Life

By studying the search algorithms of ants, researchers are discovering ways of making computer networks faster and smarter.

Unless you grew up in the muds of Mono Lake, you had better be careful opening that box.

Eyes in the darkness and a snowstorm in reverse, players in an ecological chamber play.

NPR's Robert Krulwich reports on an astonishing finding: blindfolded, no one can walk in a straight line.

Future rulers of the planet, the crows, unlike cats and other animals, are smart enough to work together. Video after the jump.

Half a millennium before Columbus' calamitous 1492 arrival in the Caribbean, DNA from the Americas may have infiltrated the European genome by way of a woman brought to Iceland by Vikings. Like the semimythical Pocahantas, her impact may have been far-reaching.

A morning on the slow but effective internet of the crows.

A study of the microbes in the guts of our closest relatives gives new meaning to the gut-check, finding that the mix of bacteria in our gastrointestinal tract is determined not solely by diet, but by evolution as well.

University of Newcastle researchers may have come up with a biotechnology answer to the roadway printer I posted about yesterday: bacteria modified to colonize cracks in concrete and fix ruined buildings and crumbling roadways.

Squid may be sending each other secret messages by visual means. Whether they use this talent to spam other squid is another question.