Tardigrades go where the slime takes them

Is snail slime the secret to the water bear's dominance?

Tardigrades can lumber along surprisingly well for their size, but to move from habitat to habitat, they probably have to hitch a ride. DEPOSIT PHOTOS

A Billion Years Before Sex, Ancient Cells Were Equipped for It

Molecular detective work is zeroing in on the origins of sexual reproduction. The protein tools for cell mergers seem to have long predated sex — so what were they doing?

Throughout nature, gamete cells like eggs and sperm fuse to create new genetic individuals, or zygotes. But outside of sex, these kinds of fusion events are far from routine for eukaryotes. Clouds Hill Imaging Ltd/SPL/Science Source

The Never-Aging Ants With a Terrible Secret

A parasite gives its hosts the appearance of youth, and an unmatched social power in the colony.

Susanne Foitzik / Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

Poland’s Crooked Forest Is Just What It Sounds Like – And Scientists Can’t Explain It

From bizarre gravity to the devastation of World War II, here are the possible explanations behind the Crooked Forest of Krzywy Las.

Flickr

An Estimate of the Total DNA in the Biosphere

Storing the total amount of information encoded in DNA in the biosphere, 5.3 × 10³¹ megabases (Mb), would require approximately 10²¹ supercomputers with the average storage capacity of the world’s four most powerful supercomputers.

Source: PLOS Biology