Like a marine mammal version of Facebook, male and female bottlenose dolphins spend their days courting friends and building alliances. Two new studies show just how important such friendships are to dolphins—and the role friends and alliances play in life's biggest game: the race to reproduce.

Fifteen years ago, Florida panthers were in a world of hurt. Only about two dozen of the beleaguered predators roamed in southern Florida, and because of inbreeding they suffered from various health problems. In 1995, biologists invigorated the panthers with some fresh blood, releasing eight cougars from Texas into south Florida.

When a tobacco plant is attacked by moth cateripllars it sends out a chemical distress call to another insect species called "big-eyed bugs," which soon arrive on the scene to attack them. Now, researchers have discovered that the alarm signal goes out at lightning speed—and in a strange twist, the caterpillars appear to help make the call.

In 1959, Robert A. McCabe ventured to Antarctica as a freelance photojournalist. For the 100th anniversary of Roald Amundsen’s and Robert Falcon Scott’s race to the South Pole, he has published a book of photographs and journal entries called “DeepFreeze! A Photographer’s Antarctic Odyssey in the Year 1959.”

A flock of pigeons swooping through a city and a swarm of hungry locusts descending on a field may have more in common than you think. According to soon-to-be-published research in Physical Review E, the same math may describe the way both types of critters switch directions in a group.

The Census of Marine Life, an ambitious project to catalogue sea life, was prompted by estimates that science had sampled marine biota in only 0.1 percent of the volume of the world's oceans. The results compiled from this global collaboration of more than 2,700 scientists from 80 nations will be released in October.

Hundreds of penguins that apparently starved to death are washing up on the beaches of Brazil. Scientists are investigating whether strong currents and colder-than-normal waters have hurt populations of the species that make up the penguins' diet, or whether human activity may be playing a role.

Scientists in Brazil say a fossil of an elephant's tooth found in the Amazon jungle proves the presence of pachyderms in South America some 45,000 years ago, a report said on Tuesday. Previous evidence showed that elephants had reached Costa Rica, in Central America, but no further south.

In January, the height of summer in the Kalahari Desert, some meerkats poke their noses out of their burrows as early as 5 a.m. Other groups sleep up to an hour later. Meerkats move between groups, so the differences aren't genetic, which is further evidence, the team says, that nonhumans can have traditions, too.

Humans are caught up in a grand planetary experiment of lowering the ocean's pH, with a potentially devastating toll on marine life. The physics and chemistry of adding an acid to the ocean are well understood, - gigatons of acid are lowering the pH of the world ocean, and the more carbon dioxide we emit, the worse it's going to get.