Blog
Why 100 Endangered Eagle Rays Swarmed a Malta Tuna Farm
When researchers sent an ROV to inspect a routine tuna farm off Malta, they found something lurking on the seafloor…
Blog
Blog
7 Things That Can Take Down a Grizzly Bear
Grizzly bears top North America's food chain, but a surprisingly short list of animals and forces can still bring one…
Blog
One Photo, One Night: How a Fisherwoman Ended a 40-Year Search
Scientists had not spotted the spinach pipefish since the 1980s, its only known specimen was destroyed in World War II,…
Blog
The Alligator’s No. 1 Killer Isn’t What You Think
Alligators have ruled their territory since the age of dinosaurs, but a surprising lineup of animals still manages to hunt,…
Blog
Why a Fort Fisher Sea Turtle Nest Suddenly Started to ‘Boil’
Dozens of loggerhead hatchlings just churned up from the sand at Fort Fisher, and the spectacle has a name that…
Blog
How Boat Noise Makes Baby Reef Fish Swim Toward Predators
Motorboat noise near the Great Barrier Reef is doing something alarming to young spiny chromis fish, and the consequences reach…
Blog
Watch a Camel Take a Dip in the Ocean
A viral video of a camel gleefully rolling in the surf off an Omani beach raises a question most people…
Blog
Scientists Filmed a 4-Foot Squid with ‘Elbows’ Two Miles Deep
A robotic sub on a routine seafloor mission accidentally crossed paths with one of the ocean's most elusive creatures, a…
Articles
Why Colorado’s Thirsty Black Bears Are Wandering into Town This Year
Colorado black bears are showing up in neighborhoods at a rate that has wildlife officials scrambling, and the reason behind…
Blog
Turtles Stuffed in Socks, Labeled ‘Plastic Toys’ — Then Rescued
A Brooklyn man stuffed hundreds of live turtles into socks and shipped them overseas as plastic toys, and he's not…
Articles
Scientists Map the Hidden Highways of Mexico’s Parrot Trade
Poachers have stripped Mexico's wild parrot populations for decades, and even strict international laws failed to slow the trade. Now…
Articles
How 40 Elk Turned an Oregon Town into Their Home
A herd of elk wandered into a quiet Oregon beach town and never left, and now residents are caught between…
Articles
A Sesame-Seed-Sized Creature Could Decide Maine Lobsters’ Future
Baby lobsters are picky eaters, and their preferred snack is vanishing from Maine's warming waters. Researchers now suspect this sesame-seed-sized…
Articles
September Is the Best Month to Watch the Salmon Runs
Every September, two of the Pacific coast's most spectacular salmon runs collide in rivers and streams from California to Alaska,…
Articles
The Government Ordered a Bald Eagle’s Death. A Mayor Said No.
When a Tennessee wildlife rescuer found an injured bald eagle, he expected a fight to save her wing. He never…
Articles
One Seahorse Species Was Actually 3 — Nobody Noticed for a Century
A routine dig through fishing bycatch in southern India upended more than a century of scientific certainty about a well-studied…
Articles
One of America’s Rarest Butterflies Makes a Remarkable Comeback
When fewer than ten Poweshiek skipperling butterflies remained across the entire United States, a desperate last-ditch effort inside zoo walls…
Articles
Australia’s Daring Plan to Hand-Vaccinate 5,000 Wild Penguins
Bird flu has reached the world's smallest penguin colonies in Australia, and officials are racing against time with an unprecedented…
Articles
Days After Jackie Died, a New Female Found Shadow’s Nest
Beloved bald eagle Jackie passed away, and within days a young female appeared at Shadow's nest singing morning songs with…
Articles
Could Mosquito Bites Stop the Disease That Kills a Child Every 2 Minutes?
Scientists have long treated the malaria-carrying mosquito as the enemy, but researchers in Australia are now betting that the bite…
Articles
This Tiny Solar-Powered Sea Slug Just Won Invertebrate of the Year
A sea slug the size of a grain of sand just beat out thousands of competitors to claim a prestigious…
Articles
Inside the Mobile Hatchery Restoring Caribbean Conch
Queen conch once blanketed Caribbean shallows in such numbers that anyone could scoop them up by the armful. Now a…
Articles
Why Some Yellowjacket Nests Are Fine to Ignore—And Others Aren’t
A yellowjacket nest appeared just feet from my front porch, and the question of whether to ignore it or act…
Articles
7 New Frog Species Found Hidden in Museum Drawers
Madagascar's diamond frogs spend most of their lives hidden, and scientists have barely scratched the surface of understanding them. Now…
Articles
One Feral Cat Killed 30 Rare Birds. Then It Walked into a Trap.
