Stories by Karen Hopkin

Injection of a hormone called FGF21 rapidly revives intoxicated mice.

The research focused on figuring out what enables certain sperm to gain some competitive advantage over millions of others fighting for the same prize.

Lions, tigers, bears: this creature sends all of those beasts running for the hills.

Can something spring back to life if it last moved around when woolly mammoths roamed the earth? The answer appears to be yes.

Are you working really hard to learn something? Remember this counterintuitive fact, and you might improve your learning curve.

Parrot nestlings spend time stringing together jumbled mixtures of sound—a rehearsal for more adult conversations
 

Some animals’ babies physically relax when their parents whisk them away from danger. The same thing works for tiny, wailing humans.

The verdict is in: female dogs actively evaluate human competence.

Concertgoers danced more when music was supplemented with low-frequency bass tones.

New research shows that birds of prey attempting to grab a bat from a roiling mass of the flying mammals have developed a way to cope with the confusion.

Rats kept awake after exploring novel objects remembered the original items but not where they’d seen those objects, raising interesting questions about human sleep.

A study of orb-weaving spiders shows that the arachnids’ webs pick up a range of sounds—and that they are always “listening” for vibrations coming in over them.

New research has discovered the first case of acoustic mimicry between a mammal and an insect—an acquired skill that could just save certain bats’ skin.

Our puppies’ eyes well up, a reaction caused by oxytocin, which makes us want to take care of them even more.

A single whiff of oxytocin, a chemical that some call the “love hormone,” promotes tolerance among lions at a wildlife sanctuary.

A pair of studies show that male bottlenose dolphins rely on wingmen when wooing mates—and that they cultivate these friendships by being vocal.

Researchers design an artificial neuron that can trigger closure of a Venus flytrap.

Appointing women to leadership positions renders organizations more likely to describe all women as being powerful, persistent and bold.

Bacteria resistant to methicillin emerged in hedgehogs long before the drug was prescribed to treat infections.

For meerkats in the Kalahari Desert, rising temperatures spark deadly outbreaks of tuberculosis.

A glitch in speech initiation gives rise to the repetition that characterizes stuttering.

Science—and experience—show that we most definitely see faces in inanimate objects. But new research finds that, more often than not, we perceive those illusory faces as male.

Using software designed to align DNA sequences, scientists cataloged the mutations that arose as folk songs evolved

What shape do you see when you hear “bouba”? What about “kiki”? It turns out that nonsense words that evoke certain shapes have something to say about the origins of language.