THE NEW YORK TIMES: The tank looked empty, but turning over a shell revealed a hidden octopus no bigger than a Ping-Pong ball. She didn’t move. Then all at once, she stretched her ruffled arms as her skin changed from pearly beige to a pattern of vivid bronze stripes. “She’s trying to talk with us,”…
Read more The Search for a Model Octopus That Won’t Die After Laying Its Eggs
AUDUBON: She thought it was goo. That’s what my 5-year-old said later about noticing the little pink-and-gray heap on the ground as we walked home from the park. I was in a hurry; it was lunchtime and starting to sprinkle. But I turned back with my 2-year-old to see what my older daughter, calling to…
KNOWABLE: On dry nights, the San hunter-gatherers of Namibia often sleep under the stars. They have no electric lights or new Netflix releases keeping them awake. Yet when they rise in the morning, they haven’t gotten any more hours of sleep than a typical Western city-dweller who stayed up doom-scrolling on their smartphone. Research has…
Read more The Awake Ape: Why People Sleep Less than Their Primate Relatives
UNDARK: Ryan Grant was in his 20s and serving in the military when he learned that the numbness and tingling in his hands and feet, as well as his unshakeable fatigue, were symptoms of multiple sclerosis. Like nearly a million other people with MS in the United States, Grant had been feeling his immune system attack his…
Read more Scientists Debate the Role of a Virus in Multiple Sclerosis
THE NEW YORK TIMES: The elephant was alone and dehydrated when villagers first found her. It was September 2017, and the motherless mammal wandering near Boromo in Burkina Faso was only 2 or 3 months old. “She was tiny,” said Céline Sissler-Bienvenu, who is currently the senior program officer for European disaster response and risk…
Read more Reuniting an Orphan Elephant and Her Mom, Perhaps, With DNA and Luck
THE NEW YORK TIMES: This spring, as countries around the world told people to stay home to slow the spread of the coronavirus, doctors in neonatal intensive care units were noticing something strange: Premature births were falling, in some cases drastically. It started with doctors in Ireland and Denmark. Each team, unaware of the other’s…
Read more During Coronavirus Lockdowns, Some Doctors Wondered: Where Are the Preemies?
QUANTA: In a loudly bubbling laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, about 2,800 of the salamanders called axolotls drift in tanks and cups, filling floor-to-ceiling shelves. Up close, axolotls are just on the cute side of alien. They have fleshy pink bodies and guileless, wall-eyed faces. Unlike most salamanders, which metamorphose into land-dwellers as…
Read more Salamander’s Genome Guards Secrets of Limb Regrowth
THE CUT: I’ve taken countless videos of my daughter since she was born, but there’s one I can barely stand to watch. In it, she is 5 weeks old and screaming. Her face and tiny fists are tomato-red. Her gums are bared and her eyes are squeezed shut, and her head is twisting back and forth…
Read more My Baby Cried More Than Yours, and No One Knows Why
BIOGRAPHIC: “This one might be a little stinky,” says Tenaya Norris, a scientist at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California. Research assistant Barbie Halaska carries a limp, sodden carcass into the room and drapes it across a gleaming steel table. Even before the researchers slice into the tiny, brown California sea lion pup and remove…
QUANTA: A little blue-and-black fish swims up to a mirror. It maneuvers its body vertically to reflect its belly, along with a brown mark that researchers have placed on its throat. The fish then pivots and dives to strike its throat against the sandy bottom of its tank with a glancing blow. Then it returns to…
Read more A ‘Self-Aware’ Fish Raises Doubts About a Cognitive Test
THE NEW YORK TIMES: I never intended to be one of those people who would whip out a boob for a toddler old enough to demand milk using full sentences. When I was pregnant, I hoped I’d be able to breastfeed at all. If things worked out, I thought, I’d continue for a normal amount…
ORION: When I find Warren Senders on the side of a Boston suburbs highway, he is ready to hand me a sign that reads, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IS SOCIAL JUSTICE. It’s only 7:30 on a late September morning, but the day is already steamy. This makes his own sign, which leans against a guardrail and proclaims, CLIMATE…
Elizabeth Preston 