Science

Parrot feathers found at a thousand-year-old burial tomb in Peru provide new evidence for an expansive live bird trade network across the Andes Mountains that pre-dates the Inca Empire, a new study suggests. Continue Reading Category: Archaeology , Science Tags: Parrot , Birds , Inca , Archaeology , Australian National University

For decades, scientists believed that associative learning – understanding that two events are linked to each other, like a stimulus and a response – required at least some form of neural machinery. But now, a tiny unicellular creature without a trace of gray matter and living at the bottom of ponds may upend this long-held assumption. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science Tags: Brain , Le…

The floor is literally lava on a nearby exoplanet, new telescope observations show. Given its small size and strange history, one team of scientists suggests planet L 98-59 d’s molten ocean and odd atmosphere might represent an entirely new category of extraterrestrial world. Continue Reading Category: Astronomy , Science Tags: Planet , Exoplanet , Super-Earth , University of Oxford , University …

The Earth’s rotation has never been perfectly stable; the spin has changed significantly throughout history. Even slight changes on the planet, from melting ice sheets to flux in the Moon's gravitational effects, can make days longer or shorter. But for most of Earth’s history, the changes were tiny and driven mostly by natural forces. Now, a new study shows that modern, human-induced climate cha…

The warm waters of Mexico and Texas are home to a small fish that has produced nothing but daughters for over 100,000 years. Essentially, the offspring are the exact genetic copy of their mother, with no father involved. The fish in focus is the Amazon molly. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science Tags: Marine Biology , Fish , Reproduction , Cloning

For the first time, astronomers claim they’ve found a way to reconstruct a galaxy’s entire ‘life story’ – from a single snapshot in time. Continue Reading Category: Astronomy , Science Tags: Astronomy , Spectroscopy , UCSC , Harvard-Smithsonian , Astrophysics

In April 2023, local fishermen off the coast of eastern Spain, incidentally caught something massive within the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Genetic analysis confirmed its species as Carcharodon carcharias, the great white shark. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science Tags: Marine Biology , Sharks , Spain

Humanity may be one step closer to space-mining and cosmic self-sustainability, thanks to a secret, tiny weapon: microbes. Continue Reading Category: Science Tags: Asteroid Mining , Asteroid , Metals , Microbes

In January 2023, researchers at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health in Germany noticed that an infant monkey known as a sooty mangabey had developed reddish skin lesions across its forehead, chest, and legs. Within 48 hours, the animal was reported dead. Over the following weeks, nearly a third of the group's 80 members developed similar lesions, and four infants died. The outbreak was caused …

Baby caterpillars have figured out how to get themselves the royal treatment in certain ant colonies – getting carried around like precious cargo, fed on demand, guarded and being rescued from danger. But why would ants give this celebrity status to a caterpillar? The secret lies in perfect mimicry: the caterpillar copies not just the queen ant’s chemical scent, but the exact rhythm of her vibrat…

For more than 150 years, vertebrate vision has been understood as a two-part system: rods for low-light conditions, and cones for bright light and color. That tidy division is now under the microscope, as researchers from the University of Queensland have discovered a new hybrid cell that breaks the rule: rod-shaped photoreceptors that run cone-specific genetic programs. Continue Reading Category…

Imagine it’s a regular Tuesday morning and you’re in Antarctica. Your eyes meet the sky, and the blue is so vivid it feels electric. The air is so clean you can just about taste it. Now, picture a dust storm over the Himalayas; you squint, trying to catch a hint of that crisp blue, but all you see is a fuzzy white. Why are the skies in some parts of the world bluer than those in other parts? Cont…

During the last ice age, when glaciers spread across the northern world, ancient humans had some serious adapting to do; our species wouldn't survive without developing new ways to keep warm. We got there by improving the ways we clothed ourselves using new tools, such as bone needles, traps, snares, and wooden artifacts - and these creations mark a crucial point in human evolution, as they helpe…

Some of us get bitten far more often than others. A new study, yet to be peer-reviewed and published in a journal, has revealed that certain mosquito species show a clear preference for men, while others zero in on specific scents from our skin. However, some experts in the field disagree on the significance of the findings. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science Tags: Mosquito , Disease , …

In a "triple win" for green research, scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a new sunlight-activated reactor that uses one waste stream to tackle another – all while producing clean hydrogen, and promising to be profitable at commercial scale. Continue Reading Category: Environment , Science Tags: Recycling , Plastics , Plastic waste , University of Cambridge , Hydrogen , Clean…

Sometimes, the most important paleontological discoveries may come from the most disgusting materials. Continue Reading Category: Biology , Science Tags: Paleontology , Predator , Reptile , Fossils

When escaped domestic pigs bred with wild boar after the Fukushima evacuation, researchers gained a rare chance to observe large-scale hybridization. New findings show that maternally inherited rapid breeding accelerated genetic turnover, quickly diluting pig ancestry in the wild population. The result offers a novel lens on how fast-breeding traits can quietly reshape wildlife genetics. In the m…

Male nipples. Whale pelvic bones. Vestigial hind limbs in snakes. Evolution is full of features that look purposeful. But upon closer inspection, science tells us that they are actually by-products of development and shifting gene expression. New research suggests the human chin may be one such evolutionary spandrel, a term biologists use for a trait that emerges as a consequence of other changes…

In the late 1990s, molecular biologist Yoram Eyal, and colleagues at The Volcani Center in Israel, identified the key gene and enzymes responsible for producing the bitterness compounds in grapefruit. Now, using the genome editing technology CRISPR/Cas9, the team has inactivated the gene in a type of grapefruit (Citrus paradisi) to eliminate that bitter taste. “We started from basic research, est…

For more than two decades, giant viruses have unsettled one of biology’s most fundamental boundaries: the line between simple viruses and complex cells. With genomes rivaling some bacteria, and gene sets that resemble those of eukaryotes (cells with membrane-bound nuclei and other internal compartments), they have forced scientists to rethink how cellular complexity may have emerged. A newly disc…