Evolution

A scientist suggests that the startling science of metamorphosis has a new dimension.

Some crows “cry wolf” to snatch food from their neighbors; some caterpillars trick ants into treating them like queens. What can we learn from beasts that bluff?

Tips for uncharted territories, from the O.G.s.

Darwin thought that family trees could explain evolution. The hoatzin suggests otherwise.

The historian and staff writer looks at a century-old battle in schools between parents and the state.

From evolution to anti-racism, parents and progressives have clashed for a century over who gets to tell our origin stories.

From hunting and gathering to grousing and grumbling.

One step forward, one step back.

Antelopes with dunce caps, a seagull with braces, and other poorly conceived wonders of nature.

By studying crows, a German biologist has helped to solve a centuries-old mystery.

His was a family of freethinkers. The other families charged their children for their thoughts.

Genetic analysis of human remains found in the Himalayas has raised baffling questions about who these people were and why they were there.

SARS-CoV-2, which honed its viral genome for thousands of years, behaves like a monstrous mutant hybrid of all the coronaviruses that came before it.

A new short film features the naturalist who, perhaps more than anyone else alive, has taught people how to see life on Earth, in all its fragility and magnificence.

The Curiosity rover recently discovered methane on Mars, which could be a sign of life. Gary Ruvkun, a molecular biologist and professor of genetics at Harvard, wants to search for DNA in space.

A new book argues that violence—specifically, the killing of alpha males—laid the foundation for virtue.

The historian addresses whether it is healthy to debate evolution and global warming, why people distrust experts, and whether public fact-checking is the solution to fake news.

The iconic birds, which helped inspire the theory of evolution, are under urgent threat. Will a controversial scientific technique be their deliverance?