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Plants & Animals News

July 9, 2025

Top Headlines

 

High heat and heavy metals dampen a bumblebee’s trademark buzz, threatening pollen release and colony chatter. Tiny sensors captured up-to-400-hertz tremors that falter under environmental stress, raising alarms for ecosystems and sparking ideas ...
Feral water buffalo now roam Hong Kong s South Lantau marshes, and a 657-person survey shows they ignite nostalgia, wonder, and worry in equal measure. Many residents embrace them as living links to a fading rural past and potential conservation ...
Danish and Welsh botanists sifted through 400 studies, field-tested seed mixes, and uncovered a lineup of native and exotic blooms that both thrill human eyes and lure bees and hoverflies in droves, ...
Kenyan fig trees can literally turn parts of themselves to stone, using microbes to convert internal crystals into limestone-like deposits that lock away carbon, sweeten surrounding soils, and still yield fruit—hinting at a delicious new weapon in ...
Immersing stressed volunteers in a 360° virtual Douglas-fir forest complete with sights, sounds and scents boosted their mood, sharpened short-term memory and deepened their feeling of nature-connectedness—especially when all three senses were ...
Scientists have discovered that starving and then refeeding worms can reveal surprising secrets about aging. When a specific gene (called TFEB) is missing, these worms don’t bounce back from fasting—they instead enter a state that looks a lot ...
Scientists have discovered that the bacteria behind Lyme disease and anaplasmosis have a sneaky way of surviving inside ticks—they hijack the tick’s own cell functions to steal cholesterol they need to grow. By tapping into a built-in protein ...
When Siberian volcanoes kicked off the Great Dying, the real climate villain turned out to be the rainforests themselves: once they collapsed, Earth’s biggest carbon sponge vanished, CO₂ ...
Scientists at UC Davis discovered a small genetic difference that could explain why humans are more prone to certain cancers than our primate cousins. The change affects a protein used by immune cells to kill tumors—except in humans, it’s ...
Locked-down Hungarians who gained or lost pets saw almost no lasting shift in mood or loneliness, and new dog owners actually felt less calm and satisfied over time—hinting that the storied “pet effect” may be more myth than mental-health ...
Zooplankton like copepods aren’t just fish food—they’re carbon-hauling powerhouses. By diving deep into the ocean each winter, they’re secretly stashing 65 million tonnes of carbon far below ...
South Australia’s tiny pygmy bluetongue skink is baking in a warming, drying homeland, so Flinders University scientists have tried a bold fix—move it. Three separate populations were shifted ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:39am EDT

Earlier Headlines

 

Urban wildlife is evolving right under our noses — and scientists have the skulls to prove it. By examining over a century’s worth of chipmunk and vole specimens from Chicago, researchers ...

Cats overwhelmingly choose to sleep on their left side, a habit researchers say could be tied to survival. This sleep position activates the brain’s right hemisphere upon waking, perfect for ...

Poachers are using a sneaky loophole to bypass the international ivory trade ban—by passing off illegal elephant ivory as legal mammoth ivory. Since the two types look deceptively similar, law ...

Two newly discovered viruses lurking in bats are dangerously similar to Nipah and Hendra, both of which have caused deadly outbreaks in humans. Found in fruit bats near villages, these viruses may ...

The shift from lizard-like sprawl to upright walking in mammals wasn’t a smooth climb up the evolutionary ladder. Instead, it was a messy saga full of unexpected detours. Using new bone-mapping ...

Leafcutter ants live in highly organized colonies where every ant has a job, and now researchers can flip those jobs like a switch. By manipulating just two neuropeptides, scientists can turn ...

Lichen from the Mojave Desert has stunned scientists by surviving months of lethal UVC radiation, suggesting life could exist on distant planets orbiting volatile stars. The secret? A microscopic ...

Exploration for deep-sea minerals in the Clarion Clipperton Zone threatens to disrupt an unexpectedly rich ecosystem of whales and dolphins. New studies have detected endangered species in the area ...

Southern resident killer whales have been caught on drone video crafting kelp tools to groom one another—an unprecedented behavior among marine mammals. This suggests a deeper social and cultural ...

In a remarkable twist of science, researchers have transformed a fungus long associated with death into a potential weapon against cancer. Found in tombs like that of King Tut, Aspergillus flavus was ...

In a twist on conventional wisdom, researchers have discovered that in ocean-like fluids with changing density, tiny porous particles can sink faster than larger ones, thanks to how they absorb salt. ...

Even after 20 million years of evolutionary separation, two tiny worm species show astonishingly similar patterns in how they turn genes on and off. Scientists mapped every cell s activity during ...

During Earth's ancient Snowball periods, when the entire planet was wrapped in ice, life may have endured in tiny meltwater ponds on the surface of equatorial glaciers. MIT researchers ...

Researchers investigating the enigmatic and antibiotic-resistant Pandoraea bacteria have uncovered a surprising twist: these pathogens don't just pose risks they also produce powerful natural ...

New research is shaking up our understanding of evolution by revealing that some species may not evolve gradually at all. Instead, scientists discovered that certain marine worms experienced an ...

Beetles that can see the color red? That s exactly what scientists discovered in two Mediterranean species that defy the norm of insect vision. While most insects are blind to red, these beetles use ...

A massive, extinct salamander with jaws like a vice once roamed ancient Tennessee and its fossil has just rewritten what we thought we knew about Appalachian amphibians. Named Dynamognathus ...

Scientists have uncovered that fish biofluorescence a captivating ability to glow in vivid colors has ancient roots stretching back over 100 million years. This trait evolved independently in reef ...

A lifelong fascination with nature and fieldwork led this researcher to the world of ethnobiology a field where ecology, culture, and community come together. Investigating how local people relate to ...

Sea anemones may hold the key to the ancient origins of body symmetry. A study from the University of Vienna shows they use a molecular mechanism known as BMP shuttling, once thought unique to ...

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