Deep within the dense foliage of Papua New Guinea lives the world’s smallest vertebrate. Meet Paedophryne amauensis, a ...

From genetics alone, scientists can now predict how long any of myriad different creatures can live. The “lifespan clock” estimates vertebrate animals’ (those with a backbone) longevity — including ...

The sympathetic nervous system, which enables the fight-or-flight response, was thought to be present only in jawed vertebrates. Analysis of a jawless vertebrate suggests that this system might be a ...

A team of herpetologists at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz just reported that a tiny frog found only in a hilltop forest in southern Bahia, Brazil, may be the smallest vertebrate in the world ...

I first read Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist in 2024. Interspersed with her personal exploration of finding purpose, ...

A cheetah pouncing on a gazelle. A bear snatching a fish out of the water with its claws. And the most dangerous predator of them all? A human and their pet bird dancing to “Gangnam Style.” Scientists ...

Scientists reveal clues about the evolutionary origin of jaws by studying the embryonic development of zebrafish -- an approach known as 'evo-devo.' Using imaging and cell tracing techniques in ...

Learn how increased protein diversity in signaling genes may have helped drive the shift from invertebrates to vertebrates, reshaping how animals with a spine evolved. From frogs and fish to birds and ...

Vertebrates have extremely different brain sizes: even with the same body size, brain size can vary a hundredfold. As a rule, mammals and birds have the largest brains in relation to their body size, ...

Learn how a second pair of eyes helped this 518-million-year-old fish evade predators. Spiders have eight eyes, bees have five, and boxed jellyfish have 24 — but these are the exceptions. The vast ...

Direct survival benefits in larger groups rather than kin-selected indirect fitness primarily drive the evolution of division of labor in cooperatively breeding vertebrates, particularly under harsh ...