Food Calls
Hungry bats: Listen up
February 11, 2025
Spix’s disc-winged bats shrieked when they were first shown mealworms, a new food for them. Were they alarmed, or were they communicating their excitement to their fellow bats?
Spix’s disc-winged bats shrieked when they were first shown mealworms, a new food for them. Were they alarmed, or were they communicating their excitement to their fellow bats?
A baby hummingbird hatches. But it has fluffy feathers on its back, looking just like a dangerous caterpillar. Could this be something unusual among hummingbirds?
Have you ever wondered how city life affects animals like frogs? A new study reveals that urban Túngara frog tadpoles develop faster —but end up being smaller — than tadpoles from forests, probably resulting in smaller adults. This might be an adaptation to warmer urban puddles with fewer predators or to constantly changing environmental conditions in the city.
A discovery by a Smithsonian intern in Panama is published by the journal Science.
A rocky intertidal zone and sandy beach
at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal.
Aboard a research vessel in the Gulf of Panama, a Smithsonian research fellow explores the hidden biodiversity of the tropical ocean.
A visiting researcher uses a movie set studio to record how the larvae of sea urchins, starfish, shellfish and corals respond to conditions in a changing ocean.
Male fiddler crabs’ large claws may look unwieldly, but a new study demonstrates that these large weapons are not only for show.
After a half century of pioneering research on evolutionary developmental biology and induction into the National Academy of Sciences, a long-time Smithsonian scientist retires.
Veteran Smithsonian evolutionary biologist Haris Lessios has made major contributions to the understanding of how new marine species arose following separation by the Isthmus of Panama.