Biology

Nov 24th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Two newly described species from Western Australia's deep waters are expanding the catalog of marine life – one a glowing lanternshark, and the other a tiny porcelain crab tucked inside soft corals. Both were uncovered during recent biodiversity surveys, showing how much remains hidden along the region's remote seafloor. The lanternshark was identified from museum specimens collected off Western Australia. The porcelain crab emerged from surveys along the Ningaloo ... [Read More]

Nov 24th, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. QUICK FACTS Milestone: Fossil "Lucy" discovered When: Nov. 24, 1974 Where: Hadar, Ethiopia Who: Anthropologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray More than 50 years ago, two anthropologists were digging in Hadar, Ethiopia, when they spotted something glinting in a gully. What they found would ... [Read More]

Nov 24th, 2025 - Hatchling loggerhead turtles feel the Earth's magnetic field when using a magnetic map The Company of Biologists  Loggerhead turtles are able to sense the Earth's magnetic field in two ways, but it wasn't clear which sense the animals use to detect the magnetic field when navigating using the magnetic map they are born with. Now researchers from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reveal in Journal of Experimental Biology that hatchling loggerhead turtles feel the Earth's magnetic ... [Read More]

Nov 24th, 2025 - Dogs were the first of any species that people domesticated, and they have been a constant part of human life for millennia. Domesticated species are the plants and animals that have evolved to live alongside humans, providing nearly all of our food and numerous other benefits. Dogs provide protection, hunting assistance, companionship, transportation and even wool for weaving blankets . Dogs evolved from gray wolves, but scientists debate exactly where, when and how many times dogs were ... [Read More]

Nov 24th, 2025 - Artificial walkways in the Amazon rainforest aren't only being used by researchers and tourists to safely traverse the canopy. It turns out that these passages are also convenient for the local wildlife. A series of camera traps monitored one walkway in particular, and found that animals used it 41 times over a course of three weeks. This research was published in the journal   under the title "Arboreal mammal use of canopy walkway bridges in an Amazonian forest with continuous canopy ... [Read More]

Nov 24th, 2025 - Analysis of the DNA and proteins of a range of animals has revealed that sperm's molecular toolkit arose in our single-celled ancestors, perhaps more than a billion years ago The evolutionary origin of sperm can be traced back to a single-celled ancestor of all living animals. Almost all animals reproduce by having a single-celled stage of their life cycle, involving two types of sex cells, or gametes. Eggs are larger cells containing genetic material and the resources for early development, ... [Read More]

Nov 23rd, 2025 - Reading time 3 minutes While hiking through the dense jungles of Uganda, wildlife photographer Federica Cordero stumbled upon a young male chimp lounging on a twisted vine. His bemused frown suggests some irritation at having his nap disturbed, but it gave Cordero's photo a charming air of adolescent grumpiness. Teenagers, am I right? The image, titled The Canopy Watcher , won the Animal Portraits category of this year's Nature inFocus Photography Awards . This annual contest celebrates ... [Read More]

Nov 23rd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Cancer is woven into the lives of almost all mammals, yet some species seem to shrug it off. New research argues that the way animals share, compete, and care for one another helps set how much cancer their species can bear. The scientists matched cancer records from thousands of zoo necropsies with traits like body size, litter size, and social living across many mammals. The team built a mathematical model to test when higher cancer in older adults might actually ... [Read More]

Nov 23rd, 2025 - On a bluebird day at West and East Lake in Grand Junction, Maddie Baker throws a plankton tow net into the water, and drags it back to her. "This is made of a 64 micrometer mesh, so that allows us to trap the veligers in their juvenile form, where they are microscopic and invisible to the eye," she said. Baker is an invasive species specialist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. A veliger is the larval form of many kinds of mollusks, including the invasive—and pervasive—zebra mussel. ... [Read More]

Nov 22nd, 2025 - All the cells in an organism have the exact same genetic sequence. What differs across cell types is their epigenetics -meticulously placed chemical tags that influence which genes are expressed in each cell. Mistakes or failures in epigenetic regulation can lead to severe developmental defects in plants and animals alike. This creates a puzzling question: If epigenetic changes regulate our genetics, what is regulating them? Scientists at the Salk Institute have now used plant cells to discover ... [Read More]

Nov 21st, 2025 - Tourists snapping selfies with sloths are fueling a booming black market that's tearing these gentle animals from the Amazon rainforest. It's not easy to find a sloth in the middle of the forest. They spend most of their time in the tree canopy and are masters of camouflage, thanks to their slow movements and the algae attached to their fur, which makes them blend in with the color of the leaves. Once identified high up, however, these animals become easy prey. Hunters  cut down the tree , ... [Read More]

Nov 21st, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. Researchers have identified ginkgo-toothed beaked whales alive at sea for the first time after years of searching, and in doing so solved the mystery of an odd echolocation pulse in the North Pacific. Rare tusked whales have been identified and photographed alive at sea for the first time ... [Read More]

Nov 21st, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Sharks and rays may be ancient survivors, but new research shows their long history has been anything but steady. An international team has reconstructed 100 million years of their evolution and uncovered a surprising trend. Instead of holding stable or rising through recent geologic time, their diversity has been falling for nearly 45 million years. Led by researchers at the University of Vienna , the analysis overturns the common assumption that cartilaginous fish ... [Read More]

Nov 20th, 2025 - An ancient regurgitated meal preserved a new species of filter-feeding pterosaur. One hundred and ten million years ago, a predator in what is now northeastern Brazil bit off more than it could chew. It swallowed two flying reptiles and four fish — then threw them up. That retch became immortal. Entombed in rock, it fossilized into a regurgitalite: a mass of prehistoric vomit that, by sheer luck, preserved a species never before seen. Researchers have now identified the remains as ... [Read More]

Nov 20th, 2025 - Aerial drones are giving scientists a new view of life at sea. In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the largest marine oil spills ever. In the aftermath of the disaster, whale scientist Iain Kerr traveled to the area to study how the spill had affected sperm whales, aiming specialized darts at the animals to collect pencil eraser-sized tissue samples. It wasn't going well. Each time his boat approached a whale surfacing for air, the animal ... [Read More]

Nov 20th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . S ome 360 million years ago, a terrible and strange sea monster named the Dunkleosteus patrolled shallow seas around the world, terrorizing its neighbors with its formidable razor-like jaws. The early fish was covered in armor, stretched 14 feet from head to tail, and could chomp enormous chunks of meat from its prey. Now an international team of scientists has published a detailed study of the fearsome apex predator revealing that it also had a ... [Read More]