The water scavenger beetle Regimbartia attenuata isn’t known for much. The family of beetles they’re part of can be pests in fish hatcheries, and they’re well suited to the humid tropics. But now, R. attenuata is giving this beetle clan a new claim to fame – thanks to the ability to quickly wiggle its way out of

Hundreds of elephants that died mysteriously in Botswana’s famed Okavango Delta probably succumbed to natural toxins, the wildlife department said Friday. ​The landlocked southern African country has the world’s largest elephant population, estimated to be around 130,000. Around 300 of them have been found dying since March. ​Authorities have so far ruled out anthrax, as

There are lots of animals that need conservation help. Cuddly creatures like pandas and koalas, or brainy beasts like whales and octopuses, just to name a few. But a team of scientists is urging us to not forget one particularly unlovable group that also needs our assistance: parasites. Parasites, the team explains, have a bit

Not all volcanoes are suddenly explosive. Some spew steady rivers of gloppy, slow-moving lava for millennia on end, like those in the Hawaiian or Galápagos islands. These are what volcanologist Michael Stock from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland calls the ‘boring’ volcanoes – yet underneath their monotonous exterior, lurks a bombshell that Stock and his colleagues

Gorillas living in larger groups might have more friends to choose from, but new research suggests at a certain point, they max out on close relationships. That’s eerily similar to what is thought to happen in our own species, where a link between brain size and group size has led to the famous idea that we

Dating is hard enough when you have ample choice, but imagine drifting through a dark nothingness, half-formed and hopeless, starved for nutrients and love. So goes the life of a bachelor anglerfish, and when there aren’t plenty of fish in the deep sea, you can’t blame them for being a little clingy when they do

Victoria Falls is said to be the largest waterfall on Earth, and Angel Falls the highest, but no matter how impressive they might look to us, both these natural wonders fall far short of the true victors. The largest and most powerful waterfalls we know of are actually surrounded by water, deep beneath the lapping

Researchers have successfully revived tiny microbes trapped dormant in a seemingly lifeless zone of the seabed for more than 100 million years. A team of scientists from Japan and America were looking to see whether microscopic life survives in the less-than-hospitable conditions beneath the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean. “We wanted to know how long

Our collective pandemic experience has made us keenly aware that bats have an uncanny ability to carry around deadly viruses, but somehow still survive. There is a lot we don’t yet know about this enviable virus resistance – along with other bat abilities, such as extreme longevity – but new highly-detailed genome sequences may provide

Many expecting fathers claim they’d love to take on the aching back, cramped organs, and painful contractions of their partner’s pregnancy. But so far, the male seahorse is the only vertebrate to make good on such a swap. These remarkable fish can hold more than 1,000 embryos in a ‘brood pouch’ for up to a

A massive survey of the world’s coral reefs has turned up a shocking decline in the populations of reef sharks. Over a three year period, almost no sharks at all were recorded at 19 percent of the reefs being monitored, meaning the predators are “functionally extinct” in up to eight nations. The cause is likely

Dogs have an enviable sense of direction. Even in a completely unfamiliar place, our pets have an uncanny way of tracking down a shortcut. For the first time, Czech scientists have found evidence that canines can sense and navigate using Earth’s weak magnetic field.  Exactly how they do this and to what extent is still

When sinkholes open up on land, it’s terrifying. In an instant, they can swallow whatever’s on top of them, whether that’s a road, a landscape, or an ancient creature destined to not see the light of day again for millennia. Sinkholes aren’t just confined to land, though. A similar phenomenon also takes place in the

How did Earth’s tectonic plates form? You’d think this would be an easy question to answer, considering we’re now trying to nail down the specifics of when it happened, and whether there’s tectonic activity on the Moon. But our knowledge on how this planetary mechanism came to be is surprisingly scant. Researchers from China, Hong Kong,

For years, scientists have been gripped by the existence of a strange anomaly weakening Earth’s magnetic field. It’s located in the midst of the South Atlantic ocean, extending all the way from South America to the west coast of southern Africa. This giant, puzzling expanse of reduced magnetic intensity – which in recent times looks

Humans have turned the building of spaces into an art form, but we’re not the only species with such dazzling achievements. A particular genus of Southeast Asian and Australian stingless bee really takes that idea to another level, creating spiral beehives that rival New York’s Guggenheim. We know bees are smart, but it’s been a bit

