Biologist Xinnian Dong says her "best Christmas gift ever" arrived in the form of a phone call. The call was from her longtime friend and collaborator at Duke University, Pei Zhou, who rang with ...

Here's some science trivia for you: unlike the inner retina in most animals (including us), birds' inner retinas function without oxygen. And now, researchers led by a team from Aarhus University in ...

A newly discovered retinal structure in the eyes of certain kinds of songbirds might help the animals find and track insect prey more easily. The foundation of avian vision rests on cells called cone ...

Most higher-order processing by the human and mammalian brain is thought to occur in the neocortex, a structure on the surface of the brain. Now researchers have found cells similar to those of the ...

Informing the century-long riddle of why some birds, despite having a radically different forebrain organization than mammals, demonstrate comparable cognitive abilities, two new studies report that a ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

A bird preserved in a museum drawer for years has begun to draw attention after closer inspection revealed an unusual tail structure. The fossil belongs to Plumadraco bankoorum, a small bird that ...