Jennifer Frazer, Scientific American

Jennifer Frazer

Scientific American

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • Scientific American
  • National Geographic

Past articles by Jennifer:

Predatory Bacteria Are Fierce, Ballistic and Full of Potential

Bacterial predators fight like wolves, torpedoes and vampires, and they could provide the next antibiotics → Read More

How a Carnivorous Mushroom Poisons Its Prey

Scientists have known for decades that oyster mushrooms feasted on roundworms—and they’ve finally figured out how their toxins work → Read More

If It Smells like Dirt, Fire Ants Are Interested

For these swarming, stinging insects it’s the aroma of home sweet home → Read More

Scientists Waited Two and a Half Years to See Whether Bacteria Can Eat Rock

Mystery of dirt’s origins is a thorny experimental problem → Read More

Slime Molds Have Been Oozing around Earth for at Least 100 Million Years

Stunning new fossil reveals that at least one Cretaceous slime mold—an “intelligent” giant amoeba—looks identical to one alive today → Read More

Striped Maples Can Change Sex Repeatedly

Striped maples are boring-looking understory trees in eastern forests, but appearances can be deceiving. These apparently milquetoast trees change sex they way some people change smartphones. Of course, changing sex may be more tempting when you have four choices, as striped maples do. The ability to change sex is called environmental sex determination. As males and females make very different… → Read More

Kangaroo Rats Channel Jackie Chan to Evade Rattlesnakes [Video]

First ever high-speed video of interaction contains big surprises → Read More

2.1 Billion-Year-Old Tracks May Be Giant Ancient "Slime Molds" [Video]

Whatever made these structures lived 1.4 billion years before the first animals → Read More

The Case for Transmissible Alzheimer's Grows

What separates a lethal prion from dementia-inducing amyloid plaque? Maybe not much → Read More

Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

Discovery suggests worrying transmission possibilities → Read More

Prions, Nearly Indestructible and Universally Lethal, Seed the Eyes of Victims

Discovery suggests worrying transmission possibilities → Read More

Fanworms, "Nature's Eye Factories," Stick Them Pretty Much Anywhere

Fanworms do, in fact, have eyes in the usual location: their heads. But since the worms have now reside in lovely, cozy mucus tubes with only a crown of colorful tentacles protruding, that means they’re also not in a position to actually see anything. And that is a problem. The tentacular crown, composed of structures called radioles, is crucial to the fanworm game plan: it’s how they eat and… → Read More

Magic Mushroom Drug Evolved to Mess with Insect Brains

For that matter, so did most natural recreational drugs → Read More

What Bored These Tunnels inside Thai Garnets?

Nothing quite like the branching, fusing and synchronously turning tunnels has ever been seen before → Read More

Blanket Hermit Crabs Use Anemones as Defensive Snuggies

Let other hermit crabs use hard, uncomfortable shells that have to be rotated every 5,000 scuttles. Hermit crabs in the genus Paguropsis and Paguropsina have stumbled on a much better solution: flexible, toxin-secreting, cozy sea anemones that can be pulled up and down like a blanket. In the western Pacific and Indian Ocean, they gad about the seafloor making all the other hermit crabs jealous… → Read More

Algae Living inside Salamanders Aren't Happy about the Situation

The world’s only known vertebrate–microbe symbiosis appears to be good for the salamander, but stressful for the alga. So why do they put up with it? → Read More

Zombie Cicadas' Bodies Are Literally Falling Apart

Parasitic fungus manipulates bodies and bedroom behavior of hapless insects → Read More

Wonderful Things: Amoebas That Grow into Candy Canes

The hindgut of aquatic insects is a surprisingly hip hangout, filled with microbes bearing resemblances to household objects → Read More

Beelzebufo and the Pumpkin Toadlet

Spiders, snakes, and assorted creepy-crawlies get all the glory. It’s time to give scary frogs and toads some Halloween love → Read More

New Glimpses of Rare Deep Sea Siphonphores

Of the ocean’s many beautiful oddities, the dandelion siphonophore is one of the finest. What you are about to see is the tuft of feeding tentacles and anchor cables of an organism that looks like it would be at home perched atop a truffula tree. This year the two ocean exploration ships Okeanos Explorer and Nautilus have uncovered a variety of interesting siphonophores, including this stunning… → Read More