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Nature

2,233 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 32 of 38.

1861. Bristle worms paddle every ocean depth from surf to trenchPolychaetes are mostly marine annelids—“bristle worms”—with parapodia bearing chitinous chaetae on each segment. More than 10,000 species span planktonic surface lives to an undes…
1862. Porpoises are small cetaceans closer to narwhals than to dolphinsPorpoises (Phocoenidae) look dolphin-like yet relate more closely to narwhals and belugas. Eight living species are among the smallest toothed whales, from the 1.4 m, 54 kg vaquit…
1863. The wandering falcon that nested on skyscrapersThe peregrine falcon is the most widespread bird of prey on Earth, breeding from Arctic tundra to the tropics and absent from just one major ice-free landmass, New Zealand. Its na…
1864. Odd toes unite horses, rhinos, and vanished giantsHorses, rhinoceroses and tapirs look nothing alike, yet they form one order, the odd-toed ungulates, with about seventeen living species. The group was far richer in the past and …
1865. Stick insects: from two-centimetre males to the world’s longest insectStick insects, the order Phasmatodea, are plant-eating night feeders that hide in plain sight by looking like twigs or leaves. They live on every continent except Antarctica and r…
1866. Fourteen otter species, all built to slideOtters are the water-going branch of the weasel family, fourteen living species at home in rivers and seas. Thick fur keeps them warm and afloat, webbed feet drive them, and they …
1867. Hundreds of Neotropical birds named for clay ovensThe ovenbird family, Furnariidae, counts around 321 species of small insect-eating birds ranging from Mexico to the far south of South America. It takes its name from the horneros…
1868. Two hundred species, fourteen neck bones, near-silent wingsOwls (Strigiformes) number over two hundred mostly nocturnal raptors with forward-facing eyes, facial discs, and flight feathers tuned for quiet. They can turn their heads about 2…
1869. True oysters, pearl oysters, and a dinner-plate giant“Oyster” is a kitchen word covering several unrelated families of saltwater clams. The true oysters we eat belong to one family, the pearl oysters to another, and the biggest pear…
1870. North America’s most widespread turtle, fifteen million years oldChrysemys picta ranks as the native turtle found across more of North America than any other, with an evolutionary story about fifteen million years deep. Adults span roughly thir…
1871. Old jaws: the bird half that includes ostriches and moasBirds fall into two great living groups, and Palaeognathae, meaning “old jaws,” is the smaller. It holds the flightless ratites, such as ostriches and kiwis, along with the flying…
1872. Keratin armour made them the world’s most trafficked mammalsPangolins are toothless, scale-covered mammals that live on ants and termites, rolling into a tight armoured ball when threatened. That defence fails against people: an estimated …
1873. True climbers: parrots walk with beak, neck, and feetParrots, some 410 species found mostly in the tropics, rank with crows and ravens among the brainiest birds. They are also the only animals that truly climb on three limbs, haulin…
1874. From sky-darkening flocks to a closed museum drawerThe passenger pigeon, a bird found only in North America, is now extinct. Named from a French word for passing by because of its migrations, it was shot on a massive scale in the …
1875. Sixty percent of birds perch on one foot planSix in every ten bird species are passerines, members of the order Passeriformes, with more than 140 families and about 6,500 species. Their name comes from the Latin for sparrow,…
1876. Three peafowl species, and estrogen that keeps trains femaleThree birds go by the name peafowl: the Indian and green species of Asia and the Congo peafowl of central Africa. Peacocks are famous for their eyespotted trains, yet peahens have…
1877. New World “pigs” that travel in smelling squadronsPeccaries, also called javelinas or skunk pigs, look like pigs but belong to their own American family, Tayassuidae. They roam from the southwestern United States to South America…
1878. Eight pelican species closer to shoebills than to gullsPelicans are eight species of big water birds built around a vast throat pouch that scoops up fish and then drains away the water. Their name comes from the Greek for axe, and DNA…
1879. Southern specialists once named for a northern aukPenguins are flightless seabirds that live almost entirely south of the equator, with only the Galápagos penguin reaching slightly north of it. They range from emperors about 1.1 …
