How Probiotics May Save Your Life
Scientists seem to care a great deal about the health and well being of mice. Thousands of men and women with PhD's dedicate their lives [...]
Scientists Discover That Antimicrobial Wipes and Soaps May Be Making You (and Society) Sick
A few weeks ago as I was walking out of a Harris Teeter grocery store in Raleigh, North Carolina, I saw a man face a [...]
Discovering my microbiome
by Carl Zimmer Some people get a thrill from getting their genome sequenced and poring through the details of their genes. I’m a bit off-kilter, [...]
The Top Ten Deadliest Animals of Our Evolutionary Past
If you live in a developed country, odds are you are going to die of a heart attack, stroke, cancer or an accident. But it [...]
Bedbug on the rampage, again
“Bedbugs sure is evil, they don’t mean me no good. Yeah, bedbug sure is evil, they don’t mean me no good. Thinks he’s a woodpecker [...]
The Mystery of Singing Mice
In late 1925, one J. L. Clark discovered an unusual mouse in a house in Detroit. It could sing. And so he did what anyone [...]
The Untold Story of the Hamster, a.k.a Mr. Saddlebags
There are many ways to be immortal. Israel Aharoni, a Jewish biologist working in Turkish-controlled Jerusalem, imagined that his enduring legacy would come from giving [...]
Remarkably Fowl
Not far from my home in North Carolina is the world’s densest population of chickens. They live in small cages, as close to each other [...]
Confessions of a Stone Turner
DIRT BOILS WITH LIFE. Roots, nematodes, ants, termites, worms, moles, voles and snakes tunnel underground. They search one another out in the dark, chasing mates [...]
You are the the Last Great Frontier
I have a theory, but first it helps if you take off your clothes. Go ahead and do it in the privacy of your bedroom. [...]
Man discovers a new life-form at a South African truck stop
Like many biologists, the German biologist Oliver Zompro spends thousands of hours looking at specimens of dead animals. He found his first new species when [...]
I Am a Rat and So Are You
Natural selection is stingy in its edits. It takes only three letters to go from “Hamlet” to “ham” and hardly more differences in DNA nucleotides [...]
The Top 10 Life-Forms Living on Lady Gaga (And You)
A new truth about Lady Gaga’s health has recently been revealed. She is covered in other life-forms—“her little monsters” you might call them. Contrary to [...]
The Top Ten Daily Consequences of Having Evolved
Natural selection acts by winnowing the individuals of each generation, sometimes clumsily, as old parts and genes are co-opted for new roles. As a result, [...]
Wild Beneath the Sheets
Dust rises in the summer air, swirls in the wind and settles back down. Dust covers the plants on the side of the road and [...]