Family Dinner Just Got a Whole Lot More... Competitive? 🐟 Animals (including us) often eat more when others are around. But why? Is it copying? Feeling safer? Getting distracted? Or does simply having others nearby flip a competitive switch? To test this, we studied zebrafish

Stress Isn't All Bad 🐒 While too much stress may shorten your lifespan, not enough might not be too good either! Researchers found that wild capuchins with higher stress responses to small droughts were twice as likely to survive the massive El Niño drought. This is compelling

Feeling Shy? You Might Just Be Sensitive! 🦀 A new study on hermit crabs found that those with a more sensitive sense were less bold. Researchers measured how long crabs hid after being poked in a startle test and found that crabs with more tiny sensory hairs (sensilla) on

Breeding Out Fear Increases Playfulness 🐔 Play isn’t just for people or pets! It’s found all across the animal kingdom. And now, new research shows it may also be tied to something unexpected: domestication. In this study, researchers looked at red junglefowl (the wild

Horses Learn by Eavesdropping on Us 🐎 In this study, researchers found that 12 out of 17 horses changed their feeding behavior after eavesdropping on a human-human interaction. When a familiar person either praised or scolded another person for eating from a certain bucket,

Is a Good Memory Inherited? 🐦 For food-storing birds, remembering where caches are hidden can mean the difference between survival and starvation. Some species can recall hundreds to thousands of food locations. Scientists expected that memory and caching strategies would have

Too Cool (and Competitive) for School 🐟 Blind cavefish live in pitch-black caves with no eyes or pigment. Although these fish evolve from highly social, sighted populations, they don’t form schools anymore. This change was long thought to be a side effect of losing their

Turtles Move with the Heat 🐢 Green turtles are famously slow and steady, but this study reveals they’ve been surprisingly quick to adjust their schedule in a warming world. Three decades of data from a beach in North Cyprus show that turtles are nesting earlier each year. Why?

A Hot Start, A Rough Future 🪲 Burying beetles have a unique parenting strategy: they turn animal carcasses into both a food source and a nursery for their young, then stay behind to feed and protect their larvae as they grow. However, new research shows that this finely tuned

Can Collars Capture Personality? 🐿️ Scientists wanted to know if accelerometer collars could measure personality in wild squirrels as well as traditional behavioral tests. Personality is often studied in controlled settings, but it’s unclear if those results reflect real-world

Reflection of Rank! 🪿 Aggression and dominance are closely linked in many animals, but figuring out who holds the top rank usually requires long-term observation of fights. This study introduces a faster way: a mirror test, which is typically used to measure aggression, may

Opposites Really Do Attract... When It Comes to Skill! 🦜 Budgerigars were trained on one of two puzzle food boxes: one required lifting a lid, while the other involved pulling a drawer. After training, females watched two males: one solving the same type of puzzle they had

Thermal Priming Allows Fish To Keep Their Cool! 🐟 Scientists uncovered a surprising ‘heatwave memory’ in threespine stickleback fish by raising three generations under different temperature conditions. Some fish got a mild heatwave before a stronger one, while others faced

Dads with Double Lives! 🐦 House sparrows might look like simple little birds, but their love lives are anything but! These birds form social pairs, meaning a male and female team up to build a nest and raise chicks together. Both parents help feed and protect their young,

Stinger Personalities! 🐝 Have you ever run away from a bee that seemed determined to come after you? Was it just bad luck, or was that bee naturally more aggressive? Turns out, some bees really are more likely to sting than others! In a fascinating study, scientists tested

Too Hot to Hatch? 🐦 Global warming is making life harder for seabirds, so the blue-footed boobies are adjusting their parenting strategy! These birds have a name that might seem unusual, but there’s a funny story behind it. Booby comes from the Spanish word bobo, meaning fool.

Dull Days Ahead? 🐦 How bright an animal looks isn’t just about genetics—color changes with age, nutrition, and environment! Researchers studied common waxbills, small birds with red bills and patches around their eyes and chests, to see how these factors affect their coloration

Optimism ≠ Boldness! 🐁 Are some animals naturally optimistic, expecting good things to happen, while others are pessimistic, always bracing for the worst? Scientists use the Judgement Bias Test (JBT) to see how animals interpret ambiguous situations. In this study, researchers

Do Monkeys Have Self-Awareness? 🐒 Imagine a baboon in the wild coming face-to-face with a mirror for the first time. What does it think? A new friend? A rival? Or does it recognize itself? Scientists wanted to find out if wild baboons understand that their reflection is them

Can Plants Recognize Their Family? 🌱 Let’s switch things up today and talk about plants! They might seem like passive, mindless organisms, just soaking up sunlight and growing wherever they land, but research suggests otherwise. A surprising discovery shows that plants can