Do songbirds hold key to stuttering?

A tiny Australian songbird may hold the answer to discovering the biological source of stuttering, which affects 3 million Americans and is notoriously difficult to treat.

Songbird sings in 3D

The question 'How do songbirds sing?' is addressed in a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biology. High-field magnetic resonance imaging and micro-computed tomography have been used to construct ...

Viruses jumping species and zoo polar bear disease

Zoos bring together different animal species that would never encounter each other in the wild. On occasion, this can have unforeseen consequences. When in 2010 at the Wuppertal Zoo one polar bear died and another fell severely ...

Scientists developing poison pill for Asian carp

Biologist Jon Amberg has spent the last two years obsessed with fish guts, laboring over a singular challenge: Develop a poison pill that will kill Asian carp and leave other fish unscathed.

Smithsonian NEMESIS tracks marine invaders online

Mitten crabs, zebra mussels and rock vomit: These and hundreds of other non-native species have invaded coastal regions throughout the United States, often causing dramatic changes to coastal ecosystems and significant economic ...

How the zebra got its stripes

If there was a 'Just So' story for how the zebra got its stripes, I'm sure that Rudyard Kipling would have come up with an amusing and entertaining camouflage explanation. But would he have come up with the explanation that ...

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