Pure Science

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Moose cry. And moths get thirsty. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Those two things might not seem related at first blush, but researchers have recorded, for the first time, images of moths...

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Average temperatures are climbing around the globe, with particularly severe swings in the Arctic—this region has heated up nearly four times quicker than the rest of the world over the past few decades. Polar bears depend on the ice there...

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Social media can be tough to ignore these days. There is so much of it, and it’s so accessible, right there glowing on the phones in our pockets and purses. Many of us find ourselves scrolling through the feeds of friends, family, and...

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A dental discovery in an ancient riverbed in North Dakota is shedding light on one of the most fearsome reptiles to ever swim the seven seas—the mosasaur. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . You may...

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As animals around the world contend with climate change, disease, and human destruction of their ecosystems, amphibians are particularly vulnerable. As of 2023, around 41 percent of amphibian species around the globe were classified as...

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In life, there are trade-offs between energy allocation for reproduction and lifespan. With a finite amount of metabolic energy available, where it is allocated makes a difference. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in ...

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You can learn a lot about a cat by its purr—less so its meow. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . The former is more closely associated with a feline’s distinct identity, researchers based in Italy...

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Psychedelic mushrooms have attracted quite a bit of interest from researchers lately. Recent research has hinted both at the effectiveness of psilocybin, the psychoactive compound in psychedelic mushrooms, in treating clinical depression...

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When a solar system is born, it isn’t really much of a system at all. Instead, it’s just a protostar surrounded by a whirling disc of gas and dust. Given time, gravity, and a variety of forces, the protostar becomes a star and the planets...

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A strikingly orange frog that fits on a pencil tip lives among the clouds in Brazil. Scientists encountered the newly named species, Brachycephalus lulai, in the cloud forests that cloak the Serra do Quiriri mountain range in the south of...

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Beneath the sugary hooks of today’s biggest pop hits, there’s often a distinctly dark undercurrent. Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy,” about a swaggering antihero who seduces a dad, Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” about a toxic,...

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Dolphins, with their exceptional echolocation abilities, are skillful at catching fish. But some fish, like Chinook salmon, are too big for them to capture and swallow whole. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or ...

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Nearly two millennia ago at an ancient port on the Red Sea, elite Roman officers seem to have kept some unusual primate pets—and loved them dearly. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . In a Roman...

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What is it about the Mona Lisa, the Taj Mahal, or a dazzling nature scene that makes them so pleasing to contemplate? Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder, or is there some inherent quality that sets it apart? It’s an age-old...

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The branches of the human family tree have grown a lot more convoluted over the past 20 years. First, geneticists discovered that Neanderthals interbred with humans. Then, paleontologists unearthed the Denisovans in Asia, an archaic...

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Millennia before the Black Death pandemic killed nearly half of Europe’s population, a different strain of the same plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, tore across Eurasia. It infected people across the region and lingered for 2,000 years...

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Sea cows—including manatees and dugongs—are the only marine mammals that aren’t carnivores. In contrast to seals and whales, sea cows munch exclusively on aquatic plants. Knowing that their closest relatives are elephants puts the...

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The ranks of serial killers seem to overflow with clinical narcissists. Dennis Rader, aka the BTK Killer, was diagnosed by a court-appointed psychiatrist as having narcissistic personality disorder due in part to his intense need for fame,...

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Across cultures and millennia, humans have embraced a diversity of sexual and marital arrangements—for instance, around 85 percent of human societies in the anthropological record have allowed men to have more than one wife. Nautilus...

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Deep in the heart of a spiral galaxy, 130 million light-years from Earth, lies a monster—a supermassive black hole 30 million times the mass of our sun. As this behemoth gobbles up matter, it casts off blasts of light and cosmic winds. ...

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The precise origins of domesticated cats have puzzled generations of scientists. Recently, genetic analysis pinpointed North African wildcats as the most likely direct ancestor of the feline friends that now share our homes and steal our...

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For many in the United States, the soundtrack of a lazy summer evening is the drone of insects filling the air. But how does one translate that languorous buzz to the cumulative insect air traffic across the entire U.S.? Nautilus...

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Plant-eating animals need to get crafty to get the salt they crave. Because sodium is relatively rare in nature and plants don’t tend to concentrate salts, herbivores get the stuff wherever and however they can. Elephants in Kenya, for...

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A swan’s beak, a blossoming lotus flower, a delicate bracelet: These are some of the highly stylized forms the human hand can make in a classical Indian dance form known as Bharatanatyam. The dancers rely on a visual language of gestures,...

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When dying stars called white dwarfs rob a stellar neighbor’s hydrogen, the growing stash of hot gas can trigger a violent eruption from the white dwarf’s surface. This may go on for days, or even months. Nautilus Members enjoy an...

