While bats live in air and dolphins live in water, both use a biological form of sonar technology called echolocation to see with sound! The specifications in dolphin and bat biosonar systems are so many, so well-integrated, and so precise, could they really have developed at random in two completely different environments?

To the untrained eye, certain butterflies can look essentially identical to corresponding varieties of another species. This way they can evade predators, who won't eat them because the insects they're copying taste terrible.

David Queller and Joan Strassmann, evolutionary biologists at Rice University, recently proposed a new way to describe what makes an organism a unified whole. They defined an organism as an entity made up of parts that cooperate well for an overall purpose, and do so with minimal conflict. But how do parts like these get together, and where does purposeful behavior come from?

Researchers recently announced that they have unlocked some of the mystery surrounding the evolution of insect flight.¹ Their observance of a certain wingless insect led them to hypothesize that its “directed aerial descent” might be an important stage in flight evolution. But is it?

Arsenic is a common toxic component in pesticides and herbicides, and one place it is found naturally is in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park. The arsenic in the water there would be deadly to many living creatures, yet the Cyanidioschyzon algae thrive in it because they are specially equipped to detoxify arsenic through chemical modification.