Nature Video |
Featured
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News & Views |
From the archive: biological clocks, and a pollen puzzle about flies
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Nature Video |
Ant milk: The mysterious fluid that helps them thrive
The liquid secreted by ant pupae appears to be key to colony health.
- Nick Petrić Howe
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News & Views |
From the archive: human memory, and fungal cultivation by ants
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Nature Video |
Record-breaking ancient DNA found in frozen soil
Two-million-year-old DNA from extinct mammals has been sequenced, revealing a lost world in Greenland .
- Shamini Bundell
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Research Highlight |
New Year’s fireworks chase wild geese high into the sky
Tracking data show that the birds fly farther than usual on the last evening of the year and are more likely to switch roosting spots.
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News & Views |
A fluid role in ant society as adults give larvae ‘milk’ from pupae
Parental-care behaviours include mammalian lactation to provide milk for offspring. The discovery that adult ants harvest nutritious fluid from pupae and give larvae this fluid reveals social feeding that aids colony success.
- Patrizia d’Ettorre
- & Kazuki Tsuji
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News |
Pupating ants make milk — and scientists only just noticed
A nutritious fluid secreted by pupating ants helps to feed the rest of the colony, and could play a part in the evolution of social structures.
- Miryam Naddaf
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Nature Podcast |
Mysterious fluid from ant pupae helps feed colony
A previously unobserved source of ant nutrition, and the latest from the Nature Briefing.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Noah Baker
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Article
| Open AccessThe pupal moulting fluid has evolved social functions in ants
Ant pupae secrete a fluid, derived from the moulting fluid, that elicits parental care behaviour, provides nutrients for larvae and must be removed for pupal survival.
- Orli Snir
- , Hanan Alwaseem
- & Daniel J. C. Kronauer
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Article |
Cretaceous ornithurine supports a neognathous crown bird ancestor
A new taxon of toothed Late Cretaceous ornithurine preserving a pterygoid is reported, overturning assumptions about the nature of the ancestral crown bird skull.
- Juan Benito
- , Pei-Chen Kuo
- & Daniel J. Field
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News |
Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders
Study is one of the few to show the behavioural effects of Toxoplasma gondii in wild animals.
- Emma Marris
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News |
Why do bat viruses keep infecting people?
Landmark study reveals ‘spillover’ mechanism for the rare but deadly Hendra virus.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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News Round-Up |
Octopus TV, vaccine hoarding and climate inequality
The latest science news, in brief.
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News & Views |
From the archive: avian mimicry, and insect metamorphosis
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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News |
Chances of finding COVID-virus ancestor ‘almost nil’, say virologists
Genome analysis finds SARS-CoV-2 and bat coronaviruses shared an ancestor just a few years ago, but extensive recombination has muddied the picture.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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News |
Duck! Octopuses caught on camera throwing things at each other
Cephalopods living unusually close together have been filmed throwing shells, algae and silt — sometimes at another octopus.
- Emma Marris
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Article |
Synchrotron tomography of a stem lizard elucidates early squamate anatomy
A study using high-resolution synchrotron phase-contrast tomography documents the near-complete skeleton of a stem squamate, Bellairsia gracilis, from the Middle Jurassic epoch of Scotland, providing insights into early squamate anatomy.
- Mateusz Tałanda
- , Vincent Fernandez
- & Roger J. Benson
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Research Highlight |
Plagued by problem birds? Call RobotFalcon!
A robotic bird of prey scares off nuisance flocks in a flash — and they don’t seem to get wise to the deception.
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News & Views |
Embrace wobble to level flight without a horizon
The apparent motion of a flier’s surroundings is shown to stabilize its flight by providing information about its orientation. Lapses in information are overcome through the effects of sensor noise and body oscillations.
- Graham K. Taylor
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News |
Orangutan genome mix-up muddies conservation efforts
Reanalysis of landmark paper finds that eight genome sequences were mistakenly assigned to the wrong orangutans. The impacts on research are as-yet unclear.
- Freda Kreier
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Article |
Ion regulation at gills precedes gas exchange and the origin of vertebrates
Measurements in three taxa with the characteristics of vertebrate ancestors (lamprey ammocoetes, amphioxus and acorn worms) suggest that gas exchange at gills has a vertebrate origin, but that ion regulation at gills has an earlier and possibly stem deuterostome origin.
- Michael A. Sackville
- , Christopher B. Cameron
- & Colin J. Brauner
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Article
| Open AccessAccommodating unobservability to control flight attitude with optic flow
Attitude can be extracted from optic flow when combined with a motion model that relates attitude to acceleration direction, which leads to stable flight attitude control with slight oscillations due to unobservable conditions.
- Guido C. H. E. de Croon
- , Julien J. G. Dupeyroux
- & Franck Ruffier
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Nature Video |
The shape-shifting robo-turtle
New amphibious soft robot makes efficiency games with morphing limbs
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Nature Video |
Exoskeleton boots could power your walk by learning your stride
New design uses model based on lab data to adapt for wearers while in use.
