How to make color-changing 'Transformers' with polymers

Shape and color changing are key survival traits for many animals. Chameleons can change their body to hide from predators, to reflect their moods, or even to defend their territory, while some soft-bodied animal-like octopuses, ...

First signs of animal life on Earth may be from microbes

Evidence suggests that microbes existed on Earth as far back as 3.7 billion years ago, a billion years after the planet formed. Animal remains, however, don't appear in the fossil record until 600 million years ago during ...

Secrets of how worms wriggle uncovered

An engineer at the University of Liverpool has found how worms move around, despite not having a brain to communicate with the body.

Signs point to sponges as earliest animal life

(PhysOrg.com) -- Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the apparently sudden appearance in the fossil record of a great variety of multicellular creatures — a rapid blossoming known as the Cambrian explosion. Since then, the ...