The newts of the genus Taricha come armed with a powerful neurotoxin that they excrete from their skin called tetrodotoxin. The toxin is a chemical defense used against predators. In a study published November 28 in the journal Frontiers in Amphibian and Reptile Science, a team of biologists describes how female Taricha newts produce more tetrodotoxin than males. The findings suggest that tetrodotoxin is not only a line of defense, but also a kind of signal. 

[Related: Poisonous animals probably took their sweet time developing unappetizing bright colors.]

“It had long been considered that newts’ toxin concentrations do not change in their lifetime and that males and females tend to have the same toxin concentrations. Now, we have shown that female newts actually contain more toxin than male newts,” study co-author and University of California, Davis ecologist and evolutionary biologist Gary Bucciarelli said in a statement. “We observed significantly greater and more drastically fluctuating toxin concentrations in females, which may have numerous causes, like mate selection.”  

Totally toxic traits

Tetrodotoxin is also found in the deadly blue-ringed octopus, pufferfish, and some shellfish and amphibian species. In sexually reproducing animals, sexually dimorphic traits like canine tooth size and vibrant color can be a key to reproductive fitness and their survival. These differing traits are believed to increase an individual’s chances of producing the next generation of offspring.

Scientists already knew that Taricha newts had other sexually dimorphic traits, such as mass, size, and tail height, so they were curious to see if toxin production also differed between the sexes. 

In the study, the authors took tetrodotoxin samples from more than 850 newts across 38 different sites in California. They noted the sex, size, mass, and tail height for all of the animals, and if the female newts were pregnant. The newts that had been captured and released were also marked so that they could know if they had been previously sampled. 

Next, the team analyzed their skin to quantify how much of the toxin was found in males compared to females. They also looked at the relationship between sexually dimorphic variables  like size and tail height and how toxin levels changed at the study sites where they could sample more than once across the breeding season. 

Understanding how these toxins work could help biologists understand more about the newts’ reproductive strategies and aid in conservation measures. A recent study found that two out of five amphibians are threatened with extinction and they continue to be the most threatened class of vertebrates on Earth. 

Femme fatale

The authors found that the females carried more toxins than the male newts. While tetrodotoxin levels generally fluctuated in both sexes, the change in females’ levels of toxin was larger. This means that female newts are likely more dangerous than males. 

[Related: How we can help the most endangered class of animals survive climate change.]

“For would-be predators, these higher concentrations pose a serious threat,” said Bucciarelli. “Taricha newts should not be handled unless by knowledgeable personnel, because they can contain up [to] 54 milligrams of tetrodotoxin per individual. Doses up to 42 micrograms per kilo of bodyweight can lead to hospitalization or death.”

The tetrodotoxin also appeared to interact with some of the other sexually dimorphic traits. The heavier newts produced higher levels of the toxin than the lighter newts and the median concentration of toxin was always higher in females regardless of size or weight. The physical resources needed to produce the toxin are possibly invested differently by females than males. Their skin may also be able to carry more of the toxin.

The higher levels of tetrodotoxin might protect females that are vulnerable to predators while reproducing. It could also allow the females to transfer toxin-producing bacteria to their eggs to potentially protect their offspring from snakes. 

Poison patterns

Previously, tetrodotoxin was believed to just be a defense against snakes. The differing amount between the sexes suggests that there might be more to it. The aroma due to the higher concentrations of the toxin may be a cue that helps the newts decide where they look for mates and which mates they choose. 

“Taricha newts’ breeding patterns are highly dependent on precipitation patterns. Given the drought conditions of California, we did not always have a balanced design when field sampling,” said Bucciarelli. “However, we feel the pattern is still very strong. Our next plan is to explore how drought and fire affect newts and their toxin concentrations and how each sex responds to these natural disasters.”

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On November 25, a healthy male Sumatran rhinoceros was born at a western Indonesian sanctuary. This birth is welcome news for the critically endangered species. There are less than 50 Sumatran rhinos left, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

[Related: Rhino horns are shrinking, and humans are to blame.]

A seven-year-old female rhino named Delilah gave birth to the 55 pound calf at the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Way Kambas National Park (SRS TNWK) on the island of Sumatra. According to officials from the sanctuary, a conservation guard found her laying next to her calf early on Saturday morning. The birth was about 10 days before the baby’s expected due date. The baby’s father is a rhino named Harapan who was born at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in Ohio before coming to Sumatra. 

“You never know if a first-time mom will know what to do, but Delilah brought that calf into the world and started nursing it with no fuss or fanfare. It’s an incredible event that gives hope to the future of this critically endangered species,” International Rhino Foundation executive director Nina Fascione said in a press release. 

Sumatran rhinos are the smallest of all rhino species at about 1,000 to 2,100 pounds and three to four feet tall. They have two horns that are dark gray to black. The horns are usually very smooth and form a slender cone that is curved backwards in the wild. Poaching, illegal trading of rhino horns, and climate change have pushed these mammals to the brink of extinction. According to the IUCN Red List, they are currently extinct in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, India, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, according to the Red List. It is uncertain if they are still present in Myanmar. 

Successful births like this one are also rare. In 2012, a male rhino named Andatu born at Way Kambas became the first Sumatran rhino born in an Indonesian sanctuary in over 120 years.

“Two years ago there was only one captive Sumatran rhino pair in the world able to successfully produce offspring. Now there are three pairs–six rhinos–who are proven breeders. Those are much better odds for the long-term survival of this species,” said Fascione.

According to Indonesian Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar, this still-to-be-named calf is the fifth born under a semi-wild breeding program at the park. The new addition brings the rhino herd at Way Kambas up to 10 animals and follows the birth of another calf in September. 

[Related: Rhinos pay a painful price for oxpecker protection.]

The sanctuary is part of a special zone in the national park where all of the rhinos are protected and looked after by local experts.

“The main objective is to produce Sumatran rhino calves to maintain the survival of the Sumatran rhino species which is now threatened with extinction,” sanctuary Director General of Natural Resources and Ecosystem Conservation Satyawan Pudyatmoko said in a statement. “The Sumatran rhino calves are the result of a breeding program. In the future, at SRS TNWK they can be released back into their natural habitat.”

Veterinarians from the Rhino Foundation of Indonesia (Yayasan Badak Indonesia) and animal care staff will continue to closely monitor Delialah and her new calf as they bond.

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The assortment of black dots that decorate African penguins’ mostly all-white fronts might help the birds tell each other apart. This is the first documented time that animal behaviorists and psychologists have pinpointed a physical feature that a bird species uses for visual recognition. The findings are described in a study published in the January 2024 issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.

[Related: How African penguins continue to survive changes in climate.]

In birds, distinguishing individual flock members is primarily based on auditory cues and not visual cues. For example, some parrots distinguish their offspring with squawking equivalent of individual names. This new research is one of the first studies to show that birds could use visual cues more than scientists previously believed. 

According to study co-author and animal psychologist Luigi Baciadonna, the dots on African penguins appear when they are about three to five months old. These birds molt annually and reemerge in the same position when the new plumage comes in. 

In the new study, a team from Italy’s University of Turin, the University of Oulu in Finland, and Zoomarine Italia marine park near Rome conducted a simple experiment with 12 penguins. The team built a small enclosure with plywood walls that was just tall enough to prevent a penguin from seeing over it. They placed cameras on either end of the pen and life-size pictures of two penguins on one of the far walls. One penguin entered the enclosure, where one of the pictures featured its specific mate. 

African penguins form lifelong bonds with their partners and the team tracked their responses to images of other penguins from their species. They found that the penguins spent more time looking at the picture of their partner than they did a picture of a different familiar penguin. This occurred even when the heads of the penguins were blurred. 

When the test penguins were shown two images of their partner, including one that had the spots removed, they preferred the images where the dots remained intact. However, this preference for their partner did not occur when the birds saw unspeckled versions of their mate and a different bird. According to the team, this suggests that the penguins use these spots to tell one another apart.

[Related: Jackass penguins talk like people.]

African penguins live along the coasts of Namibia and South Africa. They are about 24 to 27 inches tall and eat squid, anchovies, and other small fish. African penguins are known to be particularly communicative with one another, so scientists have studied their behavior to better understand some of the more advanced social behaviors seen in primates. A 2021 study found that African penguins are capable of vocal accommodation. Different group members have a different dialect and vocal accommodation allows group members to learn to speak more like the others. 

“Given how goofy penguins can seem–almost stumbling over their feet as they walk, for example–the birds may not seem like they are all that bright,” Baciadonna told New Scientist. “But we showed in these two or three experiments that actually they are quite complicated and complex. They’re also clever.”

Animal physiologist and director of the Institute of Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen Andreas Nieder told Science, “It is an original study with a remarkable finding.” Nieder was not involved in the new research.

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This article was originally featured on Undark.

Twice each year, members of a subspecies of red knots—salmon-colored sandpipers—migrate thousands of miles between their wintering grounds in northern Mexico and breeding sites in the Arctic tundra, encountering myriad obstacles along the way. Thought to migrate during both day and night, brightly lit cities likely disrupt their nighttime journeys, and rising sea levels and invasive species threaten the wetlands they rely on for refueling at stopover sites.

The red knot is one of some 350 North American bird species that migrate. Yet there remains much to learn about the details of their journeys. It’s a critical information gap given the loss of an estimated 3 billion birds in North America since 1970, according to a 2019 study.

“The only way to think about conservation of migratory birds is to consider their full annual cycles,” including their migration routes and wintering sites, said Bill DeLuca, a senior migration ecologist with the National Audubon Society.

The problem, he said, is “We don’t know, for a lot of species, what time of the year is causing the declines.” For the vast majority of migrating birds, the full picture of their life cycle is incomplete, DeLuca added.

That’s partly due to technology. Until recently, while scientists could study birds at their North American breeding sites, they had few ways to track them individually throughout their migrations or while in their wintering grounds, especially small songbirds like warblers and sparrows.

And for birds that migrate through the West’s remote deserts and mountains and across its wild shorelines, like the rufous hummingbird, which journeys between Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and Mexico, their flight routes are even less understood. “Knowledge of migration patterns for birds in the West is way behind the East,” said Mary Whitfield, research director at the California nonprofit Southern Sierra Research Station, because of the smaller number of long-term banding stations there.

But scientists across the West are increasingly turning to an accessible, low-cost technology to answer key questions about bird migration and how climate change is impacting their life cycles.

The Motus Wildlife Tracking System, launched in 2014, is an international network of about 1,800 radio receiver stations in 34 countries. The program, run by the conservation organization Birds Canada, is already well established in eastern North America, but has begun to spread rapidly across the West in the last couple of years. Researchers in the Motus network track birds (or other animals, like butterflies) using small tags. When a bird flies within range of a station—up to about 12 miles away, depending on the conditions—the tag automatically transmits a signal to a receiver, which is then uploaded to the Motus website. Scientists participate through tagging, building Motus stations, or both, and fund their own projects. Museums, zoos, and schools may also participate by hosting a Motus station and educating the public about bird migration and movement, Whitfield noted. So far, more than 43,600 animals, including butterflies, bats, and birds, have been tagged by researchers using Motus globally.

Until recently, tracking tags were too large and heavy for small songbirds. The Motus system uses tags that weigh less than 3 percent of a bird’s weight—in the case of a small songbird that weighs around 18 grams, a tag weighs just half a gram. After birds are captured in mist nets made of fine mesh, they are fitted with the tags using a harness, which they wear like a backpack.

An estimated 1 billion birds use the Pacific flyway, a route through Western coastal states, during their migration, and many millions more migrate via the central flyway through the interior West. Along the way, they routinely encounter natural phenomena like storms, drought, and predators, as well as man-made obstacles like glass-facades that attract birds and pose serious collision risks. In addition, given the rapid growth of wind and solar projects across the West, Whitfield said, it’s crucial to identify birds’ movements through desert areas earmarked for alternative energy development.

According to Whitfield, Motus (Latin for motion) could be a “game changer” for understanding Western birds’ movements through the seasons. “It’s critical,” Whitfield said. “We have to find out more about migration, because it’s definitely a pinch point for bird mortality—that’s typically when birds die the most, because it’s just a really perilous journey.”

In May of this year at the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, Matt Webb, an avian ecologist with the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, was getting ready to install a Motus radio tower with funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He hoped to fill “in some of the knowledge gaps” about grassland songbirds, which are experiencing rapid declines in population. Four species in particular have declined more than 70 percent since 1970, according to the bird conservation network Partners in Flight.

Grassland birds range from the prairies of Saskatchewan to the southernmost edges of the Chihuahuan desert in Mexico. “We’ve got this massive geography that we need to cover adequately” to understand their migration, Webb said.

And the birds don’t just travel during migration, he added—they roam widely during both the breeding season and winter, making them even more difficult to monitor. With data from Motus, Webb said, they hope to “unravel some of those mysteries of why they’re moving around and where they’re going during those seasons.”

Webb was equipped with several long antennas and a shoebox-sized, solar-powered sensor station computer with cellular connectivity for receiving and transmitting data. But the road to the tower site was flooded, after increased snowpack drove high flows in the Rio Grande River.

So Webb and Kylie Lamoree, another Bird Conservancy ecologist, turned to Plan B, surveying old water and communications towers as potential locations. In order to detect tagged birds up to 12 miles away, “We need to get it up above the topography and the vegetation nearby,” Webb said. (He later noted that they were able to go back at the end of August and install the station.)

At the northern end of the Chihuahuan desert, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is a major destination for migrating and wintering waterfowl as well as for birders. Webb was seeking to determine if the four grassland birds he’s studying—thick-billed longspurs, chestnut-colored longspurs, Baird’s sparrows, and Sprague’s pipits—are using the refuge during the winter, during migration, or both.

Those four species are small songbirds with ochre, tan, or black plumage that make them well-camouflaged in shortgrass prairie habitat. The birds are difficult to capture for tagging without large vegetation to conceal the researchers’ mist nets, Webb said.

Even so, Webb said the payoff is great: “There’s really never been a technology that works well enough to be able to collect this data” for such tiny birds, he said. And after a bird is tagged with its transmitter “backpack,” it doesn’t need to be recaptured.

Migrating shorebirds are another group of Western birds with steep population losses in recent decades. Julián Garcia Walther, a Mexican biologist and Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is monitoring shorebirds in northwest Mexico to find out more about climate change impacts on sea level rise and biodiversity. “I started thinking about how these birds that live on the interface between land and sea, the intertidal zone, how they’re going to be affected by sea level rise,” Garcia Walther said.

He learned about Motus in 2019, and realized the small tags used in the network were ideal for monitoring red knots, many of which winter in the coastal wetlands of northwest Mexico and whose populations are under pressure. But there were no Motus stations in the region.

Garcia Walther has now installed about 25 Motus stations with the help of the Mexican conservation organization Pronatura Noroeste, where he is the Motus network coordinator, along with other partner organizations. “It’s a big learning curve,” he said, requiring skills in electricity, radio communications, and construction. One of his biggest challenges is sourcing materials in Mexico, so he turned to improvised materials, like a pole once used for an osprey nest converted into an antenna mast.

Another hurdle was capturing the birds. Without tagged birds, stations are “just poles and antennas,” Garcia Walther said. Shorebirds are especially tricky to capture because they disperse across the coastline’s open expanses. While the harness method used for tagging grassland birds is also often used in shorebird research, Garcia Walther added, his team uses glue to secure the tags to the backs of red knots, meaning the birds will shed the devices when they molt.

But with three years of data from some 100 birds, Garcia’s team has made some significant observations. One finding, the result of data from Motus stations as well as GPS loggers—trackers that show fine-scale movements—revealed that during high spring tides, red knots use dried seagrass as rafts to rest on while the tidelands are inundated.

“This is analogous to what’s going to happen with sea-level rise,” Garcia Walther said. The data he has collected should help wildlife researchers plan for the future when there will likely be little shoreline available for roosting, he said, informing strategies to protect, restore, and improve vulnerable habitats.

Garcia Walther said he got advice from colleagues in the U.S. when he was setting up his stations, and he now helps scientists elsewhere in Latin America with their Motus projects.

Blake Barbaree, a senior ecologist at Point Blue Conservation Science with projects in California’s Central Valley, also depends on cross-border collaboration. His team is investigating the impact of drought on shorebirds, using Motus to track the movements of birds in California during the winter as well as during migration.

Since they’re only in the second season, Barbaree said it’s too soon to draw any definitive conclusions, though data collected at Motus towers has confirmed high connectivity between the Central Valley and coastal Washington, as well as the Copper River Delta in Alaska. “Numerous detections at Motus stations along the coasts of Oregon and British Columbia,” he wrote in a follow-up email, “have also highlighted the fact that a network of stopover sites is critical to their migration.”

This linkage, Barbaree said, helps researchers “piece together puzzles of population increases or decreases,” looking for impacts not just in wintering or breeding grounds but in key stopover habitats.

The network “has really opened up a world of migratory connectivity research” on other small animals like insects and bats, Barbaree added. And he’s seen it inspire collaboration between researchers investigating not just birds, but other migratory species.

Motus projects include studies on bats and insects, for example, with more than 340 species tagged to date. And scientists are turning to Motus for help identifying threats common to birds and bats. In 2023, a team from the U.S. Geological Survey installed two coastal Motus stations in California—with plans to install about two dozen more—to monitor three seabird species and three species of bats, to determine potential impacts of offshore energy.

After a major effort last winter to tag grassland birds in northern Mexico, Webb followed their migration north in the spring—via data their tags uploaded to the Motus website. A Baird’s sparrow his team tagged was tracked from Chihuahua to northern Kansas and up through North Dakota and Montana, the first time they had connected migratory stops through North American grassland habitats in such detail. It was “a lot of fun this spring watching the stations every morning,” he said.

DeLuca of the Audubon Society said understanding the life cycles of different species is the first step in revealing the factors causing their decline, like habitat loss or pollution. “When you think of all of the drivers that are pushing these species” towards extinction, he said, “it’s really kind of mind boggling.”

And climate change, he said, is an additional “huge over-arching pressure,” since it affects bird migration directly with impacts like increased severe weather, and indirectly when food resources like fruit or insects aren’t available.

Identifying the habitats birds rely on during migration and winter is key, DeLuca said.

And the Motus network can amplify those efforts.

The Motus philosophy is “all about collaboration,” Garcia Walther said. In addition to recording birds tagged by his own team, his Motus stations in Mexico are detecting birds from other research projects.

Once a tower is installed, any bird tagged by a Motus collaborator anywhere in the world can be detected there. “Any stations we place benefit the network as a whole,” Webb noted. And most of the data collected is publicly accessible on the Motus website.

The more the network grows, DeLuca said, “the more flexibility we have in terms of the kinds of questions we can answer with Motus.”

And with increased knowledge, scientists can better target conservation actions.

“The more we know, the more we realize just how dire the situation is,” DeLuca said. For migratory birds, he said, “The stakes, honestly, could not be higher.”

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Bird photography is hard. It can require years of practice, expensive equipment, and endless patience. We don’t have any of those, so we really like the Bird Buddy, which puts a camera in a feeder that brings your avian models to you. Usually $279, this clever contraption is just $209 right now at Amazon for Black Friday—making it something for the birds, even if the discount is anything but. It’s a phenomenal gift and a gateway to a whole new hobby.

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Even if you’re not the biggest birding fan, this is a super cool way to see nature from an up-close view that would otherwise be impossible.

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As far back as he can remember, Kali Chockalingam, now 53 and living in Echur, a village in Southern India, has loved snakes. He often got in trouble with his teachers for hiding them in his schoolbag. “As a young boy, I thought they looked like little dolls,” he said. Chockalingam hails from India’s Irula tribe, one of the country’s oldest Indigenous communities, known for their extraordinary ability to trace and catch snakes. From his father and grandfather, he learned the family trade.

Roughly 200,000 Irulars are spread out over three Southern Indian states—Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. And for the past 45 years, Chockalingam’s tribe in Tamil Nadu has run the Irula Snake Catcher’s Industrial Co-operative Society, India’s largest producer of quality snake venom, which is used to manufacture antidotes to snakebites, or antivenin.

Research has shown that antivenin made from the co-op’s venom has been effective in treating bites by the four most common venomous snakes in the country, the only snakes the Irulars are legally allowed to catch: the Russell’s viper, the common krait, the Indian cobra, and the Indian saw-scaled viper.

Still, snakebite deaths remain a problem. According to the Million Death Study, one of the largest ongoing global studies of premature mortality, around 58,000 Indians die from snakebites every year, the highest rate in the world. And a growing proportion of these bites come from less common species of venomous snakes in specific pockets of the country, for which, according to researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, available antivenin — also often called antivenom—are not very effective.

People living in India’s rural areas, who are exposed to a broad range of snakes, are particularly at risk. Treating these patients can be difficult, said Gnaneswar Ch, project leader of the Snake Conservation & Snakebite Mitigation Project at the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust Center for Herpetology, where the Irula Co-op is located.

For instance, in Tamil Nadu, data on snakebites and how to prevent them—gathered by Gnaneswar’s team since 2015—suggest that people are most likely to be bitten on their legs when they walk across agricultural fields barefoot. And they may not seek treatment at the hospital until hours after the bite, turning first to natural or folk remedies. As a result, Gnaneswar said, “we’re seeing many amputations and loss of limbs.”

The Irulars’ history with snakes traces back to the tribe’s roots as hunter-gatherers. In pre-Independent India, the tribe began to sell snakes to the British, who wanted their skins. But the tribe was thrust into poverty after India’s Wildlife Protection Act came into effect in 1972, which banned snake hunting (and later, snakeskin export in 1976).

The tribe’s prospects changed in 1978, when herpetologist Romulus Whitaker, who had formed a deep friendship with the Irulars, established the Irula Co-op. Since then, the Irulars were charged with the responsibility of catching snakes, said Gnaneswar. And “they went from snake hunters to lifesavers.”

The Irula Co-op now has approximately 350 members who, like Chockalingam, are licensed to catch venomous snakes. As a collective, they are allowed to bring in up to 13,000 snakes per year, generating an annual income between 10 and 25 million Indian rupees (between approximately $120,000 and $300,000). At any given time, the co-op has the license to house up to 800 venomous snakes. Because of the region’s immense heat, the snakes are stored in wide brimmed earthen pots, which are covered with cotton cloths and closed with a string. The snakes are protected by India’s Wildlife Act, and so the co-op is only permitted to keep individual animals in captivity for 21 days, during which their venom is extracted—or milked—four times. Venom milking involves holding the snake by its head and forcing it to bite the lip of a jar; venom drips from its fangs and collects in the jar.

The work has its dangers. Over the past 30 years, Chockalingam has been bitten five times, he said, and some of the bites have been life threatening. In 2001 on a routine snake catching operation, a Russell’s viper sank its fangs into his index finger. After stopping for a cup of tea, Chockalingam said, he went to the hospital for shots of antivenin. When he was finally allowed to go home after five days, he remembers immediately setting out to catch another snake.

Not everyone can catch snakes with the ease and expertise of the Irulars, so antivenin manufacturers across India rely heavily on the co-op. Today, just seven companies in the country produce antivenin, and all of them buy Irular-milked venom for their products.

“Manufacturing antivenin is a very technologically challenging process,” said MV Khadilkar, co-founder and technical director of Premium Serums, which makes country- and region-specific snake antivenin for India, Sri Lanka, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The product is manufactured using horses; it’s complex and labor intensive, and the outcome isn’t always guaranteed. Small, harmless doses of the snake venom are injected into the horses, and the doses are then gradually increased (though they remain at levels that will not hurt the animal). The horses’ bodies produce proteins in reaction to the venom, called antibodies, which are then harvested from their blood and processed into an injectable antivenin. “We have to ensure the health and welfare of the animal as well as we have to maintain productivity,” Khadilkar said. “It is a very delicate balance.”

The seven Indian companies that produce antivenin make 8 million vials a year, most of it derived from the Irula Co-op venom. But in spite of the Irula co-op’s efforts, and the availability of antivenin across the country, many challenges persist.

First, producing antivenins for India’s different regions is difficult. Some snakes aren’t considered medically important: Though their bites may cause severe pain, disability, neurological issues, and paralysis, they are not life-threatening. Other snakes that are lethal are restricted to specific areas of the country. In the end, producing the antidotes must be affordable without compromising on quality.

“The problem of snake venom is a problem of poor people,” Khadilkar said. It involves hard labor in manufacturing, but the profits aren’t high, he said, and “that’s why you don’t find many big pharmaceutical companies who are in this field.”

“Despite this,” he added, “there’s always a demand from different corners of India.”

The antivenin that is made isn’t always well-distributed. According to Gnaneswar, while the country produces adequate venom from the big four snakes, the antivenin may not always reach the places that need it the most. Stocks may be inadequate, especially in rural hospitals and small health care centers, because they are not distributed to places that see the most snakebites.

And the antivenins that are produced and distributed won’t treat every snakebite, even from related species. “The problem is that venom varies between species and geographically as well,” said Whitaker, who is now the Indian head of the Global Snakebite Initiative. While the Irula Co-op pulls venom from the four species that cause the most fatal bites across India, there are also four species of cobras, seven species of kraits, and two species of saw-scaled vipers, he added, and the co-op venoms may not work as well “for bites of the same or related species in other parts of the country.” And venom also changes over different seasons, even within an individual snake.

Then there’s the issue of quality. How well an antivenin works depends on the potency of the venom—a mixture of biological substances including amino acids, carbohydrates, fats, nucleic acids, peptides, and proteins. The best practices for venom extraction, which were created by the World Health Organization, “are hard to achieve in India, considering our existing wildlife laws and drug manufacturing laws, but more importantly, the necessity to keep the venom production costs to the minimum,” said Gnaneswar. For instance, the best practices dictate that snakes should be held in a controlled environment with appropriate nutrition and low chances of stress. This goes against Indian laws, where snakes are protected and can’t be held indefinitely in captivity.

There are also issues with venom storage. Once milked, the venom must quickly be stored at minus 20 degrees Celsius, or minus 4 Fahrenheit, to retain the highest quality; otherwise, its biological components could degrade. The Co-op’s current methods involve extracting venom from up to a hundred snakes in quick succession, which means the earliest collections don’t immediately go into a freezer. “It’s evident that venom loses its potency,” said Gnaneswar. “However, we are not sure how much potency it loses.”

To help make the antivenin that can treat a wider range of India’s many snakebites, there are two possible approaches, according to Khadilkar. The first is to manufacture region-specific antivenin dedicated to a particular area where there is strong demand—individual antivenins for each species of snake. If venom was collected from diverse snakes across India, a “cocktail” of those from the same species could then be used to immunize the horses, he said. The antigenic variation “can provide more diverse antibodies and the antivenin becomes effective over a wider geographical area.” But the costs for this approach would be high.

The second is to make a more diverse antivenin that can effectively act on a spectrum of snakebites. This would entail catching and milking snakes from different parts of India, not just the big four, and making a mixed antivenin. The biggest drawback is that there isn’t enough skilled labor to achieve this.

Still, on a smaller scale, there are such efforts underway. Gnaneswar’s employer, the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust Center for Herpetology, is working with the Tamil Nadu government to set up a new state-of-the-art venom collection center. The hope is for the facility to get permission to permanently house snakes from all over the country. If approved, it could be operational as early as August 2025. For Chockalingam and the other Irulars—should they get the government’s permission to catch more species of snakes beyond the big four — the serpentarium could translate to more work, more venom, better infrastructure and safety protocols, and richer rewards. “It gives me a deep sense of joy when I think of the lives we’re saving by doing this work,” said Chockalingam. “It makes every struggle worth it in the end.”

Another possible solution may be to produce antivenin in a way that doesn’t rely on injecting horses with venom and collecting antibodies. Some labs are experimenting with such an approach: oral antidotes, which target proteins in venom that are most toxic to humans. These antidotes can also withstand higher temperatures and produce fewer allergic reactions. One such company, the U.S.-based Ophirex, has recently completed a Stage 2 clinical trial on its product.

“If that drug proves out to be effective,” Gnaneswar said, “it would be a huge, huge jump for antivenom in India.”

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It’s been a wormy, sexual head-scratcher for years. The Japanese green syllid worm Megasyllis nipponica detaches its butt in order to reproduce. But how do these algae-eating invertebrates do this? The process could come down to some developmental genes, according to a study published November 22 in the journal Scientific Reports.

[Related: The jumping worm invasion may be less worrisome than it sounds.]

Bye bye, butt

Some segmented sea worms like the syllid worm go through a reproductive process called  stolonization. The stolon is the worm’s posterior organ and it is full of eggs or sperm depending on the worm’s sex. During stolonization, the stolon completely detaches from the rest of the worm’s body for reproduction. 

This detached butt swims around by itself and spawns when it meets another stolon of the opposite sex. This autonomous swimming is believed to protect the original body of the worm from dangers in the environment and help the eggs and sperm travel longer distances. 

In order to swim by themselves, the stolon have to develop their own eyes, antennae, and swimming bristles while still attached to their original body. How this happens has been a mystery. The formation of the stolon itself begins when the gonads near the worm’s butt mature. A head is then formed in the front of the developing stolon, with the eyes, antennae, and swimming bristles following close behind. It develops its nerves and the ability to sense and behave independently before the stolon detaches from the rest of the body.

Hot hox genes

In the new study, a team from the University of Tokyo looked into how the stolon’s head is formed in the first place. The researchers investigated the developmental gene expression patterns in worms as they were sexually maturing. A well-known group of genes that determine body part formation called hox genes help define the head regions of various animals. The team found that hox genes are expressed more in the head region of the stolon. The genes are not typically expressed as much in the middle of the body, except for when the gonads are developing. During this time, the hox genes are highly expressed in the worm’s middle and butt. 

“This shows how normal developmental processes are modified to fit the life history of animals with unique reproductive styles,” study co-author and University of Tokyo marine biologist Toru Miura said in a statement.

[Related: These newly discovered bioluminescent sea worms are named after Japanese folklore.]

Hox genes also determine the segmentation along the worm’s body. The team thought that the hox genes would be expressed differently along the invisible line that runs from the head of the worm to the back end.

“Interestingly, the expressions of Hox genes that determine body-part identity were constant during the process,” said Miura. 

Because of this consistency, the stolon does not have a separatedigestive tract. It also has repeated uniform body segments, except for in its head and tail. 

“This indicates that only the head part is induced at the posterior body part to control spawning behavior for reproduction,” said Miura.

The study showed the developmental mechanism of stolons for the first time and sparked more investigation into this reproductive method. Miura and the team hope to clarify the sex determination mechanism and the endocrine regulations during the worm’s reproductive cycles in future studies.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

A person might wear their heart on their sleeve, but cuttlefish seem to wear their thoughts right on their skin.

Horst Obenhaus, a neuroscientist working with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is studying how these unusual creatures communicate with color. In particular, he and his team now think the unique patterns cuttlefish show on their skin while they sleep might be a colorful reflection of their inner thoughts—and, maybe, even of their dreams.

Cuttlefish are cephalopods—cousins of octopuses and squid. They’re clever animals with complex brains. Previous research has shown cuttlefish have decent short- and long-term memory and are social animals that can learn from past experiences. Cuttlefish have passed the marshmallow test, a commonly used psychological gauge of self-restraint and long-term planning. And they even experience something that looks like REM sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep. This is the phase of sleep during which humans dream. Sleeping cuttlefish have been seen moving their eyes rapidly, twitching, and altering the patterns on their skin, suggesting they might be experiencing something similar.

Even in people, sleep is a mysterious process. Scientists aren’t entirely sure why we do it. But one explanation is that sleep helps convert daily experiences into long-term memories, reactivating experiences we had while awake so that brain structures like the cortex can extract useful information. This, scientists think, helps us consolidate experiences and learn new skills.

So, Obenhaus wondered: are cuttlefish doing the same thing?

“Wouldn’t it be cool if we could pinpoint whether these animals reactivate experiences they’ve had during the day while they’re asleep?” he says.

Like other color-changing animals, including chameleons and some fish, cuttlefish change their hues using cells in their skin called chromatophores—“little sacs of pigment, surrounded by muscles,” says Sarah McAnulty, a squid biologist and founder of Skype a Scientist who was not involved with the research. A cuttlefish can flex these muscles to open the chromatophore, revealing the color inside.

Many other color-changing animals automatically change hue in response to changes in their environment or to their hormones. Cuttlefish, however, have incredible control over the color and patterning of their skin. A cuttlefish’s chromatophores are directly wired to the animal’s brain, McAnulty says. “So, they are changing color as quickly as they can think about it.”

In a way, this gives us a direct line to their inner worlds, says Obenhaus. “You just have to watch the skin and learn about what the brain does.”

To find out what cuttlefish’s dozing displays actually mean—if anything—Obenhaus’s team put pairs of dwarf cuttlefish together in tanks and then filmed them for several weeks. The scientists were looking to see if the cuttlefish’s slumbering skin patterns reflected their previous social encounters, similar to how people might revisit their social encounters in dreams.

So far, Obenhaus says, the team’s initial experiment found that while cuttlefish do show patterns on their skin as they’re sleeping, they don’t directly match the colorations the animals made when they were awake. However, some of the sleep-induced patterns did appear to be partial, more abstract versions of those the cuttlefish made during social interactions.

The question, says Obenhaus, is whether they can confirm an alignment between these strange patterns that occur during sleep and those that occur when the cuttlefish are awake.

That there’s any similarity at all between what cuttlefish and people do when they’re asleep, though, shouldn’t be taken for granted.

“Cephalopods diverged from us so long ago,” McAnulty says. “It’s really interesting to observe that other path of evolution that’s been moving alongside us but independently of us.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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The male sex organs of the animal kingdom come in all shapes and sizes from some that look like a bottle opener to genital stingers. For mammals, penetrative sex with a penis is needed to successfully mate. However, scientists have documented the first non-penetrative sex ever seen in a mammal. The mating technique was observed in the serotine bat (Eptesicus serotinus) and it is described in a study published November 20 in the journal Current Biology.

The mysteries of bat sex

Serotine bats are quite common in Europe and Asia, but the intricacies of bat sex remain elusive. Most previous observations of bats mating have only offered a glimpse of the backs of mating pairs. But in the new study, a team from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and a bat rehabilitation center in Ukraine got lucky. 

[Related: How echolocation lets bats, dolphins, and even people navigate by sound.]

“By chance, we had observed that these bats have disproportionately long penises, and we were always wondering ‘how does that work?’,” study co-author and University of Lausanne evolutionary biologist Nicolas Fasel said in a statement. “We thought maybe it’s like in the dog where the penis engorges after penetration so that they are locked together, or alternatively maybe they just couldn’t put it inside, but that type of copulation hasn’t been reported in mammals until now.” 

The team placed cameras behind a grid that the bats could climb hoping to get footage of their genitals and mating from one side of the grid. They found that bats’ penises are roughly seven times longer than their partners’ vaginas. Each has a “heart-shaped” head that is also seven times wider than the common bat vaginal opening. This size and shape would make penetration after an erection impossible. The study shows that instead of functioning as a penetrative organ, the penis is more like an extra arm. It pushes the female’s tail sheath out of the way to engage in contact mating, similar to cloacal kissing in birds. Instead of penetration, the birds touch their two rear orifices called the cloaca together for only a few seconds, but long enough for sperm to be released.

The bat sex detectives

Fasel collaborated with bat enthusiast and citizen scientist Jan Jeucker, who filmed hours of footage of the serotine bat in a church attic in the Netherlands. The team analyzed 97 mating events—93 from the Dutch church and four from the Ukrainian bat rehabilitation center. During the recordings, the team did not see a single incidence of penetration. The erectile tissues of the bat penis were completely enlarged before they made any contact with the vulva. The male bats grasped their partner’s nape and moved their pelvis like a probe until it made contact with the vulva. Once contact was made, the pair remained still. These interactions lasted less than 53 minutes on average, but the longest event extended to 12.7 hours. 

After copulation, the researchers saw that the female bats had wet abdomens. They believe this dampness indicates the presence of semen, but more research is needed to confirm if sperm was actually transferred during these assumed mating events.

[Related: What bats and metal vocalists have in common.]

The team also characterized the form of serotine bat genitalia by measuring the erect penises of live bats that were captured as part of other research studies. The necropsies on bats that had died at bat rehabilitation centers revealed how much longer and wider the serotine bat penises were compared to the bat vaginas. The penises are also about a fifth as long as the bats’ head to body length. Female serotine bats also have unusually long cervixes, which potentially helps them select and store sperm.

The team believes that the bats may have evolved their oversized penises as a way to push aside the female tail membranes.  

“Bats use their tail membranes for flying and to capture the insects, and female bats also use them to cover their lower parts and protect themselves from males,” said Fasel. “But the males can then use these big penises to overcome the tail membrane and reach the vulva.”

The team plans to study bat mating behavior in more natural contexts and further investigate penis morphology and mating behavior in other bat species. 

“We are trying to develop a bat porn box, which will be like an aquarium with cameras everywhere,” says Fasel.

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Cooperation between different groups of humans lies at the root of our social norms, traditions, and culture. Groups of a great ape species called bonobos may also work collaboratively with other cliques, according to a study published November 16 in the journal Science.

[Related: Bonobo ladies get to choose their mates and boy oh boy are they picky.]

Along with chimpanzees, bonobos are some of our closest living relatives. Studying their relationships can help scientists reconstruct what human traits appear to be more innate and how they evolve. However, both species of primate exhibit different levels of cooperation despite living in similar social groups that have multiple adult members of both sexes. 

Chimpanzees appear to have more hostile relationships between different groups. Even lethal aggression is not uncommon. This hostility has led researchers to assume that group conflict is an innate part of human nature. 

Bonobos might be telling a different story about how social structures and communities have evolved over time. 

“The ability to study how cooperation emerges in a species so closely related to humans challenges existing theory, or at least provides insights into the conditions that promote between-group cooperation over conflict,’ study co-author and German Primate Center evolutionary biologist Liran Samuni said in a statement.

The study looked at two groups of 31 wild adult bonobos in the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo over a period of two years. When the different groups of bonobos met up, they often fed, rested, and traveled together. 

“Tracking and observing multiple groups of bonobos in Kokolopori, we’re struck by the remarkable levels of tolerance between members of different groups,” Samuni said. “This tolerance paves the way for pro-social cooperative behaviors such as forming alliances and sharing food across groups, a stark contrast to what we see in chimpanzees.” 

The authors also did not observe disputes that led to the lethal aggression that has been observed in chimpanzees. The bonobos did not not interact randomly between groups. Cooperation only happened among a select few group members. 

“They preferentially interact with specific members of other groups who are more likely to return the favor, resulting in strong ties between pro-social individuals,” study co-author and Harvard University evolutionary biologist Martin Surbeck said in a statement. “Such connections are also key aspects of the cooperation seen in human societies. Bonobos show us that the ability to maintain peaceful between-group relationships while extending acts of pro-sociality and cooperation to out-group members is not uniquely human.”

[Related: Humans owe our evolutionary success to friendship.]

Cooperation between human groups leads to exchanges of ideas, knowledge, innovation, and resources. The Bonobos in the study also shared food resources across groups without any strong cultural influence. The authors believe that this challenges another existing idea that a shared culture and traits are necessary components for groups to cooperate with one another. 

The study also highlights the importance of collaboration when studying bonobos that live in remote and largely inaccessible parts of the preserve. 

“It is through strong collaborations with and the support of the local Mongandu population in Kokolopori, in whose ancestral forest the bonobos roam, that studies of this fascinating species become possible,” said Subeck, who directs research in the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve. “Research sites like Kokolopori substantially contribute not only to our understanding of the species’ biology and our evolutionary history, but also play a vital role in the conservation of this endangered species.”

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Like jellyfish, fungi, sea worms, and fireflies, some species of sea cucumbers glow in the dark. A team of researchers from Nagoya University in Japan have found that 10 known deep-sea species are bioluminescent in their natural habitats. The findings are part of a new textbook called The World of Sea Cucumber published on November 10.

[Related: The deepest known ocean virus lives under 29,000 feet of water.]

There are roughly 1,200 species of sea cucumbers. These marine invertebrates are found in every ocean on Earth, but they are best represented in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean. They generally live in shallow waters, but some species live at depths of thousands of feet deep. Most closely related to sea urchins, sea stars (aka starfish), sea lilies, and sand dollars, these bottom-dwellers range from as small as one inch long up to six feet. Some sea cucumbers are also known to shoot out a tangle of sticky, noodle-like goo from their butts when provoked. 

The new textbook takes readers deep underwater and discusses the bioluminescent properties of some of these sea cucumbers. According to NOAA, the light emitted by bioluminescent animals is produced by energy released from interior chemical reactions that are sometimes ejected from the organism. Its function is still a mystery, but it is generally used to ward off or evade predators, find food, or as a form of communication. 

The authors drew on previous sea cucumber research to highlight the differences between the shallow-dwelling and a bit more drab species and their brilliantly glowing deep-sea relatives. The book also shows the evolution of sea cucumbers from the Jurassic era roughly 180 million years ago up to the present day. 

To uncover the 10 bioluminescent sea cucumber species, the team deployed a remotely operated vehicle about 3,280 feet below the surface of Monterey Bay, California. The vehicle was equipped with a very sensitive and an arm that was robotically controlled from the ship. Unlike the more uniform bioluminescence seen in specimens taken onto ships, the light was shining from the sea cucumber’s head to tail and then back up similar to a wave.  

According to the authors, the previously unknown luminosity in these 10 deep-sea species suggests that sea cucumbers are more diverse than scientists once believed. A member of the order Molpadia is included in this discovery, which was previously believed to be a non-luminescent order of animals. 

While these sea cucumbers dwell in some of Earth’s deepest parts, they are still not immune to the effects of overfishing and particularly the drilling and mining activities that threaten their ecosystem. 

[Related: This headless chicken is the deep-sea ‘monster’ of our dreams.]

“As deep-sea exploration and development continue, information on their biodiversity and ecology, such as this book, becomes important as it allows us to assess the impact of human activities on deep-sea ecosystems,” textbook co-author and Nagoya University biochemist Manabu Bessho-Uehara said in a statement. “Heavy metal pollution from the mud discarded during drilling operations and motor-derived noise disrupting sound communication are important problems, but the effects on organisms when bioluminescence signals are disturbed, such as when light is obscured by drilling mud, have not been examined. It is necessary to clarify the importance of bioluminescence on the deep-sea floor and find measures that will lead to sustainable development.”

Studying the flora and fauna living in these extreme locations can also provide valuable knowledge of all life on Earth. It can help us discover new viruses that thrive in hydrothermal vents and the factors at play in Earth’s climate and carbon cycle. 

“I believe that understanding deep-sea ecosystems and interactions among organisms will lead to a better understanding of life on Earth itself,” said Bessho-Uehara.

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Piping plovers are showing signs of recovery from major population losses in the state of Massachusetts. They’re listed as threatened in Massachusetts, due to habitat loss from increasing human impacts. According to Mass Audubon, they’ve identified roughly 1,145 breeding pairs nesting in the state this year. When the organization first started to monitor and protect the species in 1986, there were less than 200 breeding pairs in the Bay State. That’s a 500 percent increase in three decades.

[Related: Remembering Monty and Rose, the Chicago shorebirds that became the face of a movement.]

“While Piping Plovers remain a federally threatened species, this season’s data shows that these iconic birds are making real progress toward recovery in Massachusetts,” Mass Audubon officials wrote in a statement. “Massachusetts Piping Plover populations have recovered at a faster rate than those of most other states along the Atlantic Seaboard. As a result, approximately 50% of Piping Plovers worldwide now nest in Massachusetts. That makes coastal conservation even more important in our state—we’re responsible for safeguarding a huge portion of this threatened species’ worldwide population.”

Piping plovers are small migratory shorebirds that nest in sand and gravel beaches and mudflats across North America. There are three main populations of the endangered birds. One lives along the shores of the Great Lakes, one in the lakes and rivers of the Northern Great Plains, and another along the Atlantic coast. These roughly six to seven inch tall birds eat marine mollusks, beetles, worms, fly larvae, crustaceans, and other small marine animals. Piping plovers have a tendency to run for a short distance, stop, and then tilt forward to pull an insect or worm up from the sand. Raccoons, skunks, and foxes are their primary natural predators. 

Their main threat is habitat loss. According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, human development on beaches has reduced the amount of suitable areas for the birds to spend the winter months. Disturbance by humans and domestic animals like cats and dogs can also force migrating and wintering birds to expend unnecessary energy, which can lead breeding plovers to abandon their nests and young.

They have been listed as endangered or threatened since 1985 and piping plovers living in other states are also seeing some success and cautious optimism.  

In Maine, breeding pairs increased for the sixth consecutive year. Maine Audubon saw 157 breeding pairs in 2023, with some new nesting areas. However, the chick survival rate was the lowest since 2007.

[Related: Endangered sea turtles build hundreds of nests on the Outer Banks.]

“When monitoring an endangered species population, it is always good to proceed with caution. Despite an increase in our breeding pairs, the low fledge rate we saw this summer could be a cause for concern,” Maine Audubon wrote in a press release. “Piping Plovers migrate as far south as Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean for the winter, then have to make the trek all the way back up to Maine for the breeding season. A lot of variables are at play that are in nature’s hands during these long migrations.”

In the Midwest, 80 unique breeding pairs were counted across all five Great Lakes with a total of 85 nests. There are eight more pairs than 2022 and and the most since the species was first added to the federal Endangered Species List. Scientists with the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa in High Island, Michigan have been monitoring the island’s plovers as they nest and fledge for two decades. 

“This is the best year that we’ve had for monitoring as far as the total number of adults observed and the number of nests and chicks produced,” Bill Parsons, a scientist in the tribe’s natural resources department, told MLive in August. “We’ve definitely, over that 20 years, seen that the population is slowly, incrementally successful, but we’re nowhere near the target for rehabilitation of the population.”

Some general ways to help protect piping plovers include reporting nest locations to state or federal wildlife officials, keeping dogs on a leash during walks to protect nests, and leaving any driftwood or algae found on beaches for the birds. 

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For the first time in over 60 years, a rare egg-laying mammal has been spotted by scientists. Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi) was caught on camera during a major expedition in the Cyclops Mountains in Indonesia’s Papua Province.

[Related: Dams are hurting this enigmatic Australian species.]

A sacred animal

The long-beaked echidna is named for wildlife documentarian and conservationist Sir David Attenborough and has only been recorded by scientists once in 1961. It is considered a monotreme, or an evolutionary distinct group of mammals who can lay eggs. The platypus is also a monotreme and there are only five remaining species of these strange types of mammal on Earth. 

They live in burrows and mainly eat insects, earthworms, and termites. They are listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and are only known to live in the Cyclops Mountains.

“Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna has the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole. Because of its hybrid appearance, it shares its name with a creature of Greek mythology that is half human, half serpent,” University of Oxford biologist James Kempton said in a statement. “The reason it appears so unlike other mammals is because it is a member of the monotremes–an egg-laying group that separated from the rest of the mammal tree-of-life about 200 million years ago.”

The echidna also has cultural significance for the people in the village of Yongsu Sapari. They have lived on the northern slopes of the Cyclops Mountains for eighteen generations. Rather than fighting during conflicts, the tradition is for one party to go up into the Cyclops to find echidna while the other party goes to the ocean to search for a marlin. Both of these creatures were difficult to find and it would take decades to even whole generations to locate them. However, once they were found, the marlin and echidna would symbolize the end of the conflict.

Finding echidnas, whip scorpions, and forest shrimp

During an expedition that began in 2019, a group of scientists from institutions in multiple countries set up over 80 trail cameras. They did not see any signs of the echidna for four weeks of trekking through a “beautiful but dangerous land.” A sudden earthquake forced the team to evacuate, one team member broke his arm in two places, another contracted malaria, and another had a leech attached to his eye for a day and a half.

[Related: Meet the first electric blue tarantula known to science.]

On the last day of the expedition, they finally spotted Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna. The identification of the species was later confirmed by mammalogist Kristofer Helgen from the Australian Museum Research Institute.

In addition to this elusive egg-laying mammal, this expedition marked the first comprehensive assessment of mammal, reptile, amphibian, and invertebrate life in the Cyclops Mountains. They combined Western scientific techniques with the extensive local knowledge of Papuan team members. Among the new discoveries are several insect species that are completely new to science and an entirely new genus of ground and tree-dwelling shrimp.

“We were quite shocked to discover this shrimp in the heart of the forest, because it is a remarkable departure from the typical seaside habitat for these animals,” entomologist  Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History said in a statement. “We believe that the high level of rainfall in the Cyclops Mountains means the humidity is great enough for these creatures to live entirely on land.”

Some other funky underground species including blind spiders, blind harvestman, and a whip scorpion were also found living in a previously unexplored cave system. The team hope that its rediscovery of Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna and all of these new species will help bring attention to the conservation needs of the Cyclops Mountains and Indonesian New Guinea.

CORRECTION November 19, 2023 3:55 PM EST: An earlier version of the article summary said the animal was named after Richard Attenborough. Zaglossus attenboroughi is named for Sir David Attenborough. We regret the error.

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Researchers in Denmark have discovered six new species of beetle, including one with some eye-opening genitalia. Loncovilius carlsbergi has a penis shaped like a bottle opener. The top looks like the protruding longer part of a bottle opener that latches onto the bottle cap, and the bottom resembles the pincer that holds the bottle in place. The specimen is described in a study published October 28 in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

[Related: Acrobatic beetle bots could inspire the latest ‘leap’ in agriculture.]

While the team from the Natural History Museum of Denmark still not sure why Loncovilius carlsbergi evolved this uniquely shaped penis, studying them can reveal the role that the genitals play in the bugs’ daily lives. 

“Genitalia are the organs in insects that evolve to be different in every species. As such, they are often the best way to identify a species,” study co-author and biologist Aslak Kappel Hansen said in a statement. “That’s why entomologists like us are always quick to examine insect genitalia when describing a species. The unique shape of each species’ genitals ensures that it can only reproduce with the same species.”

Aslak and his colleagues found and named six new species in the rove beetle genus Loncovilius that had been hidden within the insect collections at the museum. Loncovilius carlsbergi was named for the Carlsberg Foundation, which has funded research at the museum for years. Carlsberg is a popular 176-year-old Danish beer company.

Loncovilius beetles are only found in Chile and Argentina and entomologists don’t know too much about them. They are less than an inch long and all of their legs have sticky bristles on them, while other predatory rove beetles only have sticky front legs. 

Where Loncovilius beetles live make them special among this family of beetles. Most predatory rove beetles live on the ground, among dead leaves, fungi, and bark. Loncovilius beetles live on flowers. The authors believe that their sticky legs helped them adapt the ability to climb flowers and vegetation.

“We suspect that they play an important role in the ecosystem. So, it’s worrying that nearly nothing is known about this type of beetles, especially when they’re so easy to spot–and some of them are even quite beautiful,” study co-author and systematic entomologist Josh Jenkins Shaw said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we can easily lose species like these before they’re ever discovered.”

The forces of climate change, pollution, and habitat loss is exacerbating the Earth’s biodiversity crisis. These combined forces have threatened over one million plant and animal species with extinction, a rate of loss that is 1,000 times greater than previously expected. The team believes that this crisis will likely affect these newly discovered beetles as well.

[Related: A pocketful of bacteria helps these beetles through their most dramatic life changes.]

“Loncovilius populations are likely to change in coming decades. Our simulations demonstrate that at least three of the Loncovilius species are at risk because the rapidly changing climate strongly alters more than half of their habitat area by 2060,” study co-author and PhD student José L. Reyes-Hernández said in a statement. “It is important to stress that many more species will be affected by this change, but we don’t know how because only for four species we had enough data for our analysis.” 

The planet’s species are also going extinct faster than scientists can fully name and describe them. Some estimates place the number of species lost from the Earth every day at upwards of 150. According to Jenkins Shaw, as many as 85 percent of all species on the planet are still not formally named or described. 

“A taxonomic name is important because nature conservation relies on knowledge about species in particular areas. Without such a description, species are often left out of conservation efforts,” said Jenkins Shaw.

The authors hope that Loncovilius carlsbergi’s attention-grabbing genitals could spark broader interest in insects. They are also working on producing an actual bottle opener shaped like this beetle’s penis into production. 

