In a bid to study and protect great hammerhead sharks, a marine scientist hopes to attach satellite-tracking tags to the 500-pound (230-kilogram) predators—by hand.
Straddling religion and medicine, the ancient practice may help treat infertility, skin diseases, and other ailments, according to doctors and the Dalai Lama.
In times of economic crisis, natural disaster, and other stresses, mothers tend to produce fewer male children. New research suggests a reason for the decline.
It may be a threat to humans' long-term future on the planet, but climate change may have helped bring us into being in the first place, some scientists say.
Score one for the Swiss-Army-knife theory. A new study hints that brains are made up of distinct parts dedicated to distinct tasks, including recognizing faces.
Rats can locate the direction of a stench's source in a single sniff, new research shows. The find provides insight into the spatial dimension of smell and the speed at which the brain operates.
Vikings often filed grooves in their teeth for looks, a new study says. Did voyaging Norsemen pick up the custom from as far away as Africa? Or North America?
A big decision from the International Olympic Committee may have mapmakers and atlas editors rethinking what to call the host city of this winter's games.
Deep in a South Pacific island jungle, explorers have uncovered an Eden thriving with unknown kangaroos, birds, bugs, and more, the scientists announced today.
Find out why tiger sharks make more meals of the sleek, high-flying loggerhead sea turtle than its slower bottom-swimming cousin, the green sea turtle.
A study of three ancient communities sheds light on the historical differences between cultures around the globe, as well as how and why people learned to work together.
A newly discovered dinosaur from China that had an elaborate head crest and other birdlike features is the oldest known ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, scientists say.
A recent law was designed to end the processing of horses for meat in the U.S., but three foreign-owned plants will be exempt, due to a new decision by the Department of Agriculture.
Explore one of Earth's biggest biodiversity hotspots—the islands stretching from Indonesia to the Philippines—and experience the sizeable wildlife that thrives there.
"I wish we hadn't had to do it," said NASA's administrator in response to criticism of the plan to redirect funds from scientific exploration to human spaceflight.
Harmless-looking birds on the Galápagos Islands have developed a surprising technique for surviving the dry season—drinking the blood of other, larger birds. Watch the "vampire birds" in action.
Olympic organizers promise that the Turin Games will be "the greenest ever." But conservationists warn of a larger environmental crisis looming at the games' Alpine site.
The bears could be the first mammals officially deemed endangered due to global warming, possibly indicating a shift in Bush Administration thinking on climate change.
For these baby polar bears, the lessons they learn will be key to their survival. Watch as a mother polar bear teaches her young the secrets of hunting, fighting, and even playing.
A discovery could spur the development of a tool that would allow doctors to detect diseases like cancer by listening to the sounds of their patient's bodies.
Think Valentine's Day's rough for humans? Mating nurse sharks put up with biting, shoving, and wrestling. Get a rare eye on the action via a shark-mounted camera.
Watch the black widow spider's delicate courtship ritual, and find out what the male spider is willing to sacrifice in the name of reproductive success.
New generations of cane toads in northern Australia have evolved longer legs, allowing the toxic invaders to spread across the continent at a much faster rate.
A multinational team of astronomers has discovered an entirely new kind of cosmic object—a Rotating Radio Transient, or RRAT—that is likely related to pulsars.
See the first video of pygmy sloth inaction. As our photographer closes in on the treetop animal, the sloth meets its first human visitor with a stare … and a snooze.
Scientists have found that African elephants can detect the calls and foot stomps of other elephants through underground vibrations. Watch as an elephant demonstrates how she can "hear" with her feet.
A thousand times more powerful than those on Earth, lightning bolts are striking the ringed planet during gargantuan storms imaged by a NASA spacecraft.
The island's glaciers are slipping into the Atlantic twice as fast as they were five years ago, a new report says. They could, in turn, accelerate the rising of the seas.
They're tireless defenders, life-saving rescuers, and even amateur therapists. Learn how cultures around the world have benefited from the efforts of working dogs.
A North Island brown kiwi hatched at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C.—only the second of these rare flightless New Zealand birds to hatch during the zoo's 116-year history.
Which president grazed sheep on the White House lawn? Better yet, who made a habit of swimming the Potomac River in the nude? Explore the hidden history of the U.S. presidency.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water … Shark attacks are down for the fifth straight year, but the long-range trend isn't so promising.
With no natural enemies, alien species can overwhelm their adopted homes. But some scientists import invaders' foes from their native lands and pit alien against alien.
Dr. Frankenstein couldn't have made a more convincing beaver-platypus-otter mix. This Chinese fossil find—the oldest known swimming mammal—is making a big splash.
Only 400 of today's public U.S. bison are genetically pure—the rest have some amount of cow DNA. Watch as a helicopter rounds up purebreds to start a new healthy herd on the prairie.
Olympic athletes hoping to win men's curling medals tomorrow can go to the games a tad wiser now that physicists may have solved one of the sport's biggest mysteries.
In the search for other habitable planets, scientists are narrowing down the list of stars in our galaxy that might have what it takes to support life in their orbit.
Rumors of twins have been swirling around a certain heavenly body lately (hint: we're not talking about Angelina Jolie). Now the truth can be revealed.
Humans' thirst for bottled water now tops 40 billion gallons a year. But campaigners say the portable potable really isn't any safer than tap water in most countries.
An ancient medical mystery—the cause of a plague that wracked Athens around 430 B.C. and contributed to its fall—has been solved by DNA analysis, researchers say.
In the wake of last year's unprecedented hurricane damage, questions are being raised about whether rebuilding should be allowed on the U.S.'s hurricane-vulnerable coastlines.
The facial tumors that could destroy Australia's Tasmanian devils is spread by bites, scientists say—the first known instance of cancer spreading this way.
Reserve areas established for Brazil's indigenous peoples are as effective as uninhabited nature parks in preventing destruction to Amazon rain forests, a new study has found.
A new study suggests that the Mormon cricket's infamous appetite for destruction may have an unusual cause: a fear of being cannibalized by fellow crickets.
Scientists say they have discovered the remains of the tiny "kingdom" of Tambora, thought to have been wiped out by the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history.
From red tide to cat feces, experts are painting a new picture of marine contaminants that shows some surprising health connections between land and sea.