1880. Bandicoots’ teeth say carnivore; their feet say kangarooBandicoots and bilbies, the marsupial order Peramelemorphia, live only in Australia and New Guinea. Their teeth resemble those of marsupial carnivores, while their fused hind toes…
1881. Three true perches, and a crowd of lookalikesPlenty of fish get called perch, but a true perch belongs to the freshwater genus Perca, which most experts divide into just three species: the European, Balkhash and yellow perch…
1882. “Perch-like” fish once claimed forty percent of bony speciesPerciformes, meaning perch-like, is an order of ray-finned fish that includes perches, darters, sea basses, groupers and scorpionfishes. It was once thought to contain about 41 pe…
1883. The pike’s name comes from a pointed medieval weaponNorthern pike (Esox lucius)—also called jack or simply pike—are freshwater carnivores across the Northern Hemisphere. Average adults run about 40–55 cm, yet giants can near 150 cm…
1884. Nurse sharks shrug off capture for science tagsNurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum) are bottom-dwelling sharks of warm coasts, rated vulnerable on the IUCN list. They cope with being caught, handled and tagged unusually well,…
1885. Giant oarfish stretch longer than any bony fishOarfish comprise three elongated pelagic species in the family Regalecidae, living from temperate seas into the tropics. The giant oarfish is the longest bony fish alive, reported…
1886. Mola mola is a giant disk with a clipped-off lookOcean sunfish (Mola mola) rank among the heaviest ray-finned fishes and serve as the type species of genus Mola. Biologists still lack clear maps of mating grounds, early life, an…
1887. Dragonfly nymphs hunt ponds before they take wingOdonata unites dragonflies, damselflies, and odd Epiophlebia damsel-dragonflies as aerial and aquatic predators. Every species has water-dwelling nymphs called naiads, and both st…
1888. Flycatcher borders blur into warblers and thrushesOld World flycatchers (Muscicapidae) are small songbirds of Europe, Africa, and Asia, with only scarce New World strays. John Fleming hung the Muscicapa family name in 1822. Ernst…
1889. True sparrows carry stubby beaks from the Old WorldPasseridae—the Old World or true sparrows—are compact brown-and-grey songbirds with short tails and strong seed-cracking bills. Field marks between species can be maddeningly fine…
1890. Old World vultures hunt carcasses by eye, not noseThe vultures of Europe, Asia and Africa belong to the hawk and eagle family Accipitridae, not to the lineage of American condors. They lack that group's keen sense of smell, and t…
1891. Cusk-eels include some of the deepest-living fishesOphidiiformes bundles cusk-eels, pearlfishes, live-bearing brotulas, and allies among ray-finned fishes. Fossils turn up by Maastrichtian time, such as Italy’s Pastorius. Abyssobr…
1892. Only one opossum reaches the United States and CanadaOpossums make up Didelphimorphia, the Americas’ largest marsupial order—about 126 species in eighteen genera. The Virginia opossum alone reaches the United States and Canada; Engl…
1893. Killer whales are dolphins that hunt like wolf packsOrcas (Orcinus orca), also called killer whales, are the largest oceanic dolphins and the only living Orcinus species. Apex hunters, their pods often specialize—fish here, seals t…
1894. Bird-hipped dinosaurs mostly chewed plants, not meatOrnithischia is an extinct clade of mostly plant-eating dinosaurs whose pelvis loosely resembles a bird's, hence the name bird-hipped. It gathered horned ceratopsians, dome-headed…
1895. Grasshoppers and crickets sing with straight wingsOrthoptera, from the Greek for straight wings, is the insect order of grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, katydids and wētā, with more than 20,000 species worldwide. They grow by inc…
1896. Fish hawks breed on all continents except AntarcticaOspreys (Pandion haliaetus)—once sea hawks or fish hawks—are daytime fish hunters with a near-global range. They miss Antarctica as breeders and visit South America only as nonbre…
1897. Bony fish split into ray-fins and our lobe-fin kinOsteichthyes, from the Greek words for bone and fish, is the clade of vertebrates whose inner skeletons are built mainly of bone. It splits into the ray-finned fishes, which make …
1898. Seed shrimp rule the arthropod fossil shelvesOstracods, nicknamed seed shrimp, are crustaceans with roughly 33,000 described species—only about 13,000 still living. Greek ostrakon means shell or tile. They are by far the mos…
1899. Shell-skin fishes made gills for breathing aloneOstracoderms—“shell-skins”—informally gather Paleozoic armored jawless fishes. Their quiet revolution: gills devoted only to respiration, not dual-purpose filter feeding as in ear…
1900. American warblers unrelated to Old World namesakesParulidae—New World or wood-warblers—holds 120 small, often brilliant passerines confined to the Americas and unrelated to Old World or Australian warblers. Diversity peaks in nor…