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For terrestrial organisms, the ability to fly opens up a skyful of possibilities. Increased access to mates and food, for two things. And yet, it’s only evolved three times in the history of vertebrates—once in bats, once in birds, and...

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Many of us have felt pain in one form or another. Often, those jabs are paired with a sense of anger, whether it’s toward a person or inanimate object that caused the pain, or something else. But new research suggests that this anger, when...

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It’s tough to convince people to act when we won’t reap immediate rewards—researchers have found that this psychological barrier applies to managing our finances, looking out for our long-term health, and reducing the impacts of climate...

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The deep seabed offers an alluring source of minerals to sustain our modern lifestyles. But the same sediments that yield valuable substances, from rare earth elements to copper and manganese, may also harbor unexplored ecosystems teeming...

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Breath is our body’s metronome, ticking from our first gulp of air at birth to our last exhale when we depart the Earth. Recently, scientists have begun to discover that this fundamental rhythm is also connected to many of our most...

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The universe is enormous. By the time you finish reading this sentence, it will be even more enormous. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . That’s because the universe is expanding—but not everything...

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The movie Jaws has been terrifying moviegoers since it hit theaters 50 years ago. Now, the reputational damage the horror film inflicted on actual sharks may be beginning to wane. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in ...

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When you listen to a jungle ape whooping through the canopy what do you hear? If it’s a chimp who’s responsible for the cacophony, it may trigger an ancient form of recognition, flickering below your conscious awareness. Nautilus...

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The space around Earth is aswarm with satellites. Recently, the dangers of overcrowding the area lower than 1,200 miles overhead—so-called low Earth orbit (LEO)—have emerged. For example, collisions threaten to destroy valuable tech and...

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It might not sound too tasty to us, but some animals snack on hornets, stingers and all, including certain spiders, birds, and frogs. Hornet stings can trigger powerful pain, heart issues, and even death in some species, yet others seem to...

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It’s nearly impossible to see a tiger (Panthera tigris) outside of a zoo. Between habitat loss, prey declines, and poaching, the species has been extirpated from more than 90 percent of their original range—for example they’re entirely...

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Some 80 million years ago, an earthquake seemed to have sent a flock of frightened sea turtles scrambling across the seafloor. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Traces of this prehistoric panic...

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If you’ve ever watched your locks pool in the shower drain during a particularly taxing time of your life, you’re not alone—stress-driven hair loss is highly common. Yet scientists are still untangling precisely how stress impacts our...

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Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Working in Cambridge, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix in early 1953, while Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, researchers at King’s...

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Knowing the time is useful for all kinds of things, and now, physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have finally figured out what time it is on Mars. Beyond the need to satisfy our cosmic curiosity,...

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We humans stuff ourselves into tight quarters for various reasons. Sometimes we pack by the dozens into airliners bound for Boca. Other times, we’re forced into close proximity as we sit in hospital waiting rooms. Nautilus Members...

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Human history is pockmarked with periods of death and destruction on unimaginable scales. Of these calamitous epochs, one stands out: The Black Death. The mid 14th century scourge killed tens of millions of people in Europe, Asia, and...

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I’ve never been a sports fan, let alone a rabid one, but I think I finally know what it feels like. I was reading a new book, Portals to a New Reality by Vlatko Vedral, when I found myself shouting at the page the way sports fans scream at...

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We’ve all been there. Lying awake in our beds, unable to shed the worries and stresses of the day or days to come when we should be peacefully drifting off to dreamland. For some of us, this is an unfortunate nightly ritual. Nautilus...

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A critical sense linked to a whole host of diseases has long lurked right under—or rather within—our noses. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . While doctors often check patients’ hearing and...

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Twelve million years ago, during the Miocene, South America was covered in an even larger tropical jungle than its current verdant swath, with some key differences. Warmer temperatures, damper wetlands, and more bountiful food sources made...

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Some words brush the mind like velvet. Words like love, halcyon, or starlight. Others make us cringe, such as moist. Most of us feel this instinctively. But can the aesthetics of a word be separated from its meaning? Nautilus Members...

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Dinosaur tracks always make a stir. Fossilized traces of animals that dominated ecosystems long before humans made their appearance on Earth, they’re literally footprints from the deep past. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free...

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Despite its name, this is no light source for a woodland sprite. What you’re gazing at is a type of fairy lantern, an incredibly rare plant. Beyond its mystical appearance and whimsical name, the newly described species is unusual in that...

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Reservoirs along the Colorado River—some of the most important stores of water in the nation—dwindle by the day, exposing sunken boats, dumped bodies, and barren soils. It’s just the latest phase in a drought that has crushed the Southwest...