“It’s important that we recognize the vast wealth of yet to be researched species around us before it’s too late. We would like for people around the world to talk about the crisis facing our planet’s species. A move towards serious learning and awareness may be sparkled by a light chat that takes place over a beer,” said Kappel Hansen.

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Hummingbirds are some of the world’s fastest birds and must frequently squeeze through tiny spaces in plants to get to the nectar that they need to keep up their energy. However, over time, they have lost their ability to fold their wings close to their bodies at the wrist and elbow like other birds. How hummingbirds squeeze into such tight spaces has remained a mystery to ornithologists until now. A study published November 9 in the Journal of Experimental Biology found that they deploy two very specific strategies: the sideways and the bullet.

[Related: This hybrid hummingbird’s colorful feathers are a genetic puzzle.]

Into the flight arena

The study focused on Anna’s hummingbirds (Calypte anna). These are among the most common hummingbirds living along the West Coast of the United States. They are about the size of a ping-pong ball and have iridescent emerald feathers and sparkling pink throat plumage. 

A team from the University of California, Berkeley designed a two-sided flight arena for the experiment. They used alternating rewards to train the hummingbird to fly through a 2.48 square inch gap in the partition that separated the two sides of the arena. To do so, they only refilled a feeder shaped like a flower with a sip of sugar water if the bird returned to the feeder that was on the other side through one of the gaps. This encouraged the birds with an only 4.7 inch-wide wingspan to flit around the arena. 

The team then replaced the gap between the two sides of the flight arena with a series of smaller oval and circular openings that ranged from 4.7 inches to only 2.3 inches in height, width, and diameter. The birds’ movements were recorded using high-speed cameras, to get a sense of how they negotiated the various openings. 

Next, the team wrote a computer program to methodically track the position of each bird’s bill as it approached and passed through each hole. The program also pinpointed where the hummingbird’s wing tips were, to calculate their wing positions as they transited through.

[Related: These female hummingbirds don flashy male feathers to avoid unwanted harassment.]

The experiment revealed that the hummingbirds used two unique strategies to negotiate the gaps. 

The sideways

In the first strategy, the hummingbirds approached the circular opening and usually hovered in front of it to assess its size. They then traveled through it sideways, reaching forward with one wing and sweeping the second wing back, similar to the shape of a cross. Their wings were still fluttering to fly through the door and then swiveled forward to continue on their way. 

The bullet

For the second strategy, the birds swept their wings backwards, pinning them to their bodies. They then quickly shot through the opening beak first like a bullet, before sweeping their wings forward. They resumed flapping their wings once they were safely through the circle. All of the hummingbirds in the study generally deployed this technique as they grew bolder and more familiar with the arena.

Changing tactics

The team observed that the hummingbirds who used the first strategy of sideways traveling tended to fly more cautiously than those that shot through the circles beak first. As the birds became more familiar with the openings after multiple approaches, they appeared to become more confident. They started to approach them quicker and dropped the more sideways way of getting through in favor of shooting through beak first. 

For the smallest opening–only half a wingspan wide–every bird zipped through facing forward with their wings back. Even the more cautious birds did this on their first attempt to avoid collisions. 

According to the team, about eight percent of the birds in the experiment clipped their wings as they passed through the partition and only one experienced a major collision. The bird who did experience the collision was able to successfully reattempting the move and continue flying.  

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From Saskatchewan to Mexico, buffalofish have been swimming under scientists’ radar. They’re a group of non-game fish, relatively difficult to catch, and not considered economically important to the regions they live in. Compared to other freshwater fish, very little is known about different species of buffalofish and their behaviors.

It was once thought that buffalofish only lived up to 26 years in the wild. Then in 2019, a centenarian buffalofish was identified in Minnesota. Now in a new study, scientists caught and analyzed specimens from Apache Lake, Arizona, and confirmed that three of the buffalofish species there can live to be more than 100 years old—and possibly many years more, based on their health. That makes them only the second animal genus, after the marine rockfish Sebastes, known to have three or more species that can live past a century. The discovery could change how we manage buffalofish populations across North America, and lead to more experimental anti-aging research in the future. The findings were published in October in the journal Nature’s Scientific Reports.

[Related: World’s oldest living aquarium fish could be 100 years young]

To pinpoint the ages of these fish, researchers focused on otoliths, the stone-like structures found in the ears of 97 percent of fish species. “What’s really interesting about otoliths, and what makes them so valuable for age analysis, is that they put down rings as they go through slow growth periods,” says Alec Lackmann, an ichthyologist at the University of Minnesota Duluth and lead author of the new study. He and his team examined thinly sliced sections of the otoliths to estimate ages. They then cross checked their findings with radiocarbon dating, revealing signs that corresponded to historical events and environmental changes in the area. For example, samples from fish that lived through the 1950s and ’60s contained unique radiocarbon signatures from when the US was testing nuclear bombs in the West.

The smallmouth buffalofish the researchers found in the lake ranged from 11 to 101 years old; the black buffalofish were 106 to 108 years old; and the bigmouth buffalofish were 85 to 105 years old. What makes the fishes’ longevity even more remarkable is that they aren’t native to Arizona waters, Lackmann says—the three species were introduced to the state in 1918, likely from Iowa. So, based on the results of the study, it’s likely that some of Arizona’s first buffalofish are still in Lake Apache today.

“I found the new study very exciting and novel in that it was the first to look at multiple species of buffalofish,” says Jeff Sereda, a manager of ecological and habitat assessment at the Water Security Agency in Saskatchewan, Canada. Sereda has studied buffalofish and has previously collaborated with Lackmann, but was not involved in the latest research. “We don’t know what the fishes’ actual upper limit for age is,” he says, and that has “completely turned up our understanding of these species on its head.” 

Before, biologists thought buffalofish populations were relatively stable wherever they existed. But the fact that most of the tested fish were excessively old indicates that they might be more at risk of decline than we thought, Sereda explains. If they’re living for so long, but numbers are stable, it’s a sign they’re barely reproducing. Think of it like the declining birth rate among people in Japan, which is causing the average age of the population to rise and the overall size of the population to shrink each year.

Another aspect of buffalofish that isn’t well understood is their reproductive behavior. Researchers in Saskatchewan haven’t found evidence of new young buffalofish in about 40 years, Sereda says. The fish spawn sometimes but don’t survive to the juvenile stage. Buffalofish remain fertile through old age, even after decades of not spawning any young, Sereda adds. We just need more research to tell whether this is how they survive—living long lives and successfully rearing very few young—or if there’s something amiss. 

[Related: A rare fish with ‘hands’ is spotted in a surprising place]

Getting a clearer picture of how buffalofish in different waters live and reproduce can give us a more accurate idea of how they’re faring. They’re classified as “special concern” in Canada, in part because of the lack of data. While a few species have special conservation statuses in the US—bigmouth buffalofish are listed as endangered by Pennsylvania—researchers don’t have a good grasp on the population sizes or trends in most places where buffalofish are found. Without that information, it’s hard to know what the creatures’ exact needs are.

“There’s such mystery surrounding buffalofish,” Lackmann says. In the future, he would like to study the otoliths of other buffalofish of the same genus, including one species in Mexico. Getting a better grasp of how their genes contribute to their impressive lifespans could also provide insight into how vertebrates postpone aging, he adds. “It’s incredibly fascinating.”

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Dinosaur Mysteries digs into the secretive side of the “terrible lizards” and all the questions that keep paleontologists up at night.

YOU NEVER KNOW how small you are until you’re next to a big ol’ dinosaur. Find the right lighting in the museum hall and you can literally stand in the shadow of the skeletons of Apatosaurus, Patagotitan, Brachiosaurus, and other reptiles that grew far larger than any other terrestrial creature in the past 66 million years. But even after nearly two centuries of research, we have only the haziest notions of why some dinosaurs were larger than any terrestrial mammal to date.

While a number of dinosaurs fell in the supersized category—Tyrannosaurus rex weighed more than a mature male African elephant—the sauropods were the all-time titleholders. They had small heads with simple teeth, impressively long necks, hefty bodies, and tapering tails. So many sauropod species reached more than 100 feet in length, paleontologists still aren’t sure which one stretched the farthest. While the largest land mammals, like the hornless rhino Paraceratherium and the biggest fossil elephants, got to be about 18 tons, sauropods evolved to have more mass at least 36 times during their evolutionary history—an ongoing reprisal of gargantuan herbivores through the Jurassic and Cretaceous.

The stunning heft of these creatures has often led us to wonder why they got to be so much bigger than any terrestrial creature before or since. But in the realm of paleontology, “why” questions are extremely difficult to answer. Queries starting with “why” are matters of history, and in this case, the history plays out dozens of times on multiple continents over the course of more than 130 million years. Though we see the end effect, we can’t quite make out the causes.

Dinosaurs have a habit of digging their claws into our imaginations, however, so researchers have kept on, turning up a few clues in the past two decades about the surfeit of superlative sauropods. While higher oxygen levels have been linked to bigger body sizes in a few ancient insects, the atmosphere in the heyday of the dinosaurs was about the same as today’s. What’s more, the Earth’s gravitational force was just as strong in the Mesozoic era as in the modern era. So we know that the impressive size of Argentinosaurus and other top sauropods was not a matter of an abiotic factor like increased oxygen in the atmosphere or lower gravity. Our explanation lies elsewhere.

Paleontologists are getting closer to the truth by looking at the dinosaurs themselves. For example, experts have identified a suite of characteristics that set sauropods apart from the mastodons and giant rhinos of the Cenozoic. Eggs have a great deal to do with it.

The largest mammals of all time were placentals, gestating their offspring on the inside so they could come out more developed. This reproductive strategy comes with some constraints. To reach even larger adult sizes, females of each species would need to carry their babies in the womb for longer. African elephants, for example, already gestate for about two years—during which much can go wrong. But sauropods, like all nonavian dinosaurs, laid multiple eggs at a time, bypassing the reproductive constraints of live birth and flooding their ecosystems with tons of babies that had the potential to grow huge (even if most ended up as snacks for the carnivores of the time). The different reproductive strategies gave dinosaurs some advantages over mammals.

Camarasaurus and other sauropods also got some assistance from their anatomical peculiarities. Sauropods had complex air-sac systems in their respiratory tracts that created air pockets within and around their bones. These nifty features kept their skeletons light without sacrificing strength, and also made extracting oxygen from the air and shedding excess body heat more efficient. The distinctive dinosaurs could grow long necks too, because they didn’t have heavy heads full of massive, grinding teeth like large herbivorous mammals over the past 66 million years. Instead, sauropods had small, light noggins full of spoon- or pencil-shaped teeth that were mostly just capable of cropping vegetation to be broken down and fermented through their gastrointestinal tracts. In other words, their guts did the work, not their teeth. Studies of ginkgoes, horsetails, and other common Mesozoic plants indicate that the ancient vegetation was more calorie-rich than previously supposed, so the abundance of green food likely fueled the reptilian giants’ unprecedented growth.

But these facts only show us what allowed sauropods to become big. The dinosaurs didn’t have to drift in that direction. In fact, some were relatively small: The island-dwelling species Magyarosaurus was about the size of a large cow. Sauropods could have thrived at smaller sizes, but they instead kept spinning off lineages of giants. We know something about what made living large possible, but what we still don’t know is what evolutionary pressures drove sauropods to evolve enormous bodies.

Predators certainly played their part. All sauropods were born small—even the largest species hatched from eggs about the size of a soccer ball. They were vulnerable to various Jurassic and Cretaceous carnivores, but growing up quickly was one way to stave off those hungry jaws. Hunting megafauna can be dangerous and even deadly, as we see with lions, wolves, and even humans today, and so sauropods may have plumped up to be less appealing to the likes of Allosaurus and T. rex.

But if carnivorous appetites were the main driver of sauropod size, we’d see a more uniform and extended “arms race” between the dinosaurs over time, resulting in gradually larger predators and prey. The fossil record instead shows that sauropods scaled up in different times and places, likely for an array of reasons ranging from local grub to what mating sauropods found sexy in each other. The repeated evolution of gigantic dinosaurs hints that there were many pathways to the sauropods’ impressive stature, not just one. Biology was as complicated back then as it is now, and we’ll never get the full story without experiencing 100-foot-long reptiles ourselves.

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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While the majority of fish are cold-blooded and rely on the temperature outside of their bodies to regulate their internal temperatures, less than one percent of sharks are actually warm-blooded. The extinct but mighty megalodon and the living great white shark generate heat with their muscles the way many mammals do. However, they are not the only sharks with this warm quirk. A study published November 7 in the journal Biology Letters found that there are more warm blooded sharks than scientists initially believed. 

[Related: Megalodons were likely warm-blooded, despite being stone-cold killers.]

Warmer muscles might help these giant carnivores be more powerful and athletic, by using that heat to generate more energy. Regional endothermy in fish has been seen in apex predators like the great white or giant tuna, but there has been debate on when this warm bloodedness evolved in sharks and if the megalodon was warm blooded. A previous study from June 2023 found that the megalodon was warm blooded and that the amount of energy it used to stay warm may have contributed to its extinction about 3.6 million years ago.

The new study looked at the results of autopsies from some unexpected shark strandings in Ireland and southern England earlier in 2023. The sharks belonged to a rarely seen species called the smalltooth sand tiger shark. These sharks are found around the world in temperate and tropical seas and in deep waters (32 to 1,700 feet deep). They have a short and pointed snout, small eyes, protruding teeth, and small dorsal and anal fins and can reach about 15 feet long. Smalltooth sand tiger sharks are considered a “vulnerable” species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. While they are not targeted by commercial fisheries, the sharks may be mistakenly caught in nets and may face threats from pollution. 

Smalltooth sand tiger sharks are believed to have diverged from the megalodon at least 20 million years ago. The autopsies from this year’s stranded sharks unexpectedly served as a timeline that took marine biologists from institutions in Ireland, South Africa, and the United States back millions of years. 

The team found that these rare sharks have physical features that suggest they also have regional endothermy like the megalodon, great white, and some filter-feeding basking sharks. This new addition means that there are likely more warm-blooded sharks than scientists thought and that warm bloodedness evolved quite a long time ago.

“We think this is an important finding, because if sand tiger sharks have regional endothermy then it’s likely there are several other sharks out there that are also warm-bodied,” study co-author and marine biologist Nicholas Payne said in a statement. “We used to think regional endothermy was confined to apex predators like the great white and extinct megalodon, but now we have evidence that deep water ‘bottom dwelling’ sand tigers, and plankton-eating basking sharks also are warm bodied. This raises plenty of new questions as to why regional endothermy evolved, but it might also have important conservation implications.” Payne is affiliated with Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. 

[Related: Were dinosaurs warm-blooded or cold-blooded? Maybe both.]

Scientists believe that the megalodon’s warmer body allowed it to move faster, tolerate colder water, and spread all over the world’ oceans. However, this evolutionary advantage could have contributed to its downfall. The megalodon lived during the Pliocene Epoch (5.33 million years to 2.58 million years ago) when the world cooled and sea levels changed. These ecosystem changes and competition with newcomers in the marine environment like great whites may have led to its extinction. 

Understanding how extinct sharks met their end could help scientists gauge how today’s warm-blooded sharks could fare due to warmer ocean temperatures from human-caused climate change. It has potential conservation implications and could explain some shifting patterns of where sharks are foraging. 

“We believe changing environments in the deep past was a major contributor to the megalodon’s extinction, as we think it could no longer meet the energetic demands of being a large regional endotherm,” study co-author and Trinity College marine biologist Haley Dolton said in a statement. “We know the seas are warming at alarming rates again now and the smalltooth tiger that washed up in Ireland was the first one seen in these waters. That implies its range has shifted, potentially due to warming waters, so a few alarm bells are ringing.”   

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Reviled the world over for making our scalps itch and rapidly spreading in schools, lice have hitched their destiny to our hair follicles. They are the oldest known parasites that feed on the blood of humans, so learning more about lice can tell us quite a bit about our own species and migratory patterns. 

[Related: Ancient ivory comb shows that self-care is as old as time.]

A study published November 8 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE found that lice likely came into North America in two waves of migration. First when some humans potentially crossed a land bridge that connected Asia with present day Alaska roughly 16,000 years ago during the end of the last ice age and then again during European colonization. 

“In some ways, lice are like living fossils we carry around on our own heads,” study co-author Marina Ascunce, an evolutionary biologist with the United States Department of Agriculture, tells PopSci.  

Lice are wingless parasites that live their entire lives on their host and there are three known species that infest humans. Humans and lice have coevolved for thousands of years. The oldest louse specimen known to scientists is 10,000 years old and was found in Brazil in 2000. Since lice and humans have a very intertwined relationship, studying lice can offer clues into human migratory patterns.

“They went on this ride across the world with us. Yet, they are their own organism with some ability to move around on their own (e.g., from one head to another). It provides insight into what happened during our time together,” study co-author and mammal geneticist from the University of Florida David L. Reed tells PopSci. 

In this new study, a team of scientists from the United States, Mexico, and Argentina analyzed the genetic variation in 274 human lice uncovered from 25 geographic sites around the world. The analysis showed distinct clusters of lice that rarely interbreed and were found in different locations. Cluster I was found all over the world, while Cluster II was found in Europe and the Americas. The only lice that had ancestry from both clusters are found in the Americas. This distinct group of lice appears to be the result of a mixture between lice that were descended from populations that arrived with the people who crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America and those descended from European lice. 

Researchers found genetic evidence that head lice mirrored both the movement of people into the Americas from Asia and European colonization after Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the late 1400’s.

“Central American head lice harbored the Asian background associated with the foundation of the Americas, while South American lice had marks of the European arrival,” Ariel Toloza, a study co-author and insect toxicologist at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnica (CONICET) in Argentina, tells PopSci. “We also detected a recent human migration from Europe to the Americas after WWII.” 

[Related: Rare parasites found in 200 million-year-old reptile poop.]

The evidence in this study supports the theory that the first people living in the Americas came from Asia between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago and moved south into Central and South America. However, other archaeological evidence like the 23,000 to 21,000 year-old White Sands footprints and Native American tradition suggests that humans were already living in the Americas before and during the last ice age. Some potentially 30,000-year-old stone tools were discovered in a cave in Central Mexico in 2020, which also questions the land bridge theory. 

The study also fills in some of lice’s evolutionary gaps and the team sequenced the louse full genome for future research. 

“The same louse DNA used for this first study was used to analyze their whole genomes and also more lice were collected, so in the next year or so, there will be new studies trying to answer our ongoing questions,” says Ascunce. 

Technological improvements can also now help scientists study include ancient DNA from lice that has been found in mummies or even from louse DNA recovered from ancient combs. The study also offers some lessons in studying animals that we may generally experience as a nuisance.

“The world is full of a lot of plants and animals that are reviled or despised,” says Reed. “You never fully [know] what role they play in the environment or what their true value might be. So, be curious and see what stories the lowliest of animals might have to tell.”

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North Carolina’s Outer Banks saw a busy sea turtle nesting season this year. The barrier islands stretching from Ocracoke Island north to the Virginia state saw 459 total nests between May and October, according to reporting from The Virginian-Pilot and three conservation groups in the state dedicated to sea turtle nesting.

[Related: This waddling robot could guide baby turtles to the sea.]

There are six species of sea turtles native to the United States—green, hawksbill, Kemp’s ridley, leatherback, loggerhead, and olive ridley. All six species are protected by the Endangered Species Act and four of them are known to nest in North Carolina. Human activities are the biggest threats to sea turtle species around the world. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that their biggest threats are being caught in fishing gear, nesting and habitat loss, pollution and marine debris, boat strikes, climate change, and the direct harvest of sea turtles and eggs.

During the early to middle of the summer in the Outer Banks, female turtles return to the same beaches where they hatched to dig nests into the sand. They use their back flippers to dig a hole in the ground to deposit the eggs, and then cover it back up with sand. According to the National Park Service, the nesting process takes about one to three hours to complete. 

The tiny turtles hatch a few months later and follow the light of the moon to the ocean. However, their journey from their nests is quite hazardous, as they can be misdirected by artificial lights from homes and streets, crushed by human activity, or eaten by predators on their way to the ocean. 

[Related: Endangered green turtles are bouncing back in the Seychelles.]

At Cape Hatteras National Seashore, this year tied with 2022 as the second-busiest nesting season on record with 379 reported nests. The area covers more than 70 miles and stretches from Ocracoke Island north to Nags Head. The National Park Service says that the first nest was found on May 12 and the most recent was seen on October 29. The nests comprised 324 loggerhead turtles, 51 green turtles, three Kemp’s ridleys, and one leatherback. The leatherback nest was the first one seen on Hatteras National Seashore in 11 years.

Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge on the northern end of Hatteras island reported its third-busiest nesting season since 2009. The refuge covers about 13 miles and saw 43 sea turtle nests this year. By species, 37 nests belonged to loggerhead turtles and six were green turtle nests, according to data from the Sea Turtle Nest Monitoring System.

The nonprofit Network for Endangered Sea Turtles (NEST) also reported its third-busiest nesting season since 2015. Vice President Susan Silbernagel said 30 nests belong to loggerhead turtles and seven were green turtle nests. The all-volunteer organization covers about 50 miles from Nags Head up to Virginia. 

[Related: Safely share the beach with endangered sea turtles this summer.]

To better protect the endangered turtles, volunteers and scientists have been regularly monitoring the region’s beaches since 1997. Staff members and volunteers at Cape Hatteras will establish a buffer zone around the nests for added protection. 

“We could not manage and monitor sea turtle nesting without the help of over 50 dedicated volunteers that assist with monitoring of our nests and reporting and responding to sea turtle strandings,” Michelle Tongue told The Virginian-Pilot. Tongue is the deputy chief of resource management and science for the National Park Service’s Outer Banks Group. 

Sea turtles spend the vast majority of their lives in the ocean and are among the largest reptiles in the world. Kemp’s ridley and green sea turtles weigh about 75 to 100 pounds, while leatherbacks can weigh about 2,000 pounds. Sea turtles are set apart from their pond or land-dwelling relatives by their flippers. Instead of these appendages, land and pond turtles have feet with claws. 

Continued monitoring and vigilance during the 2024 nesting season will hopefully increase survival rates for these endangered reptiles.

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Humans are the only primates currently living in the wild in North America, but that was not always the case. The continent was once home to non-human primates, including big-eyed tarsier-like animals called omomyiforms and long-tailed critters called adapiforms. About 30 million years ago, a lemur-like creature named Ekgmowechashala was the last primate to inhabit the continent before Homo sapiens arrived. In a study published November 6 in the Journal of Human Evolution, fossil teeth and jaws shed some new light on this mysterious creature. 

[Related: 12-million-year-old ape skull bares its fangs in virtual reconstruction.]

From China to Nebraska

Understanding the origins of North America’s primates has been a paleontological puzzle. It’s been unclear whether they evolved on the continent or arrived from somewhere else via land bridges. The first first primates in North America date back about 56 million years at the beginning of the Eocene Epoch. Scientists believe that the primates like Ekgmowechashala generally flourished on the continent for over 20 million years. 

Ekgmowechashala was about five pounds and only one foot tall. They lived in what is now the American Plains just after the Eocene-Oligocene transition. At this time, a huge cooling and dying event made the continent much less hospitable for primates. Ekgmowechashala went extinct about 34 million years ago. 

For the study, paleontologists first had to reconstruct Ekgmowechashala’s family tree with the help of  an older “sister taxon,” or a closely related group of animals. Both groups generally share a branch on their family trees, but diverged at some point and have different lineages. This sister animal originates in and the team named it Palaeohodites, which means “ancient wanderer.” The fossils were collected by paleontologists from the United States in the 1990s from the Nadu Formation in Guangxi, an autonomous region in China. The fossils closely resembled the Ekgmowechashala material that had been found in North America in the 1960s, when the primate was still quite mysterious to North American paleontologists.

The Palaeohodites fossil potentially helps resolve the mystery of Ekgmowechashala’s strange presence in North America. It was likely a migrant to the continent instead of being the product of local evolution.

“Due to its unique morphology and its representation only by dental remains, its place on the mammalian evolutionary tree has been a subject of contention and debate. There’s been a prevailing consensus leaning towards its classification as a primate,” study co-author and University of Kansas PhD candidate Kathleen Rust said in a statement. “But the timing and appearance of this primate in the North American fossil record are quite unusual. It appears suddenly in the fossil record of the Great Plains more than 4 million years after the extinction of all other North American primates, which occurred around 34 million years ago.”

[Related: These primate ancestors were totally chill with a colder climate.]

The Ekgmowechashala fossils found in the US during the 1960s include an upper molar that looks very similar to the Palaeohodites molars found in China, according to study co-author and University of Kansas paleontologist Chris Beard. The team from Kansas closely analyzed the fossils to establish evolutionary relationships between the American Ekgmowechashala and its cousin Palaeohodites. 

The paleontologists believe that Ekgmowechashala did not descend from an older North American primate that survived the climate shift roughly 33 million years ago that caused other North American primates to go extinct. Instead, Ekgmowechashala’s ancestors likely crossed over the icy Beringian region that once connected Asia and North America millions of years later.

Rising from the dead

Ekgmowechashala is an example of the “Lazarus effect” in paleontology. This is where a species suddenly appears in the fossil record long after their relatives have died off. It is a reference to Lazarus who, according to New Testament mythology, was raised from the dead. It is also a pattern of evolution seen in the fossil record of North American primates, who went extinct about 34 million years ago. 

“Several million years later Ekgmowechashala shows up like a drifting gunslinger in a Western movie, only to be a flash in the pan as far as the long trajectory of evolution is concerned,” Beard said in a statement. “After Ekgmowechashala is gone for more than 25 million years, Clovis people come to North America, marking the third chapter of primates on this continent. Like Ekgmowechashala, humans in North America are a prime example of the Lazarus effect.”

The past is prologue?

Studying the way primates were affected by previous changes in climate can provide important insight to today’s human-driven climate change. Organisms generally retreat to more hospitable regions with the available resources or end up going extinct. 

“Around 34 million years ago, all of the primates in North America couldn’t adapt and survive. North America lacked the necessary conditions for survival,” said Rust. “This underscores the significance of accessible resources for our non-human primate relatives during times of drastic climatic change.

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When looking at a sea star–or starfish–it’s not really clear which part of its identical five pointed body is considered its head. This question has puzzled biologists for decades, but some new research says that a starfish’s whole body could function like a head. The findings are described in a study published November 1 in the journal Nature and might have solved the mystery of how sea stars and other echinoderms evolved their distinctively shaped bodies.

[Related: This strange 500-million-year-old sea urchin relative lost its skeleton.]

Searching for heads and trunks 

Sea stars are invertebrates that belong to a group of animals called echinoderms.This group also includes sea urchins and sand dollars and they all have bodies that are arranged in five equal and symmetric sections. Early in their evolution, echinoderms had a bilaterally designed ancestor with two mirrored sides more like a human’s. 

“How the different body parts of the echinoderms relate to those we see in other animal groups has been a mystery to scientists for as long as we’ve been studying them,” Jeff Thompson, a co-author of the study and evolutionary biologist at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “In their bilateral relatives, the body is divided into a head, trunk, and tail. But just looking at a starfish, it’s impossible to see how these sections relate to the bodies of bilateral animals.”

In the new study, an international team of scientists compared the molecular markers in sea stars with a wider group of animals called deuterostomes. This group includes echinoderms like sea star and bilateral animals including vertebrates. Deuterostomes all share a common ancestor, so comparing their development can offer clues into how echinoderms evolved their more unique five-pointed body plan.

They used multiple high-tech molecular and genomic techniques to see where different genes were expressed during a sea star’s development and growth. Micro-CT scanning also allowed the team to understand the shape and structure of the animals in closer detail.

Sea star mapping

Team members from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Pacific BioSciences, used techniques called RNA tomography and in situ hybridization to build a three-dimensional map of a sea star’s gene expression to see where specific genes are being expressed during development. They specifically mapped the expression of the genes that control the growth of a sea star’s ectoderm, which includes its nervous system and skin. 

They found gene signatures associated with head development almost everywhere in juvenile sea stars. The expression of genes that code for an animal’s torso and tail sections were also largely missing.

[Related: What’s killing sea stars?]

“When we compared the expression of genes in a starfish to other groups of animals, like vertebrates, it appeared that a crucial part of the body plan was missing,” said Thompson. “The genes that are typically involved in the patterning of the trunk of the animal weren’t expressed in the ectoderm. It seems the whole echinoderm body plan is roughly equivalent to the head in other groups of animals.”

The molecular signatures that are typically associated with the front-most portion of an animal’s head were also localized towards the middle of each of the sea star’s five arms. 

“It’s as if the sea star is completely missing a trunk, and is best described as just a head crawling along the seafloor,” study co-author and Stanford University evolutionary biologist Laurent Formery said in a statement. “It’s not at all what scientists have assumed about these animals.” 

Sea stars and other echinoderms may have evolved their five-section body plan by losing the trunk region that their bilateral ancestors once had. This chance would have allowed them to move around and feed differently than animals with two symmetrical arms.

“Our research tells us the echinoderm body plan evolved in a more complex way than previously thought and there is still much to learn about these intriguing creatures,” said Thompson. “As someone who has studied them for the last ten years, these findings have radically changed how I think about this group of animals.”

This research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust, NASA, the NSF, and the Chan Zuckerberg BioHub.

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Lampreys are the vampires of the ocean and the lakes they can invade. While these eel-like parasitic vertebrates don’t use two sharp fangs to suck blood, lampreys have a toothed oral sucker that latches onto their prey and feasts on their host’s blood. Modern day lampreys are found in temperate zones of most of the world’s oceans except in Africa. However, specimens of their extinct ancient ancestors are fairly rare in the fossil record, despite dating back roughly 360 million years. Now, paleontologists in northern China have found two unusually large fossilized lamprey species that fill a large evolutionary gap. The specimens are described in a study published October 31 in the journal Nature Communications.

[Related: Why sea lampreys are going to be a bigger problem for the Great Lakes.]

“We found the largest fossil lampreys ever found in the world,” study co-author and Chinese Academy of Sciences paleontologist Feixiang Wu tells PopSci. “Based on these fossils, our study assumed that the most recent common ancestor of modern lampreys was likely eating flesh rather than sucking blood as conventionally believed.”

The earliest known lampreys date back about 360 million years ago during the Paleozoic Era. These early species are believed to have been only a few inches long and had weak feeding structures. The 160 million-year-old fossils in this new study were discovered in the Lagerstätte Yanliao Biota in northeastern China and date back to the Jurassic. The longer of the two specimens is named Yanliaomyzon occisor. It is more than 23 inches long and is estimated to have had 16 teeth. The shorter 11 inch-long species is named Yanliaomyzon ingensdentes and had about 23 teeth. By comparison, modern lampreys range from six to 40 inches long.

Their well-preserved oral discs and “biting” structures indicate that these lamprey species had already evolved enhanced feeding structures, bigger body size, and were predators by the Jurassic period. It also appears that they had already evolved a three-phased life cycle by this point

Lampreys begin their lives as burrowing freshwater larvae called ammocetes. During this stage, they have rudimentary eyes and feed on microorganisms with their toothless mouths. They spend several years in this stage, before transforming into adults. Some move into saltwater, while others will remain in freshwater. As adults, they become parasites that attach to a fish with their mouths and feed on their blood and tissue. Lampreys eventually return to freshwater to reproduce, where they build a nest, then spawn, and then die.

It is still unclear when lampreys evolved this lifecycle and their more complex teeth for feeding. These new well-preserved fossils fill an important gap in the fossil record and give some insights into how its lifecycle and feeding originated. 

[Related: Evolution made mosquitos into stealthy, sensitive vampires.]

The study also pinpoints where and when today’s lamprey’s first appeared. “We put modern lampreys’ origin in the Southern Hemisphere of the Late Cretaceous,” says Wu. 

The Late Cretacous lasted from 100.5 million years ago to 66 million years ago and ended with the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. In future research, the team would like to search for specimens from the Cretaceous. According to Wu, this time period could be very important to their evolutionary history.

More fossilized specimens could also provide more accurate ideas of what kinds of flesh ancient lampreys feasted on with all those teeth and how that has evolved over time. 

“Living lampreys are always hailed as ‘water vampires,’ but their ancestor might be a flesh eater, their teeth tell,” says Wu. 

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Living long lives past reproductive age is a real rarity for female members of the animal kingdom. Humans and some species of toothed whales are the only known animals to go through menopause and the reasons behind it are an evolutionary puzzle. A team of primatologists recently found that a group of wild chimpanzees in Uganda also show signs of menopause. The findings are described in a study published October 26 in the journal Science and could provide more insight into this rare biological phenomenon.

[Related: Adolescent chimpanzees might be less impulsive than human teens.]

In humans, menopause typically occurs between the ages of 45 and 55 and is characterized by a natural decline in reproductive hormones and the end of ovarian functions. Some symptoms in humans include chills, hot flashes, weight gain, and thinning hair. The evolutionary benefits of this process are still a mystery for biologists. It is also still unclear why menopause evolved in humans but not in other known long-lived primates. 

“During our ongoing twenty five year study of chimpanzees at Ngogo in Kibale National Park, Uganda, we noticed that many old females did not reproduce for decades,” study co-author and Arizona State University primatologist Kevin Langergraber tells PopSci. “It’s a surprising trait from the perspective of evolution: how and why can natural selection favor the extension of lifespan past the point at which individuals can no longer reproduce? We need to know in what species it occurs and which it doesn’t as a first step [to that question].”

To look closer, the authors calculated a metric called the post-reproductive representation (PrR). This measurement is the average proportion of adult lifespan that an animal spends in its post-reproductive state. Most mammals have a PrR close to zero, but the team found that Ngogo chimpanzees have a PrR of 0.2. This means that the female chimpanzees in this group live 20 percent of their adult years in a post-reproductive state. 

Urine samples from 66 female chimpanzees from different stages in their reproductive lives also showed that the transition to this post-reproductive state was marked by changes in hormones like gonadotropins, estrogens, and progestins. 

While similar hormonal variations are also a way to tell that this transition is happening in humans, the post-reproductive chimpanzees were not involved in raising their offspring’s children. In these chimpanzees, the common grandmother hypothesis, where females live longer after menopause to help take care of future generations, does not appear to apply. This contrasts with some populations of orca whales, where grandmothers are a critical part of raising their offspring’s young to ensure their survival. 

[Related: Nice chimps finish last—so why aren’t all of them mean?]

According to the team, there are two possible explanations for these longer post-reproductive lifespans. Chimpanzees and other mammals in captivity can have artificially long post-reproductive lifespans because they are protected from natural predators and some pathogens. Even though they’re a wild population, the Ngogo chimpanzees could also be similarly protected and live artificially long lives. They live in a relatively remote area that is undisturbed by logging and hunting by humans and are exposed to fewer human pathogens. Their current habitat could also be closer to what existed in their evolutionary past compared with other populations of primates that are more affected by humans.

“The study both illuminates and raises questions about the evolution of menopause,” University of Exeter evolutionary biologist Michael Cant wrote in a related review on the study. “It also highlights the power of difficult long-term field studies–often run on small budgets and at constant risk of closure–to transform fundamental understanding of human biology and behavior.” Cant is not an author of the study.

Langergraber says future studies like this one could answer the question of how common substantial post-reproductive lifespans have been throughout chimpanzee evolutionary history and if impacts from humans have kept their survivorship rates artificially low.

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Animals have a wide range of ways to make sense of the world around them. Dogs sniff the air around them. Dolphins use echolocation. Humans glance at each other. For the electric knifefish, “shimmying” around in the water like a tadpole helps it make sense of its watery world. But knifefish are not the only ones that wiggle with purpose. In a study published October 26 in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, scientists describe a wide range of organisms that perform these same wavy patterns of movement to feel out the environment around them. 

[Related: Five animals that can sense things you can’t.]

The team behind this study was interested in what the nervous system does when animals move to improve their perception of the world, and if that behavior could be translated to robotic control systems.

“Amoeba don’t even have a nervous system, and yet they adopt behavior that has a lot in common with a human’s postural balance or fish hiding in a tube,” study co-author and Johns Hopkins University mechanical engineer Noah Cowan said in a statement. “These organisms [knifefish and amoebas] are quite far apart from each other in the tree of life, suggesting that evolution converged on the same solution through very different underlying mechanisms.”

Shimmying in the dark

Knifefish are blade-shaped fish found in freshwater lakes and rivers in Central and South America. They can reach three feet long and eat insects, crustaceans, and other fish. In the wild, they are hardwired to hide to avoid predators. They send out weak electric discharges that sense the predators’ location and find shelter. Wiggling around rapidly helps them actively sense their surroundings to find a place to hide.

While watching electric knifefish in an observation tank, the team noticed that when it was dark, the fish shimmied back and forth significantly more frequently. The fish swayed more gently with occasional bursts of quick movements when the lights were on. 

“We found that the best strategy is to briefly switch into explore mode when uncertainty is too high, and then switch back to exploit mode when uncertainty is back down,” co-author and Johns Hopkins computational cell biologist and neuroethologist Debojyoti Biswas said in a statement. When a predator could be nearby, the knifefish will quickly search for somewhere to hide. If they feel safe, they can return back to a more normal and less wiggly state to find food.

Exciting the senses

In the study, the team created a model that simulates the key sensing behaviors of the fish. They used work from other labs and spotted these same sensory-dependent movements in other organisms including amoeba, moths, cockroaches, moles, bats, mice, and even humans.

According to the authors, this is the first time scientists have deciphered this mode-switching strategy in fish and linked the behavior across species. They believe that all organisms have a brain computation that manages uncertainty in their environment.

[Related: How cats and dogs see the world.]

“If you go to a grocery store, you’ll notice people standing in line will change between being stationary and moving around while waiting,” Cowan said. “We think that’s the same thing going on, that to maintain a stable balance you actually have to occasionally move around and excite your sensors like the knifefish. We found the statistical characteristics of those movements are ubiquitous across a wide range of animals, including humans.”

Understanding these sensory mechanisms and their nuances could be used to improve search and rescue drones, space rovers, and other autonomous robots. These same characteristics for looking around could be built into future robots to help them perceive the space around them. The team also plans to explore how these mechanisms work in living things—even in plants.

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If you’ve ever spent time on a beach in the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean, there is a solid chance you stumbled across a slimy mass of stinky, sulfurous-smelling seaweed. The specific marine plant in question during those gross encounters is likely sargassum—while helpful for absorbing CO2, sargassum is also incredibly invasive, and can wreak havoc on both shoreline and ocean ecosystems. Cleanup efforts can cost tens of thousands of dollars while disrupting both tourist and fishing industries, but a recent aquatic robot project is showing immense promise in alleviating sargassum stress. In fact, AlgaRay’s recent successes have even earned it a spot on Time’s Best Inventions of 2023.

Co-designed by Seaweed Generation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to utilizing the versatile plant to help mitigate and remove carbon emissions, an AlgaRay prototype is currently patrolling off the coasts of Antigua. There, the roughly 9-foot-wide robot scoops up clumps of sargassum until its storage capacity is filled, at which point the autonomous bot dives 200m below the surface.

[Related: Rocks may be able to release carbon dioxide as well as store it.]

At this depth, the air pockets that make sargassum leaves so buoyant are so compressed by the water pressure that it simply can’t float anymore. Once released by AlgaRay, the seaweed then sinks to the ocean floor. According to a new writeup by Seaweed Generation’s partners at the University of Exeter, the robot can repeat this process between four and six times every hour. And thanks to a combination of solar panels, lithium batteries, and navigational tools connected to Starlink’s satellite internet constellation, AlgaRay will “ultimately be able to work almost non-stop,” reports the University of Exeter.

Of course, ocean ecosystems are complex and delicate balancing acts at any depth. AlgaRay’s designers are well aware of this, and assure its potential additional ocean floor CO2 deposits won’t be carried out recklessly. Additionally, they note sargassum blooms—exacerbated by human ecological disruption—are already causing major issues across the world.

“Sargassum inundations… cause environmental, social and economic disruption across the Caribbean, Central US and West African regions,” Seaweed Generation CEO Paddy Estridge and Chief of Staff Blythe Taylor, explain on the organization’s website. “Massive influxes of seaweed wash ashore and rot, releasing not just the absorbed CO2 but hydrogen sulfide gasses, decimating fragile coastal ecosystems including mangroves and seagrass meadows and killing countless marine animals.”

[Related: The US is investing more than $1 billion in carbon capture, but big oil is still involved.]

Estridge and Taylor write that humans “need to tread carefully” when it comes to depositing biomass within the deep ocean to ensure there are no “negative impacts or implications on the surrounding environment and organisms.” At the same time, researchers already know sargassum naturally dies and sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

Still, “we can’t assume either a positive or negative impact to sinking sargassum, so a cautious pathway and detailed monitoring has been built into our approach,” Estridge and Taylor write. “The scale of our operations are such that we can measure any change to the ocean environment on the surface, mid or deep ocean. Right now, and for the next few years our operations are literally a drop in the ocean (or a teaspoon of Sargassum per m2).”

As the name might imply, the AlgaRay is inspired by manta rays, which glide through ocean waters while using their mouths to filter and eat algae. In time, future iterations of the robot could even rival manta rays’ massive sizes. A nearly 33-foot-wide version is in the works to collect upwards of 16 metric tons of seaweed at a time—equal to around two metric tons of CO2. With careful monitoring of deep sea repositories, fleets of AlgaRay robots could soon offer an efficient, creative means to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

“The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]  has been very clear that we need to be able to remove (not offset, remove) 10 billion [metric tons] of carbon a year from the atmosphere by 2050 to have a hope of avoiding utter catastrophe for all people and all earth life,” write Estridge and Taylor. Knowing this, AlgaRay bots may be a key ally for helping meet that goal. If nothing else, perhaps some beaches will be a little less overrun with rotting seaweed every year. 

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Among birds, raptors are known for their sight, penguins for their huddling techniques, and some kingfishers are skillful divers. Some of these colorful and long-beaked birds dive headfirst into water to catch fish at break-neck speeds, all without damaging their brains. How they accomplish this feat is all in their genes, according to a study published October 24 in the journal Communications Biology.

[Related: Birds are so specialized to their homes, it shows in their bones.]

The special type of diving kingfishers perform is called plunge-diving. Other birds including gannets and pelicans also plunge-dive, but it is not a common foraging method in the animal kingdom. While kingfishers don’t generally hurt themselves on these dives that can reach up to 25 miles per hour, they do not come without risk. 

“For kingfishers to dive headfirst the way they do, they must have evolved other traits to keep them from hurting their brains,” Shannon Hackett, study co-author and associate curator of birds at the Field Museum, said in a statement.

Kingfishers are divided into three families that generally share vivid plumage and smaller feet. Kingfisher species also have varied diets. Not all of them eat fish, with many species eating lizards, insects, and even other kingfishers. After a 2017 study found that the groups of kingfishers that eat fish are not even closely related within the kingfisher family tree, it became clear to Hackett that fishy diets and diving abilities likely all evolved from a common ancestor.

“The fact that there are so many transitions to diving is what makes this group both fascinating and powerful, from a scientific research perspective,” says Hackett. “If a trait evolves a multitude of different times independently, that means you have power to find an overarching explanation for why that is.”

In the study, the team compared the DNA of 30 different kingfisher species to see which genes explain the birds’ diet and their ability to dive without sustaining brain damage. They used specimens from various field work.

“When our scientists do fieldwork, they take tissue samples from the bird specimens they collect, like pieces of muscle or liver. Those tissue samples are stored at the Field Museum, frozen in liquid nitrogen, to preserve the DNA,” study co-author and evolutionary biologist Chad Eliason said in a statement. 

They began the process of sequencing the full genomes for each of the kingfisher species, generating the entire genetic code of each bird. They then used software to compare the billions of base pairs that make up these genomes to look for the genetic variations that the diving kingfishers have in common.

[Related: What engineers learned about diving injuries by throwing dummies into a pool.]

They found that the fish-eating birds had several modified genes associated with both diet and brain structure. There were mutations in two interesting places. One mutation was on the birds’ AGT gene, which has been associated with dietary flexibility in other species. The other was on the MAPT gene, which codes for tau proteins that relate to feeding behavior.

Tau proteins help stabilize tiny structures inside the brain. However, the accumulation of too many tau proteins can be harmful. Traumatic brain injuries and Alzheimer’s disease in humans have been associated with a buildup of tau. 

“I learned a lot about tau protein when I was the concussion manager of my son’s hockey team,” said Hackett. “I started to wonder, why don’t kingfishers die because their brains turn to mush? There’s gotta be something they’re doing that protects them from the negative influences of repeatedly landing on their heads on the water’s surface.”

The team suspects that these tau proteins may be a mixed-bag for the brain. The same genes that keep the neurons in the brain organized are the same ones that fail from repeated concussions or if someone has Alzheimer’s.

“My guess is there’s some sort of strong selective pressure on those proteins to protect the birds’ brains in some way,” Hackett said. 

Some next steps for this research now that the correlated genomic variations have been identified include looking to see what these mutations do and to the proteins that are being produced. They’re also interested in what is going to compensate in a brain for all of the concussive forces and see how it can be applied to human brains.

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ON A COMPUTER MONITOR, in a laboratory half the size of a galley kitchen, I’m taking a look at the future. But the grainy object on the screen isn’t all that remarkable. It’s just a horse egg in a petri dish, blown up to the point where I can see the outline of its outer membrane. That’s when a white-coated scientist directs my attention to the device at my right: a high-powered microscope projecting the image of the horse egg, with two metal spikes the size of syringes angled at each side of the plate. Beneath me on the floor is an orange pedal I’m instructed to press with my foot. Suddenly, on the screen, I see a laser beam carve an incision into the membrane of the horse egg, like a hot knife going through butter.

In a few more years, the same laser-guided system will be used to punch a hole into an egg taken from an Asian elephant, remove the nucleus of that cell, and insert a nucleus containing edited genes required for surviving arctic temperatures, such as fuzzy hair and extra fat—all in the pursuit of creating the closest animal to a woolly mammoth to walk the Earth in many millennia.

The lab is one stop on my tour of the bioengineering facility of Colossal Biosciences. Co-founded in 2021 by Harvard geneticist George Church and serial entrepreneur Ben Lamm, Colossal is the world’s first de-extinction company. Its purpose? To rewild lost species. In June, I traveled to Dallas to get an in-person look at the 26,000-square-foot research facility where the startup’s innovative might is brought to bear. 

Colossal’s plan is to design a hybrid of a prehistoric woolly mammoth—which Church has described as “the cuddly version of a velociraptor”—as well as the thylacine, a marsupial from Australia and Papua New Guinea that died out in 1936, and the quintessential symbol of human-made extinction, the dodo, the last of which was snuffed out on its native island of Mauritius in 1662. 

De-extinction as an idea is not new. Church has discussed engineering a new lineage of woolly mammoths from frozen genetic material since 2008. The nonprofit organization Revive & Restore harbors aspirations of returning the extinct passenger pigeon to the skies. Scientists at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance hope to make gametes from cryopreserved skin cells of northern white rhinoceroses, a subspecies down to its last two members. What makes Colossal unique is its unicorn status: It has raised $225 million in investment capital in just two years and is now valued at $1.45 billion. Peter Thiel, Chris and Liam Hemsworth, the Winklevoss twins, Paris Hilton, and even the not-for-profit partner of the Central Intelligence Agency have all chipped in. (So has Matt Sechrest, co-founder of Recurrent Ventures, which owns Popular Science.)

Which raises a thorny question: What happens when you venture-fund nature?

Lamm, an energetic 41-year-old with a shoulder-length mop of dark hair, is well versed in this space. He comes from the tech world and has founded six different companies in his native Texas. (One of them, an artificial intelligence defense platform that counts the US Space Force and NASA as customers, was just acquired by a Texas-based private equity firm in August.) But the focus on money and investors belies the larger point. De-extinction, Lamm says, is a way to return keystone species to degraded ecosystems while developing the techniques to support future conservation projects. If we can genetically engineer a dodo, for example, what’s to stop us from breeding a more disease-resistant offshoot of Hawaiian honeycreepers, who are currently being decimated by avian malaria?

“[Some of] the technology advances that are going to be necessitated to de-extinct a creature are exactly the same technologies that will be necessary to help creatures not fall over the brink,” says Kenneth Lacovara, a paleontologist and geologist at Rowan University who agrees with Colossal’s mission.

Critics, meanwhile, say it’s misguided to scrape the natural world for genetic material to fulfill scientific whims. Why de-extinct obsolete species when there are more than 1,300 endangered and threatened ones in the United States alone that need protection? Observers also argue that introducing the genetic traits of dead creatures into modern analogs is not a means to conservation when the habitats of still-living endangered animals are continually under threat.

“We should protect species and do what we can,” says Lamm. “But that current model of just putting our arms around it, protecting it, just doesn’t work at the same speed at which we are destroying environments.”

The pioneering work Lamm speaks of will take decades. The company expects to birth a mammoth-like calf in about five years and then build up to a whole herd of woolly proxies. But in Colossal’s vision, the reintroduction of lost species is not only a way to right the wrongs of humanity but also a way to generate significant scientific know-how—so we can sustain species currently at risk in an increasingly inhospitable world, lest they perish forever.

THAT AN EARTHBOUND CREATURE like a woolly mammoth could vanish was once utterly unbelievable. French naturalist Georges Cuvier eventually delivered the sobering truth. He made his bones in 1790s Paris studying elephant fossils. Concluding that the remains were too distinct to be directly related to modern-day elephants, Cuvier posited the notion of espèces perdues, “lost species.” It was clear to him that the skeletons belonged to another megafauna that had vanished. Voilà: Extinction became a dilemma for modern science to solve.

Lamm’s fascination began with an introductory call to Church in 2019. His business acumen lay in using artificial intelligence for satellite software systems, and he wondered if the machines could also help with synthetic biology—the practice of building living systems from DNA and other small molecules. At the end of the call, after he idly asked Church what else he was working on, the mammoth comeback came up. “I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ I stayed up all night reading” everything Church had written about his quest, recalls Lamm. Soon he teamed up with the geneticist to form Colossal, where he is now CEO. In September 2021, the company launched with $15 million in seed funding and announced its plan to revive a version of the woolly mammoth.

Colossal widened its focus to the thylacine after Lamm was introduced to Andrew Pask at the University of Melbourne, who had already been conducting research on the marsupial and now consults on the company’s project on the species. More money came in, at which point investors asked the obvious question: What can we do for extinction’s mascot, the dodo? Beth Shapiro, who co-directs the Paleogenomics Lab at the University of California at Santa Cruz and has studied the flightless bird’s genome for almost two decades, advises Colossal’s avian genomics work. A few years ago, she and collaborators from other institutions had assembled the first complete genome of the dodo.

To any expert in this field, the tools in Colossal’s Texas labs aren’t unfamiliar. There are desktop gene sequencers and centrifuges. Hooded substations in a tissue culture lab for manipulating bits of animals. Computers that peer into sequenced DNA and analyze nucleotide bases. The laser-guided microscope I saw in the embryology lab is a proprietary device Colossal invented. In a company of 116 people, more than 60 are cell engineers and geneticists using these tools daily.

What’s important to understand, however, is that despite its talk of de-extinction, not to mention the graphics peppering its website, Colossal will never resurrect an animal. There’s no way to truly reanimate an extinct species by synthesizing its DNA from scratch—even with cutting-edge technology and living cells from an organism, and there are no such cells of a mammoth, dodo, or thylacine. 

“It’s still not possible to bring an extinct species back to life if what you mean is an exact copy,” says Shapiro. “What we’re working to do is to create proxies for these extinct species using some of their traits.”

Colossal’s real aim is to take existing species closely related to extinct animals, modify their DNA to give them traits similar to the company’s de-extinction targets, and place them in ecological settings that are as similar as possible to where previously extinct species once lived. For the dodo, it may be the Nicobar pigeon, a living cousin that inhabits islands in southeast Asia. For the thylacine, it’s the fat-tailed dunnart, a marsupial that resembles a rat. Modern-day elephants are also in the mix: Although the woolly mammoth has been gone for anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 years, it has a close relative in the Asian elephant—so close, in fact, that more than 99 percent of the animals’ genomes are identical.

