Frans Plooij was a graduate student at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands in 1971 when he went to the Gombe National Park in Tanzania to study chimpanzee migration with his new wife, Hetty van de Rijt-Plooij. She had hoped to teach in a local school. But upon realizing that there were

When it comes to wooing females, it’s not just the size of a male gazelle’s antlers or the boldness of his personality that counts—it’s the number of parasites he’s harboring. All Grant’s gazelles (Nanger granti) have intestinal worms, but according to a study presented in Princeton, New Jersey, at

Today, the world wakes up to 46 new species of parrots, 36 new hummingbirds, and 26 new owls—thanks to an illustrated checklist of birds worldwide published by Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International, the first of its kind. After 4 years gathering live footage and visiting specimens in museums,

You know the story: Kids leave home to explore the world, eventually settling down in the greenest pastures they can find. But when these restless youngsters are baby fish and coral larvae, how do they choose the best place to make their new home? New research suggests that these creatures smell

Killer whales whistle, finches twitter, and hyraxes wail. But all of these sounds have long been considered fundamentally different from human language—indeed, so different that scientists haven’t been able to find any intermediate evolutionary steps between animal calls and language. Now, a new