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Nature

2,233 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 33 of 38.

1921. Born tiny, they finish growing latched to a teat in a pouchMarsupials deliver young after a short pregnancy—often twelve to thirty-three days—then the pink, blind newborn crawls to a teat in a pouch or fur fold. Gestation is brief; lactat…
1922. Croatia put a marten on its money for centuriesMedieval taxes in Slavonia and Dalmatia were once paid in marten pelts—the marturina. The banovac coin struck from 1235 to 1384 bore the animal, and the Croatian currency was late…
1923. Most giant fruit bats navigate by sight and smell, not sonarMegabats—fruit bats and flying foxes of family Pteropodidae—are the giants of the bat world, yet nearly a third weigh under fifty grams. With few exceptions they lack echolocation…
1924. Microbats paint the night with larynx-made ultrasoundMost microbats fire calls from fourteen thousand to over one hundred thousand hertz—far above human hearing—and read the returning echoes. Laryngeal ultrasound, beamed through nos…
1925. The Indo-Pacific fish that farms built before true hatcheriesChanos chanos is the sole living member of its family and genus, a silvery Indo-Pacific ray-fin that can top nearly two metres yet is usually under one. Southeast Asian ponds rais…
1926. A thousand-legged name that waited until 2020 to come trueMillipedes belong to class Diplopoda: most body rings carry two pairs of legs because each ring is a fused pair of segments. Roughly twelve thousand named species fill sixteen ord…
1927. Eight-legged worlds smaller than a millimetre, not one cladeWhat we call mites spans two huge arachnid orders—Acariformes and Parasitiformes—that most recent genetics no longer treat as each other’s closest kin. Most adults are under a mil…
1928. New Zealand's giant birds that had no wings at allMoa—order Dinornithiformes—were flightless birds endemic to New Zealand. Nine Late Pleistocene–Holocene species filled six genera; the biggest Dinornis stood about 3.6 metres with…
1929. The mimic that taught Darwin species might not stay fixedMockingbirds are New World Mimidae songbirds famed for copying other birds, insects, and frogs in loud rapid strings, and for fierce nest defence. Studies show some species even r…
1930. Crickets that dig exponential horns to broadcast pure songMole crickets—family Gryllotalpidae—are stout burrowers about three to five centimetres long with shovel forelegs and tiny eyes. Males sing from tunnels flared like exponential ho…
1931. Loons fly a thousand kilometres—yet stumble on landFeet set far aft make loons superb underwater hunters and clumsy walkers, so they visit shore mainly to mate and nest. Satellite tags have logged single-day flights up to 1,078 ki…
1932. Aquarium ‘plecos’ are Earth’s largest catfish familyLoricariidae holds more than ninety genera and just over 680 species—the biggest catfish family on the planet. Armoured in bony plates and fitted with suckermouths, they range fro…
1933. Lice are booklice that moved onto warm bloodNearly five thousand wingless parasites once ranked as their own insect order. A 2021 genetic study folded Phthiraptera into Psocodea—the booklice and barklice—as a highly modifie…
1934. Only six lungfish species guard a 410-million-year lineLungfish are the closest living relatives of tetrapods—the clade that includes amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Just six freshwater species survive in Africa, South Ameri…
1935. Four lynx species—one climbed back from the brinkLynx means four living medium wildcats: Canada lynx, Iberian lynx, Eurasian lynx, and bobcat. Tufted ears, short tails, and snowshoe paws define the look. The Iberian lynx was onc…
1936. Australia’s mimic that fans a false lyre over its backTwo ground-dwelling Australian species in genus Menura make up the lyrebirds, famed for copying forest and human sounds and for the male’s courtship plume. Early taxidermists fann…
1937. Striped schoolers whose marks help neighbors keep paceMackerel names many open-ocean fishes, mostly in the tuna family Scombridae, with forked tails and tiger-like back stripes. They lack swim bladders, retract fins into grooves, and…
1938. Golden surface racers that can outpace fifty knotsMahi-mahi—Hawaiian for “very strong”—are Coryphaena hippurus, surface hunters of warm seas worldwide, also called common dolphinfish or dorado. They are not related to marine mamm…
1939. Forty thousand crustaceans share one twenty-segment body planMalacostraca is the second-largest pancrustacean class after insects, with about 40,000 living species across sixteen orders—crabs, lobsters, shrimp, krill, isopods, amphipods, ma…
1940. The dabbling duck that remixed forty wild relativesMallards (Anas platyrhynchos) breed across temperate Americas, Eurasia, and North Africa and thrived after human introductions farther south. Drakes flash green heads; both sexes …