“A mammoth to an Asian elephant is more closely related than an African elephant is to an Asian elephant,” says Eriona Hysolli, Colossal’s head of biological sciences, who works closely with Church out of his lab in Boston and supervises the mammoth work.

What Colossal scientists are trying to do is understand links between genotype and phenotype: how the sequence of letters in DNA code translates to how an animal looks and behaves. Hysolli says they are targeting about 65 sequences in the mammoth genome that confer various cold-adaptive traits, like subcutaneous fat, woolly hair, and dome-shaped craniums. In the genome engineering lab, computers compare the ancient DNA of the mammoth to that of the Asian elephant to identify areas of the elephant genome that must be modified in a future hybrid to express extinct characteristics. 

“Are all the phenotypes there? Are all the ecological functions there? That is, for us, what we’re saying is de-extinction,” says Matt James, a former director of animal care at the Dallas Zoo, now chief animal officer at Colossal. “We de-extincted critical genes for these species.”

To do that, Colossal is trying out pluripotent stem cells, which are capable of turning into any adult cell type. Those are created inside the company’s tissue culture lab from Asian elephant cells donated from various sources. (Colossal partners with 11 zoos across the US.) This is where genome engineering and cell manipulation will eventually intersect. There are two ways to insert mammoth genes into an elephant cell: use the ever-popular CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing tool to insert enzymes that make changes to nucleotide bases along the Asian elephant’s genome, or make multiple sequence changes at once, a process known as multiplexing, with the help of other molecular tools. 

Finally, to complete the mammothification of an Asian elephant, a nucleus from a regular elephant egg would be swapped with the nucleus from a cell modified with snippets of the mammoth genome—something they are planning for by early 2026 so Colossal can meet its projected date of 2028. Known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, it’s the same technique scientists used to make the famous clone Dolly the sheep in 1996. Colossal’s scientists are already practicing with gametes from animals like cows and horses. 

Once the hybrid egg develops into an embryo, it will be implanted into a female Asian elephant. The gestation period for a mammoth is the same as for an Asian elephant: around 22 months. And if that fetus survives long enough to be born, it should, hypothetically, be adapted to cold weather because it possesses mammoth traits. It probably won’t have massive tusks, but it will be 200 pounds of flesh, fat, and protective fur.  

James is confident that Colossal will be able to produce a mammoth by implanting a modified embryo into a surrogate. To increase its chances, though, he says the team will develop multiple eggs and work with a couple of female elephants. Even so, the first generation of mammoth hybrids won’t go anywhere near the wild. “They will be in what we would call a managed care facility,” says James, which means a sanctuary or some other facility where their anatomy, physiology, and behavior can be studied regularly. The mammoths will have to prove they have the skills to live and thrive independently in the wild. 

Skeptics might say the means, in this case, don’t justify the end. “It’s not necessarily accurate to say that the animals will benefit more by being brought back to life rather than just staying dead,” says Zohar Lederman, a physician and bioethicist at the University of Hong Kong. 

Others are much more strident. “It seems like a terrible idea to me,” says Karl Flessa, a geosciences professor at the University of Arizona who centers his research work on conservation biology and habitat and species restoration. “Why are you bringing back a Pleistocene animal as the world continues to warm and all of the habitats that were once available for mammoths are pretty much gone? Why would you want to do that?”

IN AN OP-ED for Rolling Stone in July, Colossal CEO Lamm argued that the company’s efforts are absolutely essential to sustaining the biodiversity of the planet. “I came to the conclusion,” he wrote, “that the question is no longer should we practice de-extinction science but how long do we have to get it right.”

Global authorities continually point out that Earth is currently in the middle of an extinction crisis. In 2019, the United Nations published a landmark report stating that one million animal and plant species are close to dying out, which is more than ever before in our history. A subsequent report issued in 2020 by the World Wildlife Fund found that wildlife populations had decreased by two-thirds in the last half-century alone, mainly due to human activities like deforestation, insecticide use, and poaching. In May, four researchers published a study in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution linking climate change to another mass extinction. They evaluated almost 36,000 species on land and in the ocean and used climate models to show that 15 percent of those organisms will experience dangerous and potentially fatal temperatures if the planet warms by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Lamm, Church, and the rest of Colossal’s corporate chain contend that those sorts of numbers animate the underlying principle of the company: that their lab-made proxies aren’t just some well-funded science project—they can legitimately be used to build resilience in species by pushing them toward the right adaptations in a changing world. The mammoth-elephant hybrid is the classic example. Asian elephants are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Merging snippets of woolly mammoth genome with the Asian elephant might give the big mammal a chance to inhabit a place like Pleistocene Park, a large tract of tundra in Russian Siberia that’s free from our interference.

“People say we should be working on endangered species. That’s exactly what we’re working on,” Church told me via video call the day after I toured Colossal’s lab. “One of the advantages of making a hybrid starting from an endangered species is that you give that endangered species a whole new place to live, which is much larger and less encumbered by human conflict than their current location.”

At the same time, the genomic sequencing Colossal currently leads is being put toward the development of a vaccine for a herpesvirus—the primary cause of death of young Asian elephants in zoos in North America.

But geneticist Stephan Schuster remains incredulous. Schuster was part of the Pennsylvania State University team that, in 2008, was the first to sequence nearly a full genome of an extinct animal when it assembled 2.9 billion base pairs from the genome of an 18,000-year-old woolly mammoth found in Siberia. “If there is a single person on the planet that I would trust to get the project accomplished, it is George Church,” he says. But, he adds, talk of resurrecting a mammoth has gone on for a decade, without much to show for it.

Schuster has a long list of queries about Colossal’s methodology. Will changes made to Asian elephant DNA lead to unpredictable mutations elsewhere on the genome? How many elephant pregnancies must happen to create one transgenic animal? How do you implant a mammoth-hybrid embryo into the uterus of an Asian elephant, which is deep inside the animal? “Just show success,” says Schuster. “All the rest, it’s just blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Another one of the scientific community’s main criticisms of Colossal is money versus impact. A $225 million capital fund for species restoration is nothing to sneeze at. Meanwhile, based on an analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity and other conservation groups, the US Fish and Wildlife Service requires a total of $841 million to fully fund all recovery efforts under the Endangered Species Act. The agency’s 2023 budget for protection efforts is just $331 million.

Colossal retains the exclusive license to commercialize any biotechnology that emerges from its de-extinction projects. Lamm assures me that anything that might be applicable to human healthcare—for gene therapy and the like—will be strictly proprietary. The one exception is how the instruments, like its laser-guided embryo-editing tool, are employed for various species preservation projects. “We may open-source some of the technology for its application to conservation,” he says.

The proxies themselves, once born, are also likely to be wholly owned by Colossal, at least for a while. Early hybrids will live in a vast fenced-in area like a nature preserve. Once there are enough members of each de-extincted target that can live and survive in the wild, they will start being released. And that’s when, Colossal says, ownership transfers to the natural world.

“They would become more of a natural resource for the area where they’ve been rewilded,” says chief animal officer James. It would be similar to how we might view elephants already existing in the wild. A specific country doesn’t own an African elephant—although it might be argued that those countries do have a responsibility to protect wildlife. (One location that Colossal is considering for future mammoths is North Dakota; the state development fund invested $3 million in the company earlier this year.)

Skeptics of Colossal’s overall strategy also wonder what will happen should de-extinction efforts prove successful. Creatures that have been gone for tens, hundreds, and thousands of years would suddenly emerge into a vastly different world—one that, by the very metrics Colossal cites, is already far too dangerous for the organisms that are still alive.

“Having mammoths isn’t going to solve any of those problems,” says Ronald Sandler, director of the Ethics Institute at Northeastern University. “It’s not going to reduce habitat loss. It’s not going to reduce carbon emissions. It’s not going to help us prevent a currently extant species from going extinct.”

Take the infamous flightless dodo, which could be an inspiration for shoring up vanishing populations of endemic island pigeons. The scientific process for creating its replacement is different from those for the mammoth and thylacine proxies. Currently, there’s no way to genetically edit a living bird. Scientists can manipulate the egg cell of a mammal when it’s ready to be fertilized because its nucleus is easy to get to—but the yolk of a bird egg makes that impossible. Instead, Colossal plans to create primordial germ cells, which can become sperm or egg cells, and inject them into developing embryos of a living bird. One prime candidate is the Nicobar pigeon. A male and female Nicobar would each then grow up with gametes containing the edits required to birth offspring with the characteristics that so distinguished the dodo, like its flightlessness, S-shaped body, and hooked beak. Say that works multiple times over, enough to generate a population of dodo proxies. What good does that do if its historic home of Mauritius is filled with invasive predators and may be flooded in 100 years?

“I’m critical of de-extinction, but I also do think it has a role to play,” says Tom Gilbert, a paleogenomics researcher at the University of Copenhagen. He also worked with Shapiro to produce the dodo genome and is a member of Colossal’s scientific advisory board. In his eyes, releasing “a bad mutant mismatch of something else not adapted to the environment” doesn’t strike him as an effective means of ecosystem restoration. “But if you can excite a generation of young people using crazy de-extinction projects to love nature and get into science, that is going to save the world,” he adds. “If it requires a mutant mammoth-elephant hybrid to get the people excited, that is a valid reason to do it.”

THE BIGGEST OPEN QUESTION is whether Colossal can and will use the bioengineering toolkit it’s developing for the greater conservation good. The startup certainly claims it will: It recently joined forces with Thomas Hildebrandt, another member of its scientific advisory board, who currently leads BioResponse, an international consortium attempting to create a new population of northern white rhinoceroses. Colossal’s supporting role will be to gather DNA from museum specimens of the near-extinct species, analyze the data, and then use its gene-editing tools to help create more diverse northern white rhino embryos. The genetic variation should, in theory, help protect the rare mammals from disease in captive-breeding programs and, eventually, in the wild.

Still, there is no hybrid mammoth, thylacine, or dodo to point to at the moment. For Lamm, generating those ancient species is the priority. “If Colossal does nothing else in conservation or de-extinction, and we cure elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus and are responsible for saving elephants, that was a pretty good day,” he tells me just after our walk-through of the lab. “But fundamentally…if we aren’t successful in our de-extinction efforts, I will personally not see it as success.” 

Yet there is a danger in pursuing ghosts and still-fictional creatures. Mammothlike elephants or big-beaked pigeons or fiercer dunnarts could overshadow wildlife teetering on the precipice of oblivion right now. After all, who cares, really, about the orangefoot pimpleback, an endangered freshwater mussel, or the Oahu tree snail?

When I present paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara with that conundrum, he deems it a false choice. “Yes, we have to do everything we can to conserve species that are on the brink,” he says. “And yes, we should try to bring back species that have gone extinct that were pushed into extinction by humans. I think that’s justice. Those two things are not at odds with each other.”

Maybe not. Could the return of a mammoth-like beast backed by millions of dollars in capital funds stabilize an ancient Arctic ecosystem that traditionally helped trap greenhouse gases deep inside the frozen tundra? “When a species is introduced to a landscape, you can’t always predict what every one of the consequences is going to be,” says Shapiro.

But we certainly know what happens when a species is removed from where it belongs, be that the fault of overzealous humans or larger environmental degradation. Consider the reintroduction of gray wolf packs to Yellowstone National Park, perhaps the preeminent example of the positive ecological effects born from restoring fauna in their native habitats. As one of the top predators in the region, wolves helped bring other wildlife and natural cycles back into balance. 

We don’t know what will happen if a woolly mammoth hybrid makes its debut in the 21st century. But the future that Colossal envisions is one in which the act of protecting the animal kingdom goes beyond building fences, zoos, or preserves—one in which humans invest in and invent tools that could prime species for survival, including those that haven’t been dead for thousands of years. 

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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It’s a little slice of Mars right here on Earth. The volcanoes of the dry and arid Atacama desert in Argentina and Chile climb roughly 20,000 feet above sea level, with blistering winds, parched conditions, and freezing temperatures. However, a team of biologists who discovered a living two ounce leaf-eared mouse three years ago, have now found multiple mummified mice in these extreme conditions. The findings are described in a study published October 23 in the journal Current Biology.

[Related: Male mice are utterly terrified of bananas.]

“The most surprising thing about our discovery is that mammals could be living on the summits of volcanoes in such an inhospitable, Mars-like environment,” study co-author and University of Nebraska, Lincoln evolutionary biologist Jay Storz said in a statement. “Well-trained mountain climbers can tolerate such extreme elevations during a one-day summit attempt, but the fact that mice are actually living at such elevations demonstrates that we have underestimated the physiological tolerances of small mammals.”

Finding freeze-dried mummy mice

As far back as the 1970s and 1980s, archaeologists reported seeing mouse cadavers at these extreme heights. The assumption was that they naturally must have hitched a ride up the summit with the Incas. These sites are considered sacred to the Inca and the belief was that they could have been brought up along with firewood up the slopes or potentially were offered up as sacrifices.

“You can’t fault the archaeologists for thinking this way, because what other explanation is there?” said Storz. “Nothing could be living up there, so they had to have been brought there.”

Inadvertently, doubts on the mice as hitchhikers theory were cast early in 2020. Storz and his friend and fellow mountaineer Mario Pérez Mamani, captured a live specimen of leaf-eared mouse atop the 22,000-foot peak of Llullaillaco, a volcano on Chile-Argentina border. 

Along with the discovery of more live mice, they’ve now found 13 mouse mummies on the summits of three neighboring volcanoes—Salín, Púlar, and Copiapo—all close to four miles above sea level.

“These are basically freeze-dried, mummified mice,” Storz said.

It’s all relative

The frozen in time state also helped preserve their DNA and crucial genetic information. Alongside collaborators from the University of Montana, Storz compared the genetic variation among the leaf-eared mice collected in the lowlands, midlands, and highlands of Atacama Desert. This cross-habitat zone analysis can help trace the evolutionary history of animal populations that are separated by physical barriers, distance, or altitude.

[Related: 1,000-year-old mummy with full head of hair and intact jaw found in Peru.]

The team questioned whether the mummified mice living on top of the Andes Mountains may be a different subpopulation of the leaf-eared rodent that has a colonization history that differs from their more low-land dwelling peers. According to Storz, they found that the mice from the summits and those from the flanks or the base of the volcanoes in the surrounding desert are “one big happy family.”

Two pairs of the leaf-eared mummies found on Salín were also closely related, possibly siblings or parents and offspring. Along with the discovery of the live mouse burrows, the equal ratio of males to females found among the mummies, also points to the leaf-eared mouse living in and not just touring these summits. 

‘How in God’s name is anything living up there?’

Puna de Atacama is among Earth’s most inhospitable places and NASA has visited the Atacama to practice for future missions on Mars. Its less than 0.6 inches of annual rainfall make it a good analogue for the Red Planet and a rovers designed to dig in Martian soil to search for microbial life have been tested here. 

“Even at the base of the volcanoes, the mice are living in an extreme, Martian environment. And then, on the summits of the volcanoes, it’s even more so. It feels like outer space,” said Storz. “It just boggles the mind that any kind of animal, let alone a warm-blooded mammal, could be surviving and functioning in that environment. When you experience it all firsthand, it even further impresses upon you: How in God’s name is anything living up there?”

To learn more, Storz and team have established laboratory colonies of leaf-eared mice that were collected from various altitudes. They acclimated each group to conditions that simulate the Puna de Atacama, hoping to pinpoint the physiological adaptations that the rodents cope with life at the extreme. They’re are also continuing mountaineering surveys of small mammals living on high Andean peaks in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile.

They believe it possible that avoiding predators such as birds of prey, foxes, mountain lions, and smaller cats could be what’s driving the mice to live here. 

“But why they’re ascending to these extreme elevations is still a mystery,” Stoz said.

The post How did mummified mice end up on volcanoes in the Atacama Desert? appeared first on Popular Science.

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Best overall		Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder		SEE IT	The Bird Buddy offers stylish design, quality images, and a fun app with real-time notifications.
Best for hummingbirds		BirdDock Hummingbird Feeder Camera		SEE IT	The nectar attachment of this feeder can be swapped out to hold seed as well.
Best budget		WYZE Cam v3		SEE IT	This budget option lets you see the birds without any extras.

Bird feeder cameras make documenting our feathered friends fun and easy, but they aren’t created equally. Some are best for bird-watching in your own backyard, while others are better suited to remote locations. More expensive models have features like solar panels, video options, and smart bird identification, while basic, budget models make feeder photography accessible for just about everyone. No matter what you are looking for, the best bird feeder cameras will allow you to capture quality images of the birds who call your area home. 

• Best overall: Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder
• Best trail camera: TECHNAXX Full HD Birdcam TX-165
• Best for bird boxes: Hawk Eye HD Nature Cam
• Best for hummingbirds: BirdDock Hummingbird Feeder Camera
• Best for bird identification: Netvue Birdfy Pro
• Best budget: WYZE Cam v3

How we chose the best bird feeder cameras

There are dozens of bird feeder cameras on the market. Though many of them have the same basic features, they don’t all offer the same level of important features like durability, battery life, and accuracy of species detection. 

To arrive at our top picks, we relied on our own assessment of each device, including hands-on experience with multiple models. Because bird feeder cameras must be durable, weatherproof, and offer long-lasting performance, we also leaned heavily on user experiences and favored well-reviewed products. 

Features like accurate bird identification, solar panel availability, and useful accessories also helped push some models into the limelight. Other options like real-time notification and color night vision were nice to have but not essentials. Still, they didn’t tend to figure into our final decision simply because of their somewhat limited value for bird photography. 

The best bird feeder cameras: Reviews & Recommendations

Choosing a bird feeder camera can be tough. There are dozens of available models, and the prices can range from less than $50 all the way up to $400 or more. The key to finding the right bird feeder camera is not necessarily shopping by price but knowing which features are must-haves and which are not. Not everyone will benefit from AI, for example. You may even prefer to use your own knowledge to identify the birds in your photographs. Below are our favorite options, suitable for a range of situations and users. 

Best overall: Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder

SEE IT

Specs

• AI: Yes, identifies more than 1,000 bird species 
• App compatibility: Android and iOS
• Resolution: 5-megapixel photos, 720p video
• Battery: 4000 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery, optional solar panel

Pros

• Sharp images with a 120-degree field of view
• Weatherproof from -5°F to 120°F
• The smartphone app allows you to see feeders all over the world
• Compatible with an optional solar panel and lots of accessories
• Three mounting options

Cons

• No local storage, so it can’t be used without Wi-Fi
• Video resolution is lower than some competitors

The Bird Buddy bird feeder camera is relatively new, but it has much to offer, so it earns our top spot. The bird feeder is attractively designed, so it will look nice in your yard or on your deck with some solar lights, which is an important feature for many. It’s available in blue or vibrant yellow, so you can choose an option that fits your style best. I really enjoy the look of the blue Bird Buddy on the side of my porch, which is a big plus. 

The camera module is removable, which is important when it comes time to clean the feeder. It can take five-megapixel photos or offers 720p live-streamed video. The image quality won’t be that of your dedicated mirrorless or DSLR camera, but it is nicely detailed and properly exposed even in backlit situations. And being able to tune in to watch live as a bird chows down is pretty neat. 

The camera’s 120-degree field of view is wide enough to capture birds hanging out on the feeder’s side. You can also buy multiple accessories through Bird Buddy to extend the perch or feed different species. With the solar roof (the model we thoroughly tested and reviewed), you’ll never need to think about charging the camera. Without the solar roof, you’ll need to charge the camera every 5 to 15 days.

The Bird Buddy relies on AI to automatically recognize over 1,000 species of birds. The Bird Buddy app notifies you when you have new visitors to your feeder, which is always exciting. You can even browse other Bird Buddy devices all over the world to see species that you wouldn’t otherwise encounter. Plus, the images from your device contribute to migration information for conservation databases. You’ll be helping science progress while getting fun images of your feathered friends. 

Best trail camera: TECHNAXX Full HD Birdcam TX-165 

SEE IT

Specs

• AI: None
• App compatibility: N/A, no app available
• Resolution: 8-megapixel photos, full HD 1080p video
• Battery: 4 AA batteries give it a working time of up to 6 months

Pros

• Sturdy trail-cam style feeder
• 6-month battery life
• Removable water basin means it can be a feeder or a birdbath
• Captures slow-motion video

Cons

• No smartphone app or bird identification features
• Memory card storage is less convenient than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth

This hybrid bird feeder camera is as tough as any trail camera. However, unlike most trail cameras, it can focus as close as 2 to 6 inches and offers a 100-degree field of view. This means you’ll get much better images of visiting birds than you would with a typical trail cam. The TX-165 takes standard AA batteries but has a working time of up to 6 months. You can leave it in a secure, remote location for a long time without worrying about the battery going flat.

The TX-165 also has a few features you won’t find on other bird feeder cameras. You can fill it with birdseed or fill the removable basin with water and turn it into a birdbath camera. It also takes impressive eight-megapixel images and full HD 1080p video. It’s also capable of 25 frames per second for slow-motion videos. 

Best for bird boxes: Hawk Eye HD Nature Cam

SEE IT

Specs

• AI: None
• App compatibility: N/A, no app available
• Resolution: 700 tvl (television lines)
• Battery: None (includes a 75-foot power cable)

Pros

• Compact, so you can hide it almost anywhere
• Night vision lets you capture clear images in poor light 
• Durable and temperature-tolerant to between 35°F and 105°F

Cons

• Only shoots video 
• Not waterproof
• Needs to be plugged into a power supply

Birds do a lot more than just eat birdseed, so at some point, you might want to step up to a birdhouse camera. Because the Hawk Eye Nature Cam isn’t built into a feeder, it’s much more flexible than most bird cams. Its small size means you can put it anywhere—on treetops, fence posts, or even in animal burrows (though please exercise caution when putting it down a snake hole). Or it can be wired discreetly into a bird box for a 24/7 look at growing bird families, from egg to fledgling. 

The Hawk Eye Nature Cam is meant for live-streaming to your television set. The video resolution is clear and sharp, with 700 tvl (television lines) and 10 infrared diodes. This lets you view clear video even in the darkened environment of a typical bird box. Note, however, that you will need an RCA to USB adapter if you have a modern TV. 

The Hawk Eye does have a few drawbacks. It has no battery, so you’ll have to mess with a long extension cord to get it set up. It also isn’t waterproof. If you want to attach it to an unsheltered location, you’ll have to build waterproof housing or limit your use to dry weather. Finally, you can connect the camera to your PC and use additional software to grab photos and video segments from the live stream, but it’s not designed to capture high-resolution stills.

Best for hummingbirds: BirdDock Hummingbird Feeder Camera

SEE IT

Specs

• AI: Yes, identifies species and alerts you when birds approach 
• App compatibility: Android and iOS
• Resolution: 2-megapixel photos, full HD 1080p video
• Battery: 6400 mAh rechargeable batteries provide 20 to 30 days of operating time 

Pros

• AI can recognize around 5,000 different species, including hummingbirds
• Rechargeable batteries provide 20 to 30 days of use
• Hummingbird attachment is removable

Con:

• Still photos are much lower resolution than those shot by similar feeders 
• The app is clunky and difficult to use

The BirdDock is a flexible bird feeder camera that isn’t limited to just capturing photos of seed-eaters. It also offers a removable hummingbird attachment featuring five flower-shaped feeding ports with 0.16-inch holes to keep bees and other insects out.  When you want to switch to photographing songbirds, you can remove the hummingbird feeder and fill the device with seeds. 

Like other AI feeders, the BirdDock will identify species and alert you when one is approaching the feeder. It has night vision, too, which could help you identify other critters that visit your feeder overnight. This bird feeder camera features a 160-degree field of view and can be used with or without an SD memory card. It provides an impressive battery life of up to 30 days. You can also purchase a separate solar panel to keep the device charged in sunny weather.

The BirdDock has two primary drawbacks: It captures still photos at a relatively low resolution of only two megapixels (though it does also capture full HD 1080p video). It also doesn’t have an especially user-friendly app. Some users complain that the bird identification feature isn’t accurate and that the app frequently disconnects from the camera.

Best for bird identification: Netvue Birdfy Pro

SEE IT

Specs

• AI: Yes, identifies more than 6,000 different species 
• App compatibility: Android and iOS
• Resolution: Full HD 1080p video
• Battery: 5000 mAh rechargeable batteries 

Pros

• Can identify more than 6,000 different species 
• Long battery life (the manufacturer claims up to six months of use)
• Extra features like squirrel recognition and color night vision

Cons

• The bird identification service costs extra
• Storing photos on the cloud requires a subscription

The Netvue Birdfy rivals the Bird Buddy with features like ease of use, durability, and photo quality. It has an impressive array of extra features like color night vision. The AI can recognize squirrels, and the built-in microphone lets you yell at them when they’re caught robbing the feeder. You can also upgrade your feeder with add-ons like a solar panel, hummingbird feeder, and perch extension.

The Birdfy has the same features as most other feeders, including automatic capture/motion detection and real-time notification. It takes clear video at close range, provides a 135-degree field of view, and even offers 8x magnification if you want to study the fine details.

Birdfy has an impressive database of 6,000 species, though reviewers note that it isn’t always accurate. When it does misidentify a bird, you have the option to submit a report via the app. This is evidence that Netvue is constantly working to improve its software. 

The primary drawback of the Netvue bird feeder camera is you may have to pay for various subscriptions depending on what features you want access to. For example, if you want to take advantage of the bird identification feature, you must pay for a subscription. Likewise, a subscription is required if you want to store photos on the Netvue Cloud for longer than 30 days. 

Best budget: WYZE Cam v3

SEE IT

Specs

• AI: No species identification
• App compatibility: Android and iOS
• Resolution: 1080p full HD video
• Battery: No battery

Pros

• Affordable
• Weatherproof 
• Compact for easy mounting

Cons

• Minimum focus distance is around 12 inches
• No battery; needs to be plugged into a power supply

Bird feeder cameras with all the bells and whistles can be expensive. A $200 feeder might be outside your budget, or you may not need all the features that expensive bird feeder cameras offer. The WYZE Cam v3 is essentially an outdoor security camera. You won’t be able to fill it with birdseed or attach a hummingbird accessory. But you can mount this sturdy little camera next to any commercial bird feeder or install it close to a high-traffic part of your backyard. 

The WYZE Cam v3 offers all the basic features you need in a bird cam. It’s weatherproof with an IP65 rating. It takes photos when it senses motion, and it has an app so you can see what’s happening outside in real-time. 

The WYZE Cam does have a few drawbacks. One of these is the focus distance. While most dedicated bird cams can focus on subjects as close as a few inches, the WYZE Cam isn’t designed for closeups. You’ll have to mount it at least a foot away from your feeder, meaning you won’t see a lot of detail in your photos. 

The WYZE Cam is also wired. It comes with a weatherproof six-foot USB cable, so you’ll have to install it close to your home. On the plus side, once installed, you won’t have to worry about changing or recharging the battery or losing your video stream on a cloudy day.

Things to consider before buying a bird feeder camera

If you love bird watching but don’t want to sit waiting with your binoculars, a bird feeder camera will allow you to capture photos and videos of birds even when you aren’t around.

A bird feeder camera is meant for permanent outdoor use. This means it needs features you probably don’t consider when shopping for other photography gear. Here are some of the most important things you’ll want to think about when shopping for a bird feeder camera.

Durability

Bird feeder cameras can be subject to some serious abuse. The sun’s UV rays and hot temperatures can degrade plastic casings over time. These devices must also withstand storms and sprinklers, remaining waterproof from season to season. Of course, they should also be tough enough to handle the beaks and claws of visiting critters—not just the birds they’re intended for but other potential visitors like squirrels and mice.

Image quality

The image quality of bird feeder cameras is dependent on a few things. Resolution is the first thing most think of, and indeed, it is important with these devices. If you want clear, sharp images, look for bird feeder cameras with higher resolution. These compact cameras won’t offer numbers you may be used to in smartphones or mirrorless cameras, though. Five to eight megapixels for stills and 1080p for video tend to be the highest available at the moment.  However, if you aren’t concerned with high levels of detail, you could save some money and opt for a device with a less impressive resolution. 

The second factor of image quality is close focusing distance. The majority of shots taken by a bird feeder camera will be up-close. As a result, look for a device capable of getting clear photos at a very short distance. Even as close as a few inches is ideal.  Finally, birds don’t tend to sit still for long. Because of this, the camera should be able to freeze action, even in low light conditions like early morning or cloudy days. 

WiFi connectivity

WiFi isn’t necessarily a critical feature, but it’s something to consider if you’re going to keep your feeder close to your house. Most people don’t want to trek outside daily to download photos or swap out a memory card. A WiFi connection will let you see what your camera captured at any time of day in any weather. Treating it like a smart-home device will save you from having to venture into the cold, heat, or rain unless you need to change the battery or add birdseed.

Pay attention to the range of the device, too. Shy birds won’t approach your device if it is too close to your home. If it’s too far away, you won’t be able to view your photos without exiting your home.

Mounting options

Each bird feeder camera will have somewhat different requirements for how you install them. Some require a pole, some can be mounted to a fence post, and others can be hung. Depending on where you want the feeder and what tools you have available for installation, some of these options may be better than others for your particular needs.

Battery life

Some bird feeder cameras take basic replaceable AA batteries; others rely on solar panels to power internal rechargeable batteries. Either way, you’ll want to pick a camera that isn’t power-hungry. A good battery will ensure you aren’t constantly changing batteries or missing photos because your camera goes dark on a cloudy day. 

Choosing a camera with motion detection is a good place to start. These cameras only activate when there’s something to take a photo of, which helps the battery last longer.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best bird feeder cameras

• Best overall: Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder
• Best trail camera: TECHNAXX Full HD Birdcam TX-165
• Best for bird boxes: Hawk Eye HD Nature Cam
• Best for hummingbirds: BirdDock Hummingbird Feeder Camera
• Best for bird identification: Netvue Birdfy Pro
• Best budget: WYZE Cam v3

Once limited to nature photographers with long telephoto lenses and lots of patience, bird feeder cameras have made bird photography nearly effortless and available to almost anyone. That doesn’t necessarily mean any camera will do, though. Thinking about what you want to get out of your investment is an important first step in choosing a feeder. If you’re hoping to get up-close, detailed shots, pay attention to the example shots provided by the manufacturer and uploaded by users. Consider how important good battery life is to you, and ask yourself if you really need a camera that will identify already familiar local birds.

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Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

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The post The best bird feeder cameras in 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

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Bird watching seems like one of those rites of passage as you get older. You reach a certain age and boom—you suddenly like studying our avian amigos. I have, apparently, reached that age. But I don’t always have time to tromp through fields with binoculars to catch fleeting feathers. Luckily, bird watching these days is extremely easy thanks to the arrival of bird feeder cameras. These devices are built with compact, weather-resistant cameras that typically detect motion to snap photos and videos when a bird comes to feast. They provide close-up views of the snacking species that wouldn’t be possible any other way.

One of the more popular bird feeder cameras—Bird Buddy—was launched as a Kickstarter and has taken the world of bird feeder cameras by storm. It offers an attractive yet practical design and pairs with an easy- and fun-to-use app. The Bird Buddy camera allows you to capture high-quality photos and videos of birds that visit your feeder, and AI even identifies them for you. I’ve had one up for a few months to put it through its paces and have been impressed with the device.

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Overview

• The Bird Buddy is a modern-looking bird feeder with a removable camera that automatically snaps photos and videos of birds that come to snack. 
• The easy-to-use app notifies you when you have a visitor and automatically identifies over 1,000 species of birds.
• The feeder holds 3.5 cups of birdseed and comes with a scoop.
• It comes with a few different ways to mount the feeder. Additional accessories are available for purchase separately.
• A Bird Buddy Pro membership unlocks certain app features and higher video quality and costs $2.50 monthly for an annual membership or $2.99 for a monthly plan. 
• The base-level Bird Buddy costs $239, but we suggest upgrading to the version with a solar roof for unlimited battery life for $299.

Pros

• Attractive, modern design
• Very little assembly required
• Lots of accessories available
• App is easy and fun to use
• AI features automatically identify birds and other critters
• Livestream is available
• Records quality, highly-detailed photos and videos
• Holds plenty of birdseed
• Camera is removable for easy washing
• Optional solar roof does away with charging the battery
• Bird Buddy provides frequent updates

Cons

• Requires a WiFi connection
• Water pools in the bird feeder, resulting in moldy birdseed
• Some features are locked behind a subscription paywall

Verdict

The Bird Buddy is one of the best bird feeder cameras available thanks to its excellent app usability, advanced AI, and high-quality images and videos. The sleek design is easy to install, clean, and fill, and the removable camera is a nice addition. The reliance on WiFi won’t work for everyone, but smart-home devices are increasingly common, and it allows for immediate access to your camera’s feed.

Bird Buddy setup

Setting up the Bird Buddy involves two parts: Connecting to a WiFi router along with the app and physically installing the bird feeder. The Bird Buddy doesn’t offer any onboard storage, so you’ll need access to a WiFi connection to use the camera and AI features. It uses an 802.11 b/g/n connection at 2.4 GHz plus Bluetooth for connection to the app. You’ll want to install the Bird Buddy app and pair your camera to the app before installing the bird feeder in your yard. 

I had substantial issues pairing my Bird Buddy to my WiFi and connecting it to the app, and had to call customer support for assistance. Luckily, the customer support team was incredibly helpful and patient in working through the troubleshooting, and we eventually got it all set up. It is worth noting that I had an early model, so Bird Buddy has likely solved some of those issues to make the pairing process smoother.

Physical installation is simple, depending on how and where you place your bird feeder. You can hang it, mount it to a one-inch pole with the included bottom mount, or purchase a separate wall mount for attaching to fences or walls. The camera slots right into the designated slot, and it’s easy to plug it into the solar roof (if you opt for that). 

Bird Buddy design & build quality

The Bird Buddy bird feeder features a sleek, modern design with smooth curves. Though looks are subjective, I think it looks much more polished than other bird feeder cameras. It’s available in blue or vibrant yellow. Bird Buddy says it features a “bird-friendly design,” though it doesn’t specify what exactly that means. The perch features a raised bird footprint pattern, providing some grip for talons. 

The birdseed compartment—which holds 3.8 cups—is enclosed by clear plastic on both sides, allowing you and the birds to see the seed level inside. A back door at the top opens to fill the bird feeder up, though it requires careful maneuvering to get the seed inside and not spill it everywhere since it is a rather small opening. The entire back also comes off for easier cleaning. 

Bird feeders and bird feeder cameras are, naturally, outdoor items. As a result, they need to be durable, rugged, and built to withstand the elements. The Bird Buddy ticks those marks nicely. It is made of new and recycled BPA-free plastic and feels solid and sturdy. I have had it up for a handful of months, and after a quick cleaning, it looks brand new. That’s even despite the intense Florida sun constantly beating down on it.

Water issues

My main frustration with the design of the Bird Buddy is regarding keeping rain out. There are holes in the bottom that drain water in the event of rain, but they are extremely tiny. Of course, that keeps the small seeds from falling out. Butt hose same seeds can clog the holes, preventing thorough draining. Also, the protective roof helps keep some rain out but doesn’t extend beyond the feeder very much. If there is any wind blowing the rain, it will end up in the feeder. As a result, I had issues with water saturating the birdseed and mold forming. 

Granted, this may be a function of where I reside in Florida—a state where strong thunderstorms are a near-daily occurrence in the summer and humidity levels are intense. I had to change the birdseed every week because of the molding. Birds do not like moldy seeds, so I don’t get as many visitors. That’s especially true if I don’t stay on top of cleaning things out. It also means that I’m dumping out seed regularly and cleaning the feeder frequently. Neither of these is ideal and keeps birds away for longer. It may be less of an issue with different birdseed mixes or locations, but it has severely limited the number of birds I attract. 

Camera module details

The Bird Buddy’s camera is housed inside a plastic case. It is weather-resistant, though Bird Buddy doesn’t provide an IP rating. It does say that it can operate in temperatures between -5°F and 120°F. As a result, it will work in most locations throughout the year. The camera module measures 5.1 x 2 x 1.5 inches and fits securely in the bird feeder with the help of a magnet in the back.

The camera takes five-megapixel photos and 720p HD live-streamed video. It is capable of 1080p video clips, though you’ll need to pay for a Bird Buddy Pro membership ($2.50 per month for an annual membership or $2.99 per month for a monthly plan). The 120-degree field of view is wide enough to capture birds hanging out on the side of the feeder. There’s also a built-in microphone for recording bird songs as well, which is a fun addition.

Motion detection

Bird Buddy also built a laser motion detector into the camera. This senses movement on the perch and triggers the camera to take photos or videos when a visitor is present (much like a wireless security camera). I don’t have my bird feeder in a location where I can easily keep watch to test how well the motion detection works. But every time I heard a bird making noise, I received a “postcard” (Bird Buddy’s way of telling you a bird was at your feeder), so it seemed just sensitive enough.

You can switch to Power Saver Mode in the app settings if you want fewer notifications or conserve battery. Or turn on Frenzy Mode to see anything and everything, though you’ll have to pay for a Pro membership. 

Power

For power, the Bird Buddy camera utilizes a 4000 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Bird Buddy says it will last between five and 15 days. Of course, that depends on how many photos it takes, how much you stream live video, and the weather. When it needs a charge, it uses a USB-C cable. I was using the solar roof, which results in infinite battery life. If you want to save some money and don’t opt for the solar roof, the camera is fully removable. That means you won’t need to bring the entire bird feeder (along with any tiny creatures or germs) inside for charging.

Bird Buddy app

I’ve been very impressed with the Bird Buddy app during my testing. It is well-designed in design and usability, with many playful components. It is intuitive to use and easy to find what you need very quickly, even as you are getting used to it. It’s clean and minimal, without too many extra things going on.

The app uses AI to automatically identify over 1,000 species, which includes squirrels and rare birds. Unfortunately, I have only had Red-Winged Blackbirds at my feeder, so I haven’t been able to test how accurate the AI identification is beyond that single species. But it always got the Red-Winged Blackbird right, so there’s that. 

When a bird visits your feeder, the app notifies you with a “postcard.” These postcards are then saved to your gallery so you can pull them back up anytime. They can even show multiple photos or videos of the same bird if they stick around for a bit. Should there be photos in a set that aren’t worth saving, you can discard them to keep your gallery from getting too cluttered.

Your gallery is sorted by bird type. Tapping on each lets you open all photos and videos the camera has captured over time of that particular species. The page for each bird species will also provide information on that bird so that you can learn more. That includes personality type, what they eat, where they are typically found, how big they are, and what they sound like. For example, the Red-Winged Blackbird page tells me that they are brawlers, open lovebirds, and social butterflies who like to eat insects and seeds and are as big as a slice of pizza.

Community features

Beyond content from your feeder, you can see photos and videos from feeders worldwide in a few different ways. First, you can add some to your list of feeders and receive postcards from them like it is your own feeder. However, if you want to add more than one feeder for more than 72 hours, you’ll need a Pro membership.

If you don’t want to add a feeder, you can still scroll through photos and videos from the community. It’s like social media just for bird content. Birdbuddy TV is a video feed of publicly shared videos from Bird Buddy users. Or you can scroll through photos from the community, applauding people’s results. You can even help identify species by tapping the Wingbuddy link at the top of the Community page. 

Image & video quality

A bird feeder camera doesn’t do much good if the photos aren’t clear enough so you can actually see your avian visitors. The five-megapixel resolution may not seem very impressive, especially compared to smartphones and dedicated cameras. While you won’t be able to print these images to poster size by any means, the camera does offer plenty of quality for viewing on your phone. 

The images are clear and sharp, especially when the bird hangs out on the perch. The camera can’t focus much closer than that, though. My main visitor liked to sit right in the birdseed, so it was frequently out of focus, but even still, I could see good amounts of detail with vibrant colors. The auto exposure overall does great, even in extremely high-contrast lighting situations. There were times that the bird was blurry from moving during the exposure, but that wasn’t the norm. 

The Bird Buddy video quality is also really good. The footage is clear and well-exposed. If you want higher-quality video, you can upgrade to a Bird Buddy Pro membership, though I have not tested it, so I can’t comment on how much better that video looks. 

So, who should buy the Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder? 

Bird feeder cameras are becoming more and more popular, with new options seeming to pop up regularly. Spending $299 (for the solar roof version) may seem pricey for a bird feeder camera. But the Bird Buddy is priced similarly to other devices, including its closest competitor, the Netvue Birdfy Pro. So, what makes the Bird Buddy stand out? 

The Bird Buddy includes a durable yet attractive build, an integrated solar panel for infinite battery life, multiple mounting options, and an easy-to-clean design with a removable camera, which gives it the edge for most users. It’s also remarkably easy to install, with essentially no assembly beyond popping the camera into the feeder. Add to that the easy-to-use and fun app with minimal features behind a paywall, and it takes a clear lead. It’s a connected device that makes you feel a bit more connected with the natural world. If you are interested in keeping an eye on the bird species in your area, it’s hard to beat Bird Buddy. 

The post Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder review: A camera that’s not just for the birds appeared first on Popular Science.

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A group of paleontologists, park rangers, and geologists have discovered a new species of ancient shark in the rock layers of Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. It was uncovered in a large fossil deposit that includes at least 40 different species of shark and their relatives, and even well-preserved skeletal cartilage. 

[Related: Megalodons were likely warm-blooded, despite being stone-cold killers.]

The new species is named Strigilodus tollesonae and is a petalodont shark. These extinct  sharks had petal-shaped teeth and lived about 337 million years ago. According to the National Park Service, it is more closely related to present day ratfish than sharks or rays and it was identified from teeth found in the cave’s walls. Strigilodus tollesonae likely had teeth that included one rounded cusp used for clipping and a long, ridge inert side that crushed prey the way molars do. Paleontologists believe that it likely lived like modern day skates and fed on worms, bivalves, and small fish. 

Strigilodus tollesonae translates to “Tolleson’s Scraper Tooth” and it is named after Mammoth Cave National park guide Kelli Tolleson for her work in the paleontological study that uncovered the new species. 

The limestone caves that make up the 400-mile long Mammoth Cave System were formed about 325-million-years ago during the Late Paleozoic. Geologists call this time period the Mississippian Period, when shallow seas covered much of North America including where Mammoth Cave is today. 

In 2019, the park began a major paleontological resources inventory to identify the numerous types of fossils associated with the rock layers. Mammoth Cave park staff reported a few fossil shark teeth that were exposed in the cave walls of Ste. Genevieve Limestone in several locations. Shark fossils can be difficult to come by, since shark skeletons are made of cartilage instead of bone. Cartilage is not as tough as bone, so it is generally not well-preserved in the fossil record. 

The team then brought in shark fossil specialist John-Paul Hodnett of the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission to help identify the shark fossils. Hodnett and park rangers discovered and identified multiple different species of primitive sharks from the shark teeth and fine spine specimens in the rocks lining the cave passages.

“I am absolutely amazed at the diversity of sharks we see while exploring the passages that make up Mammoth Cave,” Hodnett said in a statement. “We can hardly move more than a couple of feet as another tooth or spine is spotted in the cave ceiling or wall. We are seeing a range of different species of chondrichthyans [cartilaginous fish] that fill a variety of ecological niches, from large predators to tiny little sharks that lived amongst the crinoid [sea lily] forest on the seafloor that was their habitat.”

[Related: This whale fossil could reveal evidence of a 15-million-year-old megalodon attack.]

In addition to Strigilodus tollesonae, the team have identified more than 40 different species of sharks and their relatives from Mammoth Cave specimens in the past 10 months. There appear to be at least six fossil shark species that are new to science. According to the team, those species will be described and named in an upcoming scientific publication.

The majority of the shark fossils have been discovered in areas of the park that are inaccessible to the public, so photographs, illustrations, and three-dimensional models have been made to display the discovery. The park also plans to celebrate the new shark fossils with multiple presentations and exhibits on Monday October 23. 

The post Prehistoric shark called Kentucky home 337 million years ago appeared first on Popular Science.

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This article was originally featured on High Country News.

On July 1, 2022, a National Park Service biologist named Jeff Arnold was hauling nets through a slough off the Colorado River, several miles downstream from Glen Canyon Dam, when he captured three greenish fish lined with vertical black stripes. He texted photos of his catch to colleagues, who confirmed his fears: The fish were smallmouth bass, voracious predators that have invaded waters around the West. Worse, they were juveniles. Smallmouth weren’t just living below the dam—they’d likely begun to breed. 

It was a grim discovery. Smallmouth bass, whose native range encompasses rivers and lakes in much of the Eastern United States and Great Lakes, have long plagued the Colorado River. State agencies and anglers probably began stocking them in the watershed in the mid-1900s, and they’ve since conquered much of the basin, including Lake Powell, the reservoir that sloshes above Glen Canyon Dam. Downriver from the dam, however, lies the Grand Canyon, whose sandstone depths have historically provided a bass-free haven for native fish—most of all, the humpback chub, a federally threatened species endowed with an odd dorsal bulge. Now, biologists realized, neither the canyon nor its chub were safe.

Scientists have long dreaded this development. As Lake Powell has shrunk over the past two decades, drained by overallocation and chronic drought, its diminishment has created prime conditions for bass to infiltrate the Grand Canyon. But Brian Healy, a postdoctoral researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey and Grand Canyon National Park’s former fish biologist, said that even though he and his colleagues expected the species to eventually become a problem, “we didn’t realize it would be an issue so quickly.”

Preventing a bass takeover won’t be simple, biologically or politically. The Colorado’s users expect it to simultaneously serve as a pipeline for water conveyance, a source of cheap electrons, a recreational playground, and, not least, suitable habitat for native fish. For decades, the river’s human managers have uneasily balanced these often contradictory purposes—and now they must also work to exclude smallmouth bass, an immense challenge that may well compete with the river’s many other functions. “The best way to think about this is that everything in the Colorado River is connected to everything else,” said Jack Schmidt, a watershed scientist and emeritus professor at Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies. “Everything has a ramification.” 

FORTY MILLION PEOPLE rely on the Colorado River’s largesse, from Wyoming ranchers to the residents of sprawling Arizona subdivisions to the lettuce farmers in California’s Imperial Valley. Less visibly, the river is also a lifeline for 14 native species of fish. They are rarely seen by humans—the river they inhabit is as turbid as coffee and they’re rarely fished for sport—yet they require a healthy Colorado as much as any Angeleno or Tucsonan. 

Today, however, four of those fish—the humpback chub, the Colorado pikeminnow, the razorback sucker and the bonytail—are federally listed as threatened or endangered. Lake Powell commandeered the Colorado’s payloads of silt and stymied natural floods, erasing channels and backwaters where chubs and suckers once spawned and reared. And smallmouth bass and other invasive species devastated native fish in tributaries like the Yampa River. (“Smallmouth” is a misnomer: Bass have maws so cavernous they can gulp down prey more than half their own size.) Bass arrived in Lake Powell in 1982, courtesy of a hatchery manager who, on a lark, dumped 500 spare smallmouth into the reservoir. The bass, he crowed decades later, “performed magnificently,” adding, “Anglers have caught millions of smallmouth bass over the past 30 years.”

Through it all, the Grand Canyon remained a bass-less sanctuary—thanks, paradoxically, to Glen Canyon Dam. Although smallmouth teemed in Lake Powell, they stayed in the reservoir’s warm, sunlit upper strata, well above Glen Canyon Dam’s penstocks, the massive tubes that convey water through its hydropower turbines and thence downriver. Bass never reached the Grand Canyon because they never swam deep enough to pass through the dam.

As Lake Powell withered, however, so did the Grand Canyon’s defenses. By the spring of 2022, two decades of climate change-fueled drought had lowered the lake’s surface by more than 150 feet, drawing its tepid, bass-filled top layer ever closer to the penstocks. At the same time, the warmer water flowing through the dam and downstream made the Grand Canyon more hospitable to bass. “The temperature was ideal for them,” said Charles Yackulic, a research statistician at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Last summer, after bass swam through Glen Canyon Dam’s penstocks, slipped past its whirling turbines, and apparently reproduced, managers hastened to control the incipient invasion, netting off the slough where Arnold discovered the juveniles as though it were a crime scene. The Park Service also doused the backwater with a fish-killing poison. When biologists electroshocked the river that fall and the following spring, though, they found hundreds more juveniles. The slough wasn’t an isolated beachhead; it was merely a battleground in a broader invasion.

If there is a saving grace, it is that the bass remain concentrated above the cold, clear stretch of river known as Lees Ferry. Humpback chub, by contrast, have their stronghold deep in the Grand Canyon, some 75 miles downriver from the dam, where bass haven’t shown up—at least not yet. “The worry is that you got them in Lees Ferry and they’re reproducing,” Yackulic said. “And then suddenly, you’ve just got all these babies dispersing downstream.”

THE COLORADO RIVER is at once in a state of crisis and rebirth. The decline of Lake Powell has revealed Glen Canyon, the gorgeous red-rock labyrinth that the reservoir drowned in the 1960s. Ironically, the forces behind this restoration are also imperiling native fish. “Last year was the closest we’ve had to a natural thermal regime in more than 50 years,” Yackulic noted. But for the humpback chub, it was a catastrophe.

River managers thus face a conundrum: How do you preserve native species in a broken ecosystem? In February 2023, the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that controls Glen Canyon Dam, released a draft environmental assessment evaluating four options for manipulating river flows to deter smallmouth bass. The plans are variations on a theme: When the Colorado gets dangerously warm, the agency  releases cold water to lower its temperature below the threshold where bass spawn. Two options—favored by conservation groups like the Center for Biological Diversity—include high-intensity “flow spikes” designed to freeze bass out of sloughs and backwaters. “We need flows that are cold enough for long enough that it prevents smallmouth bass from spawning,” said Taylor McKinnon, the center’s Southwest director. “Not disrupt reproduction—prevent reproduction.”

Managing the Colorado River to thwart bass, however, could conflict with Reclamation’s other goals. For one thing, all four options would release water through Glen Canyon Dam’s “bypass tubes,” outlets closer to Lake Powell’s frigid bottom. But the bypass tubes, as their name suggests, don’t pump water through the dam’s hydroelectric turbines — which, as the agency acknowledges, could lead to “a reduction in the revenue generated from power proceeds.” That possibility doesn’t thrill the Colorado River Energy Distributors Association, which represents electric utilities and co-ops and has warned of “measurable financial impacts” to ratepayers.

Some environmentalists may find themselves at odds with bass deterrence, too. For years, the Glen Canyon Institute has called on river managers to “Fill Mead First,” letting Lake Powell shrivel while sending Colorado’s water downstream to Lake Mead, the river’s other massive reservoir. As scientists pointed out in a 2020 paper, however, this strategy could “lead to warmer water temperatures throughout Grand Canyon” and render invasive fish control “especially problematic.” Indeed, if your sole goal were to protect humpback chub in the immediate term, Lake Powell—whose deep, chilly waters staved off bass for 40 years—might be the first reservoir you’d fill. “The decisions of where you store water in the system are going to determine the fate of native fish,” said Utah State’s Schmidt.

Although last winter’s strong snowpack should ultimately raise Lake Powell’s surface by around 70 feet, the invasion continues. Scientists have so far pulled 667 bass from the slough this year, along with thousands of carp and sunfish, two other warm-water nonnatives. The Park Service poisoned the slough again in late August, but that fix is clearly neither complete nor lasting. In February 2023, a group of researchers convened to study the bass problem by the Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Geological Survey recommended outfitting Glen Canyon Dam with “fish exclusionary devices”—basically fancy nets—to keep bass from swimming through the penstocks. That’s hardly a new idea—biologists first recommended that the Bureau “pursue means” of preventing invasive fish from passing through the dam in 2016 —but, at an August meeting of federal managers and researchers, one Reclamation official claimed that an effective screen design is still at least five years away.

Ultimately, staving off the bass crisis may call for even more ambitious fixes. In one paper, Schmidt and his colleagues raised the idea of drilling colossal diversion tunnels that would funnel water and sediment around Glen Canyon Dam and thus restore the silty, flood-prone conditions that favor native fish. Re-engineering the Colorado would be neither simple nor cheap, but, in recent comments to the Bureau, McKinnon and other conservationists claimed that the “climate-inevitable obsolescence” of Glen Canyon Dam calls for drastic measures. If bass take over an ever-warmer river, McKinnon said, “it’s game over.”

