In 1929 and 1930, Johns Hopkins Medical School surgeon Warfield Firor carried out a series of experiments to determine how long blood could flow between animals with joined circulatory systems. Without using any anti-coagulants, Firor attempted to es
Chemical ecologist Max Suckling at the Institute for Plant and Food Research Ltd., and summer student Rachael Sagar use Pavlovian conditioning to train bees to stick out their tongues, or proboscises, at the scent of odors produced by tuberculosis-ca
In 1842, Anna Atkins, a 43-year-old amateur botanist from Kent, England, began experimenting with a brand-new photographic process called cyanotype or blue-print. Atkins arranged algae specimens collected from around the British Isles on a sheet of g
In February 2009, a bottlenose dolphin named Nari swam up to the Tangalooma Wild Dolphin Resort on Moreton Island off Australia’s Queensland. Dozens of wild dolphins, including Nari, routinely entered an adjacent bay every night for dinner—hand fed f
Genomicist Mark Stoeckle and three high school students have taken do-it-yourself science to a new level. Research headquarters are Stoeckle’s Upper West Side apartment, where he’s laid out pipettes, a thermocycler, and a gel reader in the spots usua
This is not an ancient one-eyed species, but an animal suffering from a rare congenital condition known as cyclopia, which has been documented in a variety of species, including humans. Measuring in at 56 centimeters (22 inches) in length, the organi
Life on Earth is mind-bogglingly diverse with estimates of the number of existing species in the tens of millions. Over the last 4 billion years, many species have gone extinct; and because of the actions of humans, many existing species are now enda