Curious Kids^[1] is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.^[2]. Why can’t it always be summer? – Amanda, age 5, Chile With its long days just itching to be spent by water doing nothing, summer really can be an enchanting season. As

A rare, nearly complete fossil of an extinct North American porcupine helped me and my colleagues solve a decades-long debate^[1] about how the modern North American porcupine^[2] evolved from its ancestors.

Published in Current Biology, our paper argues that North American porcupine ancestors may well date back 10 million years, but they...

When we walked with a colleague into an aspen forest near Madison, Wisconsin, in the early spring of 2021, we expected to finalize our plans for a research project on several species of insects that live and feed on the trees. Instead, we found a forest laden with fuzzy, brown egg masses.

These masses, belonging to an invasive species...