Some Salmonella bacteria strains have found a way of evading plant defences and sneaking their way into leafy greens – a strategy that’s effective enough to protect them against plant immune systems and from being washed off in the kitchen. It’s a classic trojan horse manoeuvre that’s both deeply worrying and impressive in its ingenuity:

You’d think at least 184 million years of evolution on entirely separate continents would be enough to make two species of fish sexually incompatible. That was the assumption scientists in Hungary were going on when they placed sperm from an American paddlefish near eggs from a Russian sturgeon in the lab. The idea was to

Similar to orcas and pilot whales, the enigmatic beluga whale has long been assumed to live out their lives in pods based around close maternal ties. But new research shows their social structures go far beyond sibling quid-pro-quo. By combining DNA profiling with mathematical network analysis, researchers have found belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) across the Arctic hang

In the darkness of the deep sea, where sunlight can barely reach, a single photon of light can blow an animal’s cover. Scientists have now discovered at least 16 species of ultra-black fish, each equipped with specialised skin that allows them to evade detection while hunting or hiding in the dark. Absorbing 99.95 percent of

When microbiologist Jared Leadbeater returned to his office for the first time in months after a work trip, he found something strange. A cream-coloured manganese carbonate (MnCO3) compound, coating glassware he’d left soaking in his sink, had turned dark. Something had stolen some of its electrons. “I thought, ‘What is that?'” said Leadbeater, a researcher at the

From the depths of time, out of the Hell Creek Formation, emerged the last of the hook-handed dinosaurs: Captain Hook… of the Prairie. This fearsome creature had a tooth-filled snout and large, viciously hooked claws. But each talon sat at the end of the most ridiculously short and stubby, single-fingered hand. For all its sharp

Andean condors are the heaviest soaring bird in the world, with a single individual weighing up to about 16 kilos (or 35 pounds). When it comes to keeping these hefty bodies aloft, the sky’s very much the limit, it seems, according to new research. Getting off the ground is the hardest part for these South

Dust plumes are a natural phenomenon, part of Earth’s nutrient cycle. They occur when high-velocity winds pick up tiny dry particles from the Earth’s surface and carry them long distances. Every summer, dust plumes from Africa’s Sahara desert travel across the Atlantic Ocean. They’re usually not this big, and they often sink into the ocean.

A new study offers a better understanding of the hidden network of underground electrical signals being transmitted from plant to plant – a network that has previously been shown to use the Mycorrhizal fungi in soil as a sort of electrical circuit. Through a combination of physical experiments and mathematical models based on differential equations,

Today, flowering plants (or angiosperms) make up around four-fifths of all the green plants on Earth, but for billions of years they weren’t around at all. Now biologists have been able to fully chart the rapid rise of angiosperms over the last 140 million years. A newly published ‘time tree’ of flowering plants shows in

Scientists have identified an almost-complete skeleton of a 4.8-metre (15.7-foot) long dolphin ancestor that lived in what is now South Carolina during the Oligocene epoch around 25 million years ago. This ‘dolphin’ was the first known echolocating apex predator: as well as its large size, it would’ve had large, tusk-like teeth, and appears to have

When by itself, a rat immediately leaps to the aid of another in need. But when there are other rats around, their behaviour could depend on what the bystander rats do. This is the finding of a new ‘bystander effect’ study, and it might sound familiar to you. “We are constantly looking at others to

In the centre of the South Pacific, there’s a place as far away from land as anyone on Earth could ever hope to get. The ocean is different there. These distant waters lie at the heart of the South Pacific Gyre, the centre of which holds the ‘oceanic pole of inaccessibility’: the ocean’s remotest extreme,

Just as the Moon tugs at our planet’s seas, contributing to oceanic tidal waves, it also pulls at our atmosphere along with the Sun, creating waves in the sky. A new study now demonstrates how some types of ‘sky waves’ resonate around Earth, much like how sound waves resonate inside a bell. In the water,

Putting together a list of all the creatures great and small on the face of the Earth is no small task, but scientists have now put a plan together for how this daunting challenge might be successfully met. The potential solution outlines 10 key principles to be followed by list-makers, together with an agreed set

The Earth’s magnetic field flips, every few hundred thousand years or so on average, which means magnetic north becomes magnetic south and vice versa (the planet doesn’t actually turn upside down). New research suggests this change of direction can happen up to 10 times faster than previously thought. That’s big news for scientists studying how

