Wild habitats are shrinking as the human population grows. Many wild creatures have increasingly fewer places to live or face deteriorating environments. Finding a method that would detect whether an organism is under so much stress that its population is about to die out would be helpful to those wishing to preserve endangered species.

Altruism is a real mystery for those who believe in a world ruled by "survival of the fittest." If perpetuation of one's genes is a biological imperative, why would any creature sacrifice its resources or even its life in order to help others? And yet the natural world offers many examples of just this kind of behavior.

Some dinosaurs had a "sickle-claw," made famous by the man-hunting Velociraptors in the movie Jurassic Park. Now, paleontologists have described a new dinosaur from Transylvania, Romania, that was quite similar to the Velociraptor in size and general shape.

The mimic octopus is, frankly, incredible. It can alter its shape, texture, and color to match poisonous and colorful sea creatures so accurately that it eluded detection by marine biologists for decades. It was finally discovered and scientifically named Thaumoctopus mimicus in 1998.

Stephen Hawking, leading cosmologist and recently retired Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, has co-authored a new book, The Grand Design. In it, he claims that the universe did not need God to create it.