Ben Goldfarb is a High Country News correspondent and the author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. His next book, on the science of road ecology, will be published by W.W. Norton in 2023.

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Honeybees are a model of teamwork in nature, with their complex society and hives that generate enough energy to create an electrical charge. They also appear to be some of the rare animals that display a unique trait of altruism, which is genetically inherited. The findings were described in a study published September 25 in the journal Molecular Ecology.

[Related: Bee brains could teach robots to make split-second decisions.]

Giving it all for the queen bee

According to the American Psychological Association, humans display altruism through behaviors that benefit another individual at a cost to oneself. Some psychologists consider it a uniquely human trait and studying it in animals requires a different framework for understanding. Animals experience a different level of cognition, so what drives humans to be altruistic might be different than what influences animals like honeybees to act in ways that appear to be altruistic.

In this new study, the researchers first looked at the genetics behind retinue behavior in worker honeybees. Retinue behavior is the actions of worker bees taking care of the queen, like feeding or grooming her. It’s believed to be triggered by specific pheromones and worker bees are always female. 

After the worker bees are exposed to the queen’s mandibular pheromone (QMP), they deactivate their own ovaries. They then help spread the QMP around to the other worker bees and they only take care of the eggs that the queen bee produces. Entomologists consider this behavior ‘altruistic’ because it benefits the queen’s ability to produce offspring, while the worker bees remain sterile. 

The queen is also typically the mother of all or mostly all of the honeybees in the hive. The genes that make worker bees more receptive to the queen’s pheromone and retinue behavior can be passed down from either female or male parent. However, the genes only result in altruistic behavior when they are passed down from the female bee parent.

“People often think about different phenotypes being the result of differences in gene sequences or the environment. But what this study shows is it’s not just differences in the gene itself—it’s which parent the gene is inherited from,” study co-author and Penn State University doctoral candidate Sean Bresnahan said in a statement. “By the very nature of the insect getting the gene from its mom, regardless of what the gene sequence is, it’s possibly going to behave differently than the copy of the gene from the dad.”

A battle of genetics 

The study supports a theory called the Kinship Theory of Intragenomic Conflict. It suggests that a mothers’ and fathers’ genes are in a conflict over what behaviors to support and not support. Previous studies have shown that genes from males can support selfish behavior in mammals, plants, and honeybees. This new study is the first known research that shows females can pass altruistic behavior onto their offspring in their genes. 

[Really: What busy bees’ brains can teach us about human evolution.]

Worker bees generally have the same mother but different fathers, since the queen mates with multiple male bees. This means that the worker bees share more of their mother’s genes with each other. 

“This is why the Kinship Theory of Intragenomic Conflict predicts that genes inherited from the mother will support altruistic behavior in honeybees,” Breshnahan said. “A worker bee benefits more from helping, rather than competing with, her mother and sisters—who carry more copies of the worker’s genes than she could ever reproduce on her own. In contrast, in species where the female mates only once, it is instead the father’s genes that are predicted to support altruistic behavior.”

Pinpointing conflict networks

To look closer, the team crossbred six different lineages of honeybees. Bresnahan says that this is relatively easy to do in mammals or plants, but more difficult in insects. They used honeybee breeding expertise from co-author Juliana Rangel from Texas A&M University and Robyn Underwood at Penn State Extension to create these populations.

Once the bee populations were successfully crossed and the offspring were old enough, the team assessed the worker bees’ responsiveness to the pheromone that triggers the retinue behavior. 

“So, we could develop personalized genomes for the parents, and then map back the workers’ gene expression to each parent and find out which parent’s copy of that gene is being expressed,” Bresnahan said.

The team identified the gene regulatory networks that have this intragenomic conflict, finding that more genes that have a parental bias were expressed. These networks consisted of genes that previous research showed were related to the retinue behavior.

“Observing intragenomic conflict is very difficult, and so there are very few studies examining the role it plays in creating variation in behavior and other traits,” study co-author and Penn State entomologist Christina Grozinger said in a statement. “The fact that this is the third behavior where we have found evidence that intragenomic conflict contributes to variation in honeybees suggests that intragenomic conflict might shape many types of traits in bees and other species.”

The team hopes that this research will help provide a blueprint for more studies into intragenomic conflict in other animals and plants.

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The endangered Texas ocelot is in serious trouble due to a combination of over-hunting, habitat loss, inbreeding, and getting hit by cars. Only two populations of these bobcat sized spotted and striped carnivores remain in Texas and they’re isolated from a larger population living in northwestern Mexico by highways and buildings. 

[Related: Watch bobcats, bears, and even birds use fallen logs as bridges.]

One conservation measure to help endangered ocelots and other animals near busy roads are special wildlife exits. A study published October 13 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution found that 10 mammal species use these special structures, which could help prevent more collisions with traffic.

Chain-link fencing along Texas highways has been used to reduce wildlife mortality from colliding with cars and trucks. However, this fencing can trap animals that get on the highway if they jump over or burrow under the fencing. In 2018, the Texas Department of Transportation built 10 exits for the endangered ocelots in an effort to keep the animals from getting trapped. The openings in the fencing are about 18 inches across and 23 inches wide and are funnel shaped to encourage the ocelots to move away from the highway and into the surrounding habitat. 

This new study tested if these wildlife exits are used by medium-sized carnivores in Texas. Two automatic cameras were installed at each of the 10 wildlife exits along a 7.3-mile stretch of State Highway 100 between Los Fresnos and Laguna Vista. The cameras were inspected every month between February 2019 and November 2020 and a team of scientists downloaded the images and sorted them into species. 

They found that the wildlife exits were used by 10 mammal species to get off the highway. The species ranged from the smaller black-tailed jackrabbits and Virginia opossums up to bobcats and coyotes. For the coyotes and bobcats, their activity peaked around 10 PM and then again between midnight and dawn.

“Here we show that a range of species, including middle-sized carnivores such as bobcats and coyotes, successfully use wildlife exits, a new type of mitigation structure specifically designed for the US endangered ocelot,” study co-author and former University of Texas Rio Grande Valley graduate student said in a statement. 

While the ocelots themselves were not photographed using the exits due to their small numbers, other automatic cameras near the highway saw them. About 43 percent of bobcats, a surrogate species for the ocelot, used the exits. According to the team, observing bobcats and coyotes using the exits implies that the endangered ocelots are likely to do so as well. 

[Related: Grizzlies are getting killed by roads, but the risks are bigger than roadkill.]

“We anticipated that the extreme rarity of ocelots would limit the amount of data collected on that species,” study co-author and conservation biologist  at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Kevin Ryer said in a statement. “For this reason, we also focused on more common bobcats and coyotes, as they have similar habitats, diets, body sizes, and behaviors as ocelots, with overlapping home ranges between them.”

The largest local species including white-tailed deer, nilgai, and javelina, could not use the narrow wildlife exits. Tunnels and crossing girds are the best methods for helping these bigger animals avoid traffic collisions. 

While the exits appear to function as designed, additional research could create improvements that prevent wildlife from going in the wrong direction. These wildlife exits also have the potential to be a valuable conservation measure on Texas highways.

“Wildlife collision mitigation is less expensive to implement during the construction phase of highways than retrofitting mitigation after construction,” study co-author and University of Texas Rio Grande Valley biologist Richard Kline said in a statement. “Although the entire wildlife community near the highway should be considered when planning mitigation, endangered species should be the focus.”

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In the late 19th century, whalers, settlers, and pirates changed the ecology of the Galapagos Islands by poaching some native species—like Galapagos giant tortoises—and introducing others, like goats and rats. The latter species became pests and severely destabilized the island ecosystems. Goats overgrazed the fruits and plants the tortoises ate while rats preyed on their eggs. Over time, the tortoise population plummeted. On Española, an island in the southeast of the archipelago, the tortoise count fell from over 10,000 to just 14. Along the way, with goats eating all the plants they could, Española—once akin to a savanna—turned barren.

A century later, conservationists set out to restore the Galapagos giant tortoise on Española—and the island ecosystem. They began eradicating the introduced species and capturing Española’s remaining tortoises and breeding them in captivity. With the goats wiped out and the tortoises in cages, the ecosystem transformed once again. This time, the overgrazed terrain became overgrown with densely packed trees and woody bushes. Española’s full recovery to its savanna-like state would have to wait for the tortoises’ return.

From the time those 14 tortoises were taken into captivity between 1963 and 1974 until they were finally released in 2020, conservationists with the NGO Galápagos Conservancy and the Galapagos National Park Directorate reintroduced nearly 2,000 captive-bred Galapagos giant tortoises to Española. Since then, the tortoises have continued to breed in the wild, causing the population to blossom to an estimated 3,000. They’ve also seen the ecology of Española transform once more as the tortoises are reducing the extent of woody plants, expanding the grasslands, and spreading the seeds of a key species.

Not only that, but the tortoises’ return has also helped the critically endangered waved albatross—a species that breeds exclusively on Española. During the island’s woody era, Maud Quinzin, a conservation geneticist who has previously worked with Galapagos tortoises, says that people had to repeatedly clear the areas the seabirds use as runways to take off and land. Now, if the landing strips are getting overgrown, they’ll move tortoises into the area to take care of it for them.

The secret to this success is that—much like beavers, brown bears, and elephants—giant tortoises are ecological architects. As they browse, poop, and plod about, they alter the landscape. They trample young trees and bushes before they can grow big enough to block the albatrosses’ way. The giant tortoises likewise have a potent impact on the giant species of prickly pear cactuses that call Española home—one of the tortoises’ favorite foods and an essential resource for the island’s other inhabitants.

When the tortoises graze the cactus’s fallen leaves, they prevent the paddle-shaped pads from taking root and competing with their parents. And, after they eat the cactus’s fruit, they drop the seeds across the island in balls of dung that offer a protective shell of fertilizer.

The extent of these and other ecological effects of the tortoise are documented in a new study by James Gibbs, a conservation scientist and the president of the Galápagos Conservancy, and Washington Tapia Aguilera, the director of the giant tortoise restoration program at the Galápagos Conservancy.

To study these impacts up close, they fenced off some of the island’s cactuses, which gave them a way to assess how the landscapes evolve when they’re either exposed to or free from the tortoises’ influences. They also studied satellite imagery of the island captured between 2006 and 2020 and found that while parts of the island are still seeing an increase in the density of bushes and trees, places where the tortoises have rebounded are more open and savanna-like.

As few as one or two tortoises per hectare, the scientists write, is enough to trigger a shift in the landscape.

Dennis Hansen, a conservation ecologist who has worked with the tortoises native to the Aldabra atoll in the Indian Ocean, says that while the findings line up with what conservationists expected, it was nice to have their suspicions confirmed. The results bode well for other rewilding projects that include giant tortoise restoration as a keystone of their efforts, he says, such as those underway on other islands in the Galapagos archipelago and on the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean.

But on Española itself, though the tortoises have been busy stomping shoots and spreading seeds, they have more work to do. In 2020, 78 percent of Española was still dominated by woody vegetation. Gibbs says it may take another couple of centuries for Española’s giant tortoises to reestablish something like the ratio of grasses, trees, and bushes that existed before Europeans landed in the archipelago. But that long transformation is at least underway.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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To avoid the amphibian pile-up that often comes with mating, some female frogs take drastic measures. According to research published October 11 in the journal Royal Society Open Science, female European common frogs will lay completely still and play dead to fend off potential mates. 

[Related: Check out some of the weirdest warty frogs in North America.]

In the study, a team from the Natural History Museum of Berlin in Germany placed a male frog in a box with one large female and one small female and recorded the mating behavior. They observed 54 instances of female frogs being clutched by the males and 83 percent of females tried rotating their body when gripped. About 48 percent of clasped females emitted “release calls” like squeaks and grunts and all of these vocal frogs rotated their bodies. 

Thirty-three percent of the frogs clasped by male expressed tonic immobility. This is when a frog stiffens its outstretched arms and legs to appear dead. The immobility tended to occur alongside both rotating and calling. Smaller females more frequently used all three tactics together than the bigger frogs. 

Interestingly, this unusual behavior had actually been seen centuries before. “I found a book written in 1758 by Rösel von Rosenhoff describing this behavior, which was never mentioned again,” study co-author Carolin Dittrich told The Guardian. “It was previously thought that females were unable to choose or defend themselves against this male coercion. Females in these dense breeding aggregations are not passive as previously thought.”

The team acknowledges that this behavior could also be a way to test a male’s strength and endurance, as those traits could boost their survival chances. They also point out that a larger sample size is needed to see if smaller females are more successful at escaping. 

This playing tactic is also used by other animals as a way to avoid being eaten.

The phrase “playing possum”  refers to a tactic deployed by the North American opossum found in the United States and Canada. When this marsupial is threatened by a predator, it will throw itself onto its back, bare its teeth, drool, and excrete a very bad smelling liquid out of its anal glands to get out of danger. 

North American wood ducks and colorful mallard ducks can immediately collapse when confronted with predators. In a 1975 experiment, 29 out of 50 different wild ducks played dead when they were exposed to captive red foxes. The ducks would also stay still long enough to be brought back to the fox’s den and wait until later to escape. The veteran foxes quickly learned that they needed to quickly deal a fatal injury to ducks that appeared dead.

[Related: Why some tiny frogs have tarantulas as bodyguards.]

Despite being apex predators, multiple species of sharks and rays also exhibit tonic immobility. Lemon sharks will turn onto their back and exhibit labored breathing and an occasional tremor when facing danger. Zebra sharks will also do this and will even stay immobile when being transported. 

Male nuptial gift-giving spiders will display a different death feigning behavior called thanatosis. It’s part of a courtship ritual that begins before mating with potentially cannibalistic female spiders. In a 2006 experiment, the males would “drop dead” when a female approached with interest. When entering thanatosis, the males would collapse and remain completely still, while retaining a gift of prey the male has already caught and wrapped in silk The male only cautiously begins to move when the female ate the gifts and initiated copulation.

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Bear enthusiasts of the world have spoken—128 Grazer was just crowned the winner of Fat Bear Week 2023. This is Grazer’s first time wearing the crown, and she beat out runner up 32 Chunk in the fierce Fat Bear Tuesday final by over 85,000 votes.

[Related: It’s Fat Bear season again! This is the best feed to keep up with these hairy giants.]

According to the National Park Service, Grazer is a large adult female, boasting a long straight muzzle, light brown summer fur, and blond ears. During late summer and fall, she is often one of the fattest bears to feed on the plentiful salmon in the Brooks River in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve.

She is also a particularly defensive mother bear who has raised two litters of cubs. Grazer is known for preemptively confronting and attacking much larger bears—even the large and dominant adult males—to keep her cubs safe. One of Katmai’s adult males named 151 Walker even avoids her, even though she did not have any cubs to protect this season. 

Grazer is the third female bear, or sow, to win the tournament. In 2019, 435 Holly was dubbed fattest bear and 409 Beadnose wore the prestigious crown in 2018. Beadnose is believed to have died in the five years since. 

“The girls did really well this year,” media ranger at Katmai National Park and Preserve Naomi Boak told The Washington Post. “It was the year of the sow.”

Like any competition, this year’s voting was packed with twists and turns. Four-time Fat Bear Week Champion 480 Otis was ousted on Friday October 6. Otis is the oldest and among the park’s most famous bears. This year, he arrived at Brooks River very skinny, but transformed into a thick bear. Otis was beaten by bear 901, a new mom and the 2022 runner up. 

On Saturday October 7, the 2022 winner bear 747 was defeated by Grazer, who went on to beat 901, Holly, and Chunk in the Final Four. 

[Related: How scientists try to weigh some of the fattest bears on Earth.]

First launched by the National Park Service in 2014 as Fat Bear Tuesday, Fat Bear Week is an annual tournament-style bracket competition where the public votes for their favorite chubby bear. Its goal is to celebrate the Brooks River brown bears at Katmai in southern Alaska and its remarkable ecosystem. It was expanded Fat Bear Week in 2015, following the first year’s success. In 2022, over one million votes were cast all around the world. 

At Katmai, bears are drawn to the large number of salmon readily available from late June through September. Salmon have long since been the lifeblood of the area, supporting Katmai’s people, bears and other animals. Fat bears exemplify the richness of this area, a wild region that is home to more brown bears than people along with the largest, healthiest runs of sockeye salmon left on the planet. The daily lives of the Brooks River bears can be followed via eight live-streaming cameras on explore.org from June through October. 

The winners, and all the bears, now get six months of restful solitude as winter approaches. 

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A new marine snail that would make the late great Jimmy Buffet proud has been discovered in the Florida Keys. The lemon-colored snail is named Cayo margarita after the Spanish word for “small, low island” and the tropical drink Buffet sings about in one of his biggest hits. The new and real resident of the fictional Margaritaville is described in a study published October 9 in the journal PeerJ.

[Related: This cone snail’s deadly venom could hold the key to better pain meds.]

Marine smells are distantly related to the land-dwelling gastropods in gardens around the world. The margarita snails come from a group nicknamed worm snails, since they spend many of their lives living in one place. Worm snails also do not have a protective covering found in other snails called an operculum. This body part allows the snails to retreat further inside their shell and keep their bodies moist.

“Worm snails are just so different from pretty much any other regular snail,” study co-author Rüdiger Bieler tells PopSci. “These guys are sitting in the middle of the coral reef where everybody is out trying to eat them. And they’ve given up that protection and just advertise with their bright colors.”

Bieler is a marine biologist and curator of invertebrates at the Field Museum in Chicago who has spent 40 years studying the Western Atlantic’s invertebrates. Even after decades studying the region, these worm snails were hiding in plain sight during dive trips, largely because these snails are kind of the ultimate introverts.

Once juvenile worm snails find a spot to hunker down and they cement their shell to a hard surface never really move again. “Their shell continues to grow as an irregular tube around the snail’s body, and the animal hunts by laying out a mucus web to trap plankton and bits of detritus,” Bieler explains. 

Bieler and the rest of the international team of researchers came across the lemon-yellow snails in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and a similar lime-colored snail in Belize. Within the same species of snails, it is possible to get many different colors. There can also be color variations in a single population or even cluster of snails. Bieler believes that they may do this to confuse some of the coral reef fish that can see color so that they do not have a clear target. Some may use their hue as a warning color.  

The team initially believed that the lime-green and lemon-yellow snails were different species, but DNA sequencing revealed just how unique they are. This new yellow species belongs to the same family of marine snails as the invasive snail nicknamed the “Spider-Man” snail. This same team found these snails in 2017 on the Vandenberg shipwreck off the Florida Keys.

[Related: Invasive snails are chomping through Florida, and no one can stop them.]

The snails in this new Cayo genus also share a key trait in common with another worm snail genus called Thylacodes. The species Thylacodes bermudensis is found near Bermuda, and while only distantly related to their Floridaian and Belizean cousins, they have small colored heads and mucus that pop out of tubular shells. This might work as a deterrent to keep corals, anemones, and other reef fish from getting too close. The mucus has some nasty metabolites in it which might explain why these snails risk exposing their heads. 

The study and the new snails described in it help illuminate the stunning biodiversity of the world’s coral reefs, which are under serious threat due to climate change and the record warm ocean temperatures this summer. 

“These little snails are kind of beacons for biodiversity that need to be protected because many of them are dying out before we even get a chance to study them,” says Biler. 

It is also an important lesson in always looking right under your nose for discovery.

“I’ve been doing this for decades. We still find new species and previously unknown morphologies right under our feet,” says Biler. “This [discovery] was at snorkeling depth and in one of the most heavily touristed areas in the United States. When you look closely, there are still new things.”

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The internet has recently fallen in love with South America’s charismatic rodents called Capybaras. From catchy songs to memes, it’s hard not to see the chunky charmers in your feed these days. Here are some fun facts about these captivating creatures to inform your scrolling.

[Related: Capybara spent a month on the lam after escape from Toronto Zoo.]

Where can I see a capybara in the wild?

Capybaras are the largest rodent in the world can be found east of the Andes Mountains and the riverbanks in Central and South America from Panama to Argentina. Since they are semi-aquatic like beavers and hippos, capybaras typically live beside ponds, swamps, marshes, or wherever standing water is available. They are also called “water hogs” or “capys” and can even stay under water for more than five minutes to escape from predators like anacondas and jaguars. 

They have been known to encroach further into human territory as their habitat is dwindling. Since 2020, hundreds of capybaras have taken over Nordelta, a private and gated neighborhood outside of Buenos Aires. The rodents had always been around, but remained hidden. The lockdowns triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic enabled the furry capys to spread and flourish in the posh neighborhood’s parks. 

Multiple zoos in the United States, including the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden (also home to some famous hippos), Southwick’s Zoo in Massachusetts, and the Cape May County Park and Zoo in New Jersey, are home to a handful of adorable specimens as well. 

Do capybaras really eat their own poop?

Yes, among other things. They eat their poop for beneficial bacteria that helps their stomach break down the thick fiber from their other food sources such as reeds and grains, according to the San Diego Zoo. 

Like other rodents, capybaras have ever-growing front teeth. They use their sharp and long chompers to graze on grass and water plants. When fresh grasses and water plants dry up during the dry season, they eat squashes, melons, reeds, and grains. An adult can eat about six to eight pounds of grasses per day. 

How big are capys?

There are two known species of capybara: Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris and Hydrochoerus isthmius.  Of the two, H.hydrochaeris is the largest living rodent in the world. It can grow up to 4.3 feet long and weigh a whopping 174 pounds. H. isthmius is a bit smaller. It can grow to about 3 feet long and weigh closer to 62 pounds.

[Related: These prehistoric rodents were social butterflies.]

Can I own a capybara as a pet in the United States?

It depends what state you call home. They are currently legal with restrictions in some states including Texas, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia. California and New York have more stringent rules, including that the animals can only be obtained by those with an approved scientific or educational reason. While ownership may be legal at the state, it may be illegal at the city level. 

Yahoo Finance estimates that the initial cost to buy a capy on the exotic animal market is about $1,000 per animal, while other estimates place the cost at $8,000. Vet bills can easily stretch between $600 to $1,000 each year?? and owners need to keep in mind the six to eight pounds of food that they can eat per day. Capybaras are also social animals, so owners need to be prepared to take in more than one for their pet to thrive. 

What are capys all over my feed?

Basically, capybaras are kind of the new Baby Shark. The song Capybara from Russian artist Сто-Личный Она-Нас went viral on TikTok earlier this year. Listen at your own risk, as it is a textbook earworm that will be stuck in your head for days.

Popular videos include a capybara sparring with a platypus and jumping into above ground pools. They are also the stars of pop culture memes, including one celebrating the billion dollar hit movie Barbie. 

They are also known for being some of the friendliest critters in the animal kingdom. They are very social and live together in herds of 10 to 20 animals. They spend time together cuddling, playing, socializing, and grooming one another. They have even been known to try to use alligators to hitch a ride. 

It also doesn’t hurt that they are really cute. In an era of doom scrolling, sometimes it’s just nice to look at their hippo-like eyes and ears as they look above the water. 

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On October 5, operators of Japan’s derelict Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant resumed pumping out wastewater held in the facility for the past 12 years. Over the following two-and-a-half weeks, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) plans to release around 7,800 tons of treated water into the Pacific Ocean.

This is TEPCO’s second round of discharging nuclear plant wastewater, following an initial release in September. Plans call for the process, which was approved by and is being overseen by the Japanese government, to go on intermittently for some 30 years. But the approach has been controversial: Polls suggest that around 40 percent of the Japanese public opposes it, and it has sparked backlash from ecological activists, local fishermen, South Korean citizens, and the Chinese government, who fear that radiation will harm Pacific ecosystems and contaminate seafood.

Globally, some scientists argue there is no cause for concern. “The doses [or radiation] really are incredibly low,” says Jim Smith, an environmental scientist at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. “It’s less than a dental X-ray, even if you’re consuming seafood from that area.”

Smith vouches for the water release’s safety in an opinion article published on October 5 in the journal Science. The International Atomic Energy Agency has endorsed TEPCO’s process and also vouched for its safety. But experts in other fields have strong reservations about continuing with the pumping.

“There are hundreds of clear examples showing that, where radioactivity levels are high, there are deleterious consequences,” says Timothy Mousseau, a biologist at the University of South Carolina.

[Related: Nuclear war inspired peacetime ‘gamma gardens’ for growing mutant plants]

After a tsunami struck the Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011, TEPCO started frantically shunting water into the six reactors to stop them from overheating and causing an even greater catastrophe. They stored the resulting 1.25 million tons of radioactive wastewater in tanks on-site. TEPCO and the Japanese government say that if Fukushima Daiichi is ever to be decommissioned, that water will have to go elsewhere.

In the past decade, TEPCO says it’s been able to treat the wastewater with a series of chemical reactions and cleanse most of the contaminant radioisotopes, including iodine-131, cesium-134, and cesium-137. But much of the current controversy swirls around one isotope the treatment couldn’t remove: tritium.

Tritium is a hydrogen isotope that has two extra neutrons. A byproduct of nuclear fission, it is radioactive with a half-life of around 12 years. Because tritium shares many properties with hydrogen, its atoms can infiltrate water molecules and create a radioactive liquid that looks and behaves almost identically to what we drink.

This makes separating it from nuclear wastewater challenging—in fact, no existing technology can treat tritium in the sheer volume of water contained at Fukushima. Some of the plan’s opponents argue that authorities should postpone any releases until scientists develop a system that could cleanse tritium from large amounts of water.

But TEPCO argues they’re running out of room to keep the wastewater. As a result, they have chosen to heavily dilute it—100 parts “clean” water for every 1 part of tritium water—and pipe it into the Pacific.

“There is no option for Fukushima or TEPCO but to release the water,” says Awadhesh Jha, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Plymouth in the UK. “This is an area which is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis. They can’t store it—they have to deal with it.”

Smith believes the same properties that allow tritium to hide in water molecules means it doesn’t build up in marine life, citing environmental research by him and his colleagues. For decades, they’ve been studying fish and insects in lakes, pools, and ponds downstream from the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. “We haven’t really found significant impacts of radiation on the ecosystem,” Smith says.

[Related: Ultra-powerful X-rays are helping physicists understand Chernobyl]

What’s more, Japanese officials testing seawater during the initial release did not find recordable levels of tritium, which Smith attributes to the wastewater’s dilution.

But the first release barely scratches the surface of Fukushima’s wastewater, and Jha warns that the scientific evidence regarding tritium’s effect in the sea is mixed. There are still a lot of questions about how potent tritium effects are on different biological systems and different parts of the food chain. Some results do suggest that the isotope can damage fish chromosomes as effectively as higher-energy X-rays or gamma rays, leading to negative health outcomes later in life.

Additionally, experts have found tritium can bind to organic matter in various ecosystems and persist there for decades. “These things have not been addressed adequately,” Jha says.

Smith argues that there’s less tritium in this release than in natural sources, like cosmic rays that strike the upper atmosphere and create tritium rain from above. Furthermore, he says that damage to fish DNA does not necessarily correlate to adverse effects for wildlife or people. “We know that radiation, even at low doses, can damage DNA, but that’s not sufficient to damage how the organism reproduces, how it lives, and how it develops,” he says.

“We don’t know that the effects of the water release will be negligible, because we don’t really know for sure how much radioactive material actually will be released in the future,” Mousseau counters. He adds that independent oversight of the process could quell some of the environmental and health concerns.

Smith and other proponents of TEPCO’s plan point out that it’s actually common practice in the nuclear industry. Power plants use water to naturally cool their reactors, leaving them with tons of tritium-laced waste to dispose. Because tritium is, again, close to impossible to remove from large quantities of H₂0 with current technology, power plants (including ones in China) dump it back into bodies of water at concentrations that exceed those in the Fukushima releases.

“That doesn’t justify that we should keep discharging,” Jha says. “We need to do more work on what it does.”

If tritium levels stay as low as TEPCO and Smith assure they will, then the seafood from the region may very well be safe to eat. But plenty of experts like Mousseau and Jha don’t think there is enough scientific evidence to say that with certainty.

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Eight years ago, I first met with researchers from the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program (STDP) in Tasmania, Australia, to learn about their work to protect the endangered marsupials. Since then, I’ve continued to follow this story, including tracking how the Forestier Peninsula devils—the focus of my original article published in late 2015—fared in their “new life.”

Contagious cancers like devil facial tumor disease (DFTD) are virtually unheard of in vertebrates, yet understanding how they’re transmitted and how they evade immune systems has implications for both conservation and oncology. For that research to take place, there needs to be a healthy population of Tasmanian devils. That’s why in late 2015 and early 2016, the STDP released 49 devils bred in captivity on the isolated Forestier Peninsula, to join the estimated 30 wild devils already living on the adjacent Tasman Peninsula. Establishing a new, managed, disease-free population of devils (with another already existing on Maria Island, located just off the east coast of Tasmania) would buy researchers more time to develop a vaccine.

Their release should have been a moment of hope for the endangered species, but it was marred by a discovery some 50 kilometers west, across the sea, on another Tasmanian peninsula. A local spotted a devil with a large facial tumor: the calling card of DFTD.

Routine tests returned an unsettling result—it was a new cancer.

Called DFT2, the new disease is genetically distinct from DFT1 (the original cancer). Its method of transmission and symptoms are the same, and it poses a severe additional threat to the species.

The discovery of DFT2, however, provides a critical clue to the cancer’s puzzle. Devils, it turns out, aren’t victims of bad luck—they are particularly prone to DFTD. There are three known wild infectious cancers in vertebrates in the world, and Tasmanian devils have two of them.

“It was a big surprise. We thought that transmissible cancers were really rare—like lightning striking—and that devils were just a very unfortunate species,” says Elizabeth Murchison, who researches genetic and transmissible cancers at the University of Cambridge in England. It’s likely that DFT1 and DFT2 weren’t the first cancers to emerge in devils and are unlikely to be the last.

The habit the devils have of biting each other helps spread the disease, and their low genetic diversity creates ideal conditions for the cancers to evade the marsupial’s immune system. Another factor in the devils’ inability to fight the infections could be an issue with their peripheral nervous systems, where both DFT1 and DFT2 seem to originate. What’s likely not to blame, however, is environmental pollutants as suggested in my original article. According to Murchison, the imprint mutations left on devil DNA indicate the two cancers are natural occurrences. “There’s nothing to suggest any external exposure to a chemical or radiation or anything like that,” she says.

Fortunately, the discovery of the second cancer hasn’t slowed vaccine development. Andrew Flies—a senior research fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Menzies Institute for Medical Research—says the cancers have similarities that will make it easier for his team to develop a vaccine for both. In 2024, tests on an experimental DFT1 vaccine will begin, with the development of a vaccine that targets both cancers already underway. To reach devils, officials will distribute bait drops containing the vaccine through Tasmania’s vast wilderness.

Rollout is still several years away, but devils no longer appear to be at imminent risk of extinction. Exact numbers are unknown, but thanks in part to pilot projects to improve genetic diversity through the release of healthy devils, their population is holding strong in many areas—at least for now.

“Disease doesn’t really make a species go extinct. Diseases push the species to the very edge, and then everything else just comes along and takes them out,” says Carolyn Hogg, a researcher at the University of Sydney, who has been working with threatened species in Australia, including Tasmanian devils, for over 25 years.

For devils, “everything else” includes low genetic diversity, loss of habitat, and road fatalities. The nocturnal scavengers can’t resist the lure of rotting roadside carcasses, easy pickings in the roadkill capital of the world. In 2021, motorists killed more than 100 devils on just one 25-kilometer stretch of road in northwest Tasmania.

“If you’ve only got five breeding females in a small population and two get hit by cars on the road, you’ve lost 40 percent of your breeding population in one event,” says Hogg.

That’s exactly what happened to the Forestier Peninsula devils I wrote about in my original article. Drivers killed 16 of the 49 individuals within six weeks of their release. Through subsequent tracking, Hogg and her team discovered that devils raised in captive facilities for generations were more likely to use roadways than wild devils.

“You can’t release them anywhere near any major road systems, because behaviorally they’re used to the sound of vehicles,” says Hogg.

Since then, the STDP has done 11 more releases of healthy Tasmanian devils throughout the state to improve genetic diversity of existing wild populations. What’s changed is that instead of releasing devils bred in captivity, it now relies on the wild offspring of the disease-free population on Maria Island. A national park where there are no cars (save for those used by park rangers), Maria Island has wild devils that aren’t habituated to the sound of traffic and are more likely to survive.

Relying on Maria Island’s wild devils is the best option for building up a population of wild devils until a vaccine is developed. But the introduction of the marsupials to the island—which was devil-free until 2012—still has critics, much as it did back in 2015. In 2021, BirdLife Tasmania reported that over a decade, the introduced devils wiped out the island’s 3,000 breeding pairs of little penguins. Little penguins are found in abundance in the wild: Tasmania has hundreds of offshore islands, with an estimated 110,000 to 190,000 breeding pairs.

“We knew that was going to happen,” says Hogg. A risk assessment, she says, determined that the benefits of having a place to breed wild devils disease-free and improve their genetic diversity was “greater than the loss of the birds.”

The news, however, is not all bad. Researchers believe that introducing the carnivore has allowed Maria’s population of eastern barred bandicoots—listed as an endangered species on the mainland—to thrive, by pushing predatory possums up into trees. Cape Barren geese—which dropped in numbers following the marsupial’s introduction—have also learned to coexist with devils. As for the population of little penguins? The Maria Island population began to decline around the same time as one on a neighboring island, suggesting additional environmental factors were likely at play.

Yet, the conservation of endemic species and how to best manage them—from little penguins to Tasmanian devils—remains both a controversial and emotional topic in Australia. It’s rumored that conservation “vigilantes” are covertly rewilding Australia’s mainland with devils smuggled from Tasmania. But Hogg says any mainland devils are just as likely to develop a new cancer, given how susceptible they are to the disease. And without the protection of natural barriers that isolate populations of devils—like the narrow isthmuses on the Forestier and Tasman Peninsulas or the waters around Maria Island—preventing the cancer from spreading is impossible.

For now—until a vaccine is deployed—Maria Island’s disease-free population will be what stands between the devils and extinction.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Lions are often incorrectly called the “king of the jungle,” and not just because most live in plains and grasslands or because lionesses do most of the hunting. These days, the giant cats are not feared as much as another “super predator”—the animals living in an ecological park in South Africa now fear humans more than lions, according to a study published October 5 in the journal Current Biology. Roughly 95 percent of the mammals living among lions are more afraid of human voices than the big cats or hunting sounds. 

[Related: The rare case of a lioness with a mane.]

The study focused on Greater Kruger National Park in South Africa. It’s a protected area of about 1,328 square miles and is home to one of the world’s largest remaining roaming lion populations. African lions have been considered endangered since 2015, but lions are still among the biggest group-hunting land predators on Earth. However, humans are battling their supremacy, as multiple studies have shown that humans kill prey at higher rates than lions do. This new research compares the fear animals have of humans versus lions to see which species causes more fear.

In the study, a team of biologists observed how 19 mammal species reacted to a series of recordings. The sounds included human voices, lion vocalizations to signal the presence of a top non-human predator, and barking dogs and gunshots associated with hunting. The clips of human voices were played at a more conversational volume, came from radio or TV recordings, and included four of the most commonly used languages in the region (Tsonga, Northern Sotho, English, and Afrikaans). 

“The key thing is that the lion vocalizations are of them snarling and growling, in ‘conversation’ as it were, not roaring at each other,” Western University conservation biologist Michael Clinchy said in a statement. “That way the lion vocalizations are directly comparable to those of the humans speaking conversationally.”

The team used a waterproof camera system that had enough battery life to record day and night over the course of several months and captured 15,000 videos. The observations were also taken during the dry season and the team put the systems at waterholes to get recordings of all the animals coming by to drink. 

“One night, the lion recording made this elephant so angry that it charged and just smashed the whole thing,” study co- author and Western University conservation biologist Liana Y. Zanette said in a statement. 

When the animals heard human sounds, they were twice as likely to run and ditch the waterhole than they were when lions or hunting noises were played. About 95 percent of species, including giraffes, leopards, hyenas, warthog, impala, elephants, and rhinoceroses, ran more often or abandoned waterholes more quickly in response to human sounds than lions.  

“There’s this idea that the animals are going to habituate to humans if they’re not hunted. But we’ve shown that this isn’t the case,” said Clinchy. “The fear of humans is ingrained and pervasive, so this is something that we need to start thinking about seriously for conservation purposes.”

[Related: How a 19-year-old lion fathered 35 cubs in 18 months.]

The team is now looking into whether their sound systems could be used to steer endangered species like the Southern white rhino away from poaching areas in South Africa. Efforts to keep rhinos away from certain areas through the use of human voices have seen success in some early studies.

“I think the pervasiveness of the fear throughout the savannah mammal community is a real testament to the environmental impact that humans have,” says Zanette. “Not just through habitat loss and climate change and species extinction, which is all important stuff. But just having us out there on that landscape is enough of a danger signal that they respond really strongly. They are scared to death of humans, way more than any other predator.”

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Over 1,500 animal species, from bonobos to sea urchins to penguins are known to engage same-sex sexual behavior. Still, scientists don’t understand exactly how it came to be or why it happens. While some say the behavior might have existed since the animal kingdom first arose more than half a billion years ago, it may have actually evolved repeatedly in mammals. A study published October 3 in the journal Nature Communications suggests that the behavior possibly plays an adaptive role in social bonding and reducing conflict, and evolved multiple times.

[Related: A massive study confirms no one ‘gay gene’ controls sexual preference.]

The behavior is particularly prevalent in nonhuman primates. It has been observed in at least 51 species from small lemurs up to bigger apes. For one population of male macaques, same-sex sexual behavior may even be a common feature of reproduction and is related to establishing dominance within groups, handling a shortage of different-sex partners, or even reducing tension following aggressive behavior. 

In this new study, the team from institutions in Spain surveyed the available scientific literature to create a database of records of same-sex sexual behavior in mammals. They traced the behavior’s evolution across mammals and tested for any evolutionary relationships with other behaviors. 

The team found that same-sex sexual behavior is widespread across mammal species, occurs in similar frequency in both males and females, and likely has multiple independent origin points. This analysis found that the behavior helps establish and maintain positive social relationships in animals including chimpanzees, bighorn sheep, lions, and wolves.

“It may contribute to establishing and maintaining positive social relationships,” study co-author José Gómez told The New York Times. “With the current data available, it seems that it has evolved multiple times.” Gómez is an evolutionary biologist at the Experimental Station of Arid Zones in Almería, Spain. 

Importantly, they caution that the study should not be used to explain the evolution of sexual orientation in humans. This research focused on same-sex sexual behavior defined as short-term courtship or mating interactions, instead of a more permanent sexual preference. 

Additionally, male same-sex sexual behavior was likely evolved in species with high rates of male adulticide–-when adult animals kill other adults. The team believes that this suggests the behavior may be an adaptation meant to mitigate the risks of violent conflict between males.

Harvard University primatologist Christine Webb, who did not participate in the study, told The Washington Post that the findings add to other research and widen the scope of what it means for a behavior to be considered adaptive.

[Related: Same-sex mounting in male macaques can help them reproduce more successfully.]

“This general question of evolutionary function—that behavior must aid in survival and reproduction—what this paper is arguing is that reaffirming social bonds, resolving conflicts, managing social tensions, to the extent that same-sex sexual behavior preserves those functions—it’s also adaptive,” Webb said. 

Webb also added that it makes sense that other animals would have sex for a variety of reasons the way that humans do.

The authors caution that these associations could also be driven by other evolutionary factors. Same-sex sexual behavior has also only been carefully studied in a minority of mammal species, so our understanding of the evolution of same-sex sexual behavior may continue to change as more mammalian species are studied.

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Earth’s amphibians are in serious trouble, but there is still time to save this unique class of animals. A study published October 4 in the journal Nature finds that two out of five amphibians are threatened with extinction and they continue to be the most threatened class of vertebrates. However, the new research also found that since 1980, the extinction risk of 63 species has been reduced due to conservation interventions.

[Related: Why you can’t put a price on biodiversity.]

“This proves that conservation works and it’s not all bad news,” Jennifer Luedtke, a study co-author and the manager of IUCN Red List Assessments at conservation organization Re:wild, said during a press conference. “We found that habitat protection alone is not sufficient. We need to mitigate the threats of disease and climate change.”

A check-up for amphibians

The findings are part of Global Amphibian Assessment II, an international series of conservation analyses based on evaluations of the 8,011 amphibian species listed on the IUCN Red List. The first Global Amphibian Assessment was published in 2004 and found that amphibians are Earth’s most threatened class of vertebrates. This second report confirms that the smooth-skinned animals are still more threatened than birds or mammals.

In the study, the team found that 118 species have been driven to extinction between 2004 and 2022. About 40 percent of the species studied are still categorized as threatened. This study also covers about 94 percent of the known amphibian species in 2022. According to Luedtke, about 155 new amphibian species are discovered every year, so there will likely be more species to add to the next Global Amphibian Assessment. 

Climate change and associated habitat loss are the primary driver of these declines. The team estimates that current and projected climate change effects are responsible for 39 percent of status deteriorations since 2004. Habitat loss has affected roughly 37 percent of species in the same period. 

Why amphibians are so vulnerable to climate change

Amphibians’ unique skin puts them in more danger in the face of a changing planet, since they use their skin to breathe. Increased frequency and intensity of storms, floods, droughts, changes in moisture levels and temperature, and sea level rise can all affect their very important breathing sites.

“They don’t have any protection in their skin like feathers, hair, or scales. They have a high tendency to lose water and heat through their skin,” Patricia Burrowes, a study co-author and herpetologist formerly with the University of Puerto Rico, said during a press conference. “The majority of frogs are nocturnal, and if it’s very hot, they will not come out because they will have lost so much water even in their retreat sites that they don’t have the energy to go out to feed. They won’t grow and won’t have energy to reproduce. And that can have demographic impacts.”

[Related: Hellbender salamanders may look scary, but the real fright is extinction.]

Extinctions have continued to increase with 37 documented in 2022. By comparison 23 species were reported extinct by 1980 and 33 in 2004. According to the report, the most recent species to go extinct were the frogs Atelopus chiriquiensis from Costa Rica and western Panama and Taudactylus acutirostris from Australia.

“Amphibians are essential parts of the ecosystem in a variety of ways, one of them being their role in the food web,” Kelsey Neam, study co-author and Re:wild’s Species Priorities and Metrics Coordinator, said during a press conference. “Amphibians are prey for many species and without amphibians, those animals lose a major source of their food and they are preying upon other animals like insects and other invertebrates. Without them to fulfill that niche, we will see a collapse of the food web.”

Amphibian pandemics

The most heavily affected amphibians were salamanders and newts, with three out of five salamander species at risk for extinction. While habitat loss is also the primary threat to salamanders, they are also particularly vulnerable to a disease called chytridiomycosis. It is caused by a fungal pathogen caused by the chytrid fungus that disrupts amphibian’s skin and physiological functions. When infected, amphibians can’t rehydrate properly, which creates an electrolyte imbalance that causes fatal heart attacks.

“Droughts exacerbate the infection intensity,” said Burrowes. “When the frogs have the potential to present some kind of defense mechanism, that defense mechanism is monitored by changes in precipitation and temperature.”

North America is home to the world’s most biodiverse community of salamanders, including a group of lungless salamanders in the Appalachian Mountains. This has conservationists concerned about what would happen if another deadly fungal disease called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, or B.sal, arrives in the Americas from Asia or Europe.

‘We know what to do’

The report highlights that the time to help these critical animals is now. The authors point to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted by 190+ signatory countries at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in December 2022. The signing nations committed to halting all human induced extinctions, reversing and reducing the extinction risk of species tenfold, and to recovering populations to a healthy level.

“We know what to do. It’s time to really commit the resources to actually achieving the change that we say we want,” said Luedtke. “Amphibians will be the better for it and so will we.”

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New quadrupedal robots, based on years of research alongside some amphibian inspiration, could one day crawl and shimmy their way into search-and-rescue operations. As detailed in a new paper recently published in Nature Communications, the robotic trio developed by a team at Colorado State University can swim, walk, and crawl depending on their environments’ obstacles—thanks in large part to lightweight artificial muscles that don’t require heavy onboard power sources.

[Related: Four-legged dog robots could one day explore the moon.]

The new systems, which have been in development since 2017, were designed by a team led by CSU Department of Mechanical Engineering professor Jianguo Zhao, and rely on materials that change rigidity depending on temperature.

“Our embedded morphing scheme uses a lightweight artificial muscle similar to a human muscle, and it contracts when electricity is applied,” Zhao explained in the project’s October 2 announcement. “By embedding these artificial muscles in the spine of the robot or in its skin, we can achieve a variety of shape-types. Altogether, this approach offers a promising path towards developing robots that can navigate and work in difficult environments.”

Aside from the electrical properties, the robots owe their movements in large part to frogs—or, rather, frogs’ multiple life stages. “They start as tadpoles with tails for swimming before developing legs that let them jump, crawl or swim,” Zhao continued. “We take inspiration from those transformations, but achieving animal-like embedded shape morphing in robots remains challenging and is something we hope this work will continue to address.”

Judging from the video montage, it’s easy to see the frog analogy. Depending on its surroundings and terrain, the robots can curve their limbs to “swim,” then adjust them accordingly to scale a rocky hurdle that mimics a shoreline. On dry land, Zhao’s robots can “hop” along by repeatedly rotating their limbs 360 degrees to push forward. A third version of the robot can flatten itself to skitter through small openings, as well as hang onto a ledge to help transition across gaps.

For now, however, the robots require remote control, but future iterations could rely on sensor- and camera-based analysis of their environments for navigation, and even morph as needed to handle their surroundings.

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Parrots are the chatterboxes of the animal kingdom. These famously social birds can learn new sounds throughout their lives and even produce calls that can be individually recognized by other members of their flock. A new study of monk parakeets found that individual birds have a unique tone of voice similar to humans called a “voice print.” The findings are described in a study published October 3 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

[Related: The next frontier in saving the world’s heaviest parrots: genome sequencing.]

“It makes sense for monk parakeets to have an underlying voice print,” Simeon Smeele, a co-author of the study and biologist studying parrot social and vocal complexity at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, said in a statement. “It’s an elegant solution for a bird that dynamically changes its calls but still needs to be known in a very noisy flock.”

In humans, our voice print leaves a unique signature in the tone of our voice across every word we say. These voice prints remain even though humans have a very complex and flexible vocal repertoire. Other social animals also use similar cues to recognize one another. Individual dolphins, bats, and birds have a “signature call” that makes them identifiable to other members of their groups. However, signature calls encode identity in only one call type, and there hasn’t been much evidence that suggests animals have unique signatures that last throughout their entire repertoire of calls. 

Parrots use their tongue and mouth to modulate calls similar to the way humans speak. According to Smeele, “their grunts and shrieks sound much more human than a songbird’s clean whistle.” 

Parrots also live in large groups with fluid membership where multiple birds vocalize at the same time. Members need a way to keep track of which individual is making what sound. The question became if the right physical anatomy coupled with the need to navigate complex social lives, helped parrots evolve a voice print. 

In the study, Smeele and his team traveled to Barcelona, Spain—home to the largest population of individually marked parrots in the wild. The parakeets are considered an invasive species and they swarm Barcelona’s parks in flocks with hundreds of members. The Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona has been marking the parakeets for 20 years and have individually identified 3,000 birds.

The team used microphones to record the calls of hundreds of individuals and collected over 5,000 vocalizations in total. They also re-recorded the same individuals over a period of two years, which revealed the stability of the calls over time.

Using a set of computer models, they detected how recognizable individual birds were within each of the five main call types given by this species (contact, tja, trrup, alarm, and growl). They found high variability in the “contact call” that birds use to broadcast their identity. According to the team, this overturned a long-held assumption that contact calls contain a stable individual signal. The new findings suggested that the parakeets are actually using something else for individual recognition.

[Related: These clever cockatoos carry around toolkits to get to food faster.]

To investigate if voice prints were at play, the team used a machine learning model widely used in human voice recognition. The model detects the identity of the speaker using the quality, or timbre, of their voice. The team trained the model to recognize calls of individual birds that were categorized as “tonal” in sound. They then tested to see if the model could detect the same individual from a separate set of calls that were classified as “growling” in sound. The model was able to identify the individual parrots three times better than expected, providing evidence that monk parakeets do actually have a recognizable, individual voice print. 

While exciting, the authors caution that this evidence is still preliminary. Future experiments and analyses could use the parrot tagging work from the team in Barcelona. The GPS devices could help determine how much individuals overlap in their roaming areas.

“This can provide insight into the species’ remarkable ability to discriminate between calls from different individuals,” study co-author and ecologist from Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona Juan Carlos Senar said in a statement.

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Stories about solar-powered robotic wolves first surfaced back in 2017 after Japanese researchers began testing prototypes to combat wild boars’ devastating encroachment into farmlands. Since then, a company called Wolf Kamuy expanded sales of its sentry products featuring menacing fangs, fur, flashing red LED “eyes,” and a head capable of shaking side-to-side while emitting a 90 decibel howl. But boars aren’t the only problem plaguing rural Japanese communities. According to recent reports, Wolf Kamuy is now offering many of its faux-wolves as bear deterrence.

[Related: How to watch Alaska’s fat bears.]

It turns out the “Super Monster Wolf” isn’t just effective at protecting farmers’ crops—it’s also pretty good at protecting the farmers themselves. As reported October 1 via the BBC, bears are an increasingly difficult, sometimes even deadly nuisance in many areas of Japan thanks to a combination of serious factors, including climate change, deforestation,and urban expansion. What’s more, bear populations in regions such as Hokkaido appear to be actually increasing as Japan faces an aging population and declining birth rates. According to the BBC, some researchers estimate a total of over 22,000 bears located around Hokkaido. Because of all this, the region recorded at least 150 bear attacks over the past six decades—with four fatalities in 2021 alone. Meanwhile, bears continue to wander into more crowded towns and cities bordering wildlife areas.

Enter: the Super Monster Wolf. By installing the guard bots in urban locales, experts hope to deter bears from wandering into populated areas to potentially harm both humans and themselves. Researchers previously estimated that a robo-wolf’s howls effectively deterred bears from encroaching within approximately 1-square-km (about 0.38 square mi) of its installation—arguably better than many electric fence perimeters. With strategic placement, Super Monster Wolves could help elderly communities, and protect the bears.

Of course, humanity cannot solely rely on an army of robot wolves to protect us from bear attacks. Bears (not to mention countless other species) face immense existential threats in the face of ongoing climate change calamities, and it’s not the bears’ fault they are increasingly desperate to find food sources. The best remedy, therefore, is to continue focusing on climate solutions like conservation, renewable energy, and sustainable urban planning, rather than stopgaps like the (admittedly rad) Super Monster Wolf.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Hiking through dense vegetation in Brazil’s Parnaíba Delta, Flávia Miranda stops suddenly and plucks a wheat-colored ball of fur from the tangle of mangrove branches. Startled from its slumber, the tennis ball–sized silky anteater raises its forepaws defensively like a boxer. Miranda, a researcher in conservation medicine at the State University of Santa Cruz in Brazil, carefully takes samples of blood and fur, then releases the elusive animal back into the forest.

Silky anteaters are the smallest anteaters and were the first to evolve, between 30 and 40 million years ago. Largely solitary and nocturnal, these fluffy little canopy dwellers inhabit low-altitude rainforests and mangroves from southern Mexico to northern Bolivia. When they’re not gorging on ants and termites, they spend much of their two-year life span sleeping.

Until recently, scientists believed that all silky anteaters belonged to the same species. But in 2017, Miranda published an analysis of silky anteater DNA from across the Americas, revealing seven distinct species.

“I always had this feeling that there was more than one species,” says Miranda, who has studied Brazil’s sloths, anteaters, and armadillos for 30 years. “I’d noticed differences in the fur color of populations in different regions.”

Now, Miranda is investigating the possibility that the sleepy animal she sampled in the Parnaíba Delta, roughly 280 kilometers east of São Luís, is a member of an eighth species.