1901. An eft grew an N and became newtNewts are salamanders of subfamily Pleurodelinae, semiaquatic unlike many cousins; their land-juvenile stage is an eft. Not every water-loving salamander earns the name. Old Engli…
1902. Ground-nesting night birds with tiny useless feetNightjars of family Caprimulgidae are medium nocturnal or dusk-flying birds with long wings, short legs, and stubby bills; some New World species are called nighthawks. They occur…
1903. Second-largest animal phylum after the arthropodsMollusca holds about 86,600 living species—second only to arthropods—and maybe 60,000 to 100,000 more as fossils. Roughly 23% of named marine organisms are molluscs. Soft muscular…
1904. Not a goose: Herpestidae carnivores of three continentsMongooses are small ground carnivores in family Herpestidae—twenty-three Herpestinae species across southern Europe, Africa, and Asia, plus eleven Mungotinae species. English borr…
1905. Five living mammals that still lay eggsMonotremes are the only surviving egg-laying mammals: one platypus and four echidnas. All living species are native to Australia and New Guinea, though Late Cretaceous and Paleoce…
1906. Tallest deer, and North America’s second-heaviest landerAlces alces—the moose, or elk in Eurasian English—is the world’s tallest, largest, and heaviest living deer and the sole surviving Alces species. In North America only the America…
1907. Thirty-six hundred little flies that rewrite public healthCulicidae—mosquitoes—are some 3,600 small fly species whose Spanish/Portuguese name means “little fly.” Slender bodies, one wing pair, long legs, and piercing mouthparts define ad…
1908. Clothes don’t get eaten by adult mothsMoths are winged Lepidoptera beside butterflies, often with dark or dull patterned wings. Once dumped in the paraphyletic Heterocera, they share complete metamorphosis: eggs near …
1909. Grey mullets fed Rome—and confuse fish marketsMugilidae—mullets or grey mullets—patrol coastal temperate and tropical seas worldwide, with some freshwater members. Mediterranean tables have eaten them since Roman times; ancie…
1910. Sheep-ox of the Arctic, not an ox at allOvibos moschatus—the muskox—wears a dense Arctic coat and earns its name from the rutting male’s strong odor that draws females. Woods Cree calls translate as “ugly moose” or “ugl…
1911. From least weasel to sea otter in one familyMustelidae—named from Latin mustela, weasel—packs weasels, badgers, otters, polecats, martens, grisons, and wolverines into Carnivora’s largest caniform family. Least weasels can …
1912. Countless feet that walked onto land earlyMyriapods—Greek for countless feet—unite millipedes, centipedes, and kin in a wholly terrestrial subphylum of about 13,000 species. Molecular clocks and fossils hint at Cambrian d…
1913. True cobras wear a Sanskrit generic nameNaja holds the venomous elapids called true cobras across Africa and Asia. King cobras and rinkhals share the nickname but sit outside the genus. Sanskrit naga, meaning snake, sup…
1914. Roundworms may outnumber almost every animalNematodes—roundworms or eelworms—form phylum Nematoda across nearly every ecosystem, from polar soils to ocean trenches. Most freeload on microbes; many parasitise plants and anim…
1915. American scavengers that can smell the deadCathartidae—New World vultures and condors—counts seven living species in five genera across the Americas. Unlike Old World vultures that hunt carcasses by eye alone, some Cathart…
1916. Black mambas usually flee; humans are their main predatorsStories of black mambas chasing people circulate widely, yet these snakes generally avoid contact and use speed to escape. Apparent pursuits are often a snake racing toward its lo…
1917. Milk, hair, and three ear bones define the mammal clubFrom Latin mamma for breast, mammals are vertebrates that nurse young with mammary glands, grow hair or fur, pack a broad neocortex, and hear through three middle-ear bones. Those…
1918. Giant filter-feeding rays may recognize themselves in mirrorsManta rays carry one of the highest brain-to-body ratios among fishes and show advanced cognition. In a 2016 modified mirror test, individuals performed contingency checks and unu…
1919. Praying posture hides a stereo hunter with ultrasound earsA mantis freezes with spiked forelegs folded, looking devout—hence praying mantis. The pose is an ambush cockpit. Compound eyes with up to ten thousand facets track prey in stereo…
1920. They light their stripes moments before striking preyMarlins can change colour, flashing their stripes just before an attack. Apex predators of open seas, they carry a spear-like bill and a tall dorsal crest that inspired both their…

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