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KT images/Getty Images Conversations often end later than people would like – and sometimes too early – because people mask how they really feel about the ongoing dialogue, according to a study in the US. This leaves all partners in a conversation unsure of whether to stop talking. “People feel like it’s a social rupture to say: ‘I’m ready to go’, or to say: ‘I want to keep going although I feel like you don’t want to keep going’,” says Adam M. Mastroianni at Harvard University. “Because of that, we’re pretty skilled at not broadcasting that information.”

Pufferfish are the only bony fish that can blink – and they do so by sinking their eyeballs deep into their sockets and puckering the skin surrounding the eye together

Shutterstock/Matee Nuserm An Asian-Australian moth becomes more sexually active under red light than under another colour of light or in the dark. Dim red light appears to stimulate chemical changes in the antennae of male yellow peach moths ( Conogethes punctiferalis), making them more sensitive to the smells emitted by nearby females. This increases their copulation rates, says Wei Xiao at Southwest University in Chongqing, China. Advertisement Xiao and his colleagues made the accidental discovery while studying the general behaviour of the moths, which invade orchards and spice farms acro...

DesignPicsInc/Alamy When some frogs lose too much water they also lose their ability to jump – more evidence of the problems they face with climate change. Dan Greenberg at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, and his colleague Wendy Palen experimented with three species: the coastal tailed frog ( Ascaphus truei), which lives near cold mountain streams, the desert-adapted great basin spadefoot toad ( Spea intermontana) and the Pacific tree frog ( Pseudacris regilla), which can adjust to various habitats. Advertisement The researchers measured the animals’ jumping distances after pl...

Darko Cotoras An island spider decides which of its three kinds of webs to make depending on location and perhaps individual preferences. Spiders usually make only one kind of web, but the Wendilgarda galapagensis spider – which lives exclusively on Cocos Island, about 550 kilometres off the western coast of Central America – can make three different webs. Advertisement High above ground it makes “aerial” webs attached to nearby stems and leaves. Nearer to the ground it makes “land” webs with long horizontal strands secured between branches and with a series of vertical strands a...