It turns out that humanity’s trash may be an octopus’s treasure. A new study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin last month looked at a range of underwater photographs that show octopuses interacting with litter that had settled on the seafloor. “The deep-sea records were extremely interesting, because even at great depths these animals are interacting […]
Taking photos while whale watching or snapping an image of a zebra in the wild and sharing it on social media is a pastime for many tourists, but in addition to bringing joy to friends and family, these photos can help with the information databases of scientists tracking threatened and endangered species. Researchers have begun […]
Certain sounds are ancient, like the thunder of bison hooves across the prairie that turn the Great Plains into a giant drum. The American bison, our national mammal, was hunted to near extinction beginning in the early 1800s, and by late that century, less than a thousand remained. The largest land-dwelling mammal in America, bison […]
Scientists have discovered a prehistoric species of crocodile that had an extraordinary last meal. The new species is called Confractosuchus sauroktonos, or the broken dinosaur killer, because it was found with the remains of a young ornithopod dinosaur in its stomach, the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum announced Friday. “At the time of its death […]
The Earth is full of diverse and fascinating species, and more than 2,200 of them have been lost to science for at least 10 years. That’s why the Texas-based conservation group Re:wild has launched its “top 25 most wanted lost species” list, and on Wednesday it added eight new species to replace those that have […]
A recent report contends that reintroducing sea otters to the Oregon coast is feasible and beneficial to the state’s marine ecosystem if certain best reintroduction policies are followed. However, sea otter’s voracious appetites for certain invertebrates may have “consequential” impacts on area fisheries. Sea otters have an outsized impact on the ecosystems they inhabit, making […]
The gentle and expressive African forest elephant is a critically endangered species due to habitat loss and poaching. But according to a survey conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the National Parks of Gabon, these rare, non-predatory pachyderms have one “last stronghold offering a large quasi-continuous habitat” in Gabon, in the Congo River Basin. […]
The National Butterfly Center in Texas that stood up to former President Donald Trump’s border wall is now shuttering indefinitely because of harassment from right-wing conspiracy theorists. The 100-acre nature preserve in Mission, Texas has been in an ongoing legal battle with the former Trump administration and non-profit We Build a Wall in order to […]
In Scotland, the River Dee Board and Trust and fisheries are planting millions of trees along rivers to help save wild salmon from the effects of global warming. Scotland’s rivers are already becoming too warm in the summer for wild salmon to spawn, putting more pressure on these cold-water fish. Wild salmon prefer water temperatures […]