California two-spot octopuses learned to track prey they could see only as a mirror reflection, then moved toward the actual ...

Amphibians are in the worst shape of any vertebrate group. The second Global Amphibian Assessment, published in 2023, found ...

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 ...

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 ...

Researchers report that ancient viruses may be to thank for myelin -- and, by extension, our large, complex brains. The team found that a retrovirus-derived genetic element or 'retrotransposon' is ...

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 ...

The researchers from the HiLIFE Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki compared two central bearded dragon lizards (Pogona vitticeps): a normal one and a mutant with no body scales. They ...

Scientists have long puzzled over the gap in the fossil record that would explain the evolution of invertebrates to vertebrates. Vertebrates, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, ...

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, ...

Daddy longlegs have been observed eating frogs in South America, suggesting that these arachnids may be predators of ...

Charles Darwin proposed that evolution is driven by gradual variations in organisms that have a survival advantage in a changing environment. But University of Maryland evolutionary biologist Karen ...