Male bronze-winged jacana

A Father’s Day Shout Out to Animal Dads

This Father's Day, consider some of the busiest, quirkiest, and hardest working dads around—animal dads like the the jacana, Darwin's frog, and seahorse.
European Starlings

What If We Had All the Birds from Shakespeare in Central Park?

According to birding lore, two of America's most invasive bird species were introduced by a misguided Shakespeare fan named Eugene Schieffelin.
A bison beside a lake in Yellowstone National Park

How Not to Approach Wildlife in Yellowstone National Park

National parks like Yellowstone are great places to get close to nature, but tourists shouldn't forget that they are also important refuges for wildlife.
Science jars of formalin and fish

What Lies Beneath the Museum?

Paradoxically, museum specimens of long-dead animals may offer us the keys to protecting live ones.
Sapayoa aenigma, Nusagandi, Panama

The Sex Lives of Birds

Deep in a Central American rainforest, ornithologists have discovered that a rare bird has an unusual lifestyle.
A fox stands next to a car in a parking lot

Uptown Fox: On Wildlife in Cities

Urban environments are harsh, with only fragmentary remains of natural habitat. But human activity has driven a rise of wildlife in cities.
Colourful sponge garden with Sea Tulips (Pyura spinifera). Fly Point, Port Stephens, NSW

The Reef Hidden Beneath the Amazon Mud

A hidden sponge reef has been found in an unexpected place.
Inky the octopus swimming in a tank at the National Aquarium of New Zealand in Napier, New Zealand. Courtesy of the National Aquarium of New Zealand

The Flight of Inky the Octopus

Inky the Octopus made one of the natural world's most daring escapes when he somehow breached his tank to get to the Pacific. But how did he do it?
Cormorants on a Guano Island

Are We Entering a New Golden Age of Guano?

A history of civilization could be written in fertilizers. And the history of guano—bird poop—tells us a lot about slavery, imperialism, and U.S. expansion.
Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton (the specimen AMNH 5027) at American Museum of Natural History.

An Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs. Right?

What killed the dinosaurs? An asteroid wiped them out, right? New research suggests that even before that cataclysm, dinosaurs weren't doing so well.