Biology

For over a century scientists have known taking breaks while learning can improve long-term memory retention. A new study offers some of the first evidence to show how this actually works in the brain.

A new study has found caffeine can be used to help bees locate specific flowers. The research suggests the drug enhances bee memory and makes them more efficient at homing in on certain targeted flowers.

Joining the ranks of creatures such as pythons, green iguanas and snakehead fish, the caecilian is the latest non-native species to be discovered living in Florida. Although it looks like a big worm, it's actually a unique type of amphibian.

Last year DeepMind put forward a solution to a 50-year-old science problem, demonstrating how its AlphaFold AI could predict the 3D structures of unique proteins, and which it has now used to predict structures for nearly every protein in the human body.

Because fruits just dangle from the main plant before ultimately falling off, one might think that they are unable to communicate with that plant. According to new research, however, tomato fruits are able to transmit alerts to their mother plant.

Our brains are extremely fast at recognizing the faces of people important to us. Now, a new study has identified a previously unknown population of brain cells that may be hybrids of sensory and memory neurons, which enable this quick recall.

Most fish utilize a mouthful of water to swallow their prey. According to a new study, however, moray eels are unique in not doing so, allowing them to feed while out of the water … with some help from a second set of jaws in their throat.

Although spiders do help us by eating pests such as mosquitos, many people still aren't wild about having the things in their homes. Such folks may be interested in new research which suggests that ant chemicals could be used to harmlessly keep spiders away.

A browsable 3D map of just one millionth of the cerebral cortex has been created using 225 million images and a whopping 1.4 petabytes of data, illustrating the immense complexity of the human brain.

Although we've already heard about plants that mimic the smell of rotten meat in order to attract scavengers, botanists have now discovered that a certain plant focuses that concept – it mimics the smell of dead beetles, to draw in one type of fly.

Tardigrades are some of the toughest known lifeforms, and it’s been proposed they could seed life through asteroid impacts. Now, researchers have tested the hypothesis by firing tardigrades from a gun into sand, and checking how well they survived.

Scientists continue to make surprising discoveries in our own bodies. Stanford researchers have now discovered a new biomolecule hiding in plain sight, which may be common to most types of life and could play a role in autoimmune diseases in humans.