While bats live nearly all over the world, only some parts of our planet are blessed with flying foxes. So it’s no wonder that a recent photo of a huge fruit bat in the Philippines has gone viral on social media. “Remember when I told y’all about the Philippines having human-sized bats? Yeah, this was

Its name was Kongonaphon kely, which means ‘tiny bug slayer’, and it was about the size of a coffee cup. But big things lay ahead for this little creature. Very big things indeed. The tiny bug slayer, which lived on Madagascar approximately 237 million years ago during the Triassic period, stood just 10 centimetres (about

Meet the caecilian: looking like a cross between a snake and a worm, these creatures have been around for hundreds of millions of years, but scientists just made a brand new discovery about them. While caecilians are only distantly related to snakes, new research shows they appear to have similar venom glands. This is the

Let’s turn back the hands of time. Before extinction knocked dinosaurs off their pillar, before the “Great Dying” extinction wiped out 95 percent of all organisms – we had the Paleozoic Era. During this age in Earth’s history, between 541 million and 252 million years ago, arthropods (animals with exoskeletons such as insects, crustaceans, scorpions,

Trapdoor spiders are an ingenious lot. They create hidden burrows with silk-hinged trapdoors from which they emerge to nab their unsuspecting prey. They’ve also proven rather slippery when it comes to naming conventions. The name ‘trapdoor spiders’ can refer to spiders from a wide range of taxonomic families across the world, and now a team

 A video of a bird of prey capturing a large, shark-like fish in its claws has gone viral on social media, evoking multiple references to the science-fiction cult movie phenomenon Sharknado. The video, which CBS reported was shot by Tennessee native Ashley White last week and shared by Tracking Sharks, shows what appears to be a large hawk-like

A new fossil discovery has revealed that New Zealand’s ancient monster penguins were not the only human-sized, flightless birds waddling around our planet tens of millions of years ago. Recent findings in North America and Japan suggest there were giant penguin-like creatures plodding across the Northern Hemisphere, too. And these birds may have been even

Whale sharks, the majestic creatures that also happen to be the world’s largest fish, are far more gentle than the name suggests. They swim lazily around tropical waters, filter-feeding on plankton. Now, biologists have discovered the enigmatic giants have a curious trick up their sleeve – teeth-like scales adorning their eyeballs. It appears to be

The conventional wisdom for working out how old your dog is in human terms is to multiple the dog’s age by seven – something experts have previously debunked. Now researchers think they’ve landed on an alternative method that’s much more accurate. Part of the problem with the multiply-by-seven rule is that canines and human beings

It seems almost certain that an asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs. But only almost. Another competing theory won’t completely go away: the extinction-by-volcano theory. A new study from the UK piles more evidence on the asteroid side of the debate, while adding a new volcanic twist. These researchers say that volcanic activity actually helped life recover

Disturbing reports of a mass elephant die-off have emerged from Botswana over the last two months, with more than 350 elephant carcasses spotted since May. Some of the elephants were found face down, suggesting a sudden collapse. Most of their bodies were located around water sources in the northern parts of the Okavango Delta, a

White-throated sparrows in British Columbia are whistling a new tune and it’s going viral across Canada. What started as a minor change to a common song has now morphed into a continent-wide phenomenon before our very ears.  “As far as we know, it’s unprecedented,” says biologist Ken Otter from the University of Northern British Columbia,

It has long been a mystery how some fish can colonise isolated lakes and ponds surrounded by inhospitably dry land. It’s not like fish can get out of the water, shake themselves off, and walk between far-flung pools to spread their spawn. Yet, from remote crater lakes to desert ponds, these fish are somehow there.

Snakes may not have any limbs, but it doesn’t stop them from getting around. By wiggling their bodies to-and-fro, these crafty creatures can easily dash across land or water without the need for feet or fins. Some can even fly. Jake Socha is an expert on the paradise tree snake (Chrysopelea paradisi), which lives in

Scientists have discovered four new species and two new genera inhabiting the deep, abyssal landscape that lines the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a vast, recessed fracture zone covering some 4.5 million square kilometres (1.7 million square miles) of the central Pacific, is considered something of a prize in the mining

When you think of the colour scheme sported by the prehistoric world of the dinosaurs, greens and browns typically spring to mind. But more and more research has shown that millions of years ago, vibrant, vivid colours were everywhere in nature, just like they are today. The latest evidence – 99-million-year-old insects caught in amber