Biology

Oct 17th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A small gecko from South Africa went missing from science for more than three decades. It has been found again on the same mountain where it first turned up in 1991. The animal is the Blyde Rondavel flat gecko ( Afroedura rondavelica ), a member of a rock loving group that hugs cliffs with adhesive toe pads. It was last recorded in Dec. 1991, then nothing, which made some experts question whether it was a unique species at all. Finding Afroedura rondavelica Lead ... [Read More]

Oct 16th, 2025 - Scientists celebrate rare conservation wins as 20 species recover worldwide. From three species of Arctic seals to more than half of all birds globally, several animals have slipped closer to extinction, according to the  latest update of the IUCN Red List . However, 20 species have seen a positive change in their status: they've moved farther away from the threat of extinction, thanks to effective conservation measures or reduced threats. The  20 downlisted species  include 12 ... [Read More]

Oct 16th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A razor-snouted marine reptile with dinner-skewer teeth and massive eyes has been added to the ichthyosaur family tree. The newly described species, Xiphodracon goldencapensis – meaning "Sword Dragon from Golden Cap" – offers fresh insight into how these fast-swimming predators diversified in the wake of the end-Triassic extinction. Researchers discovered the fossilized skeleton in 2001 on England's UNESCO-listed Jurassic Coast, near the towering cliffs of ... [Read More]

Oct 16th, 2025 - Surprisingly, it's a win-win situation. In the dark waters off Florida and Tahiti, young fish no bigger than a thumb drift through the open sea holding stinging anemone larvae in their mouths. It's a striking partnership These encounters, captured in a series of luminous underwater photographs, reveal a relationship that scientists had never seen before: baby fish seemingly using venomous invertebrates as portable shields against predators. The findings, published in the Journal of Fish Biology ... [Read More]

Oct 16th, 2025 - Like humans, insects possess sensory organs responsible for vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. For vision, insects primarily rely on compound eyes. But what about hearing? For example, crickets develop tympanal organs on their forelegs, which function like a human's eardrum to detect sound. They use these "ears on the legs" to listen to courtship songs and sense approaching enemies. The tympanal organs have evolved in insects repeatedly. For example, cicadas, grasshoppers, moths and ... [Read More]

Oct 16th, 2025 - Aided by new discoveries and refined investigation methods, science is changing the way we see dinosaurs. A little colour doesn't hurt either, writes Evrim Yazgin. This article was originally published in the Cosmos Print Magazine, March 2023. Close your eyes and imagine a dinosaur . I don't have any clairvoyant powers, but I've a pretty good idea of what most of you have conjured. It's a Tyrannosaurus rex – right? It's the most famous dinosaur, and the easiest for most of us to picture. ... [Read More]

Oct 15th, 2025 - Two weeks on from Jane Goodall's death , many have been reflecting on her life, including her scientific legacy and how she changed humanity's connection to the natural world. As a pioneering primatologist, Goodall was the first to spy many behaviors and characteristics in the chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) of Tanzania's Gombe National Park that had been assumed to be unique to humans, including tool use, warfare and personalities . Goodall's observations revolutionized our understanding of ... [Read More]

Oct 15th, 2025 - A 230-million-year-old fossil found in Argentina shows that the evolution of sauropod dinosaurs' long necks began earlier than previously thought High in the Argentinian Andes, a team of palaeontologists has found a small dinosaur fossil with the first hints of the extended neck that distinguishes sauropod dinosaurs like Diplodocus . Named Huayracursor jaguensis , the fossil is a partial skeleton from a dinosaur that lived in the Triassic period, around 230 million years ago. It would have been ... [Read More]

Oct 15th, 2025 - reading time 3 minutes Photographer Qingrong Yang was visiting Yundang Lake near his home in Fujian province, China, when he captured the stunning scene in the photo above. Yang regularly goes to this lake to photograph feeding frenzies—when birds fly low over the surface to grab fish leaping to escape underwater predators. During this one, he snapped a photo at the exact moment a ladyfish snatched its prey right out from under a little egret's beak. It won Yang the Behavior: Birds ... [Read More]

Oct 15th, 2025 - Common dolphins are among the ocean's most abundant mammals, but they are living shorter lives in the North Atlantic, according to a new study in Conservation Letters. The research team, led by the University of Colorado Boulder, discovered that the longevity of female common dolphins has declined by seven years since 1997, an alarming trend that the authors say threatens not only the species but also the marine ecosystem it helps maintain. "There is an urgent need to manage the population ... [Read More]

Oct 14th, 2025 - Craving ever new varieties in nature for experimentation, Darwin wrote to his good friend and botanist, Joseph Hooker , "I have a passion to grow orchid seeds…for love of Heaven favour my madness & have some lichens or mosses scraped off & sent me. I am a gambler & love a wild experiment." It seems that Darwin was not the only one to crave exotic flowers. Three centuries earlier, the Dutch were hot on the trail to expand their imperial power by collecting exotic specimens from all over ... [Read More]

Oct 14th, 2025 - A biotech startup is taking the first real steps towards bringing the dodo bird back from extinction. No one has seen this bird since the late 17th century, but that doesn't mean it has been forgotten. On the contrary, the dodo bird is a clear example of human-driven extinction. It's a symbol easily recognized by many, yet humanity doesn't really know much about the dodo. That might soon change thanks to Colossal Biosciences, the company behind the de-extinction project. It's the same ... [Read More]

Oct 14th, 2025 - An eerie image of a brown hyena ( Parahyaena brunnea ) prowling the ruins of an abandoned diamond mining town in Namibia has won this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. The haunting scene, titled 'Ghost Town Visitor,' shows the world's rarest hyena standing in front of a long-deserted building lit with an ethereal glow. To capture it, photographer Wim Van den Heever set up camera traps in the ghost town of Kolmanskop after discovering hyena tracks there nearly a decade ago. ... [Read More]

Oct 14th, 2025 - A brown hyena standing beside the ruins of an abandoned diamond mining settlement has earned wildlife photographer Wim van den Heever the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year. He set up his camera trap after spotting fresh hyena tracks in the ghost town of Kolmanskop, Namibia. It took him ten years to get the shot, he said. The brown hyena, the rarest of all hyena species, is primarily nocturnal and tends to live a solitary life. For years, Mr van den Heever searched the deserted town, ... [Read More]

Oct 14th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Forests are the planet's lungs, drawing carbon from the air and exhaling life back into it. Yet for decades, these vital ecosystems have been shrinking at alarming rates, replaced by farmland, cities, and empty clearings. As climate anxiety rises, many have turned to tree-planting drives and billion-seedling pledges to restore Earth's green cover. But what if nature itself already holds the most powerful solution? A new study published in Nature suggests exactly that. ... [Read More]

Oct 14th, 2025 - Several wildlife species across the world are now moving toward endangerment or extinction as their habitats are slowly beginning to disappear due to various reasons. Some of the most common causes of this are increasing pollution levels , deforestation, and human expansion. From tiny insects to large mammals and even marine animals, the danger of being endangered is accelerating. Recently, the wild honeybees, Apis mellifera, found in Europe have been officially declared endangered ... [Read More]