare the National Zoo's frisky lion cubs for their public debut. For more about the Zoo's growing pride and to watch them on live webcams: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GreatCats/default.cfm?cam=LC4 [...more]
The Smithsonian’s National Zoo recently welcomed two litters of lion cubs over a three-week period – bringing the total number of cubs to seven during the summer of 2010. [...more]
Darwin's bark spider cast giant webs across streams, rivers and lakes, suspending the web’s orb above water and attaching it to plants on each riverbank. Bridgelines of these water-spanning webs have been measured as long as 25 meters. [...more]
When it comes to brains, is bigger better? Can the tiny brain of a newly hatched spiderling handle problems as adeptly as the brain of a larger adult spider? [...more]
Recently, researchers from Boston University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama have been taking a closer look at the vibrations that red-eyed treefrog embryos use as cues to trigger early hatching. They discovered that treefrog embryos can evaluate different features of vibrations. [...more]
Describing his project of counting bears, bobcats and other predatory mammals along the Appalachian Trail, National Zoological Park wildlife ecologist William McShea looks to American literature for a comparison. [...more]
This fossil represents a new genus and species of extinct aneuretopsychid, Jeholopsyche liaoningensis, recently described in a paper in the journal ZooKeys by Conrad Labandeira of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Dong Ren and ChungKun Shih of the College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing. The aneuretopsychidae are a family of long-proboscid insects that lived in Asia from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous. The paper documents the first formal record of fossil Aneuretopsychidae in China. The new fossils reveal previously unknown and detailed structure of the mouthparts, antennae, head, thorax, legs and abdomen of this distinctive insect lineage.
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