Biology

Oct 4th, 2024 - The captivating, brilliantly green night parrot, Pezoporus occidentalis , was once a common sight in the outback across the Australian continent. However, due to external factors such as the arrival of colonists and pervading feral predators, the once thriving species witnessed a near-catastrophic decline by the late 19th century. This decline was so drastic that for about a century, this vibrant parrot was thought to have been completely wiped out. It was only in 1990 when a dead specimen was ... [Read More]

Oct 4th, 2024 - Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more . You have probably seen leaf-cutter ants carrying bits of plants, maybe in a nature documentary, at a science museum or in the "Circle of Life" song at the beginning of the 1994 Disney animated film "The Lion King." Those ants don't eat the leaves — instead they bring them back to their nests to feed a garden of fungi, which produce food for the ... [Read More]

Oct 4th, 2024 - A new study shows environmental conditions in migratory birds' winter homes carry over to affect their ability to survive spring migration and the breeding season. A new study from researchers at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) shows environmental conditions in migratory birds' winter homes carry over to affect their ability to survive spring migration and the breeding season. While scientists have long known that the quality of winter, or non-breeding, ... [Read More]

Oct 4th, 2024 - Canada lynx are often mistaken for bobcats, but they are exceedingly rare in the lower 48. A juvenile male is now roaming Vermont. For the first time in six years, some Vermont residents have officially caught sight of an elusive creature: the Canada lynx .  In August, officials with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department confirmed that a Canada lynx had been spotted in the state for the first time since 2018. It was captured on video in Rutland County.  Now, officials are saying ... [Read More]

Oct 3rd, 2024 - Over the past 130,000 years, human activities have led to the extinction of hundreds of bird species. This has resulted in substantial reductions in avian functional diversity – the range of different roles and functions that birds perform in the environment.  While humans have been contributing to the global loss of species diversity for thousands of years, the impacts on other dimensions of biodiversity are not yet clear.  Extinctions impact ecological functions  New ... [Read More]

Oct 3rd, 2024 - In the coastal area of Fukui prefecture in western Japan there have been 18 reports of a dolphin attacking swimmers this year. The culprit appears to be a lone dolphin that wants to interact with humans. Dolphin researchers say they are trying to get a better understanding of why dolphins are leaving their usual habitat. In Japan's western Fukui prefecture, a series of "attacks" by what appears to be a lone dolphin has got people asking why the normally friendly mammals would be going after ... [Read More]

Oct 3rd, 2024 - Fans of Clementine, the cat whose rare eye color recently took TikTok by storm, may be intrigued to learn the results of a new study.  The striking eye colors found in many wild cats , such as the piercing gold of cheetahs, the vivid blue of snow leopards , and the glowing green of leopards, can all be traced back to one single ancestor. This feline progenitor, similar to an ocelot, roamed the Earth over 30 million years ago. Variety of cat eye colors Harvard University researchers suggest ... [Read More]

Oct 3rd, 2024 - Damien Boschetto found a nearly complete dinosaur skeleton in France -- an extremely rare discovery -- while walking his pooch. It looked like any other day for 25-year-old Damien Boschetto, who was out and about walking his dog around the serene landscape of Montouliers, Hérault, France. But it's not every day that you get to stumble across a 70-million-year-old piece of history. This happened around two years ago, not long after a recent landslide had occurred. The landslide had ... [Read More]

Oct 3rd, 2024 - Mycology has impacted your life, I guarantee it. Whether it was that penicillin you took to get better or those cultivated mushrooms you ate for dinner yesterday, you have mycology to thank. Mycologists are scientists who dedicate their careers to all things fungi. It may be surprising to hear that mycology is not a booming discipline. Most universities don't offer programs in mycology and this doesn't seem to be changing. Fungal pathogens infect over 1 billion people worldwide. They also ... [Read More]

Oct 2nd, 2024 - Coyotes , like domestic dogs, possess the ability to create the " puppy dog eyes " expression, a facial feature long thought to have evolved exclusively in dogs due to domestication, according to a new study. The research, published in Royal Society Open Science , focused on the levator anguli oculi medialis (LAOM), a muscle responsible for raising the inner eyebrow—a key component in producing the well-known puppy dog eye expression. This expression has been thought to facilitate ... [Read More]

Oct 2nd, 2024 - An extensive exploration of ten years of wildlife rescue data reveals the complex interactions between humans and reptiles in Sydney's urban landscape, where the venomous red-bellied black snake is one of the city's most-rescued reptiles. A new analysis of a decade-long collection of wildlife rescue records in NSW has delivered new insights into how humans and reptiles interact in urban environments. Researchers from Macquarie University worked with scientists from Charles Darwin University, ... [Read More]

Oct 2nd, 2024 - This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at . From January to May each year, Qeqertarsuaq Tunua, a large bay on Greenland's west coast, teems with plankton. Baleen whales come to feast on the bounty, and in 2010, two bowhead whales entered the bay to gorge. As the pair came within roughly 60 miles of one another, they were visually out of range but could likely still hear one another. That's when ... [Read More]

Oct 2nd, 2024 - A new species of moth was found in a home in south Wales after travelling thousands of miles in a photographer's boot bag. Two clearwing moths appear to have hitched a ride when they were larvae, travelling 4,500 miles from a tropical jungle in Guyana, South America, before ending up in Port Talbot. Three months later, they were spotted on a windowsill in the winter by ecologist Daisy Cadet and her mother Ashleigh in what scientists have described as an "improbable event" that "defies rational ... [Read More]

Oct 1st, 2024 - Most flowering plants depend on animals for pollination. In warm wet tropical regions, more than 90% of plant species are pollinated by animals. In Dominica, a Caribbean island country, researchers have identified a mutualistic relationship between two species of heliconia plant (Heliconia bihai and H. caribaea) and their hummingbird pollinator, the Purple-throated carib (Eulampis jugularis). The association is so specific that it has often been cited as an example in the scientific literature. ... [Read More]

Oct 1st, 2024 - Drone video of gray whales captured over seven years off Oregon has revealed new details about how the giant marine mammals find and eat food. Among the findings, described in two studies published over the summer, are that gray whales rely on different swimming techniques to collect food based on their sizes and ages and that larger whales are more likely to exhale "bubble blasts" to help them stay underwater. "Before this study, we thought that any whale used any of those behaviors," said the ... [Read More]

Oct 1st, 2024 - "Tropical rainforest" might conjure images of close-packed trees, dense humidity, and the din of animal calls. But rainforests host landscapes beyond that archetypal one, including vast, treeless clearings that seemingly appear out of nowhere. These strange, sudden canopy gaps, called bais, are located only in the rainforests of the Congo Basin of west-central Africa. Some stretching the length of 40 football fields, and some only a few hundred feet across, bais are the world's largest known ... [Read More]