Smithsonian
Alpha: Examining Hollywood’s tale of dog domestication
Long ago, before your four-legged best friend learned to fetch tennis balls or watch football from the couch, his ancestors ...
Why other primates can’t talk: It’s all in the brain
Compared to humans, most primates produce a limited range of vocalizations: At one end of the spectrum, there’s the Calabar angwantibo, ...
No link found between Flores Island pygmies and ancient ‘hobbits’ in study
Geneticist Serena Tucci sat in the small Indonesian village of Rampasasa on Flores Island, the only woman in a room full of ...
Preparing for motherhood: Do the father’s genes play a role?
[A] father may have the ability to dictate a mother’s attentiveness to their offspring—before it’s even born. The paternal genes ...
Sperm carries more than just a father’s genetics
Eat poorly, and your body will remember—and possibly pass the consequences onto your kids. In the past several years, mounting ...
Does your dog have what it takes to be a hero?
[I]n the journal Learning and Behavior, scientists report that the dogs most likely to come to the aid of their owners are those ...
Authenticity of Romanov remains confirmed through DNA analysis
Today [July 17] marks the 100th anniversary of the execution of Nicholas II and his family, an event that toppled ...
Thinking like mom: Fatherhood makes male brains more maternal
The amount of time bat-eared fox fathers spend monitoring their young is an even bigger predictor of pup survival than maternal investment ...
Nimble human fingers evolved to smash animal bones in search for marrow
Scientists have long linked the evolution of the human hand—unique for its lengthy opposable thumbs and dexterous fingers—to the rise ...
Pandemic prevention: Researchers find bats with new virus that could spread to humans
To prevent the next pandemic, pinpoint it at the source. That’s the idea behind PREDICT, a global surveillance program that has ...
‘Evolution of hugeness’: Massive dinosaurs appeared more than once in earth’s history
[T]he remains of an unusually-large-for-its-time dinosaur found in Argentina provides new insight into the evolution of hugeness—and suggest that the ...
Smarter than we thought: Neanderthals hunted in groups, ancient deer skeletons show
A group of Neanderthals used their hand-crafted wooden spears to kill two male fallow deer, both in the prime of ...
Jurassic Park showed how ‘science and science fiction can collide in the real world’
The prestigious science journal Nature published [a] breathtaking new discovery [about the oldest DNA ever recovered] in June 1993, a single day before ...
Using evolution to break barriers in an ‘increasingly polarized, politicized world’
Rick Potts is no atheist-evolutionist-Darwinist. That often comes as a surprise to the faith communities he works with as head ...
Viewpoint: Why you shouldn’t clone your dog: Costs ‘go far beyond money’
If you spend enough time reading about pet cloning, you’ll see that adjective come up over and over again: beloved ...
Herpes is rampant but there’s no vaccine in sight. Is it next on the gene editing cure list?
The fact is, almost everyone has herpes. Just so we’re defining our terms, genital herpes refers to the incredibly common ...
