Biology

Dec 14th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Deep under the hills of southern Brazil and northern Argentina, scientists found huge tunnels that appear to be cut into solid rock. They say no human or geological process created them. They do not follow river channels, they show no signs of mining, and they look nothing like normal caves. Many of the passages are longer than 600 yards (550 meters) and tall enough for an adult to walk through without bending.  The leading idea is that giant, extinct ground sloths ... [Read More]

Dec 14th, 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. It's a long-held idea that turtles can tuck their heads into their shells when threatened. But is it true? And is this protective trick why turtles the world over have shells today? The answer is that some types of turtles can, and others can't, experts told Live Science. And even though ... [Read More]

Dec 13th, 2025 - Gov'ts agree to ban or restrict international trade in shark meat, fins, and other products. For the first time, global governments have agreed to widespread international trade bans and restrictions for sharks and rays being driven to extinction. Last week, more than 70 shark and ray species, including oceanic whitetip sharks, whale sharks, and manta rays, received new safeguards under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The convention, known as ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Long before flowers flashed bright colors or released sweet scents, plants were already sending signals to their pollinators. They weren't visual or chemical. It was heat. New research shows that cycads – some of the oldest living seed plants on Earth – use heat itself to guide pollination. Male cones warm up first, drawing in their partner beetles. Hours later, female cones heat up in turn, pulling the insects across and completing the pollen transfer. It's ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . M oose cry. And moths get thirsty. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Those two things might not seem related at first blush, but researchers have recorded, for the first time, images of moths drinking a moose's tears. The intriguing interaction between the nocturnal insects and majestic mammals went down deep in the woods of Vermont, captured by trail cameras set in the state's Green Mountain National Forest as part of a broader survey ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google In a slab of Jurassic rock from northern China, a small dinosaur species named Pulaosaurus qinglong was discovered with its bones still connected. Near the chest and throat sit the last things it swallowed, including tiny bones that later turned to stone. Pulaosaurus qinglong lived about 163 million years ago in what is now Qinglong County in Hebei. Its body was only about 28-inches long, and a recent study reports plant filled gut contents and a rare bony ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 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. A new study reveals an unknown species of whiplash squid burying itself upside down in the deep sea — a first-of-its-kind behavior for cephalopods. Scientists have filmed a never-before-seen species of deep-sea squid burying itself upside down in the seafloor — a behavior never ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google In the forests of central Colombia, a roughly 2-foot long, quill-covered mammal has finally been recognized as new. It is a tree-climbing porcupine now named Coendou vossi , long mistaken for a common relative that lives nearby. The animal lives in humid and dry forests along the Magdalena River valley and Caribbean foothills of Colombia. By reexamining old museum skins, checking field photos, and collecting new specimens, researchers showed it is not just a local ... [Read More]

Dec 12th, 2025 - What would you do if you were a hungry Pacific white-sided dolphin, salivating at the idea of sampling some salmon but resigned to the fact that the fish is too large to capture and swallow whole? You might, scientists say, team up with a killer whale. In August 2020, scientists tracking the behavior of nine northern resident orcas off the coast of British Columbia observed the killer whales seeming to coordinate with Pacific white-sided dolphins to more easily score some tasty fish. On ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - A new underwater camera exposes the long-hidden sounds fish make on bustling coral reefs. Fish were discovered to make sounds more than 2,000 years ago, but they have gone largely unheard by humans. While a typical, bustling coral reef may be home to dozens of fish species, until recently, identifying specific species' sounds was practically impossible. Previous methods of studying fish sounds often involved divers interfering in the fishes' habitats, or researchers recording fish in captivity, ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - People typically think about evolution as a linear process where, within a species, the classic adage of "survival of the fittest" is constantly at play. New DNA mutations arise and get passed from parents to offspring. If any genetic changes prove to be beneficial, they might give those young a survival edge. Over the great span of time – through the slow closing of a land bridge here or the rise of a mountain range there – species eventually split. They go on evolving slowly along ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Conservationists have raised the alarm about the Botswana government's decision to increase its annual trophy-hunting quota for elephants, reigniting a debate over how the country should manage the world's largest elephant population. Botswana, a largely dry nation which is home to 2.3 million people, has more than 130,000 elephants, nearly one-third of all elephants in Africa. The African continent is home to some 415,000 elephants of the world's 460,000 elephants. The rest of the world's ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . A strikingly orange frog that fits on a pencil tip lives among the clouds in Brazil. Scientists encountered the newly named species, Brachycephalus lulai , in the cloud forests that cloak the Serra do Quiriri mountain range in the south of the country. B. lulai only measures up to a little over a half-inch long—female individuals are longer than males—making it among the tiniest four-legged creatures on the planet. The species was ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Ecologically important Diadema africanum almost eliminated by unknown disease in Canary Islands A marine pandemic is bringing some species of sea urchin to the brink of extinction, and some populations have disappeared altogether, a study has found . Since 2021, Diadema africanum urchins in the Canary Island archipelago have almost entirely been killed by an unknown disease. There has been a 99.7% population decrease in Tenerife, and a 90% decrease off the islands of the Madeira archipelago. In ... [Read More]

Dec 10th, 2025 - Sensible people might prefer to flee at torpedo speed from a great white shark, but there's one job in Australia that pays you to race towards the predators. And when you reach the big fish, you have to fix a tracker to its dorsal fin while bobbing in a boat on the ocean swell. The job is key to a sophisticated protection network that lets swimmers, surfers and fishers check for the aquatic hunters in real time when they venture into the water. Every day, workers lay 305 satellite-linked buoys ... [Read More]

Dec 10th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . T he branches of the human family tree have grown a lot more convoluted over the past 20 years. First, geneticists discovered that Neanderthals interbred with humans . Then, paleontologists unearthed the Denisovans in Asia, an archaic species or subspecies that also coexisted with modern humans. But perhaps the most peculiar addition to our genus in the past two decades is Homo floresiensis —the diminutive "hobbits" of Indonesia. Nautilus ... [Read More]