The most comprehensive analysis ever conducted on giant squid DNA has cast some interesting light on these elusive deep sea cephalopods. Despite their global reach, it now appears that there is only one species of giant squid — and they’re all “basically identical.”

Creative taxonomy — it's what happens when scientists discover an as-yet unnamed species and find some way to connect it to a person, place, or thing. Sometimes that person/place/thing is famous. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the connections between the two make perfect sense. Other times the connections are more…

It's time to test your scientific acumen — or your knowledge of a very specific musical subculture. Plenty of microbes have seriously badass names. Lots of metal bands have names that sound like weird microbial diseases. Can you tell the difference between Thergothon and Eperythrozoon? Take our quiz!

This is a priapulid, otherwise known as a "penis worm," and if you click the video, you'll understand how it earned that phallic moniker. These creatures are currently shaking the branches of the animal taxonomy tree thanks to a mystery surrounding their mouths and anuses.

When most plants and animals get named after a celebrity (and believe us, this happens often), it's rarely for anything more significant than a poorly-imagined resemblance, or a shared country of origin. Such is not the case with Gaga germanotta and the 18 other species in the newly dubbed "Gaga" genus.

Over the past decade, you may have noticed more and more articles referring to "hominins" rather than "hominids." Just why are Homo sapiens and her ancestors now called hominins? The answer isn't just semantic — it has to do with a revolution in the way evolutionary biologists perceive humans' place in the tree of life.

The latest State of Observed Species report is out. And biologists might have just earned the title of Hardest-Working People in Science, discovering a staggering 19,232 species in just one year, including nearly 10,000 new types of insects.

Sometimes it's easy to make a mistake when picking a photo of an animal — presenting an image of a rat instead of a mouse, for example. Or mistaking a crane fly for a mosquito. But whoever made this missing cat poster has taken the crown for animal mis-classification.

You're looking at an artistic representation of what is known as a Hillis plot — a visual snapshot of the evolutionary relationships connecting Earth's various life forms. Evolutionary biologists would call this a big, circular phylogenetic tree.

You're looking at three of the last known hirola on Earth. Since the 1970s, unregulated hunting, habitat destruction and drought linked to climate change have driven the number of these large African antelopes living in Kenya and Somalia from over 14,000 to fewer than 400.