Wild Animals

The magnificent bryozoan is a colonial organism that lives in warm ponds and lakes usually east of the Mississippi River. So what's it doing in western Canada?

By Jesslyn Shields

Entire colonies of half a million venomous ants are one scary threat following serious flooding.

By Jesslyn Shields

Due to a quirk in their anatomy, injured hedgehogs can experience skin inflating to the size of a basketball, which can be a painful and life-threatening development.

By Laurie L. Dove

How giant squid process visual information has long been a mystery, but a new study finds their visual processing is surprisingly uncomplicated.

By Jesslyn Shields

Thanks to the excesses of narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar, Colombian waterways now house a population of these invasive African giants.

By Jesslyn Shields

Sure, these mammals may be cute and cuddly. But that doesn't mean their bite can't pack a punch.

By Kate Kershner

Eating wild turtles may sound like an easy catch for survival, but it's a bad idea for several reasons.

By Patrick J. Kiger

By frightening top predators, the fear of humans may be distorting ecosystem processes even more than previously imagined.

By Jesslyn Shields

A new scientific study reveals that the smells unique to meerkat communities aren't produced by the meerkats themselves.

By Chris Opfer

Part of the fun is trying to finagle a spot at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park viewing site in late spring.

By John Donovan

A new genetic analysis clarifies the evolutionary relationships between five modern and extinct elephant species.

By Jesslyn Shields

Despite our best efforts at eradicating them, rats keep outsmarting us. Here's how.

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

We've learned that young orangutans nurse for much longer than any other mammal, knowledge which could help conservation efforts.

By Jesslyn Shields

It's the first evidence researchers have of the whales using their "unicorn horns" to capture prey.

By Kate Kershner

The secrets to ladybugs' wing-folding could yield new designs in flying robots and even newfangled umbrellas.

By Amanda Onion

For one species of dragonfly, the hassle of dealing with aggressive suitors is worth playing possum over.

By Jesslyn Shields

Deprived of oxygen, naked mole rats can alter their metabolic functions to something less mammalian and more plantlike, burning fructose instead of glucose.

By Jesslyn Shields

It's like the movie "Groundhog Day" every April, but with hibernation, a smaller rodent and way more hormones.

By Jesslyn Shields

Spiders not only eat more meat than humans every year, they also spend a lot of time getting eaten themselves.

By Jesslyn Shields

Rhino herds defecate in giant, shared dung piles called midden, then they stick their noses in the stuff. Here's why.

By Jesslyn Shields

It's not easy being a starfish larva. Fortunately, the tiny creatures have an efficient way to get food and swim away.

By Alia Hoyt

It sounds crazy, but it's happened before, and it'll probably happen again.

By Joe McCormick

The feral pig population in the U.S. is a growing issue in nearly 40 states. The USDA hopes to wipe out the billion-dollar problem within a decade.

By Melanie Radzicki McManus

New fossil analysis details a microscopic organism from 540 million years ago that just might be a precursor to every vertebrate on the planet.

By Christopher Hassiotis

Shark shocker! This 'virgin birth' is the first example of a shark switching from sexual to asexual reproduction.

By Jesslyn Shields