- Dan Fox
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Nature Index |
Insects offer inspiration for robot advances
Invertebrates offer solutions to building microbots the size of a fly.
- Neil Savage
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Research Highlight |
How blind fish find their way in pitch-black caves
Species with very small eyes or no eyes at all have a highly uneven distribution of sensory receptors on their heads.
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News & Views |
Female birds disguised as males get extra food
Around 20% of female hummingbirds have plumage that is characteristic of the males of the species. Evidence for why this happens offers a surprising perspective on how evolution helps to maintain colour variations.
- Tim Caro
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Research Highlight |
Freeze, thaw, repeat: chilled tardigrades still reach a ripe old age
The little animals known for their toughness have normal lifespans even when subjected to multiple cycles of freezing and thawing.
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Article |
The oldest gnathostome teeth
Direct evidence for the presence of jawed vertebrates in the early Silurian (around 439 million years ago) is provided by isolated tooth whorls of the gnathostome Qianodus duplicis from Guizhou province, China.
- Plamen S. Andreev
- , Ivan J. Sansom
- & Min Zhu
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Article |
Galeaspid anatomy and the origin of vertebrate paired appendages
Articulated remains of Tujiaaspis vividus reveal that galeaspids—extinct jawless vertebrates—had precursors to paired pectoral fins that consisted of paired, continuous pectoral–pelvic lateral fins that passively generated lift.
- Zhikun Gai
- , Qiang Li
- & Min Zhu
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Article |
Spiny chondrichthyan from the lower Silurian of South China
Fanjingshania renovata possesses dermal shoulder girdle plates and fin spines similar to those of a subset of stem chondrichthyans, but also has osteichthyan-like resorptive shedding of scale odontodes and an absence of odontogenic tissues in its spines.
- Plamen S. Andreev
- , Ivan J. Sansom
- & Min Zhu
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Where I Work |
Preventing disease transmission between people and wildlife
Conservation scientist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka looks after the health of mountain gorillas and livestock in southwest Uganda and teaches local residents how to avoid illness.
- Christopher Bendana
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Nature Video |
Wasp-inspired drones can 3D print a building
Teams of aerial robots mounted with 3D printers could work together to build emergency shelters and greener homes.
- Shamini Bundell
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Research Highlight |
Got rhythm? Male rock hyraxes that keep the beat have breeding success
The little mammals are accomplished vocalists — but some males are more accomplished than others.
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News & Views |
From the archive: how laughter evolved, and mysterious sea creatures
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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News Feature |
The fraught quest to account for sex in biology research
Funders and publishers are increasingly asking researchers to account for the role of sex in experiments — a requirement that’s contentious and hard to get right.
- Emily Willingham
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News & Views |
How red pigments are produced in fish and fowl
The enzymatic pathway has been characterized for the production of ketocarotenoids: the red pigment in some birds’ feathers and in eye cells that detect red light.
- Natasha Bray
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Research Highlight |
Dogs cry with gladness when greeting their humans
Canines’ weeping makes them the first non-human animal known to shed happy tears.
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News |
Climate change is making hundreds of diseases much worse
Heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms push up the number of cases, make diseases more severe and hamper people’s ability to cope.
- McKenzie Prillaman
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Research Highlight |
How a sponge ‘sneezes’ mucus: against the flow
A seemingly simple marine animal clears particles from its tubes with sneeze-like contractions.
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News |
How a scandal in spider biology upended researchers’ lives
Although Jonathan Pruitt, the researcher at the centre of a retractions scandal, has resigned, former lab members and collaborators continue dealing with the fallout.
- Max Kozlov
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News & Views |
From the archive: a tribute to Graham Bell, and a description of a whale
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Research Highlight |
Bonobo apes pout and throw tantrums — and gain sympathy
Primates that showed infantile behaviour after losing in a conflict drew consolation from their companions.
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News |
Tens of thousands of people exposed to bat coronaviruses each year
These infections increase the risk of the next pandemic.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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Research Highlight |
The fungus that entices male flies to mate with female corpses
Dead, spore-infested female flies lure males to their doom, perhaps with an attractive odour.
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News |
Ear fossils hint at origin of warm-blooded mammals
Analysis suggests that the cold-blooded ancestors of mammals evolved faster metabolisms in the Late Triassic period, roughly 230 million to 200 million years ago.
- Bianca Nogrady
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Nature Podcast |
How researchers have pinpointed the origin of ‘warm-blooded’ mammals
Ancient inner ears give clues to when mammals evolved ‘warm-bloodedness’, and an efficient enzyme that pulls carbon dioxide out of the air.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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Article |
Inner ear biomechanics reveals a Late Triassic origin for mammalian endothermy
The functional morphology of the fluid-filled semicircular ducts of the inner ear is adapted to body temperature and behavioural activity and can be used to investigate the evolution of endothermy.
- Ricardo Araújo
- , Romain David
- & Kenneth D. Angielczyk