The delta’s silky anteaters are isolated, living thousands of kilometers from their nearest known kin in the Amazon Basin, to the northwest, and a swath of tropical rainforest to the southeast, along Brazil’s Atlantic coast. This population, Miranda says, may be a relic left over from 11,000 years ago, when the Amazon rainforest stretched to the Parnaíba Delta.

So far, Miranda’s genetic analysis indicates that the delta population has been diverging from other silky anteater species for roughly two million years. However, the DNA tests need to be corroborated with physical characteristics to confirm that the delta’s anteaters form a new species. That’s why Miranda and her field assistant Alexandre Martins are continuing to collect blood samples and take measurements of animals that they find in the mangroves. “At the very least, we’re certain that this population is evolutionarily distinct and in the process of becoming [a separate species],” she says.

Mariella Superina, who chairs the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s group of anteater experts, describes Miranda’s research as groundbreaking. “Silky anteaters are the most understudied of all the [sloths, anteaters, and armadillos],” she says.

The Parnaíba Delta’s dense mangroves make it almost impossible for Miranda and her colleagues to count how many delta anteaters there might be. But since Miranda first visited in 2009, it has become clear that the delta is not a safe refuge for anteaters. Local people harvest the mangroves for fencing, housing, and boats. Farmers also let their cows and pigs range freely in the delta, where the livestock overgraze and trample young trees.

In 2011, Miranda began recruiting the community to reforest the mangroves. Locals started growing propagules, or mangrove seedlings, in a nursery for replanting in the delta and fenced these areas off from livestock. Quickly, the forest began to grow back. Although residents are mostly focused on protecting mangroves, their ongoing efforts are also benefitting the silky anteater and other wildlife.

“Our community’s survival is threatened by climate change, rising sea levels, and storms,” says Paulinho Morro do Meio, a fisherman, tour guide, and one of Miranda’s collaborators. “[The mangroves] are our best defense, and we work hard to restore them.”

For Miranda, though, the delta has sparked a bigger interest in yet-undiscovered silky anteaters, perhaps occupying the dry forests between the Parnaíba Delta and the distant rainforests. “I’ve got a feeling there are more ‘missing link’ populations,” she says.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Despite only eating fish, the Southern Resident orcas of the Pacific Northwest’s Salish Sea are known for a perplexing behavior. They harass and even kill porpoises without eating them and scientists are not really sure why. A study published September 28 in the journal Marine Mammal Science looked at over 60 years of data to try and solve this ongoing mystery.

[Related: Raising male offspring comes at a high price for orca mothers.]

While their relatives called transient killer whales eat other organisms including squid, shark, and porpoises, the Southern Resident orcas exclusively eat fish, particularly Chinook salmon. The strange porpoise-harassing behavior was first scientifically documented in 1962. The new study analyzed 78 documented incidents and found three plausible explanations.

Orcas at play

The behavior may be a form of social play for orcas. Like many intelligent species including dogs, elephants, and kangaroos, these whales sometimes engage in playful activities as a way to bond, communicate, or just simply enjoy themselves. Going after porpoises might benefit their group coordination and teamwork.

This theory may be reminiscent of the orcas who became famous for sinking boats in Spain and Portugal. While the Southern Resident killer whales and the whales from the Iberian Peninsula are two different populations with distinct cultures, their affinity for play could be something both populations share, according to the authors of the study. 

Hunting practice

Going after a larger animal like porpoises might help these whales hone their critical salmon-hunting skills. They may view porpoises as moving targets to practice their hunting techniques, even if a meal is not the end result.

Mismothering behavior

The orcas may be attempting to provide care for porpoises that they perceive as either sick or weak. This could be a behavioral manifestation of their natural inclination to help others within their pod. Female orcas have been observed carrying their deceased calves and have been observed carrying porpoises in a similar manner.  

Scientists also call mismothering behavior displaced epimeletic behavior. It could be due to their limited opportunities to care for their young, according to study co-author and science and research director at Wild Orca Deborah Giles. 

“Our research has shown that due to malnutrition, nearly 70 percent of Southern Resident killer whale pregnancies have resulted in miscarriages or calves that died right away after birth,” Giles said in a statement.

An endangered group

Southern Resident killer whales are considered an endangered population. Currently, only 75 individuals exist and their survival is essentially tied to Chinook salmon. A 2022 study found that these orcas have been in a food deficit for over 40 years and another study found that the older and fatter fish are also becoming more scarce in several populations.

“I am frequently asked, why don’t the Southern Residents just eat seals or porpoises instead?” said Giles. “It’s because fish-eating killer whales have a completely different ecology and culture from orcas that eat marine mammals—even though the two populations live in the same waters. So we must conclude that their interactions with porpoises serve a different purpose, but this purpose has only been speculation until now.”

Even with these three theories for the behavior, the team acknowledges that the exact reason behind porpoise harassment may always remain a mystery. What is clear is that porpoises are not a part of the Southern Resident killer whale diet, so eating them is highly unlikely. 

“Killer whales are incredibly complex and intelligent animals. We found that porpoise-harassing behavior has been passed on through generations and across social groupings. It’s an amazing example of killer whale culture,” Sarah Teman, a study co-author and marine mammal biologist with the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s SeaDoc Society, said in a statement. “Still, we don’t expect the Southern Resident killer whales to start eating porpoises. The culture of eating salmon is deeply ingrained in Southern Resident society. These whales need healthy salmon populations to survive.”

However, this research does underscore the importance of salmon conservation in the Salish Sea and the Southern Resident’s entire range. They generally stay near southern Vancouver Island and Washington State, but their range can extend as far as the central California coast and southeastern Alaska.  Maintaining an adequate salmon supply will be vital to their survival and well-being of the Salish Sea ecosystem as a whole.

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Sea turtles have been around for at least 110 million years, yet relatively little is known about their evolution. Two of the most common sea turtles on Earth are olive ridley and Kemp’s ridley turtles that belong to a genus called Lepidochelys that could help fill in some of the gaps of sea turtle biology and evolution. A team of paleontologists not only discovered the oldest known fossil of turtle from the Lepidochelys genus, but also found some traces of ancient turtle DNA. The findings are detailed in a study published September 28 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

[Related: 150 million-year-old turtle ‘pancake’ found in Germany.]

The DNA comes from the remains of a turtle shell first uncovered in 2015 in the Chagres Formation on Panama’s Caribbean coast. It represents the oldest known fossil evidence of Lepidochelys turtles. The turtle lived approximately 6 million years ago, curing the upper Miocene Epoch. At this time, present day Panama’s climate was getting cooler and drier, sea ice was accumulating at Earth’s poles, rainfall was decreasing, sea levels were falling.

“The fossil was not complete, but it had enough features to identify it as a member of the Lepidochelys genus,” study co-author and Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia paleontologist Edwin Cadena tells PopSci. Cadena is also a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

The team detected preserved bone cells called osteocytes. These bone cells are the most abundant cells in vertebrates and they have nucleus-like structures. The team used a solution called DAPI to test the osteocytes for genetic material.

“In some of them [the osteocytes], the nuclei were preserved and reacted to DAPI, a solution that allowed us to recognize remains of DNA. This is the first time we have documented DNA remains in a fossilized turtle millions of years old,” says Cadena.

According to the study, fossils like this one from vertebrates preserved in this part of Panama are important for our understanding of the biodiversity that was present when the Isthmus of Panama first emerged roughly 3 million years ago. This narrow strip of land divided the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean and joined North and South America. It created a land bridge that made it easier for some animals and plants to migrate between the two continents.

[Related: Hungry green sea turtles have eaten in the same seagrass meadows for about 3,000 years.]

This specimen could also have important implications for the emerging field of molecular paleontology. Scientists in this field study ancient and prehistoric biomatter including proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and DNA that can sometimes be extracted from fossils. 

Molecular paleontology aims to determine if scientists can use this type of evidence to determine more about the organisms than their physical shape, which is typically what is preserved in most fossils. Extracting this tiny material from bones was critical in sequencing the Neanderthal genome, which earned Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo the 2022 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.

“Many generations have grown up with the idea of extracting and bringing back to life extinct organisms,” says Cadena. “However, that is not the real purpose of molecular paleontology. Instead, its goal is to trace, document, and understand how complex biomolecules such as DNA and proteins can be preserved in fossils.”

This new turtle specimen could help other molecular paleontologists better understand how soft tissues can be preserved over time. It could also shift the idea that original biomolecules like proteins or DNA have a specific timeline for preservation in fossils and encourage re-examining older specimens for traces of biomolecules. 

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Despite having the critical and even miraculous ingredients to sustain life from microscopic viruses up to big blue whales, planet Earth likely has a future that spells some doom for most, if not all, species of mammals—including humans. A study published September 25 in the journal Nature Geosciences made the bold prediction that in about 250 million years, all of Earth’s major land masses will join together as one. When they do, it could make our planet one extremely hot and almost completely uninhabitable for mammals.

[Related: Mixing volcanic ash with meteorites may have jump-started life on Earth.]

“Widespread temperatures of between 40 to 50 degrees Celsius [104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit], and even greater daily extremes, compounded by high levels of humidity would ultimately seal our fate,” study co-author and University of Bristol paleoclimatologist Alexander Farnsworth said in a statement. “Humans—along with many other species—would expire due to their inability to shed this heat through sweat, cooling their bodies.”

The models in this study predict that CO₂ levels would rise to between 410 parts per million and 816 parts per million in a few million years This is roughly the same as today’s level, which is already pushing the planet into dangerously hot water, or up to twice as high.

“They do explain quite nicely that it’s a combination of both those factors, kind of a double whammy situation,” geophysicist Ross Mitchell of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who was not involved in the study, told Science magazine. “If there’s any disagreement I have with this paper, it’s that they’re more right than they thought they were.”

This prediction aligns well with Earth’s past periods of mass extinction and the volatile history of our planet. Here are some other times that mammalian and human life on Earth was almost completely wiped out.

The Pleistocene Ancestral Bottleneck

About 800,000 to 900,000 years ago, the population of human ancestors drastically dropped. A study published in August estimates that there were only about 1,280 breeding individuals alive during this transition between the early and middle Pleistocene. About 98.7 percent of the ancestral population was lost at the beginning of this ancestral bottleneck that lasted for roughly 117,000 years.

During this time, modern humans spread outside of the African continents and other early human species like Neanderthals began to go extinct. The Australian continent and the Americas also saw humans for the first time and the climate was generally cold. 

Some of the potential reasons behind this population drop are mostly related to extremes in climate. Temperatures changed, severe droughts persisted, and food sources may have dwindled as animals like mammoths, mastodons, and giant sloths went extinct. According to the study, an estimated 65.85 percent of current genetic diversity may have been lost due to this bottleneck.

[Related: We’re one step closer to identifying the first-ever mammals.]

The Great Dying

About 250 million years ago, massive volcanic eruptions triggered catastrophic climate changes that killed 80 to 90 percent of species on Earth. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction, or the “Great Dying,” paved the way for dinosaurs to dominate Earth, but was even worse than the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

According to a study published in May, saber-toothed creature called Inostrancevia filled a gap in southern Pangea’s ecosystem, when it was already devoid of top predators. Eventually, Inostrancevia also went extinct about 252 million years ago, as Earth’s species fought to gain a foothold on a changing planet. 

This example of how the past is prologue also bears a warning for our future, since the team says The Great Dying is the historical event that most closely parallels Earth’s current environmental crisis.

“Both involve global warming related to the release of greenhouse gasses, driven by volcanoes in the Permian and human actions currently,” study co-author museum curator and paleontologist Christian Kammerer told PopSci in May. “[They] represent a very rare case of rapid shifts between icehouse and hothouse Earth. So, the turmoil we observe in late Permian ecosystems, with whole sections of the food web being lost, represents a preview for our world if we don’t change things fast.”

The Ultimate Mammalian Survivor

Despite Earth constantly trying to kill us, life finds a way. Some of our very early ancestors potentially even shared a brief moment with Titanosaurs and the iconic Triceratops. These distant mammalian relatives also survived the Earth’s most famous mass extinction event: the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs on a spring day about 66 million years ago.

[Related: This badger-like mammal may have died while trying to eat a dinosaur.]

A study published in June revealed that a Cretaceous origin for placental mammals, the diverse group that includes humans, dogs, and bats, briefly co-existed with dinosaurs. After an asteroid struck the Earth near Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, the devastation in its wake wiped out all of the non-avian dinosaurs and many mammals, such as a Madagascan rodent-looking animal named Vintana sertichi  that weighed up to 20 pounds Scientists have long debated if placental mammals were present with the dinosaurs before the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction, or if they only evolved after the dinosaurs died out. 

This study used statistical analysis that showed groups that include primates, rabbits and hares (Lagomorpha), and dogs and cats (Carnivora) evolved just before the K-Pg mass extinction and the impact that the modern lines of today’s placental mammals started to take shape after the asteroid hit. As with other mammals, they likely began to diversify once the dinosaurs were out of the picture.

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One of the most enduring mysteries about our earliest ancestors and extinct human relatives is how they ate and procured enough food to sustain themselves millions of years ago. We believe that archery first arrived in Europe about 54,000 years ago and Neanderthals were cooking and eating crab about 90,000 years ago, but scavenging was likely necessary to get a truly hearty meal. A modeling study published September 28 in the journal Scientific Reports found that groups of hominins roughly 1.2 to 0.8 million years ago in southern Europe may have been able to compete with giant hyenas for carcasses of animals abandoned by larger predators like saber-toothed cats.

[Related: An ‘ancestral bottleneck’ took out nearly 99 percent of the human population 800,000 years ago.]

Earlier research has theorized that the number of carcasses abandoned by saber-toothed cats may have been enough to sustain some of southern Europe’s early hominin populations. However, it’s been unclear if competition from giant hyenas (Pachycrocuta brevirostris) would have limited hominin access to this food source. These extinct mongoose relatives were about 240 pounds–roughly the size of a lioness–and went extinct about 500,000 years ago. 

“There is a hot scientific debate about the role of scavenging as a relevant food procurement strategy for early humans,” paleontologist and study co-author Jesús Rodríguez from the National Research Center On Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos, Spain tells PopSci. “Most of the debate is based on the interpretation of the scarce and fragmentary evidence provided by the archaeological record. Without denying that the archaeological evidence should be considered the strongest argument to solve the question, our intention was to provide elements to the debate from a different perspective.”

For this study, Rodríguez and co-author Ana Mateos looked at the Iberian Peninsula in the late-early Pleistocene era. They ran computer simulations to model competition for carrion–the flesh of dead animals–between hominins and giant hyenas in what is now Spain and Portugal. They simulated whether saber-toothed cats and the European jaguar could have left enough carrion behind to support both hyena and hominin populations—and how this may have been affected by the size of scavenging groups of hominins. 

They found that when hominins scavenged in groups of five or more, these groups could have been large enough to chase away giant hyenas. The hominin populations also exceeded giant hyena populations by the end of these simulations. However, when the hominins scavenged in very small groups, they could only survive to the end of the simulation when the predator density was high, which resulted in more carcasses to scavenge.  

[Related: Mysterious skull points to a possible new branch on human family tree.]

According to their simulations, the potential optimum group size for scavenging hominins was just over 10 individuals. This size was large enough to chase away saber-toothed cats and jaguars. However, groups of more than 13 individuals would have likely required more carcasses to sustain their energy expenditure. The authors caution that their simulations couldn’t specify this exact “just right” group size, since the numbers of hominins needed to chase away hyenas, saber-toothed cats, and jaguars were pre-determined and arbitrarily assigned.

“The simulations may not determine the exact value of the optimum, but show that it exists and depends on the number of hominins necessary to chase away the hyenas and of the size of the carcasses,” says Rodríguez.

Scavenged remains may have been an important source of meat and fat for hominins, especially in winter when plant resources were scarce. This team is working on simulating the opportunities hominins had for scavenging in different ecological scenarios in an effort to change a view that scavenging is marginal and that hunting is a more “advanced” and more “human” behavior than scavenging. 

“The word for scavenger in Spanish is ‘carroñero.’ It has a negative connotation, and is frequently used as an insult. We do not share that view,” says Rodríguez. “Scavengers play a very important role in ecosystems, as evidenced by the ecological literature in the last decades. We view scavenging as a product of the behavioral flexibility and cooperative abilities of the early hominins.”

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This article was originally featured on High Country News.

In a sunny meadow just beyond Portland, Oregon’s western sprawl, mounds of white lupine buzzed in the late June heat. From bloom to bloom, bumblebees moved up and around the stalks of fading petals. A yellow-faced bumblebee—Bombus vosnesenskii, or “voz” for short—hugged the edges of one slipper-shaped bloom and bumped pollen dust onto its belly. On a nearby stalk, a giant B. nevadensis did the same. The B-52 bomber of bumbles—its yellow and black body half the size of a human thumb—rose and dropped on the breeze. 

Kevin Schafer swung at the bomber, tenting his insect net over the lupine. On his bucket hat and vest pocket, two enamel bumblebee pins glinted in the sun. In his net, two real bees crawled upward. He looked closely at the hint of a rust-colored patch on one, and said, excited, “I think it’s a brown-belted!” It would be the only Bombus griseocollis he’d caught all morning; they’re not common in this area. He nudged each bee and a lupine bloom into a plastic tube, and dropped them, buzzing, into his pocket. “Let’s ask the maestro.”

For six summers, Schafer—a retired photographer—and hundreds of volunteers like him have wandered through meadows and mountains across the Northwest, documenting wild bumblebees and the plants they’re foraging for the Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas. A quarter of North America’s almost 50 bumblebee species are at risk of extinction due to human-caused habitat loss and climate change, and most of them live in the Northwest. Unlike honeybees, they buzz when they pollinate plants — a pollen-releasing method that some plants require, making it essential for whole ecosystems to function. Beyond that, scientists know very little about them.

“The data that we had prior to this project, it’s basically just a bunch of collectors that have gone out and collected insects, killed them, and put them on pins,” said Rich Hatfield, Schafer’s bee “maestro” and the biologist who started the Atlas program at the nonprofit Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Dead specimens reveal few of the details that matter for conservation: What do they eat? Where do queens spend the winter? Why is this meadow full of voz and nevadensis, and yet the once-ubiquitous Western bumblebee—Bombus occidentalis—hasn’t been seen here in two decades? There aren’t enough scientists to capture the data, Hatfield said. Volunteers like Schafer help fill the gaps.

This year, the Atlas program hit a milestone: Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife used its data to adopt a conservation strategy covering eight at-risk species in the state, including occidentalis, which many expect the federal government will add to the U.S. endangered species list next year. Washington is one of the few states that can prioritize wild bees: Unlike most, the state’s laws allow officials to manage insects as wildlife, not just as pests.

“We collectively saw (those species) as a shared priority and wanted to identify things we could do,” said Taylor Cotten, who manages conservation assessments for the state wildlife department and partnered with the Xerces Society and federal agencies to develop the strategy. The resulting document outlines regions of high priority for conservation—a horseshoe around the Columbia Plateau; the swath of lowlands from Portland to Puget Sound. It also outlines protective measures, like timing mowing and prescribed burns around nesting periods and planting the specific flowers that bees need.

Julie Combs, a state wildlife employee whose job is to prevent pollinator extinction, called the new conservation plan foundational. “I can’t emphasize enough how many questions I get about: OK, now we know where the bees are, we know they’re in decline, but what do we do?”

This year, when state officials sit down to hash out plans for burning and planting vegetation at any of their conservation sites, she’ll come armed with more than 200 pages of best practices to help bees.

“OK, now we know where the bees are, we know they’re in decline, but what do we do?”

At the edge of the meadow, Hatfield unzipped a cooler half full of ice. He and Schafer pulled tubes from every bulging pocket, then pushed each into the ice to daze the bees, waiting until they were still enough to handle. Then, one by one, Hatfield gently prodded and photographed each motionless bee, examining its fur pattern and jaw length to confirm its ID while Schafer scratched tally marks and plant names onto a worksheet.

Voz on spirea, nevadensis on lupine, voz on wild rose: Between the two men, they’d netted 31 bees, including, Hatfield confirmed, Schafer’s single griseocollis. Carefully placed on the table beside petal fragments and other dazed bees, the griseocollis slowly shivered back to life. For Hatfield, this program is about more than just the data. “We’re building a community of people that now see these animals in a totally different way,” he said: As beautiful, important, fragile.

The bee bobbed its rust-belted abdomen up and down, up and down, then stretched its wings, rubbed its pollen-laden legs against its body, and flew away.

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The natural circles that pop up on the soil in the planet’s arid regions are an enduring scientific debate and mystery. These “fairy circles” are circular patterns of bare soil surrounded by plants and vegetation. Until very recently, the unique phenomena have only been described in the vast Namib desert and the Australian outback. While their origins and distribution are hotly debated, a study with satellite imagery published on September 25 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) indicates that fairy circles may be more common than once realized. They are potentially found in 15 countries across three continents and in 263 different sites. 

[Related: A new study explains the origin of mysterious ‘fairy circles’ in the desert.]

These soil shapes occur in arid areas of the Earth, where nutrients and water are generally scarce. Their signature circular pattern and hexagonal shape is believed to be the best way that the plants have found to survive in that landscape. Ecologist Ken Tinsly observed the circles in Namibia in 1971, and the story goes that he borrowed the name fairy circles from a naturally occurring ring of mushrooms that are generally found in Europe.

By 2017, Australian researchers found the debated western desert fairy circles, and proposed that the mechanisms of biological self-organization and pattern formation proposed by mathematician Alan Turing were behind them. In the same year, Aboriginal knowledge linked those fairy circles to a species of termites. This “termite theory” of fairy circle origin continues to be a focus of research—a team from the University of Hamburg in Germany published a study seeming to confirm that termites are behind these circles in July.

In this new study, a team of researchers from Spain used artificial intelligence-based models to look at the fairy circles from Australia and Namibia and directed it to look for similar patterns. The AI scoured the images for months and expanded the areas where these fairy circles could exist. These locations include the circles in Namibia, Western Australia, the western Sahara Desert, the Sahel region that separates the African savanna from the Sahara Desert, the Horn of Africa to the East, the island of Madagascar, southwestern Asia, and Central Australia.

The team then crossed-checked the results of the AI system with a different AI program trained to study the environments and ecology of arid areas to find out what factors govern the appearance of these circular patterns. 

“Our study provides evidence that fairy-circle[s] are far more common than previously thought, which has allowed us, for the first time, to globally understand the factors affecting their distribution,” study co-author and Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology of Seville soil ecologist Manuel Delgado Baquerizo said in a statement. 

[Related: The scientific explanation behind underwater ‘Fairy Circles.’]

According to the team, these circles generally appear in arid regions where the soil is mainly sandy, there is water scarcity, annual rainfall is between 4 to 12 inches, and low nutrient continent in the soil.

“Analyzing their effects on the functioning of ecosystems and discovering the environmental factors that determine their distribution is essential to better understand the causes of the formation of these vegetation patterns and their ecological importance,” study co-author and  University of Alicante data scientist Emilio Guirado said in a statement. 

More research is needed to determine the role of insects like termites in fairy circle formation, but Guirado told El País that “their global importance is low,” and that they may play an important role in local cases like those in Namibia, “but there are other factors that are even more important.”

The images are now included in a global atlas of fairy circles and a database that could help determine if these patterns demonstrate resilience to climate change. 

“We hope that the unpublished data will be useful for those interested in comparing the dynamic behavior of these patterns with others present in arid areas around the world,” said Guirado.

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Scientists in Thailand have discovered a new species of tarantula with a very unique blue hue. The tarantula is named Chilobrachys natanicharum and is also called the electric blue tarantula. The findings were described in a study published September 18 in the journal ZooKeys 

[Related: Before spider mites mate, one of them gets their skin removed.]

The new colorful arachnid was discovered in southern Thailand’s Phang-Nga province. It follows the identification of another new species of tarantula called Taksinus bambus, or the bamboo culm tarantula.

“In 2022, the bamboo culm tarantula was discovered, marking the first known instance of a tarantula species living inside bamboo stalks,” study co-author and Khon Kaen University entomologist Narin Chomphuphuang said in a statement. “Thanks to this discovery, we were inspired to rejoin the team for a fantastic expedition, during which we encountered a captivating new species of electric blue tarantula.”

The team that found the first not-so-blue bamboo culm tarantula included a local wildlife YouTuber named JoCho Sippawat. This year, Chomphuphuang joined up with Sippawat for a surveying expedition in the province to learn more about tarantula diversity and distribution. They identified this new species by this very distinctive coloration during the expedition.

“The first specimen we found was on a tree in the mangrove forest. These tarantulas inhabit hollow trees, and the difficulty of catching an electric-blue tarantula lies in the need to climb a tree and lure it out of a complex of hollows amid humid and slippery conditions,” Narin said. “During our expedition, we walked in the evening and at night during low tide, managing to collect only two of them.”

The color blue is very rare in nature. It can even exist in other animals that aren’t usually this color, including the blue lobsters that have recently been found in Massachusetts and France. Some animals also evolved wild colors including blues, yellows, and reds to appear poisonous to try and keep other animals from eating them.  

In order for an organism to appear blue, it must absorb very small amounts of energy while reflecting high-energy blue light. Since penetrating molecules that are capable of absorbing this energy is a complex process, the color blue is less common than other colors in the natural world. 

According to the study, the secret behind the electric blue tarantula’s wild color comes from the unique structure of their hair and not from a presence of blue pigment. Their hair incorporates nanostructures that manipulate the light shining on it to create the blue appearance. Their hair can also display a more violet hue depending on the light, which creates an iridescent effect. 

[Related: Blue-throated macaws are making a slow, but hopeful, comeback.]

This species was previously found on the commercial tarantula market, but there hadn’t been any documentation describing its natural habitat or unique features. 

“The electric blue tarantula demonstrates remarkable adaptability. These tarantulas can thrive in arboreal as well as terrestrial burrows in evergreen forests,” Narin said. “However, when it comes to mangrove forests, their habitat is restricted to residing inside tree hollows due to the influence of tides.”

To name the new species, the authors conducted an auction campaign and the scientific name of Chilobrachys natanicharum was selected. It is named after executives Natakorn and Nichada Changrew of Nichada Properties Co., Ltd., Thailand and the proceeds of the auction were donated to support the education of Indigenous Lahu children in Thailand and for cancer patients in need of money for treatment.

The authors say that this discovery points to the continued importance of taxonomy as a basic aspect of research and conservation. It also highlights the need to protect mangrove forests from continued deforestation, as the electric blue tarantula is also one of the world’s rarest tarantulas. 

“This raises a critical question: Are we unintentionally contributing to the destruction of their natural habitats, pushing these unique creatures out of their homes?” the researchers ask in their conclusion.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

To see a great white shark breach the waves, its powerful jaws clasping a shock-struck seal, is to see the very pinnacle of predatory prowess. Or so we thought. Several years ago, in South Africa, the world was reminded that even great white sharks have something to fear: killer whales.

Long before they started chomping on yachts, killer whales were making headlines for a rash of attacks on South African great white sharks. The killings were as gruesome as they were impressive. The killer whales were showing a deliberate sense of culinary preference, consuming the sharks’ oily, nutrient-rich livers but leaving the rest of the shark to sink or wash up on a nearby beach.

From the initial news of the attacks, the situation only got weirder. Great white sharks started disappearing from some of their best-known habitat around South Africa’s False Bay and Gansbaai regions, in the country’s southwest.

“The decline of white sharks was so dramatic, so fast, so unheard of that lots of theories began to circulate,” says Michelle Jewell, an ecologist at Michigan State University Museum. In the absence of explanation, pet theories abounded. Some proposed that overfishing of the sharks’ prey to feed Australia’s fish and chips market led to the shark’s declines. Other activists misinterpreted that idea and went on to campaign against what they thought was the recent inclusion of great white shark meat as a surprise ingredient in Australian fish and chips. That idea was, fortunately, thoroughly debunked.

Others thought the disappearance was directly caused by the killer whales. Perhaps they were killing all the sharks?

“Any time you see large population declines in local areas, it’s cause for conservation concern,” says Heather Bowlby, a shark expert with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. “In a place where animals used to be seen very regularly, and suddenly they’re not there anymore, some were concerned that they all died.”

Now, though, scientists finally know what happened. In a recent paper, Bowlby and her colleagues show that the sharks’ disappearance was, actually, caused by the killer whales. But the sharks aren’t dead. They just moved. Across South Africa, the scientists found, the white shark population has taken a pronounced eastward shift.

To Jewell, who wasn’t involved in the research, this makes sense. “We know that predators have a huge influence on the movement and habitat use of their prey, so this isn’t really surprising,” she says. “The issue is that lots of people weren’t used to thinking of great white sharks as prey.”

Alison Kock, a marine biologist with South African National Parks and a coauthor of the study, says they cracked the mystery after reports started flowing in from sites farther east that white sharks were showing up unexpectedly. “As False Bay and Gansbaai had major declines, other places reported huge increases in white shark populations,” she says. “Too rapid to be related to reproduction, since they don’t reproduce that fast.”

“It had to be redistribution,” she says, adding: “The white sharks moved east.” Places like Algoa Bay and the KwaZulu-Natal coastline had seen great white sharks before but not anywhere near this many.

In the white sharks’ absence, South Africa’s west coast is changing. New species like bronze whalers and sevengill sharks have moved into False Bay. For the tour operators who ran shark dives in the area, however, the shift has been difficult. Some have survived by switching to offering kelp forest dives—driven in part by the popularity of the documentary My Octopus Teacher. Many, though, have gone under.

But what of the great white sharks’ new home farther east? No one quite knows how these regions are adapting to a sudden influx of apex predators, but scientists expect some significant ecological changes. They’re also warning of the potential for increased shark bites, since people living in the white shark’s new homes are not as used to shark-human interactions.

We may never know exactly how many white sharks died in killer whale attacks. The prized, presumably tasty, livers targeted by the killer whales help white sharks float, which means many dead white sharks may have sunk uncounted. Overall, though, Kock is glad to see the mystery solved.

“This has been very worrying for me, and it was good to see evidence that they hadn’t all died,” says Kock. “But it’s still unbelievable to me that I can go to [False Bay’s] Seal Island and not see any white sharks. It’s something I never expected, and I miss them a lot.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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More than 4 million miles of roads crisscross the US. So it’s little surprise that roadkill makes up a big chunk of the country’s animal deaths: By 1998 it had surpassed hunting as “the leading direct human cause of vertebrate mortality on land.” Today, wildlife officials in California are concerned that vehicle collisions are killing mountain lions faster than they can reproduce. Moose keep getting struck on roads in Alaska and even Connecticut. But while hit-and-runs with big mammals are gruesome and significant, they’re just one way roads are detrimental to nature. 

Grizzly deaths

In a paper published on September 20 in the journal Wildlife Monographs, scientists used GPS tracking and DNA data from fur samples collected between 1998 and 2005 to monitor the grizzly bear population in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, and study which variables affect their distribution—and their mortality. They found that the grizzly  population density was 2.6 times higher in areas with less than .37 miles of roads per mile of land. The reason? Roads drive bears away from areas that are filled with perfectly good food sources like huckleberry bushes, and increase the risks of deaths just by putting the creatures closer to people. 

[Related: Watch bobcats, bears, and even birds use fallen logs as bridges]

Southeastern British Columbia largely has dirt roads with low speed limits, says Michael Proctor, an independent research ecologist and lead author of the new paper, but you can still “see that bears get killed around forestry roads in the backcountry for a variety of reasons.” For one, the routes give people access to more wilderness—to the detriment of bears. The vast majority of grizzlies that are killed in the wild (both legally and non-legally) are shot within 1,600 feet of an open backcountry road.

Roadkill patterns

When we move from backcountry roads to more paved roads and highways, that’s when we see more vehicles hitting animals. The resulting collision rates are affected by a whole slew of variables. 

In a 2022 study in the journal Current Biology that included more than 1 million deer killed on roads in the US, researchers found that collisions are most likely to happen within an hour or two after it gets dark. “It’s kind of the coincidence of a period of the day when humans are driving a lot, and a time when animals are moving around a lot,” says co-author Calum Cunningham, a wildlife ecologist and postdoctoral research fellow at The University of Tasmania who studies animal-vehicle collisions in various countries. Ungulates like deer and elk are crepuscular, so they tend to be most active around dawn and dusk. “That’s kind of the perfect storm for creating very high periods of collisions,” Cunningham explains.

In their study, Cunningham and his team also noted that collisions were more common in places located on the eastern side of a time zone, where the sun sets earlier. A strategy like implementing pushing the clock back an hour all year, he says, would not only reduce these accidents, but save about $1.2 billion associated with injury costs, vehicle damage, and insurance. (Researchers say wildlife-vehicle collisions cause more than 9,000 injuries and 440 fatalities among Americans each year.) 

[Related: All the ways daylight saving time screws with you]

In another paper, Cunningham and colleagues found that moose collisions in Alaska, the Yukon Territory, British Columbia, and Alberta ramp up during the winter likely due to low visibility, increased moose activity on roads (which are easier to walk on than snow-laden wilderness), and the difficulties of driving and controlling a car in the winter. More recently, researchers from the University of California, Davis calculated that cars kill about 70 mountain lions a year on California highways alone. That estimate is likely an undercount because it didn’t include incidences on city or county roads, and because many hit-and-runs with mountain lions go unreported.

A prevention plan

Fortunately, some interventions can bring down the number of large mammals dying on or near roads. Underpasses and overpasses have successfully slashed roadkill rates around the US, especially when fenced. And while overpasses can be quite expensive to build, Cunningham says, they are one-off costs that pay for themselves by saving collision costs over time. 

Another strategy includes reduced speed limits, even on a seasonal basis, Cunningham explains.  But that only works if drivers adhere to those limits, which often isn’t the case. More public awareness of the benefits of speed limit for wildlife and people could help increase animal survival, Cunningham says. 

Proctor, the grizzly bear researcher, wants to see more drastic change. “The solution is to close a portion of the roads,” especially in the backcountry where valuable food supplies are, he says. “But that’s a very unpopular idea and is challenging to do.” At the least, in places of especially high conservation concern, we need to be thinking about all the ways roads disturb elements of wildlife behavior, he notes. Though roadkill is a sobering sight, sometimes, the damage is far less visible.

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Jellyfish are an undeniable evolutionary success story, surviving at least 500 million years in Earth’s oceans. They are even poised to handle climate change very well in some areas of the world, all without a centralized brain like most animals. Despite this lack of a central brain, trained Caribbean box jellyfish can potentially remember their past experiences the way that flies, mice, and humans do, and learn to spot and dodge previously encountered obstacles in a tank. The findings are reported in a study published on September 22 in the journal Current Biology.

[Related: Jellyfish may have been roaming the seas for at least 500 million years.]

This species of jellyfish is ubiquitous in the waters of the Caribbean Sea and the central Indo-Pacific Ocean, but are generally just about a half inch in diameter. Box jellyfish like these are members of a class of jellyfish that are known for being among the most poisonous animals in the world and their stings can cause paralysis and even death in extreme cases. 

To keep up their stinging and navigate their watery world, jellyfish don’t have a centralized brain like most members of the animal kingdom. They have four parallel brain-like structures with roughly 1,000 nerve cells in each. By comparison, a human brain has approximately 100 billion nerve cells. Caribbean box jellyfish are equipped with a complex visual system of 24 eyes embedded into their bell-shaped body. They use this unique vision to steer through the murky waters of mangrove swamps, looking for prey and diving under underwater tree roots. 

“It was once presumed that jellyfish can only manage the simplest forms of learning, including habituation–i.e., the ability to get used to a certain stimulation, such as a constant sound or constant touch,” study co-author and University of Copenhagen neurobiologist Anders Garm said in a statement. “Now, we see that jellyfish have a much more refined ability to learn, and that they can actually learn from their mistakes. And in doing so, modify their behavior.”

In this study, the team used a round tank outfitted with gray and white stripes to mimic the jellyfish’s natural habitat. The gray stripes were mimicking mangrove roots that would appear to be distant at the start of the experiment. For 7.5 minutes, the team observed the jellyfish in the tank. Initially, the jelly swam close to these seemingly far away stripes and bumped into them frequently. However, by the end of the experiment, the jelly increased its average distance to the wall by roughly 50 percent, quadrupled the number of successful pivots to avoid collision with the fake tree, and cut its contact with the wall by half. 

The findings suggest that jellyfish can learn from experience and could acquire the ability to avoid obstacles through a process called associative learning. In this process, organisms form mental connections between sensory stimulations and behaviors. 

“Learning is the pinnacle [of] performance for nervous systems,” Jan Bielecki, a co-author of the study and a neuroscientist at Kiel University in Germany, said in a statement.

Bielecki added that in order to teach jellyfish a new trick, “it’s best to leverage its natural behaviors, something that makes sense to the animal, so it reaches its full potential.”

[Related: Italian chefs are cooking up a solution to booming jellyfish populations.]

The team then looked into pinpointing the underlying process of jellyfish’s associative learning by isolating the animal’s visual sensory centers called rhopalia. Each rhopalia houses six eyes that control the jellyfish’s pulsing motion. This motion spikes in frequency when the jelly swerves away from an obstacle. 

They showed the stationary rhopalium moving gray bars to mimic how the jelly approaches objects and the rhopalium did not respond to light gray bars, seemingly interpreting the bars as distant. The researchers then trained the rhopalium with some weak electric stimulations that mimicked the mechanical stimuli that occur when colliding with an object. Following the electric stimulation, the rhopalium started to generate obstacle-dodging signals in response to the light gray bars as they got closer. 

The findings from this stage of the experiment showed that combining visual and mechanical stimuli is necessary for associative learning in jellyfish and that the rhopalium is likely serving as the animal’s learning center.

“For fundamental neuroscience, this is pretty big news. It provides a new perspective on what can be done with a simple nervous system,” said Garm. “This suggests that advanced learning may have been one of the most important evolutionary benefits of the nervous system from the very beginning.”

The team plans to do a deeper dive into the cellular interactions of jellyfish nervous systems to tease apart the process of memory formation and also hope to understand how the mechanical sensor in the jellyfish’s body works to paint a more complete picture of its associative learning.

“It’s surprising how fast these animals learn; it’s about the same pace as advanced animals are doing,” says Garm. “Even the simplest nervous system seems to be able to do advanced learning, and this might turn out to be an extremely fundamental cellular mechanism invented at the dawn of the evolution nervous system.”

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The oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, but humans have only visited and mapped 5 percent of them. They remain one of the greatest, deepest mysteries close to home. With the help of scientists and photographers, however, we’re uncovering more wildlife and more about the flows and balances in oceans day by day. While we might never know everything that unfolds beneath the great blue waves, we can always keep our curiosities and appetites alive.

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In an increasingly noisy world, some primates are pushing to be noticed with another sense. A study published September 20 in the journal Ethology Ecology & Evolution found that pied tamarin monkeys use scent markings to communicate more often so they can compensate for noise pollution generated by humans. 

[Related: Noise pollution messes with beluga whales’ travel plans.]

Pied tamarins are 11 to 12 inch long monkeys with furry bodies and bare faces. The species is currently listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN. They live in a very narrow geographic range in central Brazil. Most of their territory now lies within the city of Manaus, a port city of about 2.6 million residents. The expansion of the city has restricted individual groups of monkeys to small patches that are surrounded by noisy urban spaces. 

Communicating with other groups of monkeys is crucial for their survival, so in addition to long vocal calls, pied tamarins use multiple types of scent markings to send messages. The scent markings have different functions, including passing along territorial and reproductive information. Pied tamarins have special glands above their genitals and near their stomachs that emit these scents that leave behind an olfactory message to other monkeys. This practice is also not unique to pied tamarins. Domestic and wild felines can use their famously pungent spray to mark territory, as do dogs and red pandas to name a few other mammals.

In the new study, a team from the Universidade Federal do Amazonas in Brazil and Anglia Ruskin University in England looked at the behavior of nine separate groups of wild pied tamarins. They followed each group for 10 days using radio tracking and the most common source of anthropogenic noise was road traffic. There was also noise pollution from park visitors, aircraft, and military activity.

The team found that the frequency of scent marking directly increased with decibel levels, which suggests that scent marking is being used more frequently as their vocal communication becomes more drowned out by human noise. 

“Many species depend on acoustic signals to communicate with other members of the same species about essential information such as foraging, mate attraction, predators, and territorial defense,” study co-author and Universidade Federal do Amazonas biologist Tainara Sobroza said in a statement. 

Their long vocal calls are generally used to mark territory and for communications between members of the group. In Manaus, they are important since the forest landscape is fragmented and urban areas are encroaching on their territory. The authors believe that this increase in scent marking is directly tied to this increase in urbanization. 

[Related from PopSci+: Why your dog needs to smell the world.]

“Humans have contributed many additional stimuli to the soundscapes that animals have evolved to deal with, and anthropogenic noise is increasingly drowning out natural sounds,” study co-author and Anglia Ruskin University behavioral ecologist Jacob Dunn said in a statement. “The increased use of scent marking by pied tamarins is likely to be a flexible response towards this environmental change. This is an interesting result from a conservation perspective as it shows pied tamarins are adapting their behavior in response to city noise.

One of the advantages scent marking has over vocal communication is that the information can be passed on over several days, instead of just after making a call. On the other hand, vocal calls are a better way of communicating over long distances. 

“As the pied tamarins’ range is becoming more fragmented and groups are becoming more isolated, this could potentially have a detrimental impact on a species which is already critically endangered,” said Dunn.

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After getting bit by a bat bug at a recent conference, Armin Scheben had a literal and figurative itch to study bats. The blood-sucking insect is one of many disease-causing parasites that latch themselves onto the flying mammals—yet, bats rarely get sick in the same way humans do. 

Mammalian immune systems evolve fast as species are always challenged with new pathogens in their environment. “You need to constantly keep pace with new bad guys that are trying to infect and hurt you,” says Scheben, who is a postdoctoral fellow in population genomics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (and has since recovered from the bite). And while he has studied the genetic adaptations of several mammals, they pale in comparison to the ones that have given bats the ability to fight off infections so effectively.

In a new study published today in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, Scheben and his team have identified the genes that have contributed to bats’ rapidly evolving immune system and their unique ability to evade deadly viruses and even cancer. Understanding how bats survive diseases could inspire new immune treatments for humans and potentially help prevent another pandemic. 

[Related: A ‘living’ cancer drug helped two patients stay disease-free for a decade]

The authors analyzed the DNA of 15 different bat species to get a clearer picture of how their genes evolved over time. They fully sequenced the genomes of two bat species, the Jamaican fruit bat and the Mesoamerican mustached bat, and gathered the other species from preexisting datasets. 

They then compared the bat genomes to that of humans, mice, and other cancer-susceptible mammals, focusing their attention on the sequences that encode proteins responsible for causing or preventing diseases. To start, they lined up the homologous genes, or shared genes among different species inherited from a shared evolutionary ancestor. (It’s like comparing apples with apples, explains Scheben.) With each homologous gene, they hypothesized two scenarios: if bats lost it or if it mutated. If the flying mammals completely lost the gene, it suggests that the omission is important in fighting disease. But if it remained with subtle changes in the DNA sequence that are only found in bats, it could show a change in gene function that somehow helps the group stay healthy.

In the end, the most striking changes the team detected were in type one interferon (IFN) genes, which are important for controlling inflammatory responses to infections. Specifically, they observed a shift in the number of antiviral IFN-α and IFN-ω genes. For instance, three bat species seemed to have lost all of their IFN-α while increasing the number of IFN-ω genes.

According to Scheben, the most surprising finding was observing the loss of IFN-α and addition of more IFN-ω genes, “which hadn’t been reported at all before.” The results suggest the new IFN-ω and missing IFN-α genes are important in bats for resisting viral infections while preventing overactive inflammatory responses—a feature that has made inflammation a double-edged sword in humans.

But while the findings have put geneticists one step closer to understanding how bats evolved their unique ability to resist cancer and viruses, it doesn’t paint a complete picture. The study focuses only on the genetics of innate immunity (the immediate immune response to infected cells), says Tony Schountz, a professor at the Center of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases at Colorado State University, who was not involved in the study. It does not include information about bats’ adaptive immunity, which consists of the antibody and T-cell responses that many mammals use to fight diseases. “These are two very different, but complementary components of immunity,“ Schountz explains. “Nearly all of the focus on bat immunity to date has been on innate immunity, principally because the study of adaptive immunity requires live animals, which few groups have and is much more complicated.”

Even without a full set of information, understanding the changes in the bats’ innate immune system could help scientists develop genetic treatments for humans that decrease susceptibility to certain illnesses. We can also learn which genes drive bats’ 20- to 30-year lifespans, or how their bodies have adapted to process sugar-rich foods without developing the negative consequences seen in people with diabetes. 

[Related: What bats and metal vocalists have in common]

And though bats have gained a notorious reputation for their purported role in spreading COVID, Scheben hopes that these new findings could point researchers in the right direction in understanding how the animals host such potent viruses and parasites without getting very sick. One day, he says, that information could be used to prevent our species from suffering major symptoms when infected. “It’s absolutely not misplaced to believe that studying bats could help us prevent another pandemic.”

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Just in time for spooky season, scientists have learned more about how a tiny parasitic flatworm called the lancet liver fluke infects and controls the brains of ants. With their complex four-step cycle, the flukes could be cunningly adjusting to daily changes in air temperatures to infect more hosts. The findings were recently published in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

[Related: Mind-controlling ‘zombie’ parasites are real.]

Step 1: The Zombie Ant

The parasite hijacks an ant’s brain after an ant eats a ball of snail mucus infested with fluke larvae. The larvae then mature inside the brain, where the parasite can make the ant climb up a blade of grass and clamp down on the blade. This strategic height makes it easier for the parasite’s next potential host—a cow, sheep, deer, or other grazer—to eat the flukes and offer it another place to live and breed. This new study found that the liver fluke can even get the ant to crawl back down the blade of grass when it gets too hot.

“Getting the ants high up in the grass for when cattle or deer graze during the cool morning and evening hours, and then down again to avoid the sun’s deadly rays, is quite smart. Our discovery reveals a parasite that is more sophisticated than we originally believed it to be,” University of Copenhagen biologist and study co-author Brian Lund Fredensborg said in a statement. Fredensborg conducted the research with his former graduate student Simone Nordstrand Gasque, now a PhD student at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

In their study, the team tagged several hundred infected ants in the Bidstrup Forests near Roskilde, Denmark. “It took some dexterity to glue colors and numbers onto the rear segments of the ants, but it allowed us to keep track of them for longer periods of time,” said Fredensborg.

The team observed how the infected ants behaved to humidity, light, time of day, and temperature and it was clear that temperature has an effect on their behavior. During cooler temperatures, the ants were more likely to be attached to the top of a blade of grass. When the temperature rose, the ants let go of the grass and crawled back down. 

“We found a clear correlation between temperature and ant behavior,” said Fredensborg. “We joked about having found the ants’ zombie switch,’”

Step 2: The Grazer

Once the liver fluke infects the ant, several hundred parasites invade the insect’s body. Only one of these parasites will make it to the brain where it then influences the ant’s behavior. The remaining liver flukes conceal themselves in the ant’s abdomen inside of its intestine. There, the liver flukes find their way through the bile ducts and into the liver, where they suck blood and develop into adult flukes that begin to lay eggs. 

[Related: ‘Brainwashing’ parasites inherit a strange genetic gap.]

“Here, there can be hundreds of liver flukes waiting for the ant to get them into their next host. They are wrapped in a capsule which protects them from the consequent host’s stomach acid, while the liver fluke that took control of the ant, dies. You could say that it sacrifices itself for the others,” said Fredensborg. 

The eggs are then excreted in the host animal’s feces.

Step 3: The Snail

Once the fluke eggs have been excreted, they remain on the ground waiting for a snail to crawl by and eat the feces. When the eggs are inside the snail, the eggs develop into larval flukes that reproduce asexually and can multiply into several thousand. 

“Historically, parasites have never really been focused on that much, despite there being scientific sources which say that parasitism is the most widespread life form,” said Fredensborg. “This is in part due to the fact that parasites are quite difficult to study.”

Step 4: The Slime Ball

To exit the snail and move on to their next host, the larval flukes make the snail cough. The flukes are then expelled from the snail in a lump of mucus. The ants are attracted to this moist ball, eat it, and unwittingly ingest more fluke larvae and the cycle begins all over again.

The tiny liver fluke is widespread in Denmark and other temperate regions around the world and researchers are still trying to understand more of the mechanisms behind how they take over a host’s brain. 

“We now know that temperature determines when the parasite will take over an ant’s brain. But we still need to figure out which cocktail of chemical substances the parasite uses to turn ants into zombies,” Fredensborg said. “Nevertheless, the hidden world of parasites forms a significant part of biodiversity, and by changing the host’s behavior, they can help determine who eats what in nature. That’s why they’re important for us to understand.”

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The world’s oldest living aquarium fish is actually even older than scientists initially believed. According to an analysis by the California Academy of Sciences, the Steinhart Aquarium’s beloved Australian lungfish named Methuselah is estimated to be about 92 years old, with a high-estimate of over 100.

[Related: Hogfish ‘see’ using their skin.]

Meet Methuselah

Native only to two river systems in Australia, this type of lungfish can actually breathe air. They use a single lung when the streams they live in are more dry than usual or when the water quality changes, according to the Australian Museum. They typically have olive green, black, or brown scales and a body shaped like a torpedo with a flattened snout. While the species is over 100 million years old, they are listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. They are very sensitive to human-caused changes to its habitat, primarily damming, that can increase sediment levels in the water. 

Methuselah first arrived at the San Francisco aquarium in 1938, aboard a Matson Navigation Company liner. She has outlived the 231 other fish from Australia and Fiji that arrived with her, back when Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his second term as President of the United States and Back to the Future’s Christopher Llloyd was only a baby. 

In the many decades since, Methuselah has become famous in the area for not only her advanced age, but a seemingly charming personality and a puppy-like love of belly rubs. The knowledge of her age is helpful in the context of a larger study on how to more accurately determine the age of lungfish in the wild and help conservation efforts. She was previously estimated to be about 84 years old.

“Although we know Methuselah came to us in the late 1930s, there was no method for determining her age at that time, so it’s incredibly exciting to get science-based information on her actual age,” Steinhart Aquarium’s Curator of Aquarium Projects Charles Delbeek, said in a statement. “Methuselah is an important ambassador for her species, helping to educate and stoke curiosity in visitors from all over the world. But her impact goes beyond delighting guests at the aquarium: Making our living collection available to researchers across the world helps further our understanding of biodiversity and what species need to survive and thrive.”

[Related: Trumpetfish use other fish as camouflage.]

How scientists determined the age of the oldest living aquarium fish

Estimating ages for ancient and long-lived fish like lungfish is technically challenging and has traditionally relied on more invasive and sometimes lethal methods to determine the age of fishes, including removing scales and examining inner ear bones called otoliths. The new age detection method used to estimate Methuselah’s age only uses a small tissue sample from a fin clip and the team believed that this method can be applied to other threatened species, without impacting threatened populations or the animal’s health.

The DNA analysis for this new estimate was led by Ben Mayne of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and David T. Roberts of Australian water authority Seqwater. Their upcoming study included Methuselah, two other lungfish belonging to the California Academy of Sciences (ages 54 and 50), and 30 other lungfish from six institutions in Australia and the United States. It created a catalog of living lungfish with the goal of advancing more accurate DNA-based age clocks for the species native to Australia.  This new analysis also found that she could be as old as 101.

“For the first time since the Australian lungfish’s discovery in 1870, the DNA age clock we developed offers the ability to predict the maximum age of the species,” said Mayne. “Accurately knowing the ages of fish in a population, including the maximum age, is vital for their management. This tells us just how long a species can survive and reproduce in the wild, which is critical for modeling population viability and reproductive potential for a species.”

Their original paper detailing how this age prediction method works was published in June 2021 in the journal Molecular Ecology Resources and offers a description of how threatened fish can be safely aged with DNA methylation methods.

“Methuselah’s age was challenging to calculate as her age is beyond the currently calibrated clock. This means her actual age could conceivably be over 100, placing her in the rare club of fish centenarians. While her age prediction will improve over time, she will always live beyond the calibrated age clock, as no other lungfish we know is older than Methuselah,” said Roberts.