For three years, a single feral tabby cat outwitted every trap conservationists set on a New Zealand peninsula, leaving a…
Articles
Scientists Filmed an Orca Hunting Trick Seen Nowhere Else on Earth
Off the coast of northern Norway, a group of orcas hunts with a coordinated technique so specialized that no other…
Articles
What Humpback Whales Are Actually Doing While They Sing for Hours
Scientists could record humpback whale songs traveling for miles, but what the whale's body was actually doing during those hours…
Articles
Tuna Fishing Gear Has Drifted into 174 Marine Sanctuaries
Commercial tuna fishing fleets deploy millions of floating devices across the open ocean, and once those devices drift away, no…
Articles
Cranes, Cargo Planes, and Vets in the Water: Inside the Beluga Rescue
When Marineland threatened to euthanize its entire beluga population, a scramble began across two continents to pull off one of…
Articles
From 4 to 200: The “Cocaine Hippos” Colombia Can’t Control
Pablo Escobar smuggled four hippos into Colombia decades ago, and the country has been paying for it ever since. A…
Articles
The Tiny Fish That Cheats Its Clients and Gets Away with It
On coral reefs, tiny cleaner wrasse boldly swim into the mouths of fish 20 times their size, but they have…
Articles
Meet the Nearly Extinct Frog That Communicates by Waving
Living beside roaring waterfalls makes croaking useless, so this critically endangered Panamanian frog evolved a completely silent way to flirt,…
Articles
The Tuskfish Does Something Only Mammals and Birds Were Known to Do
A fish with no hands just cracked open a clam using a rock, and scientists are scrambling to figure out…
Articles
The Desert Frog That Carries 60% of Its Weight in Stored Water
Buried beneath the baked clay of the Australian Outback, one small frog pulls off a survival trick so extreme that…
Articles
A Brainless Jellyfish Uses 24 Eyes to Navigate Mangroves
Without a brain to guide it, a tiny box jellyfish somehow threads its way through tangled mangrove roots with uncanny…
Articles
The Oystercatcher’s 15-Year Comeback
Once nearly gone from the eastern seaboard, oystercatchers faced a threat no one expected: it wasn't adult birds dying off,…
Articles
Chimps and Bonobos Form ‘Hug Trains’ to Avoid Food Fights
Before chimpanzees and bonobos sit down to share a meal, they perform a surprisingly tender ritual that keeps the peace.…
Articles
The Town That Carries Frogs Across a Road Every Spring
Every spring in Keene, New Hampshire, volunteers wade into the dark to carry thousands of frogs and salamanders across a…
Articles
The Destructive Caterpillar That Can Digest Styrofoam
A crop-destroying caterpillar notorious for ravaging cotton and soybean fields may hold an unexpected solution to one of the world's…
Articles
One Million Octopuses Spared After 5-Year Global Battle
A Spanish seafood giant had a bold plan to farm one million octopuses on a single dock, and the world's…
Articles
Why Sharks Keep Stealing Anglers’ Catches — and What NOAA Is Doing
Shark depredation has frustrated ocean anglers for generations, but now complaints have grown loud enough that a federal agency is…
Articles
Tiny Crab Hid Under Rocks in the South China Sea and Fooled Researchers for Years
Researchers kept walking right past this tiny South China Sea crab, convinced it was a species they already knew. It…
Articles
Teeth Smaller Than Rice Helped Add a Branch to the Marsupial Family Tree
A few teeth barely bigger than grains of rice sat unidentified in an Australian cave for millions of years, and…
Articles
A Grain-of-Rice Bug Hid a Reproductive Organ Unlike Any Known to Science
Researchers sweeping through a Chinese forest park thought they had bagged a familiar insect, but a closer look under the…
Articles
How a Forgotten Photo Led to One of Africa’s Rarest Monkey Discoveries
Scientists just named a secretive monkey hiding in the Congo rainforest, but the creature faces a race against time before…
Articles
One Mosquito Bite, Years of Joint Pain
A single mosquito bite can trigger joint pain so severe