Octopuses appear to deliberately throw debris, sometimes directed at other octopuses, according to a study publishing Nov. 9 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE led by Peter Godfrey-Smith at the University of Sydney and colleagues. Researchers recorded the behavior of gloomy octopuses... Continue Reading →
The Giant Wood Moth is the heaviest moth in the world, with some females weighing up to 30 grams. The caterpillars of wood moths feed on plant roots, but the adults do not feed during their short life span. The... Continue Reading →
The axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is an aquatic salamander renowned for its ability to regenerate its spinal cord, heart and limbs. These amphibians also readily make new neurons throughout their lives. In 1964, researchers observed that adult axolotls could regenerate parts of their brains, even if a... Continue Reading →
Jumping spiders rapidly move their eyes and twitch during rest, suggesting they have visual dreams, never before observed in arachnids. An international team of researchers studied the retinal movements of baby jumping spiders as they slept and found they coincided... Continue Reading →
The octopus is an exceptional organism with an extremely complex brain and cognitive abilities that are unique among invertebrates. So much so that in some ways it has more in common with vertebrates than with invertebrates. The neural and cognitive... Continue Reading →
Johns Hopkins University researchers discovered precisely how spiders build webs by using night vision and artificial intelligence to track and record every movement of all eight legs as spiders worked in the dark. Their creation of a web-building playbook or... Continue Reading →
Rotifer, also called wheel animalcule, any of the approximately 2,000 species of microscopic, aquatic invertebrates that constitute the phylum Rotifera. Rotifers are so named because the circular arrangement of moving cilia (tiny hairlike structures) at the front end resembles a rotating... Continue Reading →
An evolutionary biologist from the University of Bonn brought a new octopus species to light from depths of more than 4,000 meters in the North Pacific Ocean. The sensational discovery made waves in the media a few years ago. Researchers... Continue Reading →
Octopuses have captured the human imagination for centuries, inspiring sagas of sea monsters from Scandinavian kraken legends to TV's "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and, most recently, Netflix's less-threatening "My Octopus Teacher." With their eight suction-cup covered tentacles,... Continue Reading →
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