1+ hour, 21+ min ago   (309+ words) lead image Baby seals rarely stray far from their homes. But they do explore, gradually, the area around which they were born, roaming further and further until they are ready to be on their own. For Annika Betken and Alexander…...

3+ week, 5+ day ago   (318+ words) lead image Mollusks are one of Earth’s most varied phyla, comprising nearly 100 thousand species. Many of these species have only barely been studied, and much about them remains unknown. Take Aegires albus, for instance: This species of sea slug lives…...

2+ mon, 1+ day ago   (140+ words) lead image In the middle of a forest, surrounded by a flickering insect constellation, your first thought is likely, “This feels magical,” followed by questions like, “Why do fireflies glimmer, anyway?” or “How does bioluminescence work?” “Real fireflies look much…...

2+ mon, 3+ week ago   (172+ words) lead image “Because the flaps are passive and flexible, they may not need motors or active control,” said author Young Dal Jeong. “They can move naturally with the flow, similar to feathers on bird wings.” The researchers conducted three sets…...

3+ mon, 1+ week ago   (21+ words) Comparing the mechanics of snail shells and ant mandibles provides clues about why there are shell fragments in ants’ garbage heaps....

3+ mon, 3+ week ago   (287+ words) lead image Conventional rheometric devices, such as cone-and-plate rotational rheometers, need to extract a fluid from its source to measure it, a process that can alter some fluid properties or can be impossible. But what if researchers could bring a…...

4+ mon, 2+ week ago   (202+ words) lead image Austin et al. analyzed the potential effects of marine vibroseis on marine mammals in a shallow, near-shore region of Cook Inlet, Alaska. The pilot study examined the first commercial use of underwater seismic vibroseis, measuring a low-frequency sweep…...

4+ mon, 3+ week ago   (273+ words) lead image Sea butterflies — free-swimming mollusks that belong to the order Pteropoda — use their unique winged structures for movement, propelling themselves around in the water by “flapping.” Even with detailed optical imaging, the hydrodynamics surrounding these pteropods are hard to…...

4+ mon, 4+ week ago   (249+ words) lead image One of the most well-known approximations in physics is the spherical cow. For generations, physicists have treated cows as spheres, a simplifying assumption to make the math easier. However, this approximation renders several problems unsolvable. Benjamin Lehmann improved…...

6+ mon, 1+ week ago   (302+ words) lead image When one conjures an image of a mollusk, such as a squid, snail, or a slug, it is easy to forget that these remarkable animals have teeth. That’s probably because these teeth — known as radula — aren’t very well…...