Biology

Oct 13th, 2025 - , and to do our work we need to catch lizards—never an easy task with such fast, agile creatures. Years ago, one of us was in the Bahamas chasing a typically uncooperative lizard across dense and narrow branches, frustrated that its nimble agility was thwarting efforts to catch it. Only when finally captured did we discover this wily brown anole was . This astonishing observation set our research down an unexpected path. That chance encounter led us to collaborate with over 60 colleagues ... [Read More]

Oct 12th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Captive life does more than change routines for bears and pandas. It also changes the microscopic communities living in their guts, and for giant pandas in zoos, those communities shrink in variety compared to wild pandas. A new cross-species project led by Wei Guo of Chengdu Medical College ( CMC ) compared gut bacteria from giant pandas, red pandas, and Asiatic black bears living in nature and in captivity.  The team used 16S rRNA sequencing, a genetic method that ... [Read More]

Oct 12th, 2025 - It's official: the only Australian shrew is no more. The latest edition of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's , the world's most comprehensive global inventory on extinction risk , has declared the Christmas Island shrew is extinct. The news may not seem momentous. After all, most Australians know nothing of shrews and would be unaware this one species counted among our native fauna. But the shrew's extinction increases the tally of Australian mammals extinct since 1788 to ... [Read More]

Oct 12th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Humans stand apart from many other primates by taking more time to mature, relying on a supportive network of parents, grandparents, and community members during a long period of childhood. This extended period of growth has long been considered crucial for learning the skills required to thrive in a socially complex environment. For a while, scientists have connected this slow development to the considerable energy demands of a growing brain. Experts remain intrigued by ... [Read More]

Oct 11th, 2025 - Number of endangered butterfly species also surging amid habitat destruction and global heating, finds study The number of wild bee species in Europe at risk of extinction has more than doubled over the past decade, while the number of endangered butterfly species has almost doubled. The jeopardy facing crucial pollinators was revealed by scientific studies for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species , which found that at least 172 bee species ... [Read More]

Oct 11th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Islands run on movement. Plants drop fruit, animals carry seeds, and forests rebuild themselves across valleys and slopes. When native animals vanish or newcomers take over, that conveyor belt stutters, and a quiet shift begins in what grows where. This is the conclusion of research by Donald Drake, an expert on Pacific island ecology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa ( UHM ). How seeds are spread on islands On islands, many plants rely on seed dispersal , the natural ... [Read More]

Oct 11th, 2025 - When a scientist ventures out into the icy waters of the Arctic and notices two narwhals crossing and clanging their long, spiraling tusks with each other, they instinctively know that they should step aside. A fierce competition is going on. Narwhals, the mottled silver-grey cousins of bottlenose dolphins, are elusive, mysterious residents of the Arctic. Dubbed "corpse whales," they are infamous for their protruding tooth-like tusks that they manipulate for a variety of behaviors. In a study ... [Read More]

Oct 11th, 2025 - As the world mourns Jane Goodall, the pioneering chimpanzee scientist and campaigner who died last week aged 91, it's worth asking what chimpanzees can still teach us about climate change. They not only have a few tricks for surviving a warming planet—they've also helped to cool it. Most of the world's 200,000 or so wild chimpanzees live in the huge rainforests of west and central Africa, the second largest in the world. As recently as 2,500 years ago, much of this rainforest had withered ... [Read More]

Oct 10th, 2025 - Arctic seals are being pushed closer to extinction by climate change and more than half of bird species around the world are declining under pressure from deforestation and agricultural expansion, according to an annual assessment from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. One bright spot is green sea turtles , which have recovered substantially thanks to decades of conservation efforts, the IUCN said Friday as it released its latest Red List of Threatened Species. While many ... [Read More]

Oct 10th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Twelve million years ago, a huge flightless predator known as a "terror bird" sprinted across tropical floodplains in what is now central Colombia. Archaeologists discovered a single broken leg bone – evidence that turns a fragment into a clear view of life in the Miocene. The study was led by Federico J. Degrange, a terror bird specialist, and included Siobhán Cooke, Ph.D., associate professor of functional anatomy and evolution at the Johns Hopkins ... [Read More]

Oct 10th, 2025 - The green turtle has been rescued from the brink of extinction in what scientists are calling a major conservation victory. Once hunted extensively for turtle soup, its eggs as a delicacy and decorative shells, the ancient mariner saw its numbers plummet and has been listed as endangered since the 1980s. Now, thanks to decades of global conservation efforts - from protecting eggs and releasing hatchlings on beaches to reducing accidental capture in fishing nets - new data shows green turtle ... [Read More]

Oct 10th, 2025 - Exclusive: Trial that has produced 13 hatchlings could help other threatened species avoid extinction The slow-motion pitter-patter of tiny giant tortoise feet has been worryingly rare in recent years, but that looks set to change thanks to the first successful hatching of the species with artificial incubation. One week after the intervention, the 13 babies are building up their strength on a diet of banana slices and leafy greens in Seychelles , which is home to one of the last remaining ... [Read More]

Oct 10th, 2025 - The spider-tailed horned viper contains the raw ingredients of two of the world's most common phobias: arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and ophidiophobia (fear of snakes ). The only way it could possibly up the ante would be if it was hanging out on a high ledge (acrophobia) wearing a clown costume (coulrophobia).  This, however, is unlikely. The spider-tailed snake spends most of its time hiding in the rocky crevices of the Zagros Mountains on the border between Iraq and Iran. It's named ... [Read More]

Oct 10th, 2025 - Our robust Paranthropus cousins thrived in Africa for a million and a half years, making stone tools and sharing the landscape with different Homo species at the dawn of human cultural innovation. The first fossil hominins were discovered at the  beginning of the 20th century in South Africa , just over half a century after the publication of Darwin's milestone work  The Origin of Species  (published in 1859) set the foundation for evolutionary theory based on natural selection. ... [Read More]

Oct 9th, 2025 - A beautifully preserved skeleton found on the UK's Jurassic Coast has been identified as a new species of the marine reptiles known as ichthyosaurs Meet the "Sword Dragon", a newly-named species of ichthyosaur – predatory prehistoric reptiles that dominated the oceans while dinosaurs ruled the land. The beautifully-preserved fossilised skeleton was found on the UK's Jurassic Coast near an area called Golden Cap back in 2001, and sat for years in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum ... [Read More]

Oct 9th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . H ybrid species have long sparked the human imagination: lion-tigers, zebra-horses, minotaurs. Now, we have a brand new chimera to marvel at: the "grue jay," a dazzling bird that is half-blue jay, half-green jay. It is a harbinger of our future under climate change. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Graduate student Brian Stokes discovered the grue jay while completing his doctoral studies at the University of Texas. He was tracking ... [Read More]