Biology

Apr 19th, 2024 - April 19 (UPI) -- Birdsong is a welcome sign of spring, but robins and cardinals aren't the only birds showing off for breeding season. In many parts of North America, you're likely to encounter male wild turkeys, puffed up like beach balls and with their tails fanned out, aggressively strutting through woods and parks or stopping traffic on your street . Wild turkeys were abundant across North America when European settlers arrived. But people killed them indiscriminately year-round -- ... [Read More]

Apr 19th, 2024 - Benefits of Snakes in the Garden Garter snakes are a gardener's friend! Harmless to humans, they eat the pests that wreak havoc in your garden. Learn more about the shy but helpful gardening helper who just wants to live peacefully in harmony with you—and eat your slugs! I found a snake skin in my garden a few weeks ago. While other people might have been freaked out, it made me happy to know that snakes find my yard a good place to call home. The garter ... [Read More]

Apr 18th, 2024 - Solar farms can grow more than just clean energy. They can be a cradle for a struggling but essential population: pollinators. To avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to stop burning the fossil fuels that are warming the planet and rapidly transition to carbon-free forms of energy like solar, wind and geothermal.  Meanwhile, climate change, along with habitat loss and pesticide use, is causing populations of pollinator insects to crash, imperiling plant life, including some ... [Read More]

Apr 18th, 2024 - Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more . A giant prehistoric snake longer than a school bus slithered around what is now India 47 million years ago, according to new research. The extinct snake may have been one of the largest to have ever lived, dwarfing present-day anacondas and pythons that can grow to about 6 meters (20 feet). The colossal creature's scientific name is Vasuki indicus, ... [Read More]

Apr 18th, 2024 - New study challenges traditional views on human evolution with "bizarre" findings. The Many Humans of the Globe As our species ( Homo sapiens) evolved and spread across the globe, they were contemporary with several other hominins. These include the best known of our evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals, but also Denisovans, Homo floresiensis (mainly in Indonesia), Homo luzonensis (discovered in the Philippines), and Homo naledi (known from South Africa). Perched from atop our ivory tower, ... [Read More]

Apr 18th, 2024 - In the wake of North America's recent solar eclipse, another historic natural event is on the horizon. From late April through June 2024, the largest brood of 13-year cicadas, known as Brood XIX, will co-emerge with a midwestern brood of 17-year cicadas, Brood XIII. This event will affect 17 states , from Maryland west to Iowa and south into Arkansas, Alabama and northern Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland. A co-emergence like this of two specific broods with different life cycles ... [Read More]

Apr 18th, 2024 - There were 56 wild, endangered Puerto Rican parrots living around El Yunque National Forest before Hurricane Maria in 2017. After the storm, there was only one survivor.  "I'll admit that a couple of times I just cried," said Tom White, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who's been working for 30 years to re-establish a wild Puerto Rican parrot population at El Yunque.   The parrot is one of the most critically endangered birds in the world, according to the ... [Read More]

Apr 18th, 2024 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . I n the 1970s, when a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg was researching a new movie based on a novel about sharks, he returned to his alma mater, California State University Long Beach. The lab at Cal State Long Beach was one of the first places in the United States to study sharks in a rigorous way. Spielberg was developing a character who was a shark researcher, so he sent an art director to campus. There, the art director found the office ... [Read More]

Apr 18th, 2024 - On a special episode (first released on April 18, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: Could the woolly mammoth really be brought back to life? Ben Lamm thinks so. He's the CEO and Co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, a company at the heart of an evolving science that aims to see this ancient animal and others return in the name of preserving and promoting biodiversity. According to him, the success of this work could just be the ticket that saves humanity. Lamm joined The Excerpt podcast to talk about ... [Read More]

Apr 18th, 2024 - Honey bees – those buzzing dynamos that pollinate our food – are in trouble. Despite decades of study, scientists couldn't quite crack the code of why bee colonies are collapsing . A new study is shedding light on this mystery by revealing multiple stressors that honey bees encounter on a typical day in the field. Complex network of honey bee stressors New research from York University indicates that honey bees are not afflicted by a lone stressor, but rather an interconnected web ... [Read More]

Apr 18th, 2024 - At least nine beavers and a vole have been found dead across Utah after an unusual outbreak of tularemia, a disease that can also infect and kill humans, cats and dogs. Local wildlife experts are concerned by the unprecedented spread of the disease and have warned people to take precautions. Tularemia, also known as rabbit fever, is a bacterial disease that most commonly affects rabbits, hares, beavers , as well as other rodents, mammals and livestock. However, the bacteria, Francisella ... [Read More]

Apr 18th, 2024 - A new book explores the roots of our love for certain creatures—and our indifference toward many others. Millennium Images / Gallery Stock April 18, 2024, 9:43 AM ET Save Listen to this article 00:00 11:54 Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration. This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here . American society has a confused, contradictory relationship with animals. Many dog owners have no compunction about eating ... [Read More]

Apr 17th, 2024 - A jawbone found in Somerset, England, may belong to the largest marine reptile yet known, a huge ichthyosaur that lived about 200 million years ago. The new species is dubbed Ichthyotitan severnensis and may have been over 80 feet long, according to the team's estimates. The finding means that ichthyosaurs could have grown nearly as large as blue whales, which have long reigned as the undisputed biggest animals known to science. The team described I. severnensis in a study published today in ... [Read More]

Apr 17th, 2024 - On a nice spring day at the end of May 2020, 11-year-old Ruby Reynolds and her dad, Justin, were fossil-hunting on Blue Anchor Beach in Somerset, England, when they discovered a fragment of a titanic sea beast. As Justin studied the four-inch-long, oval-shaped fossil, Ruby started to scout the slope above them. She found a second piece of fossilized bone, this one about twice as big. Joining forces with a team of paleontologists, Justin and Ruby have now identified their find as a new species ... [Read More]

Apr 17th, 2024 - A study led by Harvard University has provided a fresh perspective on evolutionary processes, particularly in how species intermingle and evolve. The experts have found compelling evidence that hybridization can lead to the formation of entirely new species, challenging traditional views of evolution as a neatly branching tree. Evolution of Heliconius butterflies  Revisiting a fascinating observation first made by naturalist Henry Walter Bates in 1861 and shared with Charles Darwin, the ... [Read More]

Apr 17th, 2024 - Fragments of bone discovered buried in ancient rock hint at a truly colossal Leviathan that once terrorized the waves. Researchers from the UK and US argue the fossilized remnants of two separate jawbones found England's south west represent a previously unknown genus of late Triassic ichthyosaur that seems to vastly outstrip in size any other known marine reptile that has lived on this planet. Bestowing the name Ichthyotitan severnensis on the new genus and species , the team estimates the ... [Read More]