60-second Science

Horseflies misjudge landings on zebra patterns, compared with solid gray or black surfaces, which provides evidence for why evolution came up with the black-and-white pattern.

Need a break from politics and the pandemic? You’re probably not in the Amazon rain forest right now, but we can take you there in audio. Today, in part three of our three-part audio sound escape, we ascend into the trees where howler monkeys and crimson-crested woodpeckers rule the airwaves.

Need a break from politics and the pandemic? You’re probably not in the Amazon rain forest right now, but we can take you there in audio. Today, in part two of our three-part audio sound escape, we descend into a nighttime flood of frog music.

Need a break from politics and the pandemic? You’re probably not in the Amazon rain forest right now, but we can take you there in audio. Today, in part one of our three-part audio sound escape, we listen to dolphins hunting among the trees.

The concave-eared torrent frog's unusual ear anatomy lets it hear high-frequency calls, which gives a mating advantage to the littler males that sing soprano.

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from all over, including one from the United Arab Emirates about the the first interplanetary mission by an Arab country.

We wrap up our preelection series with Scientific American senior editor Jen Schwartz, who talks about the possible effects of the election results on technology development and use. 

Scientific American senior editor Mark Fischetti and associate editor Andrea Thompson talk about this election and the future of U.S. energy research and policy.

Scientific American senior editor Mark Fischetti talks about how this election will affect environmental science and policy.

Scientific American’s associate editor for sustainability Andrea Thompson talks about how climate science and policy will be affected by this election.

Scientific American’s senior medicine editor Josh Fischman talks about issues in medicine and public health that will be affected by this election.

Scientific American’s editor in chief sets up this week’s series of podcasts about how this election could affect science, technology and medicine.

Many of the statues not along the coast are in places that featured a resource vital to the communities that lived and worked there.

More than 40 of the birds, in coalitions of three or four, may fight for days over oak trees in which to store their acorns.

The volatile compounds released by microbial communities on cheese rinds shape and shift a cheese’s microbiome. Christopher Intagliata reports. 

The mass-extinction asteroid happened to strike an area where the rock contained a lot of organic matter and sent soot into the stratosphere, where it could block sunlight for years.

Planners returned water to the dry bed of Arizona’s Santa Cruz River in 2019, and various species began showing up on the same day.

Researchers say three ancient leather balls, dug up from the tombs of horsemen in northwestern China, are the oldest such specimens from Europe or Asia. Christopher Intagliata reports.

From mammals to mollusks, animals living among humans lose their antipredator behaviors.

The ancestors of today’s dogs already exhibited some playfulness, which became a key trait during domestication.