1941. Drop a lizard’s tail and it buys you an escapeMore than seven thousand lizard species span every continent but Antarctica. Many answer predation with a radical trick: they self-amputate the tail, leaving a thrashing decoy whi…
1942. Llamas left North America—then only the Andes kept themCamelid ancestors arose on North America’s Great Plains about forty million years ago and walked into South America roughly three million years ago. By the close of the last ice a…
1943. Lobsters stay fertile as they age—then moulting killsWild lobsters may live an estimated forty-five to fifty years, and research suggests they need not weaken or lose fertility with age—older animals can be more fertile. Adult tissu…
1944. A few leg ticks turn a grasshopper into a plagueLocusts are not a separate taxonomic clan—they are ordinary short-horned grasshoppers that flip into a swarming lifestyle. Crowd the hind legs with several touches a minute for ab…
1945. New Zealand’s kiwi smells prey with nostrils on its beak tipKiwi are chicken-sized, flightless New Zealand ratites—five living Apteryx species in family Apterygidae. Invisible stub wings hide under hair-like feathers, eggs can weigh a fift…
1946. Koalas sleep twenty hours on a near-poison eucalyptus dietThe koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) is Australia’s arboreal marsupial icon—not a bear—sole survivor of Phascolarctidae and cousin to wombats. Stout, tailless, with fluffy ears and …
1947. Niigata farmers turned food carp into living brocadeKoi—nishikigoi, “brocaded carp”—are ornamental color forms of carp kept in ponds and water gardens. Systematic breeding began in Japan’s Niigata villages in the early nineteenth c…
1948. The world’s largest lizard wears bone chain-mail skinKomodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis) are endemic monitors of a few Indonesian islands, topping living lizards at up to about 3 m and 150 kg. Apex hunters of rusa deer and pigs, th…
1949. Antarctic krill’s swarming biomass feeds an entire oceanKrill are small marine crustaceans of order Euphausiacea, found in every ocean. The name is Norwegian for fish fry. Near the food web’s base, they graze phytoplankton and sustain …
1950. Rabbits aren’t rodents: four upper incisors give them awayLagomorphs—order Lagomorpha—are the rabbits, hares (Leporidae), and pikas (Ochotonidae). About 109 living species in twelve genera span every continent but Antarctica. Closely rel…
1951. Jawless lampreys still clamp on with a toothed suction discLampreys are jawless fishes of order Petromyzontiformes—roughly thirty-eight living species—famed for funnel mouths lined with keratin teeth. Genetic data link them to hagfish as …
1952. Skylarks sing on the wing—and moult every chick featherLarks are passerines of family Alaudidae: ninety-eight living species in twenty-four genera, richest in Africa, with only the horned lark in North America and Horsfield’s bush lar…
1953. Leafhoppers jump, sip sap, and spray armor called brochosomesLeafhoppers—family Cicadellidae—are tiny sap-sucking bugs whose bristly hind legs launch them skyward and spread water-repellent, pheromone-carrying secretions over their bodies. …
1954. Leeches pack thirty-two segments into a solid, suckered bodyAbout six hundred eighty leech species have been named, mostly freshwater worms with suckers at both ends. Unlike earthworms, their body cavity shrinks to slim channels, and many …
1955. Leopards began in Africa then claimed Eurasia’s forestsPanthera pardus is one of five living big cats in its genus, with golden coats broken into dark rosettes. Males often weigh thirty to seventy-two kilograms; females run lighter. E…
1956. Scale-winged insects outnumber almost every other orderButterflies and moths form Lepidoptera—about one hundred eighty thousand named species, roughly eight point six percent of all described life, second only to beetles among insects…
1957. Lichens invented the word symbiosis as living partnershipsA lichen is not a plant but a hybrid colony: algal or cyanobacterial partners woven among fungal filaments, often with bacteria in the outer skin. Roughly twenty thousand species …
1958. Lions are social cats whose range once spanned three continentsPanthera leo now survives mainly in sub-Saharan Africa plus one western Indian pocket. Males carry the famous mane; females lead cooperative hunts inside prides of related lioness…
1959. Not all kingfishers fish—and blue is a trick of lightKingfishers (Alcedinidae) are 118 brightly coloured Coraciiformes in three subfamilies and nineteen genera, cosmopolitan yet strongest in tropical Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Large…
1960. New World blackbirds that pry food with powered billsIcterids—the New World blackbird family Icteridae—pack 108 species into 30 genera of often vivid passerines. Most wear black brightened by yellow, orange, or red. Their Greek-via-…
