Tartufo, the rosy-faced lovebird, has more limbs than you think. He’s got two wings, which, of course, he uses to fly. He’s got two legs, which he uses to grab branches and hop around the canopy. But when faced with an especially steep tree, he relies on a third: his head. Based on climbing experiments
No matter what terrifying figures the twisted human mind manifests, nature will always outdo our worst nightmares. With the spookiest time of year just around the corner, here are a few creepy crawlers to give you the shivers. Each creature on this list is real—and they don’t just exist at Halloween, either. We’ll start with
Growing up to 8 feet long and 1,700 pounds, polar bears are the largest carnivorous land mammals on the planet. Researchers have long tried to understand these enigmatic apex predators, but most wild polar bears live in hard-to-reach habitats above the Arctic Circle. Luckily, scientists don’t have to go all the way to the North
In the waters of the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt, bottlenose dolphins have a highly unusual relationship with their reef habitat. Divers frequently witness the marine mammals rubbing their faces and bodies against certain corals and sponges, even waiting in orderly lines to approach the invertebrates. “You get very excited to see that
Around 15 years ago, a slogan began to appear on bumper stickers, license plate holders, and tote bags: Save the bees. The sense that these pollinators—and the food system they support—were in critical condition was all-pervasive. In 2014, an online poll in the UK found that respondents ranked the decline of bees as a more
Around 540 million years ago, Earth’s life underwent a burst of evolution that gave rise to the major groups of animals alive today, including those with backbones and those that hunt prey. This bonanza is known as the Cambrian explosion. Based on the fossil record, animal life appeared to be comparatively sparse and looked very
The Huallaga river basin, which carves its way through the Central Peruvian Andes, is home to a plethora of ecosystems. One such ecosystem is the Yungas, a biodiversity hotspot on the eastern slopes of the Andes that many endemic mammals, birds, and reptiles call home. The ecoregion has a multitude of microclimates amongst its steep
The biggest known eagle in history just got a bit more metal, thanks to new research. Modern species eat their food by ripping sections off into bite-sized pieces, but the extinct bird known as the Haast’s eagle or harpagornis ate more like a condor, sticking its whole head into the carcasses of larger creatures to
Where tropical rainforests meet the Panama Canal flits the White-necked Jacobin—a large, aggressive, and rather showy hummingbird. While females don olive green feathers and a mottled chest of white, gray, and black, the males captivate birdwatchers with deep iridescent blue plumage and brilliant white bellies and tails. However, about 20 to 30 percent of female
In the central Chinese province of Henan, a farmer discovered a black orb with a vaguely blue tint, about the size of a billiards ball. While he and initial researchers thought they had found a dinosaur egg, it turned out to be something much rarer: a huge fossilized turtle egg—with an intact turtle embryo still
