Biology

You can thank yeast and bacteria cultivated over generations for the distinctive taste and smell of the oldest leavened bread in history

Is China’s future population drop a crisis or an opportunity?

Here’s what a chef, a vet and two anthropologists have to say about eating periodical cicadas

There has never been a better time to be or become a birder

Several marsupial species, including sugar gliders, independently evolved a way to make membranes that allow them to glide through the air

Ancestors of so-called soft corals may have developed bioluminescence in the earliest days of deep-ocean living

Fossilized vertebrae that were found in an Indian coal mine belonged to a gigantic and previously unknown snake species

Uncontrollable sobbing is uniquely human, and it may be our emotions running out of our faces, a way to connect us with other people

Social context shapes how fiddler crabs communicate by vibrating the ground underneath their burrows

Changing demographics mean shrinking families and more older relatives in future decades

A rice-grain-size fish screams louder than a jackhammer—and we have a lot to learn from its minuscule brain

Fossil and living birds reveal the dazzling biology of feathers