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Plants & Animals News

July 15, 2025

Top Headlines

 

A cat named Pepper has once again helped scientists discover a new virus—this time a mysterious orthoreovirus found in a shrew. Researchers from the University of Florida, including virologist John Lednicky, identified this strain during unrelated ...
Blue sharks possess a secret hidden in their skin: a sophisticated arrangement of microscopic crystals and pigments that create their brilliant blue appearance — and may allow them to change color. Scientists have discovered that these ...
Climate change is silently sapping the nutrients from our food. A pioneering study finds that rising CO2 and higher temperatures are not only reshaping how crops grow but are also degrading their nutritional value especially in vital leafy greens ...
People can intuitively sense how biodiverse a forest is just by looking at photos or listening to sounds, and their gut feelings surprisingly line up with what scientists ...
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 ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:59am EDT

Earlier Headlines

 

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 ...

Wild orcas across four continents have repeatedly floated fish and other prey to astonished swimmers and boaters, hinting that the ocean’s top predator likes to make friends. Researchers cataloged ...

Female chimpanzees that forge strong, grooming-rich friendships with other females dramatically boost their infants’ odds of making it past the perilous first year—no kin required. Three decades ...

Scientists have uncovered a surprising new way that urea—an essential building block for life—could have formed on the early Earth. Instead of requiring high temperatures or complex catalysts, ...

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 ...

A groundbreaking study suggests that the famous Cambrian explosion—the dramatic burst of diverse animal life—might have actually started millions of years earlier than we thought. By analyzing ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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