#biology

Look closely at your fingertips. You will notice tiny lines, curves, and patterns covering the skin. They might look like ordinary marks, but they are actually one of the most fascinating features of the

Source: Photo by and (c)2008 Derek Ramsey (Ram-Man) — GFDL 1.2, Wikimedia Commons The Monarch Butterfly: Navigation Across Generations Every autumn, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies converge

When out and about in the city, I come across different bird species that frequent this urban environment on Canada's west coast. In this edition of #SMaP, I include an assortment of birds that I took

Source: Hrald — CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons The European Hedgehog: The Art of Hibernation As the nights grow cold in autumn, the European hedgehog prepares for one of the most dramatic physiological

Imagine a creature born when kings still ruled by divine right — and still swimming under Arctic ice today, completely unfazed. Image: a Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) — photo by Super Bomba,

Source: Böhringer Friedrich — CC BY-SA 3.0 at, Wikimedia Commons The Alpine Marmot: Six Months of Sleep in the Mountains High above the tree line in the Alps, the alpine marmot lives in a world where summer

A quite extensive collection of recently found mushrooms near Vienna

Good evening, everyone. OpenAI put out a new model for biology labs yesterday, and most of us cannot use it. That is not a mistake in the launch. That is the whole point of it. Quick take: GPT-6 Rosalind

Artificial intelligence designs viruses to combat diseases. A bacterial infection proved resistant to all available treatments, leading a group of researchers to turn to artificial intelligence to design

Source: Charles J. Sharp — CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons Migratory Birds and the Magnetic Compass Within Each autumn, a European robin weighing less than 20 grams departs Scandinavia and navigates thousands

I could hear the knock-knock sound as I approached the trail intersection. On either side, the forest was still thick in spite of the loss of foliage to the fall, I could scarcely peer through the entangled

Most animals get one life, lived in one direction: born, grow up, grow old, die. One tiny jellyfish never got that memo. Meet the immortal jellyfish. Turritopsis dohrnii is barely 4.5 millimetres across

Source: USFWS Midwest Region from Midwest Region, United States — Public domain, Wikimedia Commons The Snowshoe Hare: Changing Coats and a Ten-Year Cycle Every autumn, the snowshoe hare of North America's

The Christmas Island Red Crab: A Migration Timed by the Moon On Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, the forest floor is home to tens of millions of bright red land crabs. For

Every vaccine, every IV drug, every surgical implant you will ever receive was tested by an animal that has barely changed in 450 million years. Blue blood. Horseshoe crabs don't use hemoglobin like we

“All Fungi are edible. Some fungi are only edible once.” Terry Pratchett At the market the other day, I saw a mushroom grow kit, and I decided to give it a try. I like the idea of growing your own food,

Slugs are not the most charismatic of creatures, and we have a variety of them around these parts. You can find them on trails when the conditions are cool and moist, particularly in the fall and spring.

Photo of Cymothoa exigua in the mouth of a fish. Original photographer unknown. Just imagine opening a fish’s mouth and finding that its tongue has been replaced by a parasite. This is an interesting example

The Gibbon: Songs, Territories, and the Acrobat of the Canopy The gibbon moves through the forest canopy by brachiation — swinging hand over hand beneath branches — at speeds exceeding 55 kilometers per

The Hammerhead Shark: 360-Degree Vision and Electric Panorama The hammerhead shark's distinctive head shape — the wide, flat cephalofoil that gives the family its name — is one of the most immediately