Biology News

Bumblebees Display Emotion-Like Reactions to Sweet and Bitter Tastes

Gibbons et al. showed that bumblebees are capable of modifying their response to noxious stimuli in order to get a higher sugar reward. Image credit: Ralphs Fotos.
Jul 13, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Slow-motion video reveals that buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) respond to sweet and bitter tastes with distinct, context-dependent behaviors resembling mammalian expressions of pleasure and disgust, adding fresh evidence to the debate over insect consciousness. Zhou et al. show that buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) display analogous orofacial reactions to tastes that reflect affective evaluation, rather than simple feeding reflexes...

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Recent findings document the domestication of cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) in the Ecuadorian Amazon region, its region of origin, by at least 5,300 years ago. Lanaud et al. demonstrate the large landscape of domestication of cacao, out of its area of origin, along the Pacific coast of South America, occurring concurrently during this same early time period and in subsequent time periods. Image credit: Fernando Graniel.

Scientists Discover Four New Genetic Lineages of Cacao in Peru

Jul 7, 2026 by News Staff

In an analysis of 390 traditionally cultivated cacao trees representing traditional Amazonian varieties, researchers identified four previously unknown...

Cell cycle of synthetic cells with 90-kbp genome, undergoing selection replication. Image credit: Gaut et al., doi: 10.64898/2026.07.01.735724.

Biologists Build Synthetic Cell that Can Feed, Grow, Divide and Evolve

Jul 4, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Biologists at the University of Minnesota say they have built a synthetic cell — made entirely from non-living chemical components — that can...

Revised distributions of the four planigale species formerly attributed to Planigale ingrami. Image credit: Umbrello et al., doi: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlag082.

World’s Smallest Marsupial is Actually Four Distinct Species

Jun 29, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Scientists in Australia have revealed that what was long thought to be a single widespread planigale species is actually four distinct ones, including...

Variation in laughter tempo across five great ape species (orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans): each dot represents an individual observation; color indicates phylogenetic distance (in million years ago); each square contains an image of the corresponding species, with a matching dot color for intuitive reference. Image credit: De Gregorio et al., 10.1038/s42003-026-10499-z.

New Research Traces Origins of Human Laughter

Jun 28, 2026 by Natali Anderson

The way humans laugh — in rapid, rhythmically timed bursts — is not uniquely ours. New research by the University of Warwick and the University...

Testing situation and hunters with their dogs -- examples from each of the four non-WEIRD societies: (a) pointing test in Mongolia, (b) unsolvable problem test in Vanuatu, (c) showing test in Mongolia, (d) Vanuatu, (e) Mongolia, (f) Madagascar, (g) Peru. Image credit: Bräuer et al., doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-57657-1.

Human-Dog Bond is Ancient, Universal and Strikingly the Same Everywhere: Study

Jun 23, 2026 by News Staff

New research spanning five continents and vastly different cultures — from the steppes of Mongolia to the rainforests of the Pacific — shows...

Lauren Scott & Brittany Florkiewicz show that cat facial signals correspond to different social functions, which have likely been influenced by domestication. Image credit: Sci.News / Makieni777 / Rise-a-mui / Alexas_Fotos / Dorothe / Vaclav Zavada / Artem Makarov / Daga Roszkowska / Birgit / Pasi Mammela.

Domestic Cats Age Like Humans, New Study Shows

Jun 23, 2026 by News Staff

Domestic cats (Felis catus) develop the same patterns of brain shrinkage and neurological decline as aging humans, and scientists think that makes them...

Heliconius hecale. Image credit: Robert Lawton / CC BY-SA 2.5.

Secret to Heliconius Butterflies’ Longevity May Be Hidden in Pollen

Jun 22, 2026 by News Staff

A team of entomologists led by the University of Bristol and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has compiled decades of data from butterfly houses,...

Hemiscyllium dudgeonae, male paratype, Nubwageta, Milne Bay province, Papua New Guinea. Image credit: M.V. Erdmann.

New Species of Walking Shark Discovered off Papua New Guinea

Jun 16, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Marine biologists have identified a new species of the shark genus Hemiscyllium in the waters of eastern Papua New Guinea, expanding a remarkable group...