1961. The thumb spike that was once a nose hornIguanodon—"iguana-tooth"—was named in 1825 by Gideon Mantell and became the second dinosaur formally named from fossils, after Megalosaurus. Today's genus centres on I. bernissart…
1962. Bangladesh's national fish that runs up monsoon riversTenualosa ilisha—ilish, hilsa, or hilsa shad—is a herring-family migrant prized across Bengal and named Bangladesh's national fish as well as West Bengal's state fish. As of 2023 …
1963. Antelope that leaps ten metres and combs its own ticksThe impala (Aepyceros melampus)—Afrikaans rooibok, "black-footed high-horn" in Greek—is eastern and southern Africa's sole living Aepyceros. Shoulder height runs about seventy to …
1964. More than half of all known animal species wear exoskeletonsInsects—Latin insectum, cut into three parts—are arthropods with a head, thorax, abdomen, six legs, compound eyes, and antennae. Over a million species are described, more than ha…
1965. Ninety-seven percent of animals have no backbone"Invertebrate" is a convenience label, not a true taxon: animals that never form a vertebral column. One estimate puts them at about ninety-seven percent of animal species, spanni…
1966. Three "jackals" that are not one family treeToday "jackal" usually means three African and Eurasian canids: black-backed and side-striped jackals (genus Lupulella) plus the golden jackal (Canis aureus). The African golden w…
1967. America's big cat that kills through the skullThe jaguar (Panthera onca) is the Americas' only living Panthera and the hemisphere's largest cat—third worldwide after tiger and lion. Body length reaches about 1.85 metres and m…
1968. Half-billion-year hunters that are mostly water and stingJellyfish are the free-swimming medusa stage of many Medusozoa within Cnidaria—gelatinous bells of mesoglea trailing stinging tentacles. They pulse for propulsion, capture prey wi…
1969. Spiders that see in colour and jump like telescopesJumping spiders (Salticidae) form the largest spider family—nearly 700 genera and about 7,000 species, roughly thirteen percent of all spiders. Their forward-facing principal eyes…
1970. Hoppers whose name never meant "I don't know"Kangaroos are the big macropods—red, antilopine, eastern grey, and western grey—native to Australia and New Guinea. Large males can stand about two metres and weigh ninety kilogra…
1971. Haploid sons help explain why sisters build empiresHymenoptera—the sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants—counts over 150,000 living species and more than two thousand extinct ones. Many are parasites; females often wield an ovipositor t…
1972. Elephant cousins the size of a stout marmotHyraxes—dassies of family Procaviidae—are thickset African herbivores thirty to seventy centimetres long and two to five kilograms. They look like overgrown pikas, yet their close…
1973. Sacred mud-probers that are not one tidy family treeIbises are long-legged waders of Threskiornithidae with downcurved bills, usually probing wet mud in groups for crustaceans. They nest territorially, often in trees beside spoonbi…
1974. True hornets are giant social wasps—not bald-faced lookalikesHornets are Vespa wasps, the largest eusocial vespines—European workers to about 35 mm, Asian giants past 50 mm. Twenty-two species exist, mostly Asian tropics; North America’s “b…
1975. Modern horses left the Volga-Don, not Botai campsHorses evolved in North America over 45–55 million years from tiny multi-toed Eohippus to today’s one-toed runners. Domestication was once tied to Botai culture around 4000 BCE, y…
1976. The house sparrow is the world’s most widespread wild birdPasser domesticus—about 16 cm and 24–40 grams—followed humans from Europe, the Mediterranean, and Asia into Australasia, Africa, and the Americas. Intentional and accidental intro…
1977. Houseflies see your swat in slow motionMusca domestica processes visual flicker about seven times faster than humans, so a descending hand looks sluggish. Born likely in the Middle East, this gray four-striped commensa…
1978. Bee-sized dynamos that hover at nearly a hundred wingbeatsHummingbirds are American nectar specialists in the family Trochilidae—about 375 species from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Their wings can beat roughly twelve times a second in gia…
1979. Bubble-net hunters that sang their way back from five thousandHumpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are the sole species in genus Megaptera—rorquals fourteen to seventeen metres long and up to forty metric tons. They breach, slap, and mig…
1980. Only four species left from a once dog-like dynastyHyenas form the tiny family Hyaenidae—just four living species, each in its own genus—yet they shape many African ecosystems. Phylogenetically closer to cats and viverrids, they h…

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