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Under towering palms and tangled mangroves, coil-shelled creatures slowly crawl across damp leaves and mossy rocks. As these invasive snails take advantage of the hot, wet ambiance of southern Florida, they leave glistening trails of slime across backyards, parks, forests, and gardens. The Sunshine State is a paradise for snails from other parts of the world who are being shipped in for the pet trade, outcompeting native species, spreading disease, and wreaking havoc overall.   

“Florida has become a hotspot for invasive snails because of its tropical climate in the south end and enormous amount of freshwater springs for aquatic species,” says Lori Tolley-Jordan, an invertebrate zoologist at Jacksonville State University who specializes in freshwater invertebrate biodiversity. “While Alabama has the most diversity of [freshwater] snails, Florida’s environment and climate temperatures are very suitable for land and aquatic snails because it is not much different than their homes in southeast Asia and other tropical areas.”

[Related: Experience the uncomfortable weirdness of a snail eating fruit]

In turn, visitors like the giant African land snail from East Africa, one of the largest snails in the world, have found Florida to be a home away from home. As wide as the size of an adult hand with a unique brown lined shell, they make for a charismatic terrarium pet and are available for sale on websites like Amazon. That means they typically arrive through one of the 16 seaports in Florida that aid the multi-billion-dollar wildlife trafficking business. “It’s one of the largest ports of entry into the US,” Tolley-Jordan says.

Some time after an imported species like the giant African snail or spotted apple snail arrives at its new home, the buyer may decide to release the snail into the wild, thinking it’s the humane thing to do. However, the critters become an issue with their ability to spread quickly and quietly, munching on essential plants and crops along the way. 

“One of the [indicators] for species that are the most invasive, if anything, is their ability to reproduce quickly,” says Tolley-Jordan. 

The giant African snail first came to Florida in the 1960s. It was forcibly wiped out from the state in the 1970s, but made a comeback through seaports in 2011. As the population expands its range, it has begun to impact the environment and the survivability of its native counterparts, including the Florida apple snail. With the ability to populate quickly, a hermaphroditic giant African snail or dioecious exotic apple snail can produce as many as 500 eggs every one to two weeks. Inversely, a native apple snail needs to find a mate to reproduce as little as 20 eggs per clutch every few weeks. 

“There are several species of non-native snails in Florida, but most of them are locally restricted and have been confined in Florida for decades. So they only have gotten out by people having them as pets,” says Robert Fletcher, a professor in wildlife ecology at the University of Florida and principle investigator of a snail kite monitoring research team. “But, the [exotic apple snail] is a different story.” 

A snail-sized apocalypse

As the alien snail species pump out numerous eggs, their sticky capsules become sneaky stowaways, clinging to unsuspecting humans and animals that whisk them away to new areas. Within weeks, the newly hatched babies will overwhelm their surroundings. 

“Even if a person hasn’t released that species, that species can happen to be found on other plants when they are being sold or moved around that their eggs are attached to,” Tolley-Jordan says. “Either intentionally or unintentionally, they move everywhere.” 

Already, shady exotic drifters like the trumpet snail and island apple snail have extended their ranges and colonized new ecosystems in multiple parts of the US. They also end up bringing extra company with them: parasites. Notorious for pathogens, species like the trumpet snail serve as vectors for the lung fluke, a flatworm that causes meningitis-like symptoms in humans and can sometimes be deadly to wildlife. Meanwhile, the giant African land snail carries roundworms, which can trigger intestinal issues. 

The devastation wrought by these snails can be felt up the food chain, too. Non-native apple snails, for example, are outcompeting Florida apple snails, which are the primary food source for Everglade snail kites. This highly specialized bird of prey has been on the federal endangered species list since the 1960s, and has a relatively small population that is confined to southern Florida. The kite uses its unique hook-shaped beak to pry open snail shells, and has just started to crack into the larger invasive apple snails.

“There are lots of concerns about whether or not this non-native snail is going to further contribute to the decline of snail kites, and maybe push it to the brink of extinction,” says Fletcher. “[But] we have seen so far that this non-native highly invasive snail has essentially provided a Band-Aid for the snail kite.”

With the non-native apple snails increasing more rapidly than the native one, Fletcher says that his research team thinks it’s possible the invasive prey is “playing towards the increase in sort of the reversal of this population trend” in the snail kite—a glimmer of hope for the species.

As the battle for holding the balance between native and nonnative species in Florida continues, another slimy creature may soon enter this picture and add to the damage. “The assassin snail could wipe out entire populations of Florida’s unique spring snails if introduced,” says Tolley-Jordan.

The bumble bee-striped assassin snail doesn’t have an appetite for the plants in Florida like the apple snails, but will prey on smaller native species like Florida apple snails. It currently ranks as a top predator in its homeland of Malaysia, and will likely make its way to Singapore, a hotpot of global transport of invasive species, Tolley-Jordan notes. The zoologist has no doubt that it would thrive in the “Lion City” and New Zealand. 

[Related: Researchers release more than 5,000 snails in the Pacific]

As far as experts know, the assassin snail hasn’t entered Florida yet. But it’s a rising star on the pet market, so it might only be a matter of time. 

Doing the detective work

One way scientists are able to determine if an invasive critter is getting too cozy in the Sunshine State is through environmental DNA or eDNA. For early detection, they can take water samples and look for traces of a specific species genetic material. The tool has been used in other parts of the US such as in the Mississippi River to detect black carp and the New Zealand mud snails. 

Eradicating snail squatters can be tricky: Once they’ve spread through an ecosystem, they can be hard to find, catch and prevent from reproducing. This June, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services began to treat in Broward County and other southern properties such as in ​​Broward County for giant African snails with a pesticide called metaldehyde, a.k.a. snail bait. Once applied to crops and certain residential areas, the pesticide works by interfering with a snail’s ability to make mucus, ultimately impacting its mobility and digestion. Within days the target dies from dehydration. Officials also use specially trained canine units to sniff out the offenders.

Prevention through early detection, public outreach, and ecological management has proven to be the best strategy against the Sunshine State’s slimy epidemic. But of course, the best way to keep Florida from being taken over by alien snails is for pet owners to make smarter decisions, both for themselves and for the local wildlife and environment. “The public oftentimes is just not aware,” Tolley-Jordan says, “ It’s one of our biggest problems.”

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Jet lag isn’t just an unpleasant side effect of travel for humans. It could also affect the internal circadian clock of captive giant pandas living outside of their natural habitat range in China. A study published September 18 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology found that outdoor cues like changes in temperature and daylight are particularly important for giant pandas. Some problems can arise when their environments and natural body clock don’t match up. 

[Related: Pandas weren’t always bamboo fiends.]

Animals’ internal circadian clocks are generally regulated by cues from the environment and are linked to changes in their behavior and physiology. For humpback whales in the North Atlantic, the decrease in the daylight around the autumnal equinox likely signals that it’s time for the whales to migrate south to their breeding grounds in the Caribbean. Several species of migratory birds use variation in temperature to time their migrations and delaying their departures may help them navigate climate change, but at a cost. 

“Animals, including humans, have evolved rhythms to synchronize their internal environment with the external environment,” University of Stirling PhD student and study co-author Kristine Gandia said in a statement. “When internal clocks are not synchronized with external cues like light and temperature, animals experience adverse effects. In humans, this can range from jet lag to metabolic issues and seasonal affective disorder.” 

For the pandas in this study, those living outside of their latitudinal ranges were observed performing fewer activities than they would in the wild and responding to some human-based cues that only exist in captivity. 

Giant pandas in the wild live highly seasonal lives, where spring is time for migrations to find new shoots of their preferred bamboo. Migration season is also mating season, possibly because finding mates is easier when pandas are all after the same bamboo shoots. Pandas are also a favorite in zoos around the world and their public webcams make them easier to observe. 

In this new study, scientists set out to understand how pandas in zoos are affected by the “jet lag” of living in latitudes they did not evolve in, since important conditions such as daylight and temperature ranges will be different in these areas. According to Gandia, the latitudinal range for giant pandas is between 26 and 42 degrees north and matching latitudes could be between 26 and 42 degrees south, since these latitudes mirror the temperature and lighting conditions further north. Other latitudes will have different amounts of sunlight and varying temperatures, which could alter the panda’s internal clocks and changes to their behaviors, such as, looking for a mate. The study also looked at whether or not anthropogenic cues like regular visits from keepers could also affect their circadian clock. 

The team of 13 observers used webcams to monitor 11 giant pandas born in captivity at six zoos both inside and outside pandas’ natural latitudinal range. Every month for one year, they carried out one day’s worth of hourly focal sampling–watching one animal for a set length of time and recording everything the animal does–to see how their behavior changed across a day and how that changed across a year. The observers noted general activity, sexual behavior, and abnormal behavior.

Daylight and temperature changes were particularly important cues for pandas and were closely associated with general activity in latitudes that matched their natural range in China. Just like their wild counterparts, pandas in captivity showed three peaks of activity over 24 hours, including a peak at night. Sexual behaviors were only displayed by adult pandas during the day, which possibly makes it easier to find mates in the wild.

[Related: The science behind our circadian rhythms, and why time changes mess them up.]

The pandas living outside their home latitude were less active, correlating to the different temperature and daylight cues in these newer latitudes. 

“When giant pandas are housed at higher latitudes—meaning they experience more extreme seasons than they evolved with—this changes their levels of general activity and abnormal behavior,” said Gandia. One of the abnormal behaviors included reacting to zoo-specific cues, such as becoming very active during the early morning. This indicates that the pandas may be anticipating a keeper visiting with fresh food.  

Additionally, the pandas’ abnormal and sexual behaviors fluctuated at similar points. The team believes that this could represent frustration that the pandas can’t mate or migrate in captivity as they would in the wild. The pandas living in mismatched latitudes performed fewer abnormal behaviors related to mating, potentially because they weren’t getting the same environmental cues for sexual behaviors.

“To expand on this research, we would want to incorporate cycles of physiological indicators,” said Gandia. “Importantly, we would want to assess sexual hormones to understand the effects the environment may have on the timing of release. This could help us further understand how to promote successful reproduction for a vulnerable species which is notoriously difficult to breed.”

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

For commercial fishers, losing gear is part of doing business. Fishing lines and nets break and wear out over time or have to be cut loose when gear snags on the seafloor. By one estimate, at least 50,000 tonnes of nets, lines, and traps disappear into the water globally each year. In California alone, as many as 14,000 crab traps are lost or discarded each season. Most of this material is plastic, and lots of it is still partially functional, meaning it can go on catching and killing marine life for centuries—a process known as ghost fishing.

For several years, scientists, fishers, and conservations have been eyeing a not-so-novel solution: biodegradable fishing gear. Made of things like microalgae fibers or biodegradable polyesters, this equipment can be broken down by aquatic microorganisms. Yet while these environmentally friendly nets offer benefits, recent field trials conducted largely in Norway and South Korea show that biodegradable nets catch significantly fewer fish than synthetic ones.

Benjamin Drakeford, a marine resource economist at the University of Portsmouth in England, puts it bluntly: “Biodegradable gear right now is not very good.”

In Atlantic cod fisheries, for instance, nylon nets catch as much as 25 percent more fish than biodegradable alternatives. One team of scientists attributed such shortfalls to biodegradable materials’ tendency to be more elastic and stretchy, potentially allowing fish to wiggle free.

But Drakeford and his colleagues wanted to look at the bigger picture: if biodegradable nets and traps reduce fishers’ catches—but they also lessen the environmental damage from lost and discarded gear—is that a financial hit worth taking? After all, fishers have a vested interest in keeping fish populations healthy. The scientists analyzed prior studies of biodegradable fishing gear’s effectiveness, then interviewed 29 fishers, boat owners, and representatives from fishing industry groups in England about their expenses, profits, and other financial details.

In conclusion, Drakeford and his colleagues write in a recent paper, an industry shift to biodegradable nets would not lessen the impacts of ghost fishing enough to offset fishers’ reduced catches. Biodegradable nets would leave more fish in the water and reduce rates of ghost fishing, helping fishers with future catches. But to make up for the reduced landings, fishers would need financial incentives.

But, the scientists say, if biodegradable gear can be improved, the benefits “over traditional fishing gear would grow exponentially.”

One big problem, the scientists reason, is that a certain degree of ghost fishing is currently locked in: the gear is already lost. Even if fishers everywhere replace their gear, the decrease in ghost fishing—and resultant bump in fish stocks—wouldn’t happen for years. So rather than improving their catch by cutting down on ghost fishing, fishers would be trading environmental sustainability for a lower catch without seeing much of an immediate benefit.

Brandon Kuczenski, an industrial ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who wasn’t involved in the work, suggests this lack of cost-effectiveness could be overcome with government subsidies.

Drakeford and his team’s analysis comes amid mounting concern over marine plastic pollution, which is pouring into the world’s oceans at alarming rates and is liable to haunt marine ecosystems essentially forever. Large pieces of plastic can choke and strangle marine life, while tiny micro- and nanoplastics—the inevitable result of plastic breaking down—can have more insidious impacts.

Geoff Shester, a campaign director for the conservation organization Oceana, says that while he endorses efforts to develop biodegradable gear, he thinks it would be easier and faster to implement a penalty and reward system to incentivize fishers to not lose or litter gear in the first place. Such a system, he says, would require registering and tracking all commercial fishing equipment.

“If you put out fishing gear, you should have to demonstrate that you’re getting it back,” he says. Right now, he adds, there is no penalty for fishers who lose their gear other than having to buy new gear. He thinks such a system could be more effective in reducing waste.

There is another option, too: holding net manufacturers financially accountable for plastic gear pollution and the costs to fishers of shifting to biodegradable gear. This concept, known as extended producer responsibility, is briefly discussed in Drakeford’s paper.

For his part, Drakeford believes biodegradable nets’ lower efficiency is a speed bump on the road to widescale adoption. He thinks the gear will follow the path of electric vehicles—getting better and better and better. In just a decade, he points out, the range of electric vehicles has doubled several times.

Drakeford sees some irony in the fact that switching to biodegradable gear is, in concept at least, not so much a leap forward as it is a step back.

“In the past, we used biodegradable materials to make crab pots and fishing nets and such,” he says. “We know the answer to this—we just need to go back to what we used to do.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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This article is republished from The Conversation.

Ask any parent—welcoming a new baby to the family is exciting, but it comes with a lot of work. And when the new addition is a pair of babies—twins—parents really have their work cut out for them.

For many animal species it’s the norm to have multiple babies at once. A litter of piglets can be as many as 11 or more!

We are faculty members at Mississippi State University College of Veterinary Medicine. We’ve been present for the births of many puppies and kittens over the years—and the animal moms almost always deliver multiples.

But are all those animal siblings who share the same birthday twins?

Twins are two peas in a pod

Twins are defined as two offspring from the same pregnancy.

They can be identical, which means a single sperm fertilized a single egg that divided into two separate cells that went on to develop into two identical babies. They share the same DNA, and that’s why the two twins are essentially indistinguishable from each other.

Twins can also be fraternal. That’s the outcome when two separate eggs are fertilized individually at the same time. Each twin has its own set of genes from the mother and the father. One can be male and one can be female. Fraternal twins are basically as similar as any set of siblings.

Fraternal twins originate in two eggs fertilized separately, while identical twins originate in a single fertilized egg that divides to create two embryos. Veronika Zakharova/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

Approximately 3 percent of human pregnancies in the United States produce twins. Most of those are fraternal – approximately one out of every three pairs of twins is identical.

Multiple babies from one animal mom

Each kind of animal has its own standard number of offspring per birth. People tend to know the most about domesticated species that are kept as pets or farm animals.

One study that surveyed the size of over 10,000 litters among purebred dogs found that the average number of puppies varied by the size of the dog breed. Miniature breed dogs—like chihuahuas and toy poodles, generally weighing less than 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms)—averaged 3.5 puppies per litter. Giant breed dogs—like mastiffs and Great Danes, typically over 100 pounds (45 kilograms)—averaged more than seven puppies per litter.

When a litter of dogs, for instance, consists of only two offspring, people tend to refer to the two puppies as twins. Twins are the most common pregnancy outcome in goats, though mom goats can give birth to a single-born kid or larger litters, too. Sheep frequently have twins, but single-born lambs are more common.

Horses, which are pregnant for 11 to 12 months, and cows, which are pregnant for nine to 10 months, tend to have just one foal or calf at a time—but twins may occur. Veterinarians and ranchers have long believed that it would be financially beneficial to encourage the conception of twins in dairy and beef cattle. Basically the farmer would get two calves for the price of one pregnancy.

But twins in cattle may result in birth complications for the cow and undersized calves with reduced survival rates. Similar risks come with twin pregnancies in horses, which tend to lead to both pregnancy complications that may harm the mare and the birth of weak foals.

DNA holds the answer to what kind of twins

So plenty of animals can give birth to twins. A more complicated question is whether two animal babies born together are identical or fraternal twins.

Female dogs and cats ovulate multiple eggs at one time. Fertilization of individual eggs by distinct spermatazoa from a male produces multiple embryos. This process results in puppies or kittens that are fraternal, not identical, even though they may look very much the same.

Biologists believe that identical twins in most animals are very rare. The tricky part is that lots of animal siblings look very, very similar and researchers need to do a DNA test to confirm whether two animals do in fact share all their genes. Only one documented report of identical twin dogs was confirmed by DNA testing. But no one knows for sure how frequently fertilized animal eggs split and grow into identical twin animal babies.

And reproduction is different in various animals. For instance, nine-banded armadillos normally give birth to identical quadruplets. After a mother armadillo releases an egg and it becomes fertilized, it splits into four separate identical cells that develop into identical pups. Its relative, the seven-banded armadillo, can give birth to anywhere from seven to nine identical pups at one time.

There’s still a lot that scientists aren’t sure about when it comes to twins in other species. Since DNA testing is not commonly performed in animals, no one really knows how often identical twins are born. It’s possible—maybe even likely—that identical twins may have been born in some species without anyone’s ever knowing.

Michael Jaffe is an associate professor of small animal surgery at Mississippi State University. Tracy Jaffe is an assistant clinical professor of veterinary medicine at Mississippi State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The jury may still be out on plant-based meat alternatives’ economic and environmental viability, but experts largely agree that the seafood industry in its current form is untenable. Overfishing presents countless ecological problems, including plastic pollution and the potential for a wholesale collapse of marine biodiversity. Researchers have been experimenting with seafood alternatives for years, but one company is finally ready to bring its offering to market—and it represents a major moment within the industry.

Austrian-based food-tech startup Revo Foods announced this week that its 3D-printed vegan fish filet “inspired by salmon” is heading to European grocery store shelves—a first for 3D-printed food. According to the company’s September 12 press release, the arrival of “The Filet” represents a pivotal moment in sustainable food, with 3D-printed consumables ready to scale at industrial volumes. Revo Foods’ Filet is likely to be just the first of many other such 3D-printed edible products to soon hit the market.

[Related: Scientists cooked up a 3D printed cheesecake.]

“Despite dramatic losses of coral reefs and increasing levels of toxins and micro plastic contaminating fish, consumer demand for seafood has paradoxically skyrocketed in recent decades,” the company announcement explains. “One promising solution to provide consumers with sustainable alternatives that do not contribute to overfishing is vegan seafood. The key to success of these products lies in recreating an authentic taste that appeals to [consumers].”

The Filet relies on mycoprotein made from nutrition-heavy filamentous fungi, and naturally offers a meat-like texture. Only another 12 ingredients compose Revo’s Filet, such as pea proteins, plant oils, and algae extracts. With its high protein and Omega-3 contents, eating a Revo Filet is still very much like eating regular salmon—of course, without all the standard industrial issues. And thanks to its plant-based ingredients, the Filet also boasts a three-week shelf life, a sizable boost from regular salmon products.

“With the milestone of industrial-scale 3D food printing, we are entering a creative food revolution, an era where food is being crafted exactly according to the customer’s needs,” Revo Foods CEO Robin Simsa said via this week’s announcement.

While Revo’s products are currently only available for European markets, the company says it is actively working to expand its availability “across the globe,” with Simsa telling PopSci the company hopes to enter US markets around 2025. Until then, hungry stateside diners will have to settle for the Revo Salmon dancehall theme song… yes, it’s a real thing.

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What does it mean to be intelligent? If it’s defined by having the biggest brain, then sperm whales—whose noggins are a hefty 20 pounds—would be the brightest creatures on Earth. But, more likely, it’s how a brain is wired. Viewed in this way, intelligence is what gives an organism the best chance to survive and thrive in an environment. Language may be one of the best ways to demonstrate that kind of smarts. 

Though all animals can communicate with others, humans are one of the few species to have a spoken language. Using speech, we could share complex ideas, pass knowledge through generations, and create communities. Whether spoken language actually helped us evolve as species into more advanced beings, however, has never really been tested.

“Language allowing humans to be a more advanced species is an assumption that somebody came up with one day without really trying [to prove] it,” says Erich Jarvis, a professor at Rockefeller University who studies the neurobiology of vocal learning. The idea stuck around, but so have other common beliefs that are not really supported with evidence—like the myth that we only use 10 percent of our brains at any point in time, he points out. 

But Jarvis and his colleagues were able to examine this hypothesis with the help of songbirds. Jarvis’ new study, published today in Science, provides some of the first evidence that vocal learning—one of the crucial components for a spoken language—is associated with problem-solving. Vocal learning is the ability to produce new sounds by imitating others, relying on experience rather than instinct. Birds who could do this and solve problems had bigger brain sizes, the research team found.

The team performed seven cognitive experiments on 214 songbirds from 23 different species. Of these, 21 species were caught from the wild in New York. Two songbirds studied, zebra finches and canaries, are domesticated. The behavioral tests examined the birds’ problem solving, for instance by figuring out how to remove an object to access the food reward. The researchers also gauged two other skills often associated with intelligence: learning by association, plus what’s called reversal learning, in which an animal adjusts its behavior to get a reward.. They then looked at whether being vocal learners helped develop the three skills, comparing 21 bird species to two others, which were vocal non-learners (these birds learned sounds only during a brief developmental period).

[Related: What does brain size have to do with intelligence?]

The biologists noticed a strong relationship between vocal learning and problem-solving skills. Vocal learning bird species could come up with innovative ideas, such as getting seeds or a worm trapped under a cup by removing the obstacle, piercing it, or pulling it apart. “It’s pretty surprising that these two skills are related to intelligence but not the other traits we measured,” explains Jean-Nicolas Audet, an ecologist and neurobiologist at Rockefeller University who served as the lead study author. All three abilities—problem solving, associative learning, and reversal learning—are typically considered “components of intelligence,” he says.

This doesn’t mean that the two bird species who were not vocal learners were stupid. Instead, it shows they did not evolve this one particular form of intelligence. “We have to be careful and very specific when we talk about intelligence because it really depends on which traits we are talking about,” Audet explains.

[Related: Wild birds don’t need your backyard feeders to survive]

Brain size was another benefit to vocal learning that may have supported these problem-solving abilities. The 21 vocal-learning species had slightly larger brains, relative to their body size, than the two who weren’t. Jarvis says it’s possible these big-noggined birds packed more neurons. Or perhaps they evolved to have larger skull space, which gave rise to extra circuits for more advanced vocal learning and problem-solving skills. “This suggests to me that there’s something special about problem solving,” he says. “Like spoken language, it made some species more advanced than others.”

One question left unanswered is why there’s such a strong relationship between problem-solving abilities and vocal learning. The brain areas in charge of vocal learning are not the same ones that get activated when we need to troubleshoot an issue, says Audet. The next step for this team is to take a deeper look into the brains of songbirds and figure out what genes or other brain regions connect these two areas. Some bridge yet undiscovered helps form this type of intelligence.

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A fish with “hands” might seem like an evolutionary oddity—until you remember that all limbs formed from fins. Spotted handfish, which are related to anglerfish, aren’t known so much for their swimming, but instead walk around on the seafloor with modified pectoral fins that look like little fingered flippers. They also use their strange human-like appendages to clean and care for their eggs. The species is so rare today, only 2,000 or so left in the wild in places like the lower Derwent River estuary and Frederick Henry Bay in southeast Australia, according to CSIRO research technician Carlie Devine. 

“We may only see one or two fish over a 60-minute dive, and sometimes none,” Devine said in a recent press release by the Australian government’s science agency. This is why it was such a big deal when runner Kerri Yare bumped into one on the beach in Primrose Sands, Tasmania. The spotted handfish is one of seven handfish species local to Tasmania and one of 14 in the world. But up until this discovery, the spotted handfish was believed to be extinct in Primrose Sands because there hadn’t been a sighting in nearly 20 years.

[Related: An endangered fish’s story follows the vanishing waters of the Rio Grande.]

Beyond their endearing, all-over freckles and unique method of locomotion, spotted handfish are also known as the first marine fish to be flagged as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Prior to the 1990s, it was a pretty common creature in Tasmanian waters, but has since been split up into nine isolated populations. The biggest threat to these walking water beasts is dredge fishing boats in the area searching for scallops, and simultaneously, wrecking the handfish’s habitat and turning them into bycatch. Dredging is also a problem for dolphins, sea turtles, and other marine life. Invasive species like the North Pacific sea star, which love to snack on bottom-dwelling scallops, oysters, and mussels, have only made things worse for the spotted handfish by targeting the sea squirts that they wrap their eggs around. 

Thankfully, dedicated scientists like Devine are keeping the species from teetering into extinction through methods like artificial spawning habitats and in-lab breeding programs. “We also have what we call an insurance population: fish that we collected from the wild that live in commercial aquariums,” Devine said in the statement. “This is so we can keep the species from going extinct. But [it’s] also to breed the fish, keep the juveniles safe until they are a bit older, and put them back in the river in hopes we can increase numbers in the wild. Through this program we’ve already released a small number of juveniles into the wild, and we are excited to see the ongoing impact of our work. We’re not done yet.”

Correction (September 15, 2023): The article previously stated that North Pacific sea stars prey on spotted handfish and their eggs, rather than just the substrate for their eggs.

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Dogs and wolves are well known for their incredible sense of smell, but some new research suggests that they do not solely rely on their olfactory gifts to find food. In a study of multiple wolves and dogs published September 13 in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, a team of researchers found that both animals performed better at finding hidden food if they visually observed it being hidden by a human. This suggests that they could be remembering where the food was, and not just following their noses alone. 

[Related from PopSci+: Why your dog needs to smell the world.]

Social learning is an important way for many species—such as chimpanzees, octopuses, and rats—to transmit information. In social learning, one individual learns by observing or interacting with another. Some earlier research has suggested that both wolves and dogs are capable of a form of social learning called observational spatial memory. This is where an individual animal can remember where another individual has hidden food and then snatch it. However, there are still several knowledge gaps to fill in about these abilities and how they may differ between wolves and domesticated dogs. 

In the study, a team from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria used nine timber wolves and eight mongrel or mutt dogs living at the Wolf Science Center in Ernstbrunn, Austria. They tested the ability of each animal to find four, six, or eight caches of food, after either seeing a human hiding them or without seeing the food be hidden.

They found that both dogs and wolves found more of the first five food caches more quickly and with less distance traveled if they had seen the food compared to scenarios where they didn’t observe a human hiding the cache. The authors believe that this suggests that the wolves and dogs didn’t just use their noses to find the treats and provides more support to the theory that wolves and dogs are capable of observational spatial memory.

[Related: Old dogs need to learn new tricks. Here’s why.]

Additionally, wolves outperformed dogs at finding the cache, whether or not they saw the food being hidden. The team believes that this difference in performance may not be due to differing observational spatial memory abilities between wolves and dogs, but from differences in other traits like persistence and food-related motivation.

“While domestication probably affected dogs’ willingness to adjust to humans, the results of the current study collaborate previous findings suggesting that cognitive abilities do not differ very much between dogs and wolves,” the authors wrote.

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

In several quiet rooms in a marine lab in southwest France, dozens of Pacific oysters sit in large glass tanks, quietly living their oyster lives. Each morning, the lights come up slowly, carefully mimicking the rising sun, but at night the rooms never fully darken. The dim glow simulates the light pollution that increasingly plagues many marine species—even in natural habitats.

The results of the experiment, which were recently published, found that artificial light at night can disrupt oyster behavior and alter the activity of important genes that keep the animals’ internal clocks ticking.

Damien Tran, a marine scientist at the Paris-based French National Centre for Scientific Research, and one of the study’s authors, was surprised that even the lowest level of nighttime light that they tested—“below the intensity of the full moon,” he says—was enough to throw off the oysters’ circadian rhythm.

It’s especially remarkable, Tran says, when you remember that oysters don’t have eyes.

How oysters see is a bit of a mystery. While related bivalves, such as scallops, have eye-like organs, oysters likely use patches of specialized cells on their skin to detect light, though scientists have yet to identify the cells or figure out exactly how they might work.

In the recent study, Tran and his colleagues put four tanks of oysters in different rooms and exposed each to a different intensity of artificial light at night. The researchers compared the oysters’ responses with the responses of animals in a control tank that experienced complete nighttime darkness.

Tran’s colleague and coauthor, marine scientist Laura Payton, explains that shell movement is really the only oyster behavior that can be observed. The team fitted half of the oysters in each tank with electrodes to determine when the animals opened their shells—something oysters do to feed, breathe, and mate. In the control tank, oysters were most active in the middle of the day but started to close when the lights went out.

But exposure to artificial light at night caused the oysters in the other four tanks to stay open at inappropriate times, with activity peaking in the early evening. And while oysters have certain genes that typically turn “on” during the day and others that turn on at night, exposure to nighttime light eliminated the difference. For example, the oyster equivalent of a mammal gene that helps make melatonin is usually more active at night, but the researchers observed that the gene stayed highly active during the day, eclipsing the natural circadian rhythm.

In human terms, that’s called insomnia. In oysters, as Payton explains, this response could negatively affect their health, possibly making the animals more vulnerable to disease over the long term. Although, she concedes, many of the specific consequences have yet to be studied.

If oyster populations do suffer, so would the ecology and economy of many regions worldwide, where oysters filter water, protect shorelines from storms, and, as a commercially grown species, provide food and jobs to communities.

Emily Fobert, a marine ecologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia who was not involved in the research, says the results are compelling. But she critiqued the researchers’ choice to expose just one tank of oysters to each level of artificial light. That means there’s a chance that the study results were caused by something else in the tank, rather than the light alone, she says. Fobert doesn’t question that the changes in oyster behavior and gene expression were due to the artificial light, but having multiple tanks per light level would have made the study more robust, she says.

Nevertheless, artificial light at night is a growing concern for many marine species. Oysters in particular need our help, Payton says, because they can’t run away when their environment is disturbed.

Technologically, Fobert says, it’s completely in our power to improve conditions for the health and well-being of marine species that are affected by light pollution. “We have huge opportunities to get it right.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London.

From the tops of Mount Olympus in Pieria, Greece, to the sandy floors of Rijeka, Croatia, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition explores nature’s magic through the “eyes” of cameras. With each shot and submission, photographers reveal unique moments in the great outdoors in luminous detail, letting us catch a glimpse of the hidden lives of animals, plants, and other natural elements. Maybe it’s from the bow of a weathered fishing boat, encrusted in sea salt, as a local fisherman hauls in the day’s catch under the Ecuadorian sunlight. Or maybe it’s from a chilly prairie covered in fresh snow, as a shaggy bison shakes powdery flakes from its fur.

As the founder and long-time organizer of Wildlife Photographer of the Year, the National History Museum in London has remained committed to sharing entries from eminent photographers who documented natural history subjects, expeditions, and museum exhibits. The winners of the 59th contest will be announced in October and will be followed by a new gallery at the museum. Until then, enjoy these highly commended images selected from thousands of award-worthy images by the judging panel.

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The lives of corvid, or the family of birds that include crows, are shockingly complex. They hold ‘monogamish’ relationships, build tools, hold funerals, solve puzzles, and may even have their own form of democracy. Now, researchers have provided the latest peek into corvid life that adds a new element to their intricate and complicated lives—social climbing. Yes, even birds will ditch their old friends if something better comes along, according to a new study published September 11 in Nature.

For their recent experiment, scientists at universities of Exeter and Bristol utilized the Cornish Jackdaw Project to split a group of jackdaws, members of the crow family found in Europe, western Asia and North Africa, into two randomly sorted groups—A and B. They then tagged the birds with transponder chips, worn like little anklets, to tell who was who. 

[Related: Crows and ravens flexed smarts and strength for world dominance.]

As many animal studies go, there’s got to be some kind of snack involved. This time, the scientists set up a feeding source with two locked doors—one filled with grain, a merely okay morsel for a hungry crow, and the other with a much yummier rendition of some grain and some dried mealworms. If a bird visited alone, only the low-quality snack door opened. With a buddy from the same-tagged group, say two As or two Bs, either both doors unlocked or just the high-quality snack door. But when a jackdaw visited the snack dispenser with a member of the opposite-tagged clique, there were no goodies for anybody.

The choice for the birds then was either loyalty or tasty treats. 

“The jackdaws turned out to be very strategic, quickly learning to hang out with members of their own group and ditching old ‘friends’ from the other group so they could get the best rewards,” author Alex Thornton, a professor of cognitive evolution at Exeter, said in a release.

The same couldn’t always be said for familial relationships. Despite the potentially disappointing outcome, jackdaws would still stick with their offspring, siblings, or mating partners. Some long-term relationships, it turns out, were more important to the feathery creatures than a chance at a delicious morsel. 

“The fundamental idea is that if you need to keep track of interactions you have had with other individuals, remember the outcomes of those interactions and use those to adjust your [behavior],” Thornton told the Guardian. “What we were able to do here was test the idea: can individuals keep track of the outcomes of past interactions and update their relationships. It turns out they can.”

For the authors, these results can give us clues to the evolution of intelligence, memory, and social status in the animal kingdom—and even in the human world. 

“Our findings also help us to understand how societies emerge from individual decisions,” author and Exeter PhD student Josh Arbon said in a release. “The balance between strategically playing the field for short-term benefits and investing in valuable long-term partners ultimately shapes the structure of animal societies, including our own.”

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Climate change is often in the form of extremes in weather like sweltering heat domes, devastating inland flooding or record breaking wildfire seasons, which puts lives and livelihoods at risk for humans. However, the world’s animals who are on the front lines of an ever changing planet experience these changes a little differently. 

[Related: We don’t have a full picture of the planet’s shrinking biodiversity. Here’s why.]

“When we see climate change in the news, we often think of big storms or major weather events but animals are vulnerable to the smallest changes,” wildlife filmmaker and host Bertie Gregory tells PopSci. 

In the new series “Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory,” viewers can get a look into these subtleties and changes. In one episode, the team is searching a dive spot in Indonesia for the elusive devil ray, when a swarm of hundreds of jellyfish approaches.

“Avoiding their stingers was like playing a video game! We were told that huge jellyfish plumes like that were becoming a more regular sight in these tropical waters, which is not a good sign,” Gregory says. 

When Gregory checked the dive thermometer, it read 87.8 degrees Fahrenheit, in water that should have been about 82 degrees. A few degrees might not always sound like much, but has an outsized impact on animals.  “Jellyfish are thought to tolerate climate change better than other species, hence their huge numbers on that day. For us, it meant no other signs of life,” says Gregory.

[Related: Maine’s puffins show another year of remarkable resiliency.]

The series spans the planet and uses high-tech drones and cameras that Gregory calls a “game changer” for wildlife filmmaking. The tech allows the filmmakers to catch a glimpse of the outer lives of animals and even some of their more inner workings.

“We also used a military grade thermal imaging camera to film elephants at night in the depth of the jungle in the Central African Republic—it uses heat to “see” in the dark and elephant ears look incredible as you can see all their veins!” says Gregory.

The series also captures just how difficult it is for terrestrial animals like the pumas of Patagonia and marine mammals like Antarctica’s orca whales to get a solid meal and how climate change continues to threaten vital food sources. 

An episode features a group of Antarctic orcas known as the B1s during what Gregory says was the warmest Antarctic trip he has ever experienced. These killer whales are known for a unique strategy to hunt seals resting on the ice that might remind some orca enthusiasts of the hydroplaning killer whales near Argentina’s Valdés peninsula who thrust their 8,000 to 16,000 pound bodies up onto the beach to catch seals. 

Instead of using surf, sand, and rocks like their Argentinian cousins, these Antarctic killer whales work together as a team to create waves that wash the seals into the water. 

“We witnessed and filmed the staggering intelligence and adaptability of a group of killer whales. There are thought to be just 100 of these unique killer whales in existence, and during filming it was clear they were struggling to ‘wave wash’ seals from ice because there wasn’t much ice,” says Gregory.

[Related: Orcas are attacking boats. But is it revenge or trauma?]

The whales had to constantly adapt their strategy just to get a single seal, sometimes risking an escape from their prey in order to teach the younger whales strategies to carry on to the next generation. 

These constant struggles offer up sobering reminders of the macro and micro ways that the planet is changing and making life more difficult for almost every living thing.. Over one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, a rate of loss that is 1,000 times greater than previously expected. The  United Nations agreed upon a biodiversity treaty at the end of 2022 pledging to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s wild land and oceans by 2030. Currently, only about 17 percent of terrestrial and 10 percent of marine areas are protected through legislation.

The same location in Indonesia where Gregory and his team encountered the stingy jellyfish swarm is home to the Misool Marine Reserve. Despite climate change’s constant challenges, the area is a conservation success story thanks to community-led initiatives to protect the area from overfishing by implementing specific parts where fishing is allowed.

“Now, Misool is one of the few places on earth where biodiversity is increasing. What they’ve managed to do could be a blueprint for how we can protect oceans around the world and proof that if given the chance, nature can make an amazing comeback,” says Gregory. “It’s good news for wildlife and good news for people.”

“Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory” premieres September 13 on Disney+.

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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. 

In 2008, polar bears had the dubious distinction of being the first animal placed on the United States’ endangered species list due to climate threats, specifically the loss of Arctic sea ice. 

But that same year, President George W. Bush’s Interior Department adopted a new policy that prevented federal agencies from considering the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on polar bears, despite those emissions being the main driver of the climate threat to the keystone Arctic predators. Every new ton of emissions leads to more melting of the sea ice that the bears live on. 

The policy-setting 2008 memo was written by Dave Bernhardt, a former fossil fuel industry lobbyist then working as solicitor for the Interior Department who would go on to be President Donald Trump’s secretary of the interior. It required that the projected emissions impacts to polar bears from new proposals, like pipelines or drilling permits, be separated from the effects of historical cumulative emissions.

That set what seemed an impossibly high scientific bar at the time because researchers hadn’t yet fully identified the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from specific projects on threatened species. But science has cleared that hurdle, said Steven Amstrup, an adjunct biology professor at the University of Wyoming and co-author of a new peer-reviewed paper in Science that could help “close the loophole” in the Endangered Species Act by showing how emissions from new projects on federal lands result in more days during which polar bears can’t feed because of declining sea ice.

The paper establishes a direct link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and cub survival rates using a methodology that can “parse the impact of emissions by source,” said Amstrup, also the chief science officer for Polar Bears International, a nonprofit conservation organization.

For example, the new paper notes that the hundreds of power plants in the U.S. combined will emit more than 60 gigatons of carbon dioxide over their 30-year lifespans. By calculating the amount of warming that carbon will drive, and the amount of Arctic sea ice that heat will melt, they estimate that those emissions will reduce polar bear cub recruitment in the Southern Beaufort Sea population by about 4 percent. By using that formula, they can measure how greenhouse gas emissions from a new project would affect polar bear populations, a calculation that wasn’t as clear when polar bears were listed as vulnerable. 

And the same type of analysis could be applied to measure the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on habitat and demographic changes for other species listed as endangered, Amstrup said.

Emerging Science Supports Climate Lawsuits

Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said a current legal challenge to the Willow oil and gas drilling project in northern Alaska uses a similar argument. 

“Our view is this,” Burger said. “Science supports drawing a causal connection from emissions from specific sources to climate change impacts in specific places. Studies like this one without question reinforce the argument.”

The specific impacts of greenhouse gas emissions are “particularly evident” when it comes to loss of sea ice and the impact on polar bears, the Sabin Center noted in an amicus brief submitted in support of plaintiffs challenging the Willow project, he said.

In the brief, the Sabin Center alleges that the Bureau of Land Management ignored the effect of greenhouse emissions on endangered and threatened species due to the “misconception” that science could not establish “causal links” between emissions and impacts to at-risk species. But since 2008, when the Interior Department’s memo tried to ban consideration of greenhouse gas impacts on listed species, research has made the causal connections more clear, he added. 

“What’s more, climate models and detection and attribution methods can be used to quantify the relative contributions of specific GHG sources to climate change impacts,” Burger wrote in the brief. In some cases, he said, it’s even possible to isolate the per-ton effects of greenhouse gas emissions, as was the case with a 2016 study showing that each additional metric ton of carbon dioxide results in the sustained loss of about 3 square meters of September sea ice in the Arctic.

A 2021 report from the Sabin Center summarizes the scientific findings about the impacts of climate change on endangered species, and the new study “provides useful new methodologies and evidence,” to describe those effects, said Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert and co-founder of the Sabin Center.

Scientists and legal scholars have been telling federal agencies for quite some time that the Bernhardt Memo is incorrect, said Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute with the Center for Biological Diversity. There are pending lawsuits that have raised that point, but no rulings yet, and the new paper adds extra scientific support to such cases.

“It is a very big deal,” said Siegel, who wrote the petition for listing polar bears as endangered species in 2004. “It’s the first time scientists have actually done the analysis and published their findings in one of the world’s leading scientific journals.”

Amstrup did the original research for the U.S. government that supported the listing of polar bears, she said. The science was so clear that the George W. Bush administration had no choice but to list the species.

But the lack of any meaningful action to protect polar bears since then has been frustrating to Siegel.

“I’m feeling a lot of grief, and I’m feeling a lot of anger, like a lot of people,” she said. “But what keeps me going is that there is still time to make a difference. There’s nothing more important than the actions taken right now to reduce greenhouse pollution.”

She said the failure of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which implements the Endangered Species Act, to properly analyze the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on polar bears and other listed species is “a form of climate denial. It’s going against the science, and it is breaking the law.” 

“Hopefully the publication of this paper will finally convince the Biden administration to follow the science and the law,” she added.

In 2021, scientists and law professors petitioned the Biden Administration to rescind any rules that prevent agencies from considering the impacts of greenhouse gases. Failing to consider them “leaves the government blindfolded in its effort to protect threatened species,” said Stuart Pimm, a conservation scientist at Duke University who signed the petition. 

Shaye Wolfe, climate director for the Center For Biological Diversity,said the polar bear is an example of how rules like Bernhardt’s memo have weakened climate action. Without such policies, which the Trump Administration tried to further enshrine in 2019 when Bernhardt was secretary of the interior, “agencies would have another mechanism to consider and reduce carbon emissions,” Wolf said.

“Greenhouse gases are no different from mercury, pesticides or anything else that accumulates in the land, air or water and harms species,” she added. “It’s simply ridiculous not to take them into account.”

Global Warming Increasing Mass Extinction Risk

Right now, there are 1,497 animals on the U.S. endangered species list and the best available science shows that nearly every one of them faces climate-related threats, as do 1 million other species on the planet. 

The number, distribution and density of species—biodiversity—is declining rapidly in an unfolding mass extinction that could equal dramatic die-offs recorded in fossil records and attributed to planetary system-changing events like ice ages, meteor crashes or intense, massive and persistent volcanic eruptions. 

The current wave of species declines and extinctions could have profound impacts on human societies. Food security will be threatened if pollinators, seed-spreading birds or important food fish disappear. About 4 billion people rely primarily on natural medicines for their health care, while about 70 percent of drugs used to treat cancer are natural or are synthetic products inspired by nature. 

And if global warming changes the reproductive cycles of fundamental organisms like plankton, bacteria and fungi, it would have a huge effect on how much carbon dioxide oceans, fields and forests remove from the atmosphere, potentially driving even faster warming of the climate. 

Some groups of animals have been particularly hard hit, with 40 percent of amphibians and about a third of corals and marine mammals facing possible extinction, according to a 2019 United Nations global biodiversity report, which acknowledged that “Nature is essential for human existence and good quality of life.” 

“Most of nature’s contributions to people are not fully replaceable, and some are irreplaceable,” the report added.

Seen as a global call to action, the report concluded that nature is deteriorating worldwide. “The biosphere, upon which humanity as a whole depends, is being altered to an unparalleled degree across all spatial scales,” the report noted. “Biodiversity—the diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems—is declining faster than at any time in human history.”

There are numerous scientific red flags. A 2022 study showed that the current rate of ocean warming could bring the greatest extinction of sea life in 250 million years. And it’s also clear that the loss of biodiversity and the climate crisis must be addressed hand-in-hand, as a 2021 report from the United Nations noted. Global warming is an overarching threat to nearly all species, and if biodiversity collapses, some of the planet’s best natural mechanisms to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and slow atmospheric heating will fail, the report explained.

Every Ton of CO2 Brings New Misery, and Not Just to Polar Bears

Research shows that Human activities are responsible for declining polar bear habitat and most of the damage to the rest of the life-sustaining web of ecosystems and species, and those activities often intensify each other’s effects. Land impacts like urban development and industrialized agriculture strip away carbon-sequestering vegetation and destroy habitat. Greenhouse gas emissions are making parts of the ocean too hot for many fish and melting the snow that sustains wolverines high in the Rocky Mountains of the western United States.

Research like the new study could provide scientific support to get more protection for the few remaining wolverines that depend on a deep mountain snowpack for denning, said Matthew Bishop, the Rocky Mountains office director with the Western Environmental Law Center. 

Climate models and observations show most of those snowfields retreating rapidly, making it crucial to protect any remaining pockets as climate refugia. But despite the models, the federal government claims it doesn’t know enough about how wolverines will respond to the shrinking snow to act on the science, Bishop said. 

“We know they are snow dependent species and that snow is going to be gone,” he said. “That’s enough and the court agrees, but the agencies keep coming back and saying they need to know more.” At some point soon, it’s going to be too late for wolverines and many other climate-sensitive species, he added. 

“When in doubt, any kind of uncertainty should err on the side of protection for the species, and doing what we can to limit all the non-climate stressors,” he said. “Let’s give them a chance to make it. Ultimately, it may not matter. But let’s do everything we can in our power to make sure they stay on the landscape.”

For polar bears, like for wolverines, that means protecting parts of their habitat that might persist for the next 50 or 100 years, even if the outcome beyond that is uncertain. But most of all, as last week’s paper in Science emphasized, it means cutting greenhouse gas emissions immediately and quickly. 

Pairing a biologist and a climatologist for the new paper on how greenhouse gas emissions affect polar bears seemed a logical choice, said co-author Ceclilia Bitz, a scientist at the University of Washington, who studies the connection between climate, sea ice and wildlife habitat.

Focusing on the direct link between greenhouse gas emissions and polar bear habitat makes the paper policy relevant and helps paint a clear picture of the impacts of sea ice decline, she said.

“We’re saying that every additional 23 gigatons of CO2 that we emit as a world causes an additional day that the polar bears have to fast,” she said. “Currently we’re emitting about 50 gigatons per year as a planet.”

That increases the time polar bears go without eating by more than a day each year in each of their populations, she said.

“That’s huge. Imagine if you’re already hungry, going an extra day without eating,” she said. “It’s relentless. As humans, we’re emitting so much CO2 that it’s having these really perceptible and serious consequences.”

Amstrup said the new study gives people one more reference point for understanding the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Polar bears depend on thresholds,” he said. “If they fast for over a certain amount of days, they simply can’t survive.”

The findings again show how closely linked the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are, Siegel added. “They cannot be separated,” she said. “The survival of all life on Earth, including ours, is at stake.”

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This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Peter Kyne sits down at his desk to write a eulogy for a fish he’s never met. It’s summer 2019. No scientist has seen signs of the critically endangered Rhynchobatus cooki, or clown wedgefish, since a dead one turned up at a fish market in 1996. Kyne, a conservation biologist at Charles Darwin University in Australia who studies wedgefish, has worked only with preserved specimens of the spotted sea creature. “This thing’s dust,” Kyne thinks, feeling defeated as he writes the somber news in a draft assessment of the global conservation status of wedgefish species for the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Wedgefish are a type of ray. They look like sharks that swam head first into a panini press, with flat faces and sharkish tails. The clown wedgefish is the runt of the 11 known species, about as long as a baseball bat. Along with their cousins, sawfish and guitarfish, wedgefish are among the most endangered animals in the sea, thanks largely to fishers who supply the shark fin trade. Fetching up to US $1,000 per kilogram, wedgefish’s spiny fin meat is some of the most highly sought in this ecocidal economy because it’s perfect for shark fin soup, a delicacy favored by wealthy East Asian seafood connoisseurs.

Wedgefish’s pointy snouts are easily snagged in fishing nets, so they’re also a frequent, unintended casualty of other commercial fisheries. This double whammy has led to the near eradication of wedgefish worldwide. Nine species are critically endangered. Kyne is about to add an extinction to that list.

Just hours before submitting the final assessment, though, Kyne learns that a dead clown wedgefish has just shown up at a Singapore fish market. Relieved, he and his colleagues revise their work. But the swift action necessary to help the species won’t be possible without more information. The scientists don’t even know the critter’s habitat requirements. Somehow, they must find out where the last holdouts live.

Kyne mentions the problem in a Zoom meeting about wedgefish conservation. Luckily for Kyne, his friend Matthew McDavitt is among the attendees. McDavitt is an amateur academic well versed in an emerging research methodology that turns the virtual sea of social media posts into information scientists can use to track the world’s rarest species. His curiosity ignited, McDavitt gets to work. Kyne doesn’t know it yet, but the hunt for the clown wedgefish is on.

Matthew McDavitt happens to be an expert on wedgefish and their relatives, but he’s no scientist. He grew obsessed with sawfish as a kid, when the ray’s long, toothy snout hooked his curiosity. At university, McDavitt studied archaeology and became fascinated with ancient cultural ties to sawfish when he learned the Aztecs buried sawfish snouts under their temples and rendered the fish’s likeness in paintings.

After graduating, he wanted to study the sawfish’s importance to other cultures around the world. But sawfish-adjacent ethnozoologist jobs weren’t exactly falling from the sky, so McDavitt pivoted to a legal career. He earned his law degree and became a research attorney, ghostwriting trial briefs and law articles for other attorneys, judges, and mediators, but he never gave up his passion. He started obsessing over guitarfish and wedgefish, too, cramming his marine studies into what little free time he had, sometimes unable to touch them for months. “I do it on breaks. I put in the time when I can,” he says. “I do it on weekends sometimes.”

In the early 2000s, as the internet gained traction and social media began its rise, McDavitt mined a treasure trove of information about wedgefish and sawfish—fishing-trip photos, sightings, ancient art, whatever he could find. Over two decades, he compiled thousands of pictures and posts about various species and stored them on his computer.

At first, McDavitt served only his own curiosity about different cultures’ connections to his favorite fish. But along the way, as he contacted ecologists who studied sharks and rays to ask questions and share his findings, he discovered species in locations where they hadn’t been formally recorded before. In some cases, he found what his new ecologist friends suspected were entirely new species. “I’ll often get into work and there, in my inbox, there’s something else he’s found,” says Kyne, who met McDavitt at a sawfish conservation workshop. “I’m like, Matt, how do you do this?” McDavitt began to realize his ethnozoological research could be used to study and protect imperiled marine animals.

McDavitt was practicing what is now known as iEcology, which relies on online public data sources to study the natural world. Scientists can download thousands of records of the species they’re studying without setting foot in the field. “It’s a huge amount of data,” says Ivan Jarić, a professor at Université Paris-Saclay in France and one of iEcology’s most devout advocates. “It is, in many cases, freely available, so it’s easy and cheap to obtain it.”

