Removal of an offender's hand, tongue or ear: punishments described in Babylon's Hammurabi Code, depended on the nature of the crime. Published in 1771 B.C., the code set the first formal standards for business interactions. But scientists disagree about whether punishment is necessary to maintain mutually-beneficial interactions between animals and plants in nature. In a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute […]

Rats choose carefully who they spend time with, according to a new study published today. Published by researchers from the Universities of Portsmouth and Lincoln, the study found that male rats have preferred partners in their groups and they decide who to avoid, too.

Primates who are more tolerant of each other use vocal communication more than their stricter counterparts, research from the University of York shows.

The "mini earthquakes" that elephants make by both walking and vocalizing are not only a way to communicate with each other but can be used to track their movements, according to a study published Wednesday.

What if the COVID-19 virus could be used against itself? Researchers at Penn State have designed a proof-of-concept therapeutic that may be able to do just that. The team designed a synthetic defective SARS-CoV-2 virus that is innocuous but interferes with the real virus's growth, potentially causing the extinction of both the disease-causing virus and the synthetic virus.