Living World

Treating Disease With Nature’s Deadliest Toxins

Drug companies and scientists are turning nature’s weapons into life-saving treatments. 10.22.2009

Who Killed All Those Honeybees? We Did

The great bee die-off is not such a mystery after all: Industrial agriculture has stressed our pollinators to the breaking point. 10.19.2009

Field Notes: Stalking Fish in the Name of Science

An exhaustive new marine census is tracking everything that swims in the sea, one fish at a time. 10.17.2009

How Invaders Break Through the Brain's Great Wall

Some bacteria pierce the imposing blood-brain barrier by breaking links in the chain; sneakier ones do it by fooling the guard cells. 10.15.2009

Numbers: Microbes, From the Tiny Genome to the 70 Trillion in Your Body

10.15.2009

Giant Analysis Agrees: Fossils Are Telling the Truth

Ancient bones from many animals lying in a big jumble are more easily put in context than you might think. 10.13.2009

Does Evolution Explain Human Nature?

This panel discussion was based on a recent Big Questions essay series sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. The panel was moderated by DISCOVER editor-in-chief Corey Powell and hosted by Yale University. 10.05.2009

Humans vs Animals: Our Fiercest Battles With Invasive Species

From Burmese pythons to Galapagos goats, these animals are threatening a hostile takeover—unless we can stop them. 09.24.2009

Intelligent Design's 8 Biggest Fails

The latest incarnation of creationism keeps trying—and failing—to take down Darwin. 09.17.2009

Jane Goodall on the Lazarus Effect

Rediscovery of a long-lost species sends a message of hope about second chances for all of us. Goodall relates two beautiful examples: the tiny Caspian horse and the Lord Howe Island phasmid (it's a bug). 09.16.2009

10 Animals With Terrible Table Manners

A second set of jaws, vomiting up your stomach, eating the insides of living animals—the strange things other organisms do to get by without silverware. 08.31.2009

Life on Europa?

NASA is betting $4 billion that there's life in strange, frigid oceans on Jupiter's mysterious moon. 08.27.2009

Earth's Own Underwater Aliens

Marine biologist Edie Widder's underwater spy camera finally gives humans a chance to see the freaky world of deep-ocean bioluminescent animals. 08.27.2009

Set Your CT Scanner to "Kill" and Look Inside Some Fossils

Penetrating chunks of amber and ancient rock, powerful new imaging machines render 3-D portraits of fossil creatures concealed for millions of years. 08.26.2009

3-D Scanning: How to Put the Real World Into Your Computer

The recent imaging of two 300-million-year-old proto-spiders was just the tip of the iceberg: Here are 12 new scanning technologies that are bringing amazing 3-D images into Hollywood, medical care—and home PCs. 08.12.2009

Discover Interview: Thanks, Evolution, For Making the Great Building Material Called DNA

Electronic computers are great at what they do. But to accomplish really complicated physical tasks—like building an insect—Erik Winfree says you have to grow them from DNA. 08.11.2009