Many social media posts come tagged with dates and locations, allowing scientists to track animals through space and time to study movement patterns, interspecies behavior, and the abundance and spread of invasive or endangered species. One study used pictures and videos from Italian tourists to track blue sharks along the Mediterranean coast over a decade. Another used Facebook and Instagram posts to count whales on their annual migrations along the coast of Portugal. Scientists in Hawai‘i have used tourist photos to monitor critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal populations.

iEcology’s origins trace back to at least 2011, but the method began to gain traction in the past several years, as Jarić and other scientists proselytized its advantages. It got another boost in 2020, when the pandemic scuttled fieldwork for many scientists, as iEcology offered them a remote way to continue their research. “It basically saved two years of my career,” says Valerio Sbragaglia, a behavioral ecologist at the Spanish National Research Council’s Institute of Marine Science, who spent the COVID-19 lockdown using amateur angler videos to monitor the spread of an invasive grouper species as it pushed north through a warming Mediterranean Sea.

There are other advantages, too. Field studies can be a constant game of catch-up, where data may become outdated before ecologists can publish their analyses. But iEcology allows them to monitor animals in near real time. These tools also make ecological surveys more accessible to scientists who can’t secure funding for expensive field trips. In Brazil, for instance, researchers used YouTube videos to find examples of people releasing pet fish into wild waterways, where they multiplied and became invasive. “For a developing country,” Sbragaglia says, “it’s a first source of information that can support future research.”

McDavitt’s iEcology skills have earned him a reputation among marine ecologists as a sort of super citizen scientist. His research has been cited in scientific papers detailing the illegal shark fin trade, and he has published his own research on the importance of sawfish to Indigenous peoples in Australia. McDavitt’s work was cited numerous times in a 2007 proposal that convinced the governing body behind the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, to restrict the trade of seven species of endangered sawfish. “I’m good at finding weird things,” he says.

McDavitt begins his search for the clown wedgefish shortly after his 2019 Zoom meeting with Kyne. The first thing he does is create a methodology for sifting through social media posts. The known clown wedgefish sightings are all at fish markets in either Jakarta or Singapore. McDavitt figures the creatures must live somewhere between the two places, a vast stretch of sea dotted with thousands of islands, occupied by millions of people.

With this in mind, McDavitt compiles a list of about 25 common names for wedgefish from the local Indonesian, Chinese, and Malay dialects spoken across the western Indonesian archipelago. He targets the islands lining the coasts of Sumatra and Borneo, sometimes narrowing his queries to individual towns and villages he finds on Google Maps. His searches produce thousands of posts, many by local subsistence fishers showing off their catches. Dozens include wedgefish, but they’re all the wrong species. “I’m just going through picture after picture after picture, and most of it is, of course, not useful to me,” McDavitt says.

In August, several weeks after Kyne almost wrote off the clown wedgefish, McDavitt hunches over a desk buried in teetering piles of legal paperwork, scrolling through Facebook posts. He pauses on yet another wedgefish photo. “It looked weird,” McDavitt says. The picture, from a 2015 post, shows a somber young Indonesian man hefting a small, flat fish. The white-edged fins and playful polka dots are unmistakable. McDavitt has found the clown wedgefish.

He jumps up from his desk and shouts for his wife. Then he emails Kyne, who has no idea what his friend has been up to until he receives the message. “If it was in the morning, I would’ve had coffee. If it was late at night, I would’ve had red wine. In either case, I probably did spit some out,” Kyne remembers.

The photo comes from Lingga Island, part of a cluster of islands wedged between Sumatra, Singapore, and Borneo. Kyne hurries to apply for grants to fund a full field study of the area. McDavitt keeps combing the web. Over the next few months, he finds five more photos of clown wedgefish from local fishers; some pictures are only a few weeks old. He and Kyne map their findings, establishing for the first time in Western science the clown wedgefish’s range, and publish their work in 2020.

Kyne also taps Charles Darwin University PhD candidate Benaya Meitasari Simeon, who’s spent years researching other wedgefish species, to spearhead the study’s local initiatives. Simeon grew up eating wedgefish, a traditional Indonesian food. Now she’s vowed to protect them; she even sports a wedgefish tattoo on one arm. Simeon musters a team of students and locals to hang illustrated wedgefish guides—scientific wanted posters—in areas where the fish has shown up on Facebook, to help local fishers identify clown wedgefish in their catch and report sightings.

A big part of Simeon’s job is convincing locals to participate in the project. Some are wary of conservationists because they fear new fishing restrictions could harm their livelihoods. The key, Simeon says, is explaining to fishers that “if it’s gone, it’s gone forever and your kids cannot see it anymore.” Her efforts pay off: her network reports around 10 clown wedgefish catches. All are dead.

In early 2023, Simeon travels from her home in Jakarta to a Sumatran hotel room where her colleagues have a juvenile clown wedgefish for her to inspect. She takes the palm-sized spotted carcass into the hotel bathroom for a closer look. She cries as she touches it. “I saw hope,” she says.

As popular platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram become major sources of research material, scientists must grapple with new challenges. Even experts can misidentify species in amateur photos when they can’t measure, touch, or see the creature for themselves. Researchers must meticulously review and confirm the records they’ve gathered to avoid false identifications. Some have been less thorough than others.

Last year, a group of European scientists published a paper claiming to have found the first record of a young goblin shark in the Mediterranean, a deep-sea species with a face straight out of a Ridley Scott sci-fi flick. They based their conclusion on a photo taken on a Mediterranean beach. But some experts noticed that the juvenile “shark” appeared to be missing a gill and was strangely rigid for a dead fish. McDavitt spotted the fraud immediately. The proof was on his living room shelf: a plastic goblin shark toy that matched the supposed animal in the picture. The authors retracted their paper after McDavitt and others raised concerns.

Scientists using social media data to study species that have been nearly eradicated by poaching run the risk of exposing those animals to further harm. “If it’s a very rare species, you don’t want to publicize the location where the species can be found because of potential misuse,” Jarić says. And the research raises a familiar ethical conundrum. In a social media–saturated world where personal privacy is itself endangered, how do you ethically scrape pictures and videos provided by the masses without their consent? For now, scientists manage this by anonymizing posts, blurring profile photos, and removing usernames.

And there is always the prospect of misinformation and falsehoods making it into data sets. Artificial intelligence (AI) may prove a complicated partner in this regard. Researchers like Sbragaglia have recruited coders to develop machine-learning models for disseminating massive arrays of data about a specific species. They hope these AI models will pull, in a matter of hours, databases of pictures and videos that the McDavitts of the world would need months to compile. But with the alarming advance of artificially generated images, AI could also hinder scientists’ ability to tell real pictures from fake ones. “This is terrifying,” Sbragaglia says. “But I think for the moment, it’s far away.”

On a windy day in June 2023, Kyne dives into the turquoise waters off the coast of Singkep Island, just south of the location where McDavitt discovered the first clown wedgefish post in 2019. Jungle-clad mountains loom in the distance. Palm trees lean drunkenly over white sand beaches. Simeon and other scientists watch from the boat as Kyne disappears into the depths, clutching an empty one-liter bottle. Fleets of commercial fishing boats dot the surrounding sea, underscoring the urgency of the task.

Kyne and Simeon are here to collect samples for an eDNA study, supported by three years of funding that the Save Our Seas Foundation supplied for the wedgefish search, thanks in large part to McDavitt’s findings. When a creature swims through the water, it sheds genetic material that can reveal its presence once water samples taken from that area are analyzed. When the survey results are back in six months to a year, the scientists hope they can zero in on where clown wedgefish are hiding. Ultimately, they hope to convince the Indonesian government to enact laws that specifically protect the species. They have some traction: officials have already sought Simeon’s advice on where to implement stricter protections for endangered marine animals.

As Kyne swims toward the ocean floor, the water grows thick with debris. He can barely see the bottle in his hand when he reaches the sandy bottom, unscrews the lid, and fills it with seawater that he hopes will contain the next clue in his team’s long quest. The clown wedgefish may remain a shrinking target in a murky sea, and Kyne has yet to see one alive. But now, as he caps the bottle and swims for the surface, he’s confident the species is still hanging on, somewhere beyond the silt and trash. McDavitt keeps finding evidence of the fish on Facebook, including several specimens from a new location on the Sumatran coast. All the team has to do is find them IRL—in real life.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Australia is currently home to the only living species of their endangered and iconic koalas, but there once were multiple species spread across the continent. Now, the discovery of another marsupial ancient relative is helping scientists fill in a 30 million year evolutionary gap. The findings are detailed in a study published September 4 in the journal Scientific Reports.

[Related: With bulging eyes and a killer smile, this sabertooth was an absolute nightmare.]

In 2014 and 2020, study co-author Arthur Crichton, a PhD student at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, found fossil teeth of the new species, named Lumakoala blackae, at the Pwerte Marnte Marnte fossil site in central Australia. The teeth are believed to be roughly 25 million years old. 

“Our computer analysis of its evolutionary relationships indicates that Lumakoala is a member of the koala family (Phascolarctidae) or a close relative, but it also resembles several much older fossil marsupials called Thylacotinga and Chulpasia from the 55 million-year-old Tingamarra site in northeastern Australia,” Crichton said in a statement. 

According to Chrichton, it was previously suggested that the enigmatic Thylacotinga and Chulpasia may have been more closely related to marsupials from South America.  This new discovery of Lumakoala suggests that they could actually be early relatives of herbivorous Australian marsupials including possums, kangaroos, koalas, and wombats.

“This group (Diprotodontia) is extremely diverse today, but nothing is known about the first half of their evolution due to a long gap in the fossil record,” said Crichton. 

If the study’s hypothesis is correct, the diprotodontian fossil record would be aged back by another 30 million years. Additionally, wombats, kangaroos, koalas and possums split off from other marsupials between roughly 65 million and 50 million years ago.

“These Tingamarran marsupials are less mysterious than we thought, and now appear to be ancient relatives of younger, more familiar groups like koalas,” Robin Beck, study co-author and evolutionary biologist at the University of Salford in England, said in a statement. “It shows how finding new fossils like Lumakoala, even if only a few teeth, can revolutionize our understanding of the history of life on Earth.” 

The study also raises some new questions, including whether these relatives of herbivorous marsupials in Australia once lived in Antarctica and South America. According to Beck, some South American fossils look very similar to the marsupials found at the Tingamarra site. 

[Related: This 500-pound Australian marsupial had feet made for walkin.’]

It also reports that two other types of koala called Madakoala and Nimiokoala lived alongside Lumakoala and filled in different ecological niches in the forests that flourished in central Australia about 25 million years ago. The late Oligocene (about 23–25 million years ago) was  “kind of the koala heyday,” according to the Flinders University paleontologist and study co-author Gavin Prideaux.

“Until now, there’s been no record of koalas ever being in the Northern Territory; now there are three different species from a single fossil site,” Prideaux said in a statement. “While we have only one koala species today, we now know there were at least seven from the late Oligocene – along with giant koala-like marsupials called ilariids.”  

At this time, iliariids were the largest marsupials living in Australia, weighing in at up to 440 pounds. Iliariids lived alongside a strong-toothed wombat relative named Mukupirna fortidentata and a strange possum named Chunia pledgei.

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The mechanics of how athletes like New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones’ are able to throw a perfect spiral or how wide receiver Darius Slayton may extend his elbow to reach for the catch may have ancient roots. These skills may have first evolved as a natural braking system for our primate ancestors who simply needed a safe way to get out of trees. 

[Related: Chilly climates may have forged stronger social bonds in some primates.]

In a study published September 6 in the journal Royal Society Open Science, a team from Dartmouth found that apes and early human ancestors likely evolved free-moving shoulders and flexible elbows as a way to slow their descent from trees while gravity pulled down on their bodies. Versatile appendages that could throw spears for hunting and defense, climb trees, and gather food were essential for survival—especially as early humans left forests for grassy savannas.

“There’s a lot we still don’t understand about the origin of apes,” study co-author and Dartmouth University paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva tells PopSci. “There was a common ancestor to monkeys and apes that lived about 25 to 30 million years ago and then there was a divergence and now we have these two different kinds of primates. But why the convergence?”

One of the possibilities is different ecological, physical, and behavioral niches related to primate size. The first apes evolved about 20 million years ago and are bigger than other early primates. Getting out of a tree presented a new set of challenges for these bigger primates, since typically the bigger the animal, the greater the risk of injury from a fall. Natural selection would have eventually favored anatomies that allowed early apes to safely descend from the trees. 

In the study, the team used sports-analysis and statistical software to compare videos and still-frames of chimpanzees and small monkeys called mangabeys climbing in the wild. They saw that mangabeys and chimps climbed up the trees similarly, with their shoulders and elbows mostly bent close to the body. 

However, when it was time to climb down, chimpanzees extended their arms above their heads to hold onto branches, similar to how a person going down a ladder, as their weight pulls them down. This process called “downcliming” appears to be significant in the evolution of apes and early humans.

“Our study broaches the idea of downclimbing as an undervalued, yet incredibly important factor in the diverging anatomical differences between monkeys and apes that would eventually manifest in humans,” study co-author and Dartmouth graduate student Luke Fannin said in a statement. 

[Related: How to hike downhill safely and comfortably.]

These flexible shoulders and elbows passed on from ancestral apes would have allowed early humans such as Australopithecus to climb into trees at night for safety and then come down in the daylight unscathed. Once Homo erectus could use fire to protect itself at night, the human form took on the broader shoulders capable of a 90-degree twist that worked with free moving shoulders and elbows to make human ancestors excellent shots with a spear for hunting.

“The idea that downclimbing could be such a strong evolutionary force as to change the nature of how our bones and range of motion evolved was very fascinating,” study co-author Mary Joy tells PopSci. “Not a lot of the field really thinks about downclimbing as its own motion with implications on natural selection.” Joy brought her experience as a trail runner and athlete to the study to bring in a different perspective to looking at biological sciences and evolution. 

The team also used skeletal collections from Harvard University to study the anatomical structure of chimpanzee arm alongside remains in The Ohio State University’s collections to study  mangabey arms. Chimpanzees are more like humans than mangabeys and have a shallow ball-and-socket shoulder that allows for a greater range of movement. Chimps can also fully extend their arms due to a reduced length of bone located just behind the elbow called the olecranon process.

Mangabeys and other monkeys are built more like four-legged animals like cats and dogs, with deep pear-shaped shoulder sockets and elbows that have a protruding olecranon process, which makes the joint look like the letter L. These joints are more stable, but they have a more limited range of movement and flexibility.

The analysis showed that the angle of a chimp’s shoulders was 14 degrees greater during their descent than when scaling a tree. The arm also extended outward at the elbow 34 degrees more when climbing down a tree than climbing up. The angles at which the mangabeys positioned their shoulders and elbows were only about four degrees or less when ascending a tree versus downclimbing.

“If cats could talk, they would tell you that climbing down is trickier than climbing up and many human rock climbers would agree. But the question is why is it so hard,” study co-author and 

anthropologist and evolutionary biologist Nathaniel Dominy said in a statement. “The reason is that you’re not only resisting the pull of gravity, but you also have to decelerate. 

[Related: Lucy, our ancient human ancestor, was super buff.]

According to DeSilva, the question of “how did we not see this before” in regards to downclimbing was one of the most surprising parts of the study. The fresh eyes of both Joy and graduate student Fannin were crucial in uncovering one of evolution’s hidden wonders. 

“Our evolutionary ancestry is this wonderful example of how evolution just sort of tinkers and tweaks pre-existing forms,” says DeSilva. “Our bodies are bodies that have been just tweaked and modified through natural selection over millions of years, to give us the bodies we have now, but there are all these wonderful echoes of our ancestry in our bodies today.”

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New Zealand’s quirky and critically endangered kākāpō have begun to return to the country’s mainland for the first time in almost 40 years. Kākāpōs are the heaviest parrots in the world, with some exceeding six pounds, and they have a lifespan of up to 90 years. Like penguins and ostriches, they can’t fly, so kākāpōs climb trees and forage on the ground for nuts and seeds to eat.  

[Related: A flightless parrot is returning to mainland New Zealand after a 40-year absence.]

The big, green, nocturnal birds used to be widespread across New Zealand, but were hunted to near extinction and threatened by non native predators like cats and dogs. Popular Science magazine described these “curious” green birds as already being “doomed to early extermination” all the way back in April 1895. 

The roughly 250 or so individual birds that are left are managed by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC) and the South Island’s Ngāi Tahu tribe on five islands that are free of predators. Now equipped with 21st Century genetic science, research platform Genomics Aotearoa is funding high-quality genetic sequencing of almost the entire kākāpō population. The results of an early study of how these full genomic sequences will help manage the health of these iconic birds was published August 28 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Establishing genetic sequencing methods is not expected to only play a part in kākāpō survival, but other endangered species throughout New Zealand and the rest of the world. Conservation genomics is part of a growing trend in the field. In 2019, a team from San Diego and the University of Hawaii used advanced DNA sequencing technology to create a nearly complete genome assembly for Hawaii’s only remaining lineage of the crow family ‘alalā (Corvus hawaiiensis). The sequencing gave conservationists critical clues into the disease susceptibility, population-level diversity, and genetic load of the alalā to better inform their policies.

The same information could help the kākāpō thrive. This work over the last year has produced two very significant outcomes. First, it has given the team an in-depth understanding of kākāpō biology. It has also produced a high-quality code and reusable pipeline, which allows other researchers to rapidly use these methods in their own work and advanced New Zealand’s genomic capability.

“Kākāpō suffer from disease and low reproductive output, so by understanding the genetic reasons for these problems, we can now help mitigate them,” Andrew Digby, the DOC’s Science Advisor for Kākāpō Recovery, said in a statement. “It gives us the ability to predict things like kākāpō chick growth and susceptibility to disease, which changes our on-the-ground management practices and will help improve survival rates.”

[Related: Eavesdropping on pink river dolphins could help save them.]

Diby added that the Kakapo125+ project is another example of how genetic data can assist population growth. The 125 refers to the number of kākāpō living when the project began in 2015. “The novel genetic and machine learning tools developed can be applied to improve the productivity and survival of other taonga under conservation management,” said Digby.

The sequencing technique was developed by University of Otago microbial scientist Joseph Guhlin and an international team of researchers and could have impacts outside of New Zealand. 

“Using technology created by Google, we have achieved what is likely the highest quality variant dataset for any endangered species in the world,” said Guhlin. “This dataset is made available, through DOC and Ngai Tahu, for future researchers working with kākāpō.”

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For the second year in a row, the Atlantic puffins living on the rocky islands off Maine’s coast had a rebound year for fledgling chicks, all in the face of record warm waters due to climate change. This second consecutive rebound year is welcome news, after 90 percent of nesting puffins failed to raise a single chick in 2021 while the climate change in New England has put this species, and others like humpback whales and the zooplankton at the base of the Gulfs food web, in jeopardy.

[Related: Cyclones can be fatal for seabirds, but not in the way you think.]

The Gulf of Maine and its bays are among the world’s fastest-warming bodies of water. Since the early 1980s, it has warmed about four degrees Fahrenheit, while the global ocean has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the same period of time. The rising heat has affected the fish stocks in the area that puffins and other species rely on. Haddock used to make up a large portion of puffin diets, but populations have fluctuated in recent years, first increasing in 2017 due to federal management to this year showing signs of a decrease. 

However, a small eel-like fish called the sand lance has been abundant this year. The fish are only about four to eight inches long, but are high in fats and make them a great forage fish for seabirds. A 2020 study found that 72 Atlantic Ocean animal species from whales to bluefish to gannets eat sand lances in the waters from Greenland to North Carolina. 

According to the Maine Monitor, the sand lance were less abundant in the region by mid-July, but the puffins were found feasting on a mixture of haddock, hake, and redfish depending upon where they were. Don Lyons, the director of conservation science at National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute, told the Maine Monitor, “I can’t offhand recall such a seamless transition from one fish to another. It tells you a lot about the resourcefulness of puffins and at the same time, it’s a reminder of how much we still don’t know of when and where food is for seabirds, and how fast that all can change.”

Lyons estimated that there are now as many as 3,000 puffins in Maine, what he calls a stable population. In 2022, about two-thirds of the puffins fledged—or developed wing feathers that are large enough for flight. While they didn’t reach that number this year, they had a better season than the catastrophic 2021 season despite a rainy and hot summer. The Audubon Society’s Project Puffin has been monitoring the population for 50 years and uses decoys, mirrors, and recordings to attract the birds to suitable nesting sites to raise the next generation of birds.

Maine’s puffin population was once as low as 70 pairs on Matinicus Rock 25 miles off the coast. They were hunted for their feathers and meat in the early 20th Century, but by the 1970’s Audubon conservationists worked to grow puffin colonies in the state, by bringing chicks from Canada to Maine’s Eastern Egg Rock. Puffins still call that tiny rock home, in addition to Seal Island and Petit Manan Island. Live cams keep an eye on them and volunteers and scientists monitor their progress every year.

Currently, Maine’s population are the only breeding Atlantic puffins in the United States. The species lives in areas of the North Atlantic from Maine and Canada eastward to Europe. Iceland, a country well known for its puffins, has seen the puffin populations decline by 70 percent in 30 years largely due to lack of food due to warming oceans.

[Related: Emperor penguins suffer ‘unprecedented’ breeding failure as sea ice disappears.]

While this ability to reproduce despite huge environmental changes does speak to their resiliency as a species, puffins are still at risk of long term dangers from marine heat waves, sea level rise threatening nesting sites, and a loss of food.  

“The problem with climate change is these breeding failures and low breeding productivity years are now becoming chronic,” Bill Sydeman, president and chief scientist of the California-based Farallon Institute, told the AP. “There will be fewer young birds in the population that are able to recruit into the breeding population.”

Some of the ways to help Maine puffin population and other coastal birds in the face of this constant uncertainty include Audubon’s adopt-a-puffin program and advocating for your local seabirds by contacting regional elected officials.

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Weeks before we even think about getting sandbags or boarding up windows to prevent hurricane damage, an underwater evacuation begins. Sharks, sea snakes, and other wildlife will make preparations to escape becoming trapped or hurt as massive storms approach a coast. 

Much of Florida’s aquatic life—including species as diverse as manatees and alligators—know what to do in a storm like Hurricane Idalia. After all, these native animals have had millions more years of practice than us. But those age-old skills will only become more useful as hurricanes become more intense from climate change. 

“Aquatic animals respond to storms for the same reason we do—to avoid injury, death, and the destruction from hurricanes,” says Bradley Strickland, a postdoctoral researcher who studies aquatic animal response to hurricanes and climate change at William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Still, some animals are better equipped to weather or evade the storms than others. And sharks are among the best. 

[Related: Sharks are learning to love coastal cities]

Even when a hurricane is far on the horizon, the atmosphere changes: the barometric pressure drops. “From two weeks out of a hurricane, sharks can actually detect the change and start heading for deeper water,” says Neil Hammerschlag, director of the shark research and conservation program at the University of Miami. The air around a hurricane decreases in pressure as a storm strengthens and wind speeds increase. Sharks can sense that, allowing them to flee long before Florida’s human residents were given mandatory evacuation orders. 

“Similar to the way we use meteorological technologies and observations about the changing wind and temperature before a storm, aquatic animals have ways to sense the approach of a storm,” Strickland says. Sharks use their sensitive inner ears to detect a gathering storm’s pressure changes, he adds. And, because of their incredible swimming abilities (some can swim up to 45 miles per hour), they can quickly escape oncoming storms—that is, if they choose to. 

Smaller shark species and juveniles opt to escape to deeper water to avoid the turbulence near the shore. For them, “staying in shallow water would be like a shark tornado,” Hammerschlag says, because hurricanes can push currents up to 300 feet below the ocean’s surface. For smaller sharks that remain in the shallows, they risk being swept inland.

Yet other larger predators, like tiger sharks that grow up to 14 feet and 1,400 pounds, view hurricanes as an opportunity for the ultimate sea smorgasbord. By tracking tiger sharks during and after Hurricane Irma, Hammerschlag noticed that “not only did they not run away, but they may have been taking advantage of the things that were dying, either birds that got washed into the water or fish and invertebrates that collided with debris.” After the storm, he adds, there were “higher numbers of tiger sharks in the area for about two weeks.”

For aquatic and semi-aquatic animals that can’t ride out the storm or swim beyond its reach, finding shelter may be the superior option for survival. “Sea snakes will seek refuge in volcanic rocks to avoid typhoons,” Strickland says. “Alligators likely hunker down to weather a storm by finding easy to get in and out of places,” he adds. Some smaller gators may get swept away by hurricanes; others might change their foraging patterns altogether to stay safe. 

Other species may be less lucky. After Hurricane Ian struck Florida in 2022, clean-up crews had to remove debris from the holes where burrowing owls live, since the threatened birds can’t claw through the trash on their own, as one wildlife rehabilitation expert told CNN. And when storms shove salty seawater inland, increases in salinity can disturb trees or turtles that dwell in freshwater ecosystems.

Along the coast, graceful manatees, too, have been found in particularly sticky situations post-hurricane. Although weight-wise they are comparable to a tiger shark, speed-wise they are definitely not, cruising up to 15 mph only if they really push it. And try as they might to hunker down before a storm, this doesn’t always work out for them. Instead, they may get swept out of coastal waters by floods. Others, curious to explore new streams, have been found stuck in smaller ponds, forests, or even by roads after post-storm swims through flooded areas. Yet hurricanes rank low on the dangers to manatees, a threatened keystone species in Florida often imperiled by watercraft.

Even if Hurricane Idalia is the first big tempest that a Floridian animal will experience, the odds are good it will take some kind of action. “We see animals evacuating the places they call home in advance of a major storm despite, in some cases, having never experienced a hurricane within their lifetime,” Strickland says. “This shows just how innate it is to protect yourself from a storm by preparing or fleeing compared to just waiting it out.”

This post has been updated. It was originally published on September 28, 2022.

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A newly discovered three-eyed relative is disappointingly unrelated to the eerie three-eyed ravens of Game of Thrones. But this Cambrian-era beast is a relative of today’s insects and boasts some fearsome limbs. The unique fossilized animal was described in a study published August 28 in the journal Current Biology. 

[Related: This ancient ‘mothership’ used probing ‘fingers’ to scrape the ocean floor for prey.]

The animal, scientific name Kylinxia, was found in 520 million year old rocks in a fossil deposit called the Cambrian Chengjiang biota near the town of Chengjiang in southern China. More than 250 species of exceptionally well-preserved fossil organisms have already been described from this location, which gives scientists a glimpse of what was going on in the world’s oceans as they developed. 

Importantly, Kylinxia is filling in some evolutionary gaps in our understanding of the evolution of animals known as arthropods. This phylum of animals includes insects, crabs, shrimp, scorpions, spiders, and centipedes among others. Arthropods have an exoskeleton made of a tough material called chitin that is mineralized with calcium carbonate, as well as a body divided into segments and paired jointed appendages. They are considered some of Earth’s most successful species and over 85 percent of all known animal species are classified as arthropods.

Kylinxia was about the size of a large shrimp, had a pair of limbs that it likely used to catch prey, and a signature trio of eyes on its head. 

“Most of our theories on how the head of arthropods evolved were based on these early-branching species having fewer segments than living species,” Greg Edgecombe, a co-author of the study and arthropod evolution expert at London’s Natural History Museum, said in a statement. “Discovering two previously undetected pairs of legs in Kylinxia suggests that living arthropods inherited a six-segmented head from an ancestor at least 518 million years ago.”

After its initial discovery, Kylinxia was imaged using a CT scanner. The scan revealed that more soft parts of the animals’ anatomy were also buried in the rock. While there are plenty of species of arthropods preserved in the fossil record, most fossils only preserve the hard skeletons. 

[Related: Newly discovered fossils give a whole new meaning to jumbo shrimp.]

“The preservation of the fossil animal is amazing,” study co-author and University of Leicester PhD student Robert O’Flynn said in a statement. “After CT-scanning we can digitally turn it around and literally stare into the face of something that was alive over 500 million years ago. As we spun the animal around, we could see that its head possesses six segments, just as in many living arthropods.”

This new specimen was nearly complete, which enabled the team to identify the six segments that made up its body: the head, a second segment with its grasping limbs, and the other four segments which have a pair of jointed limbs.

“Robert and I were examining the micro-CT data as part of his doctoral thesis in the hope of refining and correcting previous interpretation of head structures in this genus, Kylinxia,” study co-author and Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeobiology paleobiologist Yu Liu said in a statement. “Amazingly, we found that its head is composed of six segments, as in, e.g., insects.”

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A neurosurgeon in Australia pulled a live, three inch-long worm from the brain of a 64-year-old woman in June 2022. The roundworm Ophidascaris robertsi is native to Australia and its larvae were also present in other organs in the patient’s body, including the liver and lungs. This is the first known human case of this parasitic infection and it is described in a case study published in the September 2023 issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

[Related: Rare parasites found in 200 million-year-old reptile poop.]

The patient was first admitted to her local hospital in late January 2021 after experiencing three weeks of diarrhea and abdominal pain, followed by dry cough, night sweats, and fever. By June 2022, she was also experiencing forgetfulness and depression, and was referred to Canberra Hospital. While there, she underwent brain surgery when an MRI revealed some abnormalities.

Neurosurgeon Hari Priya Bandi was performing a biopsy when she used forceps to pull the parasite out of the woman’s brain. She immediately contacted Canberra Hospital infectious diseases physician Sanjaya Senanayake, saying “Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe what I just found in this lady’s brain—and it’s alive and wriggling,” Bandi said, according to The Guardian.

According to the case study, this is the first known human Ophidascaris infection and the first to involve the brain of a mammalian species. These worms are common to carpet pythons and they typically live in a python’s stomach and esophagus. Humans infected with Ophidascaris robertsi larvae would be considered accidental parasite hosts.

“Normally the larvae from the roundworm are found in small mammals and marsupials, which are eaten by the python, allowing the life cycle to complete itself in the snake,” Senanayake, who is also one of the co-authors of the case study, said in a statement. 

The researchers believe that the woman from southeastern New South Wales likely caught the roundworm after collecting Warrigal greens next to a nearby lake where a python had shed the parasite via its feces. The patient used the Warrigal greens for cooking and was probably infected with the parasite directly from touching the native grass or after consuming the greens.

According to the team, this world-first case highlights the danger of zoonotic transmission, or  diseases and infections that pass from animals to humans. This risk is growing as humans and animals start to live more closely together and habitats continue to overlap. 

“There have been about 30 new infections in the world in the last 30 years. Of the emerging infections globally, about 75 percent are zoonotic, meaning there has been transmission from the animal world to the human world. This includes coronaviruses,” Senanayake said. “This Ophidascaris infection does not transmit between people, so it won’t cause a pandemic like SARS, COVID-19, or Ebola. However, the snake and parasite are found in other parts of the world, so it is likely that other cases will be recognised in coming years in other countries.”

[Related: Mind-controlling ‘zombie’ parasites are real.]

The patient was sent home following the surgery with antiparasitic drugs and has not returned to hospital since, but they are monitoring her since this is such a new infection.  

Despite this case being extremely rare and spine-tingling, parasitic infection is actually extremely common. One of the most widespread types is pinworm (Enterobius vermicularis or threadworm), and some estimates say it is present in over one billion people around the world. They are specific to humans and can cause intense itching and are passed from person-to-person.

Two types of hookworm—Necator americanis and Ancylostoma duadonale—are found in soil. Ancylostoma duodenale only lives in Australia typically in more remote communities. These worms typically enter the bloodstream through the feet.

According to Vincent Ho, an associate professor and clinical academic gastroenterologist at Western Sydney University, the best ways to avoid a parasitic infection include avoiding undercooked or raw pork, avoiding swimming or jumping into warm fresh bodies of water, practicing good hand washing, and wearing shoes in rural areas. 

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The Earth’s South Pole is at a climate change crossroads, with Antarctica’s quickly melting ice and expected consistent ocean heat waves. Now, one of its signature species is in trouble. A study published August 24 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment found that some Emperor penguin colonies saw an unprecedented breeding failure in a region of the continent that experienced a total loss of sea ice in 2022.

[Related: The East Antarctic Ice Sheet could raise sea levels 16 feet by 2500.]

Four out of five Emperor penguin colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea on the western side Antarctica did not see any chicks survive to successfully fledge in the spring of 2022. Emperor penguin chicks typically fledge at four months old, when they’ve developed their first set of waterproof feathers. 

All of the colonies in this study have been discovered in the last 14 years using satellite imagery, and there has only been one previous instance of breeding failure among these penguin populations. 

“We have seen the occasional colony have bad sea ice and early break up, but this most unusual thing in this study is that a whole region has had extremely poor sea ice,” Peter Fretwell, a remote sensing expert and environmental scientist with the British Antarctic Survey and co-author of the study, tells PopSci. 

Similarly, the Halley Bay penguin colony, which was not included in this study and lives in a different part of Antarctica, failed to raise any chicks between 2016 and 2019. That failure was also attributed to sea ice loss. 

From April to January, Emperor penguins depend on stable sea ice that is firmly attached to the shore or ‘land-fast’ ice. Once they arrive at their chosen breeding site, penguins will lay eggs during the Antarctic winter (May to June) in the ice. Eggs will hatch after 65 days, but the chicks do not fledge until December to January during Antarctic summer. 

“This year the ice in the Bellingshausen Sea did not form until late June–when the birds should already be on their eggs. It may be that in future this region could be one of the first to become unsuitable breeding habitat,” says Fretwell.

Between 2018 and 2022, 30 percent of the 62 known Emperor penguin colonies living in Antarctica were affected by partial or total sea ice loss. The British Antarctic Survey said that it is difficult to immediately link specific extreme seasons to climate change, but a longer-term drop in sea ice extent is expected based on current climate models.  

[Related: The march of the penguins has a new star: an autonomous robot.]

By early December 2022, the Antarctic sea ice matched the previous all-time low set in 2021. The central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea region saw the worst of it, with 100 percent sea ice loss.

“Right now, in August 2023, the sea ice extent in Antarctica is still far below all previous records for this time of year,” Caroline Holmes, a British Antarctic Survey polar climate scientist who was not involved in the study, said in a statement. “In this period where oceans are freezing up, we’re seeing areas that are still, remarkably, largely ice-free.”

Previously, Emperor penguins have responded to this sea ice loss by moving to a more stable site the next year. However, this strategy won’t work if the loss of sea ice habitat extends to an entire region. 

These populations have also not been subject to large scale hunting or overfishing and other direct interactions with humans, and climate change is considered to be the only major influence on their long-term population changes. More recent efforts to predict Emperor penguin population changes paint a bleak picture, showing that if the present rate of warming persists, more than 90 percent of colonies will be quasi-extinct by the end of this century.

Daniel P. Zitterbart, a physicist by training and an Emperor penguin remote sensing expert from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who was not involved in the study called it a very important and timely investigation. 

“The sad part is we had all been expecting this, but we expected this later. It happened for so many colonies in just one year, just because of changing weather patterns,” Zitterbart tells PopSci. “Peter points out that this is likely due to La Niña and change in wind patterns, but the study can show us how increased extremes can have an immediate impact on those colonies that are further up north.”

As their habitat is expected to shrink over the next century, scientists are unsure if the areas that they are moving to will have enough resources to host all of the penguins coming in. Studies like this one continue to ring the alarm that Antarctica and its wildlife remain vulnerable to extremes.

“Hopefully, this is a one year thing for now and with the weather pattern changing back to El Niño, the sea ice in this location this year and next year will grow back to what it normally is,” says Zitterbart. “But we all know that this year we had the first 6.4 Sigma event, which means that the sea ice in Antarctica is very low.”

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The pointy-snouted and reef dwelling hogfish that dot the Atlantic Ocean between North Carolina and Brazil are known for their color-changing skin. These chameleons of the sea can quickly switch from white to a reddish brown to blend in with reefs, but their skin may be hiding something else.

[Related: Octopus change color as they shift between sleep phases.]

A study published August 21 in the journal Nature Communications looked deeper into the hogfish’s sensory feedback system and found that the fish could be using their skin to help see underwater. They can also use this to take mental photographs of themselves from the inside.

University of North Carolina Wilmington biologist Lori Schweikert was inspired to study this phenomenon after she witnessed it first hand in the Florida Keys. When she saw that a hogfish could continue this camouflage act even after it had died, she wondered if hogfish could detect light using only their skin, versus relying on their eyes and brain. 

In an earlier study, Schweikert and Duke University biologist Sönke Johnsen found that hogfish carry a gene for a light-sensitive protein called opsin that is activated in their skin. This gene is different from the opsin genes that are found in their eyes. Squid, geckos, and other color-changing animals also make light-sensing opsins in their skin, but scientists are unsure how they help the animals change color. One hypothesis is that light-sensing skin helps animals take in their surroundings, but it also could be a way that the animals view themselves. 

In this new study, Schweikert and Johnsen took pieces of skin from different parts of the hogfish’s body and took images of them under a microscope. Up close, each dot of color on the skin is a specialized cell called a chromatophore. These cells have granules of pigment inside them that can be black, yellow, or red.

The movement of these pigment granules changes the skin color. When they are spread out across the cell, darker colors appear. The cell becomes more transparent when they cluster together into a tiny spot. 

Next, the team used a technique called immunolabeling to find the light sensing opsin proteins within the skin. They saw that in hogfish, the opsins aren’t produced in the color-changing chromatophore cells. The opsins actually reside in other cells that are located directly beneath them.

Images taken with a transmission electron microscope showed a previously unknown cell type below the chromatophores that are full of opsin protein.

[Related: Some sea snakes may not be colorblind after all.]

According to Schweikert, the light striking the skin must pass through the pigment-filled chromatophores first before it gets to the light-sensitive layer. She and the team estimate that the opsin molecules in the hogfish are most sensitive to blue light. This is the wavelength of light that the pigment granules in the hogfish absorb best. 

The fish’s light-sensitive opsins are somewhat like an internal roll of Polaroid film, that captures changes in the light and then can filter through the pigment-filled cells when the pigment granules fan out or scrunch up. 

“The animals can literally take a photo of their own skin from the inside,” Johnsen said in a statement. “In a way they can tell the animal what its skin looks like, since it can’t really bend over to look.”

Eyes do more than merely detect light and work to form images, so it’s not enough to say that hogfish skin is like a giant eye. 

“Just to be clear, we’re not arguing that hogfish skin functions like an eye,” Schweikert added in a statement. “We don’t have any evidence to suggest that’s what’s happening in their skin. They appear to be watching their own color change.”

The findings may help researchers develop better sensory feedback techniques for devices that need to fine-tune performance without eyesight or camera feeds, such as robotic limbs and self-driving cars.

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This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. It was published in collaboration with Earth Island Journal.

The floatplane bobs at the dock, its wing tips leaking fuel. I try not to take that as a sign that my trip to Chirikof Island is ill fated. Bad weather, rough seas, geographical isolation—visiting Chirikof is forever an iffy adventure.

A remote island in the Gulf of Alaska, Chirikof is about the size of two Manhattans. It lies roughly 130 kilometers southwest of Kodiak Island, where I am waiting in the largest town, technically a city, named Kodiak. The city is a hub for fishing and hunting, and for tourists who’ve come to see one of the world’s largest land carnivores, the omnivorous brown bears that roam the archipelago. Chirikof has no bears or people, though; it has cattle.

At last count, over 2,000 cows and bulls roam Chirikof, one of many islands within a US wildlife refuge. Depending on whom you ask, the cattle are everything from unwelcome invasive megafauna to rightful heirs of a place this domesticated species has inhabited for 200 years, perhaps more. Whether they stay or go probably comes down to human emotions, not evidence.

Russians brought cattle to Chirikof and other islands in the Kodiak Archipelago to establish an agricultural colony, leaving cows and bulls behind when they sold Alaska to the United States in 1867. But the progenitor of cattle ranching in the archipelago is Jack McCord, an Iowa farm boy and consummate salesman who struck gold in Alaska and landed on Kodiak in the 1920s. He heard about feral cattle grazing Chirikof and other islands, and sensed an opportunity. But once he’d bought the Chirikof herd from a company that held rights to it, he got wind that the federal government was going to declare the cattle wild and assume control of them. McCord went into overdrive.

In 1927, he successfully lobbied the US Congress—with help from politicians in the American West—to create legislation that enshrined the right of privately owned livestock to graze public lands. What McCord set in motion reverberates in US cattle country today, where conflicts over land use have led to armed standoffs and death.

McCord introduced new bulls to balance the herd and inject fresh genes into the pool, but he soon lost control of his cattle. By early 1939, he still had 1,500 feral cattle—too many for him to handle and far too many bulls. Stormy, unpredictable weather deterred most of the hunters McCord turned to for help thinning the herd, though he eventually wrangled five men foolhardy enough to bet against the weather gods. They lost. The expedition failed, precipitated one of McCord’s divorces, and almost killed him. In 1950, he gave up. But his story played out on Chirikof over and over for the next half-century, with various actors making similarly irrational decisions, caught up in the delusion that the frontier would make them rich.

By 1980, the government had created the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska Maritime for short), a federally protected area roughly the size of New Jersey, and charged the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW) with managing it. This meant preserving the natural habitat and dealing with the introduced and invasive species. Foxes? Practically annihilated. Bunnies? Gone. But when it came to cattle?

Alaskans became emotional. “Let’s leave one island in Alaska for the cattle,” Governor Frank Murkowski said in 2003. Thirteen years later, at the behest of his daughter, Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, the US Congress directed the USFW to leave the cattle alone.

So I’d been wondering: what are those cattle up to on Chirikof?

On the surface, Alaska as a whole appears an odd choice for cattle: mountainous, snowy, far from lucrative markets. But we’re here in June, summer solstice 2022, at “peak green,” when the archipelago oozes a lushness I associate with coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. The islands rest closer to the gentle climate of those coasts than to the northern outposts they skirt. So, in the aspirational culture that Alaska has always embraced, why not cattle?

“Why not cattle” is perhaps the mantra of every rancher everywhere, to the detriment of native plants and animals. But Chirikof, in some ways, was more rational rangeland than where many of McCord’s ranching comrades grazed their herds—on Kodiak Island, where cattle provided the gift of brisket to the Kodiak brown bear. Ranchers battled the bears for decades in a one-sided war. From 1953 to 1963, they killed about 200 bears, often from the air with rifles fixed to the top of a plane, sometimes shooting bears far from ranches in areas where cattle roamed unfenced.

Bears and cattle cannot coexist. It was either protect bears or lose them, and on Kodiak, bear advocates pushed hard. Cattle are, in part, the reason the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge exists. Big, charismatic bears outshone the cows and bulls; bear protection prevailed. Likewise, one of the reasons the Alaska Maritime exists—sweeping from the Inside Passage to the Aleutian chain and on up to the islands in the Chukchi Sea—is to protect seabirds and other migratory birds. A cattle-free Chirikof, with its generally flat topography and lack of predators, would offer more quality habitat for burrow-nesting tufted puffins, storm petrels, and other seabirds. And yet, on Chirikof, and a few other islands, cows apparently outshine birds.

The remoteness, physically good for birds, works against them, too: most people can picture a Ferdinand the Bull frolicking through the cotton grass, but not birds building nests. Chirikof is so far from other islands in the archipelago that it’s usually included as an inset on paper maps. A sample sentence for those learning the Alutiiq language states the obvious: Ukamuk (Chirikof) yaqsigtuq (is far from here). At least one Chirikof rancher recommended the island as a penal colony for juvenile delinquents. To get to Chirikof from Kodiak, you need a ship or a floatplane carrying extra fuel for the four-hour round trip. It’s a wonder anyone thought grazing cattle on pasture at the outer edge of a floatplane’s fuel supply was a good idea.

Patrick Saltonstall, a cheerful, fit 57-year-old with a head of tousled gray curls, is an archaeologist with the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak. He’s accompanying photographer Shanna Baker and me to Chirikof—but he’s left us on the dock while he checks in at the veterinarian’s where he has taken his sick dog, a lab named Brewster.

The owners of the floatplane, Jo Murphy and her husband, pilot Rolan Ruoss, are debating next steps, using buckets to catch the fuel seeping from both wing tips. Weather is the variable I had feared; in the North it’s a capricious god, swinging from affable to irascible for reasons unpredictable and unknowable. But the weather is perfect this morning. Now, I’m fearing O-rings.

Our 8:00 a.m. departure ticks by. Baker and I grab empty red plastic jerrycans from a pickup truck and haul them to the dock. The crew empties the fuel from the buckets into the red jugs. This will take a while.

A fuel leak, plus a sick dog: are these omens? But such things are emotional and irrational. I channel my inner engineer: failing O-rings are a common problem, and we’re not in the air, so it’s all good.

Saltonstall returns, minus his usual smile: Brewster has died.

Dammit.

He sighs, shakes his head, and mumbles his bewilderment and sadness. Brewster’s death apparently mystified the vet, too. Baker and I murmur our condolences. We wait in silence awhile, gazing at distant snowy peaks and the occasional seal peeking its head above water. Eventually, we distract Saltonstall by getting him talking about Chirikof.

Cattle alone on an island can ruin it, he says. They’re “pretty much hell on archaeological sites,” grazing vegetation down to nubs, digging into the dirt with their hooves, and, as creatures of habit, stomping along familiar routes, fissuring shorelines so that the earth falls away into the sea. Saltonstall falls silent. Brewster is foremost on his mind. He eventually wanders over to see what’s up with the plane.

I lie on a picnic table in the sun, double-check my pack, think about birds. There is no baseline data for Chirikof prior to the introduction of cattle and foxes. But based on the reality of other islands in the refuge, it has a mix of good bird habitats. Catherine West, an archaeologist at Boston University in Massachusetts, studies Chirikof’s animal life from before the introduction of cows and foxes; she has been telling me that the island was likely once habitat for far more birds than we see today: murres, auklets, puffins, kittiwakes and other gulls, along with ducks and geese.

I flip through my notes to what I scrawled while walking a Kodiak Island trail through Sitka spruce with retired wildlife biologist Larry Van Daele. Van Daele worked for the State of Alaska for 34 years, and once retired, sat for five years on the Alaska Board of Game, which gave him plenty of time to sit through raucous town hall meetings pitting Kodiak locals against USFW officials. Culling ungulates—reindeer and cattle—from islands in the refuge has never gone down well with locals. But change is possible. Van Daele also witnessed the massive cultural shift regarding the bear—from “If it’s brown, it’s down” to it being an economic icon of the island. Now, ursine primacy is on display on the cover of the official visitor guide for the archipelago: a photo of a mother bear, her feet planted in a muddy riverbank, water droplets clinging to her fur, fish blood smearing her nose.

But Chirikof, remember, is different. No bears. Van Daele visited several times for assessments before the refuge eradicated foxes. His first trip, in 1999, followed a long, cold winter. His aerial census counted 600 to 800 live cattle and 200 to 250 dead, their hair and hide in place and less than 30 percent of them scavenged. “The foxes were really looking fat,” he told me, adding that some foxes were living inside the carcasses. The cattle had likely died of starvation. Without predators, they rise and fall with good winters and bad.

The shape of the island summarizes the controversy, Van Daele likes to say—a T-bone steak to ranchers and a teardrop to bird biologists and Indigenous people who once claimed the island. In 2013, when refuge officials began soliciting public input over what to do with feral animals in the Alaska Maritime, locals reacted negatively during the three-year process. They resentfully recalled animal culls elsewhere and argued to preserve the genetic heritage of the Chirikof cattle. Van Daele, who has been described as “pro-cow,” seems to me, more than anything, resistant to top-down edicts. As a wildlife biologist, he sees the cattle as probably invasive and acknowledges that living free as a cow is costly. An unmanaged herd has too many bulls. Trappers on Chirikof have witnessed up to a dozen bulls at a time pursuing and mounting cows, causing injury, exhaustion, and death, especially to heifers. It’s not unreasonable to imagine a 1,000-kilogram bull crushing a heifer weighing less than half that.

But, as an Alaskan and a former member of the state’s Board of Game, Van Daele chafes at the federal government’s control. Senator Murkowski, after all, was following the lead of her constituents, at least the most vocal of them, when she pushed to leave the cattle free to roam. Once Congress acted, Van Daele told me, “why not find the money, spend the money, and manage the herd in a way that allows them to continue to be a unique variety, whatever it is?” “Whatever it is” turns out to be not much at all.

Finally, Ruoss beckons us to the plane, a de Havilland Canada Beaver, a heroically hard-working animal, well adapted for wandering the bush of a remote coast. He has solved the leaking problem by carrying extra fuel onboard in jerrycans, leaving the wing tips empty. At 12:36 p.m., we take off for Chirikof.

Imagine Fred Rogers as a bush pilot in Alaska. That’s Ruoss: reassuring, unflappable, and keen to share his archipelago neighborhood. By the time we’re angling up off the water, my angst—over portents of dead dog and dripping fuel—has evaporated.

A transplant from Seattle, Washington, Ruoss was a herring spotter as a young pilot in 1979. Today, he mostly transports hunters, bear-viewers, and scientists conducting fieldwork. He takes goat hunters to remote clifftops, for example, sussing out the terrain and counting to around seven as he flies over a lake at 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour) to determine if the watery landing strip is long enough for the Beaver.

From above, our world is equal parts land and water. We fly over carpets of lupine and pushki (cow parsnip), and, on Sitkinak Island, only 15 kilometers south of Kodiak Island, a cattle herd managed by a private company with a grazing lease. Ruoss and Saltonstall point out landmarks: Refuge Rock, where Alutiiq people once waited out raids by neighboring tribes but couldn’t repel an attack from Russian cannons; a 4,500-year-old archaeology site with long slate bayonets; kilns where Russians baked bricks for export to California; an estuary where a tsunami destroyed a cannery; the village of Russian Harbor, abandoned in the 1930s. “People were [living] in every bay” in the archipelago, Ruoss says. He pulls a book about local plant life from under his seat and flips through it before handing it over the seat to me.

Today, the only people we see are in boats, fishing for Dungeness crab and salmon. We fly over Tugidak Island, where Ruoss and Murphy have a cabin. The next landmass will be Chirikof. We have another 25 minutes to go, with only whitecaps below.

For thousands of years, the Alutiiq routinely navigated this rough sea around their home on Chirikof, where they wove beach rye and collected amber and hunted sea lions, paddling qayat—kayaks. Fog was a hazard; it descends rapidly here, like a ghostly footstep. When Alutiiq paddlers set off from Chirikof, they would tie a bull kelp rope to shore as a guide back to safety if mist suddenly blocked their vision.

As we angle toward Chirikof, sure enough, a mist begins to form. But like the leaking fuel or Brewster’s death, it foreshadows nothing. Below us, as the haze dissipates, the island gleams green, a swath of velveteen shaped, to my mind, like nothing more symbolic than the webbed foot of a goose. A bunch of spooked cows gallop before us as we descend over the northeast side. Ruoss lands on a lake plenty long for a taxiing Beaver.

We toss out our gear and he’s off. We’re the only humans on what appears to be a storybook island—until you kick up fecal dust from a dry cow pie, and then more, and more, and you find yourself stumbling over bovid femurs, ribs, and skulls. Cattle prefer grazing a flat landscape, so stick to the coastline and to the even terrain inland. We tromp northward, flushing sandpipers from the verdant carpet. A peppery bouquet floats on the still air. A cabbagey scent of yarrow dominates whiffs of sedges and grasses, wild geraniums and flag irises, buttercups and chocolate lilies.

Since the end of the last ice age, Chirikof has been mostly tundra-like: no trees, sparse low brush, tall grasses, and boggy. Until the cattle arrived, the island never had large terrestrial mammals, the kind of grazers and browsers that mold a landscape—mammoths, mastodons, deer, caribou. But bovids have fashioned a pastoral landscape that a hiker would recognize in crossing northern England, a place that cows and sheep have kept clear for centuries. The going is easy, but Baker and I struggle to keep pace with the galloping Saltonstall, and we can’t help but stop to gape at bull and cow skeletons splayed across the grasses. We skirt a ground nest with three speckled eggs, barely hidden by the low scrub. We cut across a beach muddled with plastics—ropes, bottles, floats—and reach a giant puddle with indefinable edges, its water meandering toward the sea. “We call it the river Styx,” Saltonstall says. “The one you cross into hell.”

