The Plague killed millions of Europeans in the middle ages. It’s still alive today. Although it rarely strikes humans, it has killed millions of prairie dogs in the last century in North America.

The Newscripts gang loves hearing readers’ reactions to our stories. For instance, Barbara Lewis, a chemistry lab instructor at Clemson University, wrote to tell us about how a Jan. 23 story inspired ...

Lauren Koenig receives funding from the National Science Foundation. It’s hard to appreciate the value of pain when we feel it, but most living things would not survive without it. Pain is a signal ...

I didn’t believe it until I actually heard it. There is an unusual mouse who literally howls at the Moon before killing its prey. Called the grasshopper mouse, it’s a rare carnivorous mouse who eats ...

Habitat: The arid badlands of south-western US and adjacent regions of Mexico, in burrows stolen from other rodents In the dark expanses of the Sonoran desert in the US, a terrifying creature ...