Deep Look

Like its name suggests, the brown dog tick dines on dog blood. But as temperatures rise, they're more likely to feast on you, too. That's a problem, because the brown dog tick is a vector for Rocky Mountain spotted fever, a disease that's deadly to both dogs and humans.

This fuzzy acorn weevil can’t crack open acorns like a woodpecker or chomp through them like a squirrel. Instead, she uses her incredibly long snout, called a rostrum, to power-drill through an acorn’s tough and resilient shell. And it's not just lunch on her mind – she's also making a nursery for her babies.

Every year, up to half the honeybee colonies in the U.S. die. Varroa mites, the bees’ ghastly parasites, are one of the main culprits. After hitching a ride into a hive, a mite mom hides in a honeycomb cell, where she and her offspring feed on a growing bee. But beekeepers and scientists are helping honeybees fight back.

Ladybugs may be the cutest insects around, but they don't start off that way. Also called lady beetles or ladybirds, they pop out of their eggs as prickly mini-monsters with an insatiable hunger for aphids. Once they've bulked up, they transform, shedding their terrifying looks, but keeping their killer vibes.

Do cockroaches -- those daring, disgusting disease vectors -- have anything at all to offer us? Scientists think so. They compressed American roaches with a hydraulic press, subjecting them to the force of 900 times their body weight. Don't worry (or do): They survived! How exactly do they do it?

Covered in a shiny bubble, the alkali fly scuba dives into the harsh waters of California's Mono Lake. Thanks to an abundance of hair and water-repellent wax, this remarkable insect remains dry while embarking on a quest for tasty algae and a place to lay its eggs.

A “bee fly” looks a bit like a bee, but it’s a freeloader that takes advantage of a bindweed turret bee’s hard work. The bees dig underground nests and fill them with pollen they collect in the form of stylish “pollen pants.” As the bees are toiling on their nests, the flies drop their *own* eggs into them from the air. But the bees employ a tricky defense against the flies.

Most of the sea snails in this tide pool cruise around searching for food. But not the scaled wormsnail. It cements its shell to a rock and snags its meals using the one thing a snail has plenty of: mucus!

Step right up to see tiny springtails spin through the air with the greatest of ease! In ponds and streams, they skyrocket out of the reach of hungry insects like water striders by slapping a tail-like appendage against the water. And you won’t believe how they stick the landing.

No suction cups, no Velcro, no glue. Geckos navigate nearly any surface with something far cooler: an electron dance at the atomic scale.

To us, a snake's forked tongue evokes danger and deceit. But the tongue's two sensitive tips, called tines, actually help the snake smell in stereo. That's bad news if you're a mouse ...

Bird’s nest fungi look just like a tiny bird's nest. But those little eggs have no yolks. Each one is a spore sac waiting for a single raindrop to catapult it on a journey with a layover inside the bowels of an herbivore.