National Zoo officials say two rare Guam rail chicks have hatched there. The birds are extinct in the wild.

The small, flightless birds hatched March 3 and 4. The total population of the birds is now 162.

Frustrated male fruit flies, whose sexual advances are rejected by females, turn to alcohol to drown their sorrows, a study published Thursday revealed.

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco discovered that rejected male flies have a tiny neuropeptide F molecule in their brain that pushes them to drink far more than their sexually satisfied counterparts.

Researchers say they have discovered the fossils of a small camel with a long snout that roamed the tropical rainforests of the isthmus of Panama some 20 million years ago.

The ancient camel had no hump, and one of the two species found appeared to stand only about two feet (.6 meters) tall, scientists reported in a recently published article in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Conventional wisdom holds that during the Mesozoic Era, mammals were small creatures that held on at life's edges, but now scientists say at least one mammal group flourished.

Rodent-like creatures called multituberculates appeared during the last 20 million years of the dinosaurs' reign and survived after dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago.

The most recent fossils ever found of a human-like species in southeast China have presented scientists with a mystery about what may be an unknown Stone Age culture, researchers said Wednesday.

Sometimes called the "red deer people," the remains are about 11,500 to 14,500 years old and appear to show a mix of modern and archaic peoples, said an Australian and Chinese team of researchers in the journal PLoS One.

Amazed biologists have uncovered a new species of frog in the jungle -- New York's concrete jungle.

The mottled green creature was for years mistaken as belonging to a widespread variety of the leopard frog. But now scientists realize this is new.

Rats are smart, that's a well-known fact. But U.S. researchers said Tuesday a series of tests have shown they may be just as good as humans at juggling information in order to make the best decision.

The discovery could help scientists better understand how the brain works in order to help people with autism who have difficulty processing various stimuli the way that others can, said the study authors.

Australia said Wednesday that it remains committed to beating South Africa to host the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope, which will address fundamental questions about the universe including how the first black holes were formed.

A consortium of 20 countries will announce as early as next month whether South Africa or a joint bid from Australia and New Zealand will be chosen to host the Square Kilometer Array, which will be 50 times more sensitive and survey the sky 10,000 times faster than any other telescope.

Several endangered black-footed cats have been born recently in the U.S. and researchers say Crystal's birth is the rarest — the first ever born from an embryo fertilized in a lab dish, frozen, and later implanted in a housecat's womb.

The black-footed cat is Africa's smallest wildcat and one of the world's smallest felines — smaller even than a domestic cat.

Australia's climate is warming at an alarming rate and is set to become drier despite recent record floods, scientists said in a report that warns of increased drought and fiercer storms.

The country has seen annual average daily temperatures rise by 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1911, with each decade since the 1950s warmer than the last, the report by government science body CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology said.