A new species of beaked whale has been identified in a unique collaboration between Indigenous knowledge and Western science. The new species, formally announced in Proceedings of the Royal Society B last month, is named Ramari’s beaked whale after Ramari Stewart, a female Mātauranga Māori whale expert who was instrumental in the discovery. Ramari also […]
The synchronous display of the Photinus carolinus firefly is so mesmerizing that it draws more than 12,000 visitors a year to one of the species’ chief staging grounds in the Elkmont, Tennessee section of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But despite the event’s popularity, many questions remain about how and why the fireflies are able […]
Humans are at risk of putting their closest animal relatives out of a home. A new study published in Diversity and Distributions Sunday warned that Africa’s great apes could lose more than 90 percent of their habitat within the next 30 years due to the combined pressures of human population growth, resource extraction and the […]
By Charles Emogor The white-bellied pangolin is one of eight evolutionary distinct pangolin species split equally between Africa and Asia. They’re among the very few mammals with scales and have a tongue that, when pulled out of its cavity, is longer than their entire body, which measures about 30 inches. These gentle and somewhat quirky […]
By Malavika Vyawahare “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are,” the French lawyer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote in his 1826 opus, Physiologie du Goût. This is quite literally the case, scientists decoding the human body have found. Now, an analysis of chemical signatures in human hair and nails shows […]
By Nate Seltenrich Synthetic dyes used as colorants in many common foods and drinks can negatively affect attention and activity in children, according to a comprehensive review of existing evidence published this month by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA). Funded by the California legislature in 2018, the new report involved a […]
By John R. Platt Spiders need our help, and we may need to overcome our biases and fears to make that happen. “The feeling that people have towards spiders is not unique,” says Marco Isaia, an arachnologist and associate professor at the University of Turin in Italy. “Nightmares, anxieties and fears are very frequent reactions […]
Describing hotter temperatures and altered weather as the “new normal” under climate change has become cliché, and updated NOAA data makes it official. The U.S. is now hotter than it was just a decade ago, wetter in the central and eastern parts of the country, and drier in the West, according to NOAA data released […]
By Marlowe Starling Clear-skied, low-wind summer days are rare off the coast of California. But they’re a blessing if you’re a researcher tracking down critically endangered leatherback sea turtles. Marine ecologists Scott Benson and Karin Forney, with NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, spent many of those days tag-teaming a decades-long research effort to collect data […]
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