Deep within the dense foliage of Papua New Guinea lives the world’s smallest vertebrate. Meet Paedophryne amauensis, a ...

From genetics alone, scientists can now predict how long any of myriad different creatures can live. The “lifespan clock” estimates vertebrate animals’ (those with a backbone) longevity — including ...

The sympathetic nervous system, which enables the fight-or-flight response, was thought to be present only in jawed vertebrates. Analysis of a jawless vertebrate suggests that this system might be a ...

A team of herpetologists at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz just reported that a tiny frog found only in a hilltop forest in southern Bahia, Brazil, may be the smallest vertebrate in the world ...

I first read Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist in 2024. Interspersed with her personal exploration of finding purpose, ...

A cheetah pouncing on a gazelle. A bear snatching a fish out of the water with its claws. And the most dangerous predator of them all? A human and their pet bird dancing to “Gangnam Style.” Scientists ...

Scientists reveal clues about the evolutionary origin of jaws by studying the embryonic development of zebrafish -- an approach known as 'evo-devo.' Using imaging and cell tracing techniques in ...

Vertebrates have extremely different brain sizes: even with the same body size, brain size can vary a hundredfold. As a rule, mammals and birds have the largest brains in relation to their body size, ...

Learn how increased protein diversity in signaling genes may have helped drive the shift from invertebrates to vertebrates, reshaping how animals with a spine evolved. From frogs and fish to birds and ...

New CU Boulder-led research finds that the traits that make vertebrates distinct from invertebrates were made possible by the emergence of a new set of genes 500 million years ago, documenting an ...

Direct survival benefits in larger groups rather than kin-selected indirect fitness primarily drive the evolution of division of labor in cooperatively breeding vertebrates, particularly under harsh ...