The cuttlefish and its relatives, squid and octopuses, often strike human observers as floating aliens wreathed in sucker-covered limbs — boneless, squirming appendages that would seem to have nothing in common with our own arms and legs.

But hidden under the superficial differences, a new study shows, are some profound similarities: Human and cuttlefish limbs develop under the direction of the same genes. The new study, published on Tuesday in the journal eLife, lends weight to the theory that many animal appendages, from insect wings to fish fins, share a long evolutionary history.

Continue reading “Cuttlefish Arms Are Not So Different From Yours” →

Ladybugs briefly took over the news cycle.

Meteorologists at the National Weather Service were looking over radar images in California on the night of June 4 when they spotted what looked like a wide swath of rain. But there were no clouds.

The meteorologists contacted an amateur weather-spotter directly under the mysterious disturbance. He wasn’t getting soaked by rain. Instead, he saw ladybugs. Everywhere.

Continue reading “These Animal Migrations Are Huge — and Invisible” →

Some of the scenes in Mark Honigsbaum’s “The Pandemic Century” were so vivid they had me drafting movie treatments in my head. Midway through the book, I was picturing a doctor climbing the front steps of a rowhouse in Annapolis, Md., in the winter of 1930. His knock on the door goes unanswered, so he makes his way inside. An auto mechanic is sprawled in a living room chair, muttering in a feverish sleep. His wife wanders in from the bedroom, shouting gibberish. From the kitchen, her mother emerges unsteadily, a rattling cough rising up from deep in her lungs.

Continue reading “Ebola, H.I.V., Spanish Flu, SARS — the 20th Century’s Deadliest Hits” →

Scientists reported on Wednesday that they have discovered the oldest known fossils of fungi, a finding that may reshape our understanding of how life first arrived on land from the oceans.

Fungi are the invisible giants of the natural world, even if most people are only dimly aware of them as toadstools along a hiking trail, or mushrooms sprinkled across a pizza.

Scientists have identified about 120,000 species of fungi so far, but  estimate there are as many as 3.3 million species in all. By comparison, all living mammals comprise fewer than 6,400 species.

Continue reading “A Billion-Year-Old Fungus May Hold Clues to Life’s Arrival on Land” →