To date, 14,232 millipede species have been described, with at least as many still awaiting discovery. Image credit: Vasquez-Valverde et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.05.035.

Entomologists Reconstruct Evolutionary History of Millipedes

Jun 14, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Two elusive groups of millipedes, Siphoniulida and Siphonocryptida, were the last missing pieces in the evolutionary history of Earth’s oldest land animals,...

The short-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis) from a trap camera in Bolivia. Image credit: G. Ayala & M.E Viscarra.

Amazon’s Elusive Short-Eared Dog May Be More Common than Researchers Once Thought

Jun 11, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Hundreds of camera-trap records from Bolivia and Peru suggest the short-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis), one of the world’s least-known canids and one...

This image of a dwarf gray fox (Urocyon sp.) was captured on the island of Cozumel, Mexico: an adult male is shown partially concealed behind foliage before capture by the Fundación de Parques y Museos de Cozumel on September 14, 2023; this represents the first photograph ever taken of the species on the island and the first reported sighting since 2001. Image credit: Rafael Chacón.

Scientists Capture First-Ever Images of Cozumel Dwarf Fox

Jun 11, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Researchers have obtained the first-ever photographs of the Cozumel dwarf fox (Urocyon sp.), an elusive dwarf fox living on the Caribbean island of Cozumel,...

Cave lions painted in the Chauvet Cave, France.

Study: Cave Lions were Distinct Species that Occasionally Bred with Ancestors of Today’s Lions

Jun 10, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

The extinct Eurasian cave lion (Panthera spelaea) and today’s African and Asian lions (Panthera leo) belong to separate evolutionary lineages that diverged...

The Linnaeus’s two-toed sloth (Choloepus didactylus) at London Zoo. Image credit: Dick Culbert / CC BY 2.0.

Secret to Sloths’ Slow Life May Lie in Ancient ‘Jumping Genes’

Jun 10, 2026 by News Staff

Along with armadillos and anteaters, sloths are members of Xenarthra, the only clade of placental mammals to have originated in South America. In new research,...

The cheerful fantail (Rhipidura laguceria) in November 2022. Image credit: James A. Eaton.

Ornithologists Describe New Bird Species from Remote Indonesian Islands

Jun 8, 2026 by Natali Anderson

A small songbird inhabiting the Babar Islands, in the Banda Sea, Indonesia, has been identified as a new species after a duo of researchers discovered...

The Heaven Sword tree. Image credit: Chia-Chun Hsu et al., doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2026.1746112.

After Decade-Long Hunt, Scientists Find East Asia’s Tallest Tree

Jun 5, 2026 by Natali Anderson

Deep in the mountains of northern Taiwan, a towering Taiwania cryptomerioides — a large coniferous tree in the cypress family Cupressaceae whose...

Euplotes gigatrox. Image credit: Ben Larson & Samuel Lord.

When Food Runs Short, This Single-Celled Organism Turns into Giant Cannibal to Survive

Jun 3, 2026 by News Staff

Euplotes gigatrox, a new species of ciliate collected from a seawater filtration system on the Caribbean Island of Curaçao, can transform into a cannibalistic...

Lisowski et al. used physical, morphological, functional, and genomic assays to identify the presence of superparamagnetic macrophages in the liver of homing pigeons (Columba livia domestica). Image credit: Spanishguitar101 / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Pigeons May Sense Earth’s Magnetic Field Using Superparamagnetic Immune Cells in Their Livers

Jun 1, 2026 by Natali Anderson

An international research team led by scientists from the University of Bonn, the University Hospital Bonn and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior...

Sigmops gracilis. Image credit: Wu Quancheng / Fisheries Research Institute, Council of Agriculture, Taiwan.

Bioluminescent Deep-Sea Fish Use Crystal ‘Prisms’ to Recycle Their Own Glow

May 27, 2026 by News Staff

A marine biologist studying the photophores of a bioluminescent fish species found needle-shaped guanine crystals that scatter and redirect light instead...

Microeledone galapagensis. Image credit: Voight et al., doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.5814.4.5.

New Species of Octopus Discovered in Deep Waters near Galapagos Islands

May 25, 2026 by Natali Anderson

A single female specimen, collected 1,773 m below the surface near Darwin Island, has been described as a new species of deep-sea octopus, and it doesn’t...

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