Sable Nakamura
Wildlife CorrespondentFormer field biologist who spent three years tracking wolves and now tracks facts about the animal kingdom. Firm believer that animals are weirder than aliens.
Articles by Sable Nakamura
A Tiny Fish Just Proved Your Brain-Size Assumptions Are Completely Wrong
Cleaner wrasse fish recognize themselves in mirrors and test reflections with food—behavior scientists thought only dolphins and apes could pull off. Fish brains, it turns out, don't work the way we thought.
Cows Can Use Tools—Overturning a Cornerstone of Intelligence Science
Scientists have documented cattle deliberately using tools to solve problems, upending decades of assumptions about farm animal cognition and what tool use actually reveals about intelligence.
The Octopus's Exhausting Design Flaw: Why Swimming Makes Their Heart Stop
Octopuses have three hearts, but the main one stops beating whenever they swim—making the ocean's most intelligent escape artists too tired to flee.
A Fish the Size of a Rice Grain Screams Love Songs at 140 Decibels
Danionella cerebrum, a transparent fish barely visible to the naked eye, produces underwater mating calls as loud as a firecracker. It's the animal kingdom's most absurd exception to the size-sound rule.
Dolphins Are Getting High on Pufferfish Toxin—and They Know Exactly What They're Doing
Dolphins deliberately harass pufferfish to trigger toxin release, then pass the fish around to experience the intoxicating effects. It's the animal kingdom's most blatant case of recreational drug use.