When boring into wood in search of food, a woodpecker exerts so much force with each strike that its beak should crumble, its skull should crack, and its brain should be reduced to mush. However, a suite of design features absorbs the shock and ensures that these tragedies do not happen. How are these features able to provide such effective protection?

The life of a Maine lobster is mostly a matter of crawling around on muddy continental shelf seafloors, not far from a coastline. Benthic scavenging is periodically interrupted by molting and ecdysis.^1,2 But Maine lobsters recently made international news as the subject of a presidential action issued from the White House.³

The diamond weevil, which makes its home in the Brazilian tropics, has a body studded with tiny, brilliant reflectors. Each one is like a diamond, reflecting different-colored light in shiny arrays. New research has probed the microstructure of these brilliant facets and discovered that the way they work is familiar—but the way they are made is not.

This month the American Academy of Neurology published a medical science study showing that senior women can fight air pollution hazards, including brain shrinkage, by eating seafood rich in omega-3 fatty acids.^1-3