Compared with the Emerald City behind us, the underworld across the Styx is a Kansas dust bowl, a sandy mess that looks as if it could swallow us. Saltonstall tells us about a previous trip when he and his colleagues pulled a cow out of quicksand. Twice. “It charged us—and we’d saved its life!”

Hoof prints scatter from the river. At one time, the river Styx probably supported a small pink salmon run. A team of biologists reported in 2016 that several Chirikof streams host pink and coho, with cameo appearances of rainbow trout and steelhead. This stream is likely fish-free, the erosion too corrosive, a habitat routinely trampled.

Two raptors—jaegers—cavort above us. A smaller bird’s entrails unspool at our feet. On a sandy bluff, Saltonstall pauses to look for artifacts while Baker and I climb down to a beach where hungry cattle probably eat seaweed in winter. We follow a ground squirrel’s tracks up the bluff to its burrow, and at the top meet Saltonstall, who holds out his hands: stone tools. Artifacts sprinkle the surface as if someone has shaken out a tablecloth laden with forks, knives, spoons, and plates—an archaeological site with context ajumble. A lone bovid’s track crosses the sand, winding through shoulder blades, ribs, and the femoral belongings of relatives.

After four hours of hiking, we turn toward the lake where we left our gear. So far on this hike, dead cattle outnumber live ones, dozens to zero. But wait! What’s that? A bull appears on a rise, across a welcome mat of cotton grass. Curious, he jogs down. Baker and Saltonstall peer through viewfinders and click off images. The bull stops several meters away; we stare at each other. He wins. We turn and walk away. When I look back, he’s still paused, watching us, or—I glance around—watching a distant herd running at us.

Again, my calm comrades-in-arms lift their cameras. I lift my iPhone, which shakes because I’m scared. Should I have my hands on the pepper spray I borrowed from Ruoss and Murphy? Closer, closer, closer they thunder, until I can’t tell the difference between my pounding heart and their pounding feet. Then, in sync, the herd turns 90 degrees and gallops out of the frame. The bull lollops away to join them. Their cattle plans take them elsewhere.

Saltonstall has surveyed archaeology sites three times on Chirikof. The first time, in 2005, he carried a gun to hunt the cattle, but his colleagues were also apprehensive about the feral beasts. At least one person I talked to suggested we bring a gun. But Saltonstall says he learned that cattle are cowards: stand your ground, clap, and cows and bulls will run away. But to me, big domesticated herbivores are terrifying. Horses kick and bite, cattle can crush you. The rules of bears—happier without humans around—are easier to parse. I’ve never come close to pepper spraying a bear, but I’m hot on the trigger when it comes to cattle.

The next morning, we set out for the Old Ranch, one of the two homesteads built decades ago on the island and about a three-hour amble one way. Ruoss won’t be picking us up till 3:00 p.m., so we have plenty of time. The cattle path we’re following crosses a field bejeweled with floral ambers, opals, rubies, sapphires, amethysts, and shades of jade. It’s alive with least sandpipers, a shorebird that breeds in northern North America, with the males arriving early, establishing their territories, and building nests for their mates. The least sandpiper population, in general, is in good shape—they certainly flourish here. High-pitched, sped-up laughs split the air. They slice the wind and rush across the velvet expanse. Their flapping wings look impossibly short for supporting flights from their southern wintering grounds, sometimes as far away as Mexico, over 3,000 kilometers distant. They flutter into a tangle of green and vanish.

From a small rise, we spot cattle paths meandering into the distance, forking again and again. Saltonstall announces the presence of the only other mammal on the island. “A battery killer,” he says, raising his camera at an Arctic ground squirrel, and he’s right. They are adorable. They stand on two legs and hold their food in their hands. To us humans, that makes them cute. Pretty soon, we’re all running down the batteries on our cameras and smartphones.

Qanganaq is Alutiiq for ground squirrel. An Alutiiq tailor needed around 100 ground squirrels for one parka, more precious than a sea otter cloak. Some evidence suggests the Alutiiq introduced ground squirrels to Chirikof at least 2,000 years ago, apparently a more rational investment than cattle. Squirrels were easily transported, and the market for skins was local. Still, they were fancy dress, Dehrich Chya, the Alutiiq Museum’s Alutiiq language and living culture manager, told me. Creating a parka—from hunting to sewing to wearing—was an homage to the animals that offered their lives to the Alutiiq. Archaeologist Catherine West and her crew have collected over 20,000 squirrel bones from Chirikof middens, a few marked by tool use and many burned.

Chirikof has been occupied and abandoned periodically—the Alutiiq quit the island, perhaps triggered by a volcanic eruption 4,000 years ago, then came people more related to the Aleuts from the west, then the Alutiiq again. Then, Russian colonizers arrived. The Russians lasted not much longer than the American cattle ranchers who would succeed them. That last, doomed culture crumbled in less than 100 years, pegged to an animal hard to transport, with a market far, far away.

Whether ground squirrels, some populations definitely introduced, should be in the Alaska Maritime is rarely discussed. One reason, probably, is that they are small and cute and easy to anthropomorphize. There is a great body of literature on why we anthropomorphize. Evolutionarily, cognitive archaeologists would argue that once we could anthropomorphize—by at least 40,000 years ago—we became better hunters and eventually herders. We better understood our prey and the animals we domesticated. Whatever the reason, researchers tend to agree that to anthropomorphize is a universal human behavior with profound implications for how we treat animals. We attribute humanness based on animals’ appearance, familiarity, and non-physical traits, such as agreeability and sociality—all factors that will vary somewhat across cultures—and we favor those we humanize.

Ungulates, in general, come across favorably. Add a layer of domestication, and cattle become even more familiar. Cows, especially dairy cows named Daisy, can be sweet and agreeable. Steve Ebbert, a retired USFW wildlife biologist living on the Alaska mainland outside Homer, eradicated foxes, as well as rabbits and marmots, from islands in the refuge. Few objected to eliminating foxes—or even the rabbits and marmots, he told me. Cattle are more complicated. Humans are supposed to take care of them, he said, not shoot them or let them starve and die: they’re for food—and of course, they’re large, and they’re in a lot of storybooks, and they have big eyes. Alaskans, like many US westerners, are also protective of the state’s ranching legacy—cattle ranchers transformed the landscape to a more familiar place for colonizers and created an American story of triumph, leaving out the messy bits.

We spot a herd of mostly cows and calves, picture-book perfect, with chestnut coats and white faces and socks. We edge closer, but they’re wary. They trot away.

Saltonstall, always a few leaps and bounds ahead, spots the Old Ranch—or part of it. A couple of bulls are hanging out near the sagging, severed rooms that cling to a cliff above the sea, refusing their fate. Ghostly fence posts march from the beach across a rolling landscape.

Close by is a wire exclosure, one of five Ebbert and his colleagues set up in 2016. The exclosure—big enough to park a quad—keeps out cattle, allowing an unaggravated patch of land to regenerate. Beach rye taller than cows soars within the fencing. This is what the island looks like without cattle: a haven for ground-nesting birds. The Alutiiq relied on beach rye, weaving the fiber into house thatching, baskets, socks, and other textiles; if they introduced ground squirrels, they knew what they were doing, since the rodents didn’t drastically alter the vegetation the way cattle do.

Saltonstall approaches a shed set back from the eroding cliff.

“Holy cow!” he hollers. No irony. He is peering into the shed.

On the floor, a cow’s head resembles a Halloween mask, horns up, eye sockets facing the door, snout resting close to what looks like a rusted engine. Half the head is bone, half is covered with hide and keratin. Femurs and ribs and backbone scatter the floor, amid bits and bobs of machinery. One day, for reasons unknown, this cow wedged herself into an old shed and died.

Cattle loom large in death, their bodies lingering. Their suffering—whether or not by human hands—is tangible. Through size, domestication, and ubiquity, they take up a disproportionate amount of space physically, and through anthropomorphism, they grab a disproportionate amount of human imagination and emotion. When Frank Murkowski said Alaska should leave one island to the cattle, he probably pictured a happy herd rambling a vast, unfenced pasture—not an island full of bones or heifer-buckling bulls.

Birds are free, but they’re different. They vanish. We rarely witness their suffering, especially the birds we never see at backyard feeders—shorebirds and seabirds. We witness their freedom in fleeting moments, if at all, and when we do see them—gliding across a beach, sipping slime from an intertidal mudflat, resting on a boat rail far from shore—can we name the species? As popular as birding is, the world is full of non-birders. And so, we mistreat them. On Chirikof, where there should be storm petrels, puffins, and terns, there are cattle hoof prints, cattle plops, and cattle bones.

Hustling back to meet the seaplane, we skirt an area thick with cotton grass and ringed by small hills. In 2013, an ornithologist recorded six Aleutian terns and identified one nest with two eggs. In the United States, Aleutian tern populations have crashed by 80 percent in the past few decades. The tern is probably the most imperiled seabird in Alaska. But eradicating foxes, which ate birds’ eggs and babies, probably helped Chirikof’s avian citizens, perhaps most notably the terns. From a distance, we count dozens of birds, shooting up from the grass, swirling around the sky, and fluttering back down to their nests.

Terns may be dipping their webbed toes into a bad situation, but consider the other seabirds shooting their little bodies through the atmosphere, spotting specks of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to raise their young, and yet it’s unsafe for them on this big, lovely island. The outcry over a few hundred feral cattle—a loss that would have absolutely no effect on the species worldwide—seems completely irrational. Emotional. A case of maladaptive anthropomorphism. If a species’ purpose is to proliferate, cattle took advantage of their association with humans and won the genetic lottery.

Back at camp, we haul our gear to the lake. Ruoss arrives slightly early, and while he’s emptying red jerrycans of fuel into the Beaver, we grab tents and packs and haul them into the pontoons. Visibility today is even better than yesterday. I watch the teardrop-shaped island recede, thinking of what more than one scientist told me: when you’re on Chirikof, it’s so isolated, surrounded by whitecaps, that you hope only to get home. But as soon as you leave, you want to go back.

Chirikof cattle are one of many herds people have sprinkled around the world in surprising and questionable places. And cattle have a tendency to go feral. On uninhabited Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean, the French deposited a herd that performed an evolutionary trick in response to the constraints of island living: the size of individuals shrank in the course of 117 years, squashing albatross colonies in the process. In Hong Kong, feral cattle plunder vegetable plots, disturb traffic, and trample the landscape. During the colonization of the Americas and the Caribbean, cattle came to occupy spaces violently emptied of Indigenous people. Herds ran wild—on small islands like Puerto Rico and across expanses in Texas and Panama—pulverizing landscapes that had been cultivated for thousands of years. No question: cattle are problem animals.

A few genetic studies explore the uniqueness of Chirikof cattle. Like freedom, “unique” is a vague word. I sent the studies to a scientist who researches the genetics of hybrid species to confirm my takeaway: the cattle are hybrids, perhaps unusual hybrids, some Brown Swiss ancestry but mostly British Hereford and Russian Yakutian, an endangered breed. The latter are cold tolerant, but no study shows selective forces at play. The cattle are not genetically distinct; they’re a mix of breeds, the way a labradoodle is a mix of a Labrador and a poodle.

Feral cattle graze unusual niches all over the world, and maybe some are precious genetic outliers. But the argument touted by livestock conservancies and locals that we need Chirikof cattle genes as a safeguard against some future fatal cattle disease rings hollow. And if we did, we might plan and prepare: freeze some eggs and sperm.

Cattle live feral lives elsewhere in the Alaska Maritime, too, on islands shared by the refuge and Indigenous owners or, in the case of Sitkinak Island, where a meat company grazes cattle. Why Frank Murkowski singled out Chirikof is puzzling: Alaska will probably always have feral cattle. Chirikof cattle, of use to practically no one, fully residing within a wildlife refuge a federal agency is charged with protecting for birds, with no concept of the human drama swirling around their presence, have their own agenda for keeping themselves alive. Unwittingly, humans are part of the plan.

We created cattle by manipulating their wild cousins, aurochs, in Europe, Asia, and the Sahara beginning over 10,000 years ago. Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, who could never find a place in human society, cattle trotted into societies around the world, making themselves at home on most ranges they encountered. Rosa Ficek, an anthropologist at the University of Puerto Rico who has studied feral cattle, says they generally find their niche. Christopher Columbus brought them on his second voyage to the Caribbean in 1493, and they proliferated, like the kudzu of the feral animal world. “[Cattle are] never fully under the control of human projects,” she says. They’re not “taking orders the way military guys are … They have their own cattle plans.”

The larger question is, Why are we so nervous about losing cattle? In terms of sheer numbers, they’re a successful species. There is just over one cow or bull for every eight people in the world. If numbers translate to likes, we like cows and bulls more than dogs. If estimates are right, the world has 1.5 billion cattle and 700 million dogs. Imagine all the domesticated animals that would become feral if some apocalypse took out humans.

I could say something here about how vital seabirds—as opposed to cattle—are to marine ecosystems and the overall health of the planet. They spread their poop around the oceans, nurturing plankton, coral reefs, and seagrasses, which nurture small plankton-eating fishes, which are eaten by bigger fishes, and so on. Between 1950 and 2010, the world lost some 230 million seabirds, a decline of around 70 percent.

But maybe it’s better to end with conjuring the exquisiteness of seabirds like the Aleutian terns in their breeding plumage, with their white foreheads, black bars that run from black bill to black-capped heads, feathers in shades of grays, white rump and tail, and black legs. Flashy? No. Their breeding plumage is more timeless monochromatic, with the clean, classic lines of a vintage Givenchy design. The Audrey Hepburn of seabirds. They’re so pretty, so elegant, so difficult to appreciate as they flit across a cotton grass meadow. Their dainty bodies aren’t much longer than a typical ruler, from bill to tail, but their wingspans are over double that, and plenty strong to propel them, in spring, from their winter homes in Southeast Asia to Alaska and Siberia.

A good nesting experience, watching their eggs hatch and their chicks fledge, with plenty of fish to eat, will pull Aleutian terns back to the same places again and again and again—like a vacationing family, drawn back to a special island, a place so infused with good memories, they return again and again and again. That’s called fidelity.

Humans understand home, hard work, and family. So, for a moment, think about how Aleutian terns might feel after soaring over the Pacific Ocean for 16,000 kilometers with their compatriots, making pit stops to feed, and finally spotting a familiar place, a place we call Chirikof. They have plans, to breed and nest and lay eggs. The special place? The grassy cover is okay. But, safe nesting spots are hard to find: massive creatures lumber about, and the terns have memories of loss, of squashed eggs, and kicked chicks. It’s sad, isn’t it?

This story was made possible in part by the Fund for Environmental Journalism and the Society of Environmental Journalists.

The post This is what happens when feral cows take over a remote Alaskan island appeared first on Popular Science.

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Ocean temperatures are surging worldwide largely due to human-made climate change and natural El Niño driven patterns. The rise is wreaking havoc on the planet’s coral reefs, however a study published August 22 in the journal Nature Communications found that the coral reefs in one part of the Pacific Ocean can likely adjust to some rises in temperature. This adaptation has the potential to reduce future coral bleaching as the climate continues to change. 

[Related: The heroic effort to save Florida’s coral reef from a historic heatwave.]

“We know that coral reefs can increase their overall thermal tolerance over time by acclimatization, genetic adaptation or shifts in community structure, however we know very little about the rates at which this is occurring,” study co-author and Newcastle University coral reef ecologist James Guest said in a statement. 

The rate at which coral reefs can naturally increase thermal tolerance, and if it can match pace with warming, is largely unknown. So the team started their work by investigating historic mass bleaching events that have occurred since the late 1980s in a remote Pacific coral reef system. 

They focused on a reef system Palau, an island country in the western Pacific Ocean, and found that increases in the heat tolerance of reefs is possible. Reefs here are known as a bevy of biodiversity and provide a barrier from storms. The team used decades of data to create models of multiple future coral bleaching trajectories for Palauan reefs. Each model had a different simulated rate of thermal tolerance enhancement. The team found that if coral heat tolerance continues to rise throughout this century at the most-likely high rate, significant reductions in bleaching impacts are actually possible.

The results affirm the general scientific consensus that the severity of future coral bleaching will depend on reducing carbon emissions. For example, if the commitments of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit future warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, high-frequency bleaching can be fully mitigated at some reefs under low-to-middle emissions scenarios. These bleaching impacts are unavoidable under high emissions scenarios where society continues to rely on fossil fuels.  

Coral communities will need to persist under constant climate change and will likely need to endure progressively more intense and frequent marine heatwaves. The team believes that the observed increase in tolerance suggests that some natural mechanisms, such as genetic adaptation or acclimatization of corals or their symbiotic microalgae, may contribute to the increased heat tolerance. 

[Related: To save coral reefs, color the larvae.]

While this is some positive news for Pacific coral, the resilience comes at a high cost. Adaptations like these can reduce reef diversity and growth, and without cutting future greenhouse gas, the Pacific’s reefs won’t be able to provide the habitat resources and protection from waves that residents depend on.

“Our study indicates the presence of an ecological resilience to climate change, yet also highlights the need to fulfill Paris Agreement commitments to effectively preserve coral reefs,” study co-author and Newcastle University coral reef ecologist Liam Lachs said in a statement. “We quantified a natural increase in coral thermal tolerance over decadal time scales which can be directly compared to the rate of ocean warming. While our work offers a glimmer of hope, it also emphasizes the need for continued action on reducing carbon emissions to mitigate climate change and secure a future for these vital ecosystems.”

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This article was originally featured on The Conversation.

Memes galore centered on the “orca revolution” have inundated the online realm. They gleefully depict orcas launching attacks on boats in the Strait of Gibraltar and off the Shetland coast.

One particularly ingenious image showcases an orca posed as a sickle crossed with a hammer. The cheeky caption reads, “Eat the rich,” a nod to the orcas’ penchant for sinking lavish yachts.

A surfboard-snatching sea otter in Santa Cruz, California has also claimed the media spotlight. Headlines dub her an “adorable outlaw” “at large.”

Memes conjure her in a beret like the one donned by socialist revolutionary Ché Guevara. In one caption, she proclaims, “Accept our existence or expect resistance … an otter world is possible.”

My scholarship centers on animal-human relations through the prism of social justice. As I see it, public glee about wrecked surfboards and yachts hints at a certain flavor of schadenfreude. At a time marked by drastic socioeconomic disparities, white supremacy and environmental degradation, casting these marine mammals as revolutionaries seems like a projection of desires for social justice and habitable ecosystems.

A glimpse into the work of some political scientists, philosophers and animal behavior researchers injects weightiness into this jocular public dialogue. The field of critical animal studies analyzes structures of oppression and power and considers pathways to dismantling them. These scholars’ insights challenge the prevailing view of nonhuman animals as passive victims. They also oppose the widespread assumption that nonhuman animals can’t be political actors.

So while meme lovers project emotions and perspectives onto these particular wild animals, scholars of critical animal studies suggest that nonhuman animals do in fact engage in resistance.

Nonhuman animal protest is everywhere

Are nonhuman animals in a constant state of defiance? I’d answer, undoubtedly, that the answer is yes.

The entire architecture of animal agriculture attests to animals’ unyielding resistance against confinement and death. Cages, corrals, pens and tanks would not exist were it not for animals’ tireless revolt.

Even when hung upside down on conveyor hangars, chickens furiously flap their wings and bite, scratch, peck and defecate on line workers at every stage of the process leading to their deaths.

Until the end, hooked tuna resist, gasping and writhing fiercely on ships’ decks. Hooks, nets and snares would not be necessary if fish allowed themselves to be passively harvested.

If they consented to repeated impregnation, female pigs and cows wouldn’t need to be tethered to “rape racks” to prevent them from struggling to get away.

If they didn’t mind having their infants permanently taken from their sides, dairy cows wouldn’t need to be blinded with hoods so they don’t bite and kick as the calves are removed; they wouldn’t bellow for weeks after each instance. I contend that failure to recognize their bellowing as protest reflects “anthropodenial” – what ethologist Frans de Waal calls the rejection of obvious continuities between human and nonhuman animal behavior, cognition and emotion.

The prevalent view of nonhuman animals remains that of René Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who viewed animals’ actions as purely mechanical, like those of a machine. From this viewpoint, one might dismiss these nonhuman animals’ will to prevail as unintentional or merely instinctual. But political scientist Dinesh Wadiwel argues that “even if their defiance is futile, the will to prefer life over death is a primary act of resistance, perhaps the only act of dissent available to animals who are subject to extreme forms of control.”

Creaturely escape artists

Despite humans’ colossal efforts to repress them, nonhuman animals still manage to escape from slaughterhouses. They also break out of zoos, circuses, aquatic parks, stables and biomedical laboratories. Tilikum, a captive orca at Sea World, famously killed his trainer–an act at least one marine mammal behaviorist characterized as intentional.

Philosopher Fahim Amir suggests that depression among captive animals is likewise a form of emotional rebellion against unbearable conditions, a revolt of the nerves. Dolphins engage in self-harm like thrashing against the tank’s walls or cease to eat and retain their breath until death. Sows whose body-sized cages impede them from turning around to make contact with their piglets repeatedly ram themselves into the metal struts, sometimes succumbing to their injuries.

Critical animal studies scholars contend that all these actions arguably demonstrate nonhuman animals’ yearning for freedom and their aversion to inequity.

As for the marine stars of summer 2023’s memes, fishing gear can entangle and harm orcas. Sea otters were hunted nearly to extinction for their fur. Marine habitats have been degraded by human activities including overfishing, oil spills, plastic, chemical and sonic pollution, and climate change. It’s easy to imagine they might be responding to human actions, including bodily harm and interference with their turf.

What is solidarity with nonhuman animals?

Sharing memes that cheer on wild animals is one thing. But there are more substantive ways to demonstrate solidarity with animals.

Legal scholars support nonhuman animals’ resistance by proposing that their current classification as property should be replaced with that of personhood or beingness.

Nonhuman animals including songbirds, dolphins, elephants, horses, chimpanzees and bears increasingly appear as plaintiffs alleging their subjection to extinction, abuse and other injustices.

Citizenship for nonhuman animals is another pathway to social and political inclusion. It would guarantee the right to appeal arbitrary restrictions of domesticated nonhuman animals’ autonomy. It would also mandate legal duties to protect them from harm.

Everyday deeds can likewise convey solidarity.

Boycotting industries that oppress nonhuman animals by becoming vegan is a powerful action. It is a form of political “counter-conduct,” a term philosopher Michel Foucault uses to describe practices that oppose dominant norms of power and control.

Creating roadside memorials for nonhuman animals killed by motor vehicles encourages people to see them as beings whose lives and deaths matter, rather than mere “roadkill.”

Political scientists recognize that human and nonhuman animals’ struggles against oppression are intertwined. At different moments, the same strategies leveraged against nonhuman animals have cast segments of the human species as “less than human” in order to exploit them.

The category of the human is ever-shifting and ominously exclusive. I argue that no one is safe as long as there is a classification of “animality.” It confers susceptibility to extravagant forms of violence, legally and ethically condoned.

Might an ‘otter world’ be possible?

I believe quips about the marine mammal rebellion reflect awareness that our human interests are entwined with those of nonhuman animals. The desire to achieve sustainable relationships with other species and the natural world feels palpable to me within the memes and media coverage. And it’s happening as human-caused activity makes our shared habitats increasingly unlivable.

Solidarity with nonhuman animals is consistent with democratic principles–for instance, defending the right to well-being and opposing the use of force against innocent subjects. Philosopher Amir recommends extending the idea that there can be no freedom as long as there is still unfreedom beyond the species divide: “While we may not yet fully be able to picture what this may mean, there is no reason we should not begin to imagine it”.

Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond is an Associate Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

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This article is republished from The Conversation.

Armed with scrub brushes, young scuba divers took to the waters of Florida’s Alligator Reef in late July to try to help corals struggling to survive 2023’s extraordinary marine heat wave. They carefully scraped away harmful algae and predators impinging on staghorn fragments, under the supervision and training of interns from Islamorada Conservation and Restoration Education, or I.CARE.

Normally, I.CARE’s volunteer divers would be transplanting corals to waters off the Florida Keys this time of year, as part of a national effort to restore the Florida Reef. But this year, everything is going in reverse.

As water temperatures spiked in the Florida Keys, scientists from universities, coral reef restoration groups and government agencies launched a heroic effort to save the corals. Divers have been in the water every day, collecting thousands of corals from ocean nurseries along the Florida Keys reef tract and moving them to cooler water and into giant tanks on land.

Marine scientist Ken Nedimyer and his team at Reef Renewal USA began moving an entire coral tree nursery from shallow waters off Tavernier to an area 60 feet deep and 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 Celsius) cooler. Even there, temperatures were running about 85 to 86 F (30 C).

Their efforts are part of an emergency response on a scale never before seen in Florida.

The Florida Reef – a nearly 350-mile arc along the Florida Keys that is crucial to fish habitat, coastal storm protection and the local economy – began experiencing record-hot ocean temperatures in June 2023, weeks earlier than expected. The continuing heat has triggered widespread coral bleaching.

While corals can recover from mass bleaching events like this, long periods of high heat can leave them weak and vulnerable to disease that can ultimately kill them.

That’s what scientists and volunteers have been scrambling to avoid.

The heartbeat of the reef

The Florida Reef has struggled for years under the pressure of overfishing, disease, storms and global warming that have decimated its live corals.

A massive coral restoration effort – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mission: Iconic Reef – has been underway since 2019 to restore the reef with transplanted corals, particularly those most resilient to the rising temperatures. But even the hardiest coral transplants are now at risk.

Reef-building corals are the foundation species of shallow tropical waters due to their unique symbiotic relationship with microscopic algae in their tissues.

During the day, these algae photosynthesize, producing both food and oxygen for the coral animal. At night, coral polyps feed on plankton, providing nutrients for their algae. The result of this symbiotic relationship is the coral’s ability to build a calcium carbonate skeleton and reefs that support nearly 25% of all marine life.

Unfortunately, corals are very temperature sensitive, and the extreme ocean heat off South Florida, with some reef areas reaching temperatures in the 90s, has put them under extraordinary stress.

When corals get too hot, they expel their symbiotic algae. The corals appear white – bleached – because their carbonate skeleton shows through their clear tissue that lack any colorful algal cells.

Corals can recover new algal symbionts if water conditions return to normal within a few weeks. However, the increase in global temperatures due to the effects of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities is causing longer and more frequent periods of coral bleaching worldwide, leading to concerns for the future of coral reefs.

A MASH unit for corals

This year, the Florida Keys reached an alert level 2, indicating extreme risk of bleaching, about six weeks earlier than normal.

The early warnings and forecasts from NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Network gave scientists time to begin preparing labs and equipment, track the locations and intensity of the growing marine heat and, importantly, recruit volunteers.

At the Keys Marine Laboratory, scientists and trained volunteers have dropped off thousands of coral fragments collected from heat-threatened offshore nurseries. Director Cindy Lewis described the lab’s giant tanks as looking like “a MASH unit for corals.”

Volunteers there and at other labs across Florida will hand-feed the tiny creatures to keep them alive until the Florida waters cool again and they can be returned to the ocean and eventually transplanted onto the reef.

Protecting corals still in the ocean

I.CARE launched another type of emergency response.

I.CARE co-founder Kylie Smith, a coral reef ecologist and a former student of mine in marine sciences, discovered a few years ago that coral transplants with large amounts of fleshy algae around them were more likely to bleach during times of elevated temperature. Removing that algae may give corals a better chance of survival.

Smith’s group typically works with local dive operators to train recreational divers to assist in transplanting and maintaining coral fragments in an effort to restore the reefs of Islamorada. In summer 2023, I.CARE has been training volunteers, like the young divers from Diving with a Purpose, to remove algae and coral predators, such as coral-eating snails and fireworms, to help boost the corals’ chances of survival.

Monitoring for corals at risk

To help spot corals in trouble, volunteer divers are also being trained as reef observers through Mote Marine Lab’s BleachWatch program.

Scuba divers have long been attracted to the reefs of the Florida Keys for their beauty and accessibility. The lab is training them to recognize bleached, diseased and dead corals of different species and then use an online portal to submit bleach reports across the entire Florida Reef.

The more eyes on the reef, the more accurate the maps showing the areas of greatest bleaching concern.

Rebuilding the reef

While the marine heat wave in the Keys will inevitably kill some corals, many more will survive.

Through careful analysis of the species, genotypes and reef locations experiencing bleaching, scientists and practitioners are learn valuable information as they work to protect and rebuild a more resilient coral reef for the future.

That is what gives hope to Smith, Lewis, Nedimyer and hundreds of others who believe this coral reef is worth saving. Volunteers are crucial to the effort, whether they’re helping with coral reef maintenance, reporting bleaching or raising the awareness of what is at stake if humanity fails to stop warming the planet.

Michael Childress is an associate professor of biological sciences and environmental conservation at Clemson University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Oh, the wonders scientists see in the field. Documenting the encounters can be an integral part of the discovery process, but it can also pull others into the experience. These seven photos and illustrations are the winners of this year’s BMC Ecology and Evolution image competition, which gets submissions from researchers all around the world each year. It includes four categories: “Research in Action,” “Protecting our planet,” “Plants and Fungi,” and “Paleoecology.”

See the full gallery of winners and their stories on the BMC Ecology and Evolution website. And explore last year’s winners here.

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On August 15, a schooner set sail from Plymouth on the southern coast of England to recreate the South America-bound voyage taken by biologist Charles Darwin almost 200 years ago. The Dutch tall ship Oosterschelde began its two year mission as a floating laboratory, where about 200 conservationists and naturalists will gather along the way to take part in a project called Darwin200.

[Related: Let’s talk about Charles Darwin’s sexy theory of selection.]

In 1831, the HMS Beagle set sail from Plymouth with a then 22-year-old Charles Darwin aboard. The five-year journey was primarily intended to explore the coastline of South America and chart its harbors, with Darwin tasked to make scientific observations. He explored Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and the remote areas of the Galápagos Islands. Over the course of the journey that Darwin said was “by far the most important event in my life,” he brought back specimens of more than 1,500 different species and this work influenced his book On the Origin of Species and the theory of evolution.

The Oosterschelde is expected to make the 40,000 nautical mile expedition and hopes to anchor in 32 ports, including all the major ports visited by the Beagle. It expected to make its first landing in the Canary Islands and then cross the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil. It will then follow along South America’s eastern coast, up the west coast, and out to the Galápagos. It will then sail to Australia and New Zealand, before stopping in South Africa, and returning to England.

“I always think it is very much worth reminding ourselves on a daily basis that humans and the rest of the living world share a common origin,” Sarah Darwin, a botanist and the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin told the Associated Press. “Darwin was saying that 160 years ago, that we were related with all other nature. We’re not above it, we are part of nature.” 

The Darwin200 project has been in the works for at least a decade and aims to empower a new generation of exceptional environmental leaders through training some of the world’s top young conservationists ranging from 18 to 25 years-old. 200 young people were selected based on their accomplishments aimed at making the world a better place and will join the voyage at different stages. 

“This is about hope, it’s about [the] future and it’s about changing the world,” leader Stewart McPherson told the AP. 

[Related: Letters From Charles Darwin.]

Today’s naturalists are studying a world a bit different than Darwin. The planet’s birds, reptiles, mammals, fish, and amphibians have already shown population declines of around 68 percent since the 1970s and 10 percent of terrestrial biodiversity is set to decrease by 2050 if new policies are not immediately put in place. In December 2022, 200 countries’ delegates  at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) reached the 30 by 30 deal, vowing to protect 30 percent of the Earth’s wild land and oceans by 2030, thus representing the most significant effort ever to protect the world’s dwindling biodiversity. The deal also provides funding in an effort to save and preserve biodiversity in lower-income countries. Currently, only 17 percent of terrestrial and 10 percent of marine areas are protected through legislation.

Still, more work is needed as some scientists believe current estimates of biodiversity loss are even higher than scientists first expected. One of the goals of Darwin200 is to develop projects to save the species it is studying along the way before it’s too late.

“We all know we’re in the midst of the sixth great extinction with a lot of doom and gloom about the problems facing the environment, climate change and loss of biodiversity,” Famed primatologist and Darwin200 supporter Jane Goodall told Reuters. “This voyage will give many people an opportunity to see there is still time to make change.”

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Over 23 million years ago, an ancient relative of modern seals called Potamotherium valletoni was possibly one of the first pinnipeds to use their whiskers to forage for food and explore their watery world. The findings were published August 17 in the journal Communications Biology and provide more insight into how ancient seals transition from a life lived on land into one mostly underwater. 

[Related: Baby seals are born with a great sense of rhythm.]

The relatives of present day pinnipeds primarily lived on land and in freshwater environments, unlike our recognizable harbor seals which spend most of their time under the waves in saltwater. These early seals had legs for walking instead of flippers, a long tail, and were much longer, and looked a bit like present-day otters. 

“Pinnipeds (seals, sea lions and walruses) diversified tremendously since their ancestors entered the seas,” study co-author Alexandra van der Geer, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands tells PopSci. “All living pinnipeds are very distantly related to Potamotherium, so one could say that in a way all living pinnipeds are equally closely related to Potamotherium. That is why Potamotherium is called a stem (or basal) pinniped.”

Some early species used their forelimbs to explore their surroundings, and prior to this study, scientists were unsure when seals and their relatives began using their whiskers to forage. Whiskers are thick wiry hairs with tons of nerve endings at their base and they’re very sensitive to movement. They can be used to help detect vibrations in the water, making it easier to find fish. 

Van der Geer and colleagues from institutions in Italy, Greece, and Sweden were inspired to look into this area of neurobiology by a visit to Chicago’s Field Museum. There, they studied the museum’s collection of special skull models called endocasts.  “An endocast is the infilling of the inside of the skull, so it fills up the space of the (former) brain. The brain is soft tissue and does not fossilize, but decomposes and disappears after death,” explains van der Geer.

In the study, they used these endocasts to investigate the evolution of whisker-foraging behaviors. They compared the brain structures of Potamotherium with six extinct and 31 living carnivorous mammals, including bears, mustelids, and seal relatives. The team compared the size and structure of a brain region called the coronal gyrus. Some earlier studies suggest that this region is involved in processing signals from seal whiskers. 

[Related: Seals snooze during 20-minute ‘sleeping dives’ to avoid predators.]

They found that Potamotherium had a larger coronal gyrus than both ancient and living land-based mammals that use their forelimbs to forage, such as the Asian small-clawed otter. However, it had a similar sized coronal gyrus to other ancient seal relatives and semiaquatic mammals that use whiskers to explore, including the Eurasian otter. This shows that Potamotherium may have used a combination of forelimbs and whiskers to forage.  

The team was surprised by the convergent evolution they saw in their study. “Not just seals but also some otters, civets and other carnivore mammals that are unrelated to seals, yet use their whiskers for foraging their prey underwater in the same way as seals, developed the same part of the brain,” van der Geer says. 

Additionally, they were surprised to see that coronal gyrus looks the same species with the same behavior, independent of their family ties. The team believes that whisker-based foraging may have already been present in seal relatives before they transitioned to their fully aquatic lifestyles of today. Using whiskers may have helped the Miocene-era creatures adapt to finding food underwater.

The study also shows the value of studying brain endocasts to look into the past. “By looking at the details of the brain endocast one can infer behavior and function in fossil species,” says van der Geer.

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Of all the animals that could be named after Harrison Ford, known for playing one of the world’s most famous fictional archaeologists, it had to be a snake. A newly discovered species of snake from Peru’s Andes Mountains has been named Tachymenoides harrisonfordi for the actor in honor of his conservation work. This honor would surely make famed ophidiophobiac Indiana Jones smile uncomfortably.

[Related: Snakes can actually hear really well.]

According to Conservation International, T. harrisonfordi is a slender snake of only about 16 inches when fully grown, with copper colored scales and amber eyes. The well-camouflaged predator is harmless to humans, though it does have an appetite for lizards and frogs.

While the reptile is not necessarily a formidable foe to humans, finding it proved to be quite a feat. A team of scientists from Peru and the United States took an expedition into Otishi National Park, which is one Earth’s least explored grasslands and is primarily accessible by helicopters (no word if Jock Lindsey was piloting the chopper), to look for new organisms. 

The discovery did not come easy, as the team trekked through a dangerous area watched by drug cartels, crossed alpine swamp, sifted through the tall grass. They eventually found a male snake sunning himself on a mountaintop pass that they named for the iconic actor.

“The snake was a big surprise as we did not expect to find a snake in a high elevational swamp,” expedition leader and Illinois Wesleyan University biologist Edgar Lehr said in a statement.  “Every new species is exciting, and it’s important to name it because only the organisms that are known can be protected. We hope that the publication of the new snake species will create awareness of the importance of biodiversity research and the importance of protecting nature.

Lehr added that it is pretty rare for new species of snakes to be discovered, with the closest related snake named in 1896.

Ford is the vice chairman of Conservation International who has been an advocate for all sorts of animals. Ford has other species of animals named after him–an ant (Pheidole harrisonfordi) and a spider (Calponia harrisonfordi). However, the star told Conservation International that found quick kinship with his new slithery namesake. 

“The snake’s got eyes you can drown in, and he spends most of the day sunning himself by a pool of dirty water—we probably would’ve been friends in the early ‘60s,” Ford said in a statement. 

While it may seem like trivial fun to name a new organism, describing new species like this snake is crucial for scientists to identify which organisms need protection and where. Unfortunately, some species are disappearing from the Earth before they can even be found.

[Related: Stressed rattlesnakes just need a little help from their friends.]

Scientists have described around 1.2 million known species on Earth, which is a fraction of the 8.7 million species that are estimated to exist. At the current rate of extinction, it may be impossible to fully understand and name all of the diverse flora and fauna maintaining Earth’s ecosystems. 

“Only organisms that are known can be protected,” Lehr told Conservation International, adding that hopes this discovery will draw more attention to the extinction crisis facing animals all over the world. 

It’s also crucial for reptiles like T. harrisonfordi, which can be particularly vulnerable. A 2022 report from Conservation International researchers found that one fifth of all reptiles are currently threatened with extinction. 

“In all seriousness, this discovery is humbling. It’s a reminder that there’s still so much to learn about our wild world—and that humans are one small part of an impossibly vast biosphere,” said Ford. “On this planet, all fates are intertwined, and right now, one million species are teetering on the edge of oblivion. We have an existential mandate to mend our broken relationship with nature and protect the places that sustain life.”

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It’s not a bad time to be a bivalve. Oyster reefs are hailed as natural storm barrier protectors, and we’re learning more and more about the genomes of these odd little creatures. A study published August 15 in the journal Nature Communications found that hundreds of shellfish species that humans harvest tend to be more resistant to extinction. 

[Related: Wild oysters are tastiest in months that end with ‘R’—here’s why.]

A team of researchers found that humans exploit about 801 species of bivalves, a figure that adds 720 species to the 81 listed in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ Production Database. The team identified the traits like geographic diversity and adaptability that make them prime for aquaculture—humans tend to harvest bivalves that are large-bodied, occur in shallow waters, occupy a wide geographic area, and can survive in a large range of temperatures. 

Geography and climate adaptability are what make even the most used bivalve species less susceptible to the extinctions that have wiped out species in the past. Species including the Eastern oyster live in a wide range of climates all over the world that include a wide range of temperatures, and this adaptability promotes resilience against some of the natural drivers of extinction. However, increased demand for these species from hungry humans can put them and their ecosystems in danger. 

“We’re fortunate that the species we eat also tend to be more resistant to extinction,” study co-author and Smithsonian Institution research geologist Stewart Edie said in a statement. “But humans can transform the environment in the geologic blink of an eye, and we have to sustainably manage these species so they are available for generations that will come after us.”

Bivalve mollusks have been filtering water and feeding humans for thousands of years. The indigenous Calusa tribe sustainably harvested an estimated 18.6 billion oysters in Estero Bay, Florida and constructed an entire island and 30-foot high mounds out of their shells. However, for every sustainable use of bivalve aquaculture, there are also examples of overexploitation from European colonizers and overfishing. These practices have led to collapses of oyster populations in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay in California, and Botany Bay near Sydney, Australia. 

[Related: Oyster architecture could save our coastlines.]

“It is somewhat ironic that some of the traits that make bivalve species less vulnerable to extinction also make them far more attractive as a food source, being larger, and found in shallower waters in a wider geographical area,” study co-author and University of Birmingham macroecologist Shan Huang said in a statement. “The human effect, therefore, can disproportionately remove the strong species. By identifying these species and getting them recognised around the world, responsible fishing can diversify the species that are gathered and avoid making oysters the dodos of the sea.”

The team hopes that this data improves future conservation and management decisions, particularly their list of regions and species that are particularly prone to extinction. They also believe that this new list may help identify species that need further study to fully assess their current risk of extinction.

“We want to use what we learned from this study to identify any bivalves that are being harvested that we don’t already know about,” said Edie. “To manage bivalve populations effectively, we need to have a full picture of what species people are harvesting.”

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California’s Sierra Nevada is now home to a newly identified pack of gray wolves. According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), this new pack is roaming at least 200 miles away from the nearest known pack. It joins three known gray wolf packs living in Northern California: the Beckwourth Pack, the Whaleback Pack, and the Lassen Pack.

[Related: Snowy weather could determine life or death for Wisconsin’s poached gray wolves.]

In July, CDFW received a wolf sighting report from a spot in Sequoia National Forest. They found wolf tracks and other signs that wolves were present and collected 12 feces and hair samples from the area. 

DNA analysis determined that the samples are in fact from wolves and also revealed the sex, coat color, individual identity, relation to one another, and the pack’s origin. All 12 samples were confirmed to belong to gray wolves and the pack consists of at least five individuals that have not previously been detected in California. One of the adult females is a direct descendant of the first wolf documented in California’s recent history (a male named OR7) and four offspring (two females, two males). They did not detect any samples of any adult males, but the genetic profile indicates that the breeding male is a descendant of the Lassen pack.

Gray wolves are native to the state,, but were hunted to near extinction in California by the 1920s. Sometime in late 2011, OR7 crossed the state line from Oregon into California and became the first gray wolf in nearly a century to include the Golden State in its range. OR7 eventually returned to Oregon to form the Rogue Pack.

[Related: Wolves and beavers can have magical ecosystem effects—if they have space to thrive.]

In California, gray wolves are considered a recovering endangered species and are protected under California’s Endangered Species Act and the federal Endangered Species Act. While both laws mean it is illegal to kill them, wolves remain unprotected across much of the Northern Rockies, following decades of lawsuits over these regulations and concern from farmers. Researchers have advocated for an expansion of protected lands for the gray wolves, saying that they are important to the ecosystem’s overall health as a keystone species. 

Gray wolves are carnivores and their primary sources of prey are large native species such as deer and elk. They will also eat birds and reptiles, opportunistically scavenge carrion and may prey on large livestock. They can weigh anywhere between 70 and 120 pounds and can run in short bursts of up to 35 miles per hour. Their fur also comes in many colors including white, tan, black, brown, and the name “gray” refers to the color of their undercoat that can be visible before the warmer summer months. 

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Two newly-discovered types of moles have possibly been hiding in eastern Turkey’s mountains for as many as three million years. These hide-and-seek champions are named Talpa hakkariensis and Talpa davidiana tatvanensis, and they belong to a group of subterranean, invertebrate-eating mammals found across parts of Europe and Western Asia. The potential new species are described in a study published late last month in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

[Related: Like humans, naked mole-rats have regional accents.]

At least seven mole species are known to burrow in the grounds of North America and only one species (Talpa europaea) is in Britain. East of the United Kingdom, there are a number of different moles and many of them have small geographical regions. 

In this study, the team used DNA to confirm that these moles are distinct from others within the group and family. Both live in the mountains of eastern Turkey are able to survive conditions that range to over six feet of snow during the winter months to temperatures over 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. 

“It is very rare to find new species of mammals today. There are only around 6,500 mammal species that have been identified across the world and, by comparison, there are around 400,000 species of beetles known, with an estimated 1-2 million on Earth,” study co-author and University of Plymouth biologist David Bilton said in a statement. 

On the surface, the moles in this study look similar to other mole species, since their underground dwellings can constrain the evolution of their shape and size.

“Our study highlights how, in such circumstances, we can under-estimate the true nature of biodiversity, even in groups like mammals, where most people would assume we know all the species with which we share the planet,” said Bilton. 

With these new additions, scientists have now identified 18 Eurasian moles and each of them have distinct genetic and physical characteristics. The team closely studied the size and shape of their various bodily structures, which helped them use specimens collected during the 19th century that are in museum collections. The complementary DNA analysis that compared them to other known mole species confirmed that they are distinct.

Found in the Hakkari region in southeastern Turkey, Talpa hakkariensis was identified as a completely new mole species. 

[Related: Star-nosed moles are nature’s speed-eating champions.]

Talpa davidiana tatvanensis is also found in southeastern Turkey near Bitlis. It was also identified as being morphologically distinct, but it has been classified as a subspecies of Talpa davidiana that was first identified in 1884. T. davidiana it is listed as data deficient by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

“We have no doubt that further investigations will reveal additional diversity, and that more new species of mole remain undiscovered in this and adjacent regions. Amid increasing calls to preserve global biodiversity, if we are looking to protect species we need to know they exist in the first place,” Bilton said. “Through this study, we have established something of a hidden pocket of biodiversity and know far more about the species that live within it than previously. That will be critical for conservation experts, and society as a whole, when considering how best to manage this part of the planet.”

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Antarctic blue whales, the largest animals on Earth, can reach 98 feet from mouth to tail. But to get to this massive length, these mammals needed the right conditions to grow, whether that was more food or protection from danger—perks of living in water. 

Four hundred million years ago, the pre-mammalian ancestors of the ocean’s behemoths roamed on land on four legs. Ancestral whales returned to the sea 350 million years later. They likely spent so much of their lives in the water that, over time, their bodies completely adapted to swimming. But it’s unclear how much of this evolutionary history was amphibious before they fully submerged in the ocean.

Paleontologists in Egypt now have a better idea of what happened during this critical period of whale evolution. In a study published Thursday in Communications Biology, they unearthed fossilized remains of a miniature whale species that lived 41 million years ago. This extinct family, the basilosaurids, represents one of the earliest whale species to become fully aquatic. Though, if you saw one swimming in today’s seas, you might initially mistake it for a large fish. The newfound whale was only 8.2 feet long—12 times smaller than today’s blue whale.

[Related: This giant sea cow-like whale may have been the heaviest creature to ever live on Earth]

The study authors named the mini whale Tutcetus rayanensis, after the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun—a fitting name for a family of whales known as the “king of ancient seas,” says Hesham Sallam, an Egyptian paleontologist at The American University in Cairo and senior author of the study. The fossilized whale, like King Tut, died very young.

How the vertebrate and skull bones are fused suggests the whale was close to adulthood but did not reach it. It’s likely this whale specimen died before adulthood, though it was already sexually mature. The fossil remains show it was old enough to have adult molars but too young to have permanent premolars. Meanwhile, its enamel, the outer layer of its teeth, was very smooth, indicating it fed on fish, octopus, or other soft prey. Both are common features in mammals with shorter life cycles. According to Sallam, the teeth patterns also told them how this whale spent all of its time in the ocean, rather than an amphibious lifestyle like they previously envisioned for whale ancestors of this time.

The transition from a semiaquatic lifestyle to a fully aquatic one, as the basilosaurids did, is an area where more fossil data is needed to understand how these creatures evolved, says Ryan Bebej, an associate professor of biology at Calvin University in Michigan, who was not involved in the study. “Given its geologic age and phylogenetic position, Tutcetus is an important data point in helping us understand the earliest fully aquatic cetaceans.”

But why were these aquatic creatures dwarves compared to other basilosaurids? Basilosaurids around this time period were 13 to 59 feet in length. In contrast, this ancient whale was approximately 8 feet long and weighed around 412 pounds, making it “the smallest whale ever,” Sallam says. Today’s smallest whale, the dwarf sperm whale, grows just a little longer, at up to 9 feet. 

Its little stature was likely an evolutionary response from a global warming event called the Lutetian thermal maximum. Forty-two million years ago, temperatures in the South Atlantic ocean rose by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Because smaller bodies lose heat more quickly than larger bodies, the mini size of these whales probably helped them survive. Sallam says this biological trait—prioritizing a tiny shape—is still seen today in animals living in warmer climates.

We don’t know how big (or small) this ancient whale would have grown to as an adult. But its bones provide valuable information on the evolution of aquatic creatures As they adapted to life in the water, cetaceans diversified in a variety of ways, and this little king of the ancient seas is just one regal example.

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While any season is a good time to visit some national parks, tourist visits really peak in the summer. Even as extreme temperatures smashed records in Death Valley National Park in California, visitors still trekked out to one of Earth’s hottest locales. Heat related illnesses in Grand Canyon National Park are also expected to rise due to climate change. 

The majestic views and inspiring landscapes of “America’s best idea” can create lifelong memories and allow people to connect with the natural world in ways that they might otherwise not. However, they can also bring out some pretty bad behavior. Here’s how to act cool no matter how sweltering it gets on your next trip to a national park. 

[Related: The 10 most underrated national parks in the US.]

All for the ‘gram

While the unofficial motto of the national parks is “take only memories and pictures, and leave only footprints,” that does not mean putting life and limb at risk for a photo. In June, a visitor to Yellowstone National Park seemingly ignored warnings and dipped her hand into one of the park’s famous hot springs. These springs can reach temperatures of up to 198 degrees Fahrenheit (the boiling point of water at Yellowstone’s average altitude) due to the area’s active geothermal activity. Don’t do this if you want to avoid burning your hand and disturbing the hot spring. And, if you don’t heed this warning, you could also end up on TouronsofYellowstone. 

Another video taken at Yellowstone earlier this summer shows a tourist getting uncomfortably close to a bison. These animals are the largest land mammals in North America and can weigh up to 1,000 pounds. Park rangers urge all visitors to not disturb the wildlife and stay at least 25 yards away. Further east in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, tourists cornered a black bear with a selfie stick. While rare, the park’s black bears have attacked humans and disturbing them is illegal. So when it comes to America’s beloved fauna, admire from afar. 

Leave the spray paint at home 

National parks are no stranger to artistic endeavors—restricted caves in Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California house various ancient rock carvings and drawings called petroglyphs, for example. But it’s best to leave these drawings alone, and not contribute anymore. In February, a man from Minnesota who climbed into a 600-year-old restricted cave in Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California was fined $540 and banned from any national park for one year. Joshua Tree, known for spiky trees and dramatic rock formations, is unfortunately no stranger to this type of bad behavior. In 2019, the  park battled vandalism during a government shutdown that was so bad that it may take the trees 300 years to fully recover. 

[Related: How to avoid dying in national parks.]

The National Park Service is also investigating red graffiti at Maine’s Acadia National Park. This kind of vandalism could be dangerous if the red markings confuses hikers, as it could be mistaken for trail blazers. NPS advised hikers to follow blue trail blazes instead. Spray paint has also been spotted on the rocks along Laurel Falls Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For safety and preservation purposes, save the nature-inspired art for when you get out of the park. 

Keep your hands (and tongue) to yourself

Towards the end of last year, NPS officials had to warn visitors to stop licking the Sonoran desert toad. Also known as the Colorado river toad,this roughly seven inch-long amphibian secretes a potent toxin that can make people sick if it makes contact with the skin or gets in the mouth. Some have discovered that these toxic secretions contain 5-MeO-DMT, a powerful hallucinogenic.  The US Drug Enforcement Administration considers it a Schedule 1 drug, which means it is not currently accepted for medical use and has a high potential for abuse. So, if you’re tempted to give this frog prince a kiss for whatever reason, please just don’t. 

In May, a man pleaded guilty to one count of feeding, touching, teasing, frightening, or intentionally disturbing wildlife at Yellowstone. Even though his actions weren’t proven to be malicious, the newborn bison calf was unable to find its herd. This left the poor creature to wander the roadways causing hazards, and the calf was eventually euthanized. He was charged a $500 fine, a $500 Community Service payment to Yellowstone Forever Wildlife Protection Fund, a $30 special assessment, and a $10 processing fee.

Again, if you love wildlife, it’s best for you and fellow visitors to keep their hands to themselves. The NPS urges all visitors to be mindful of trails and wildlife, take out any trash brought into the parks and heed park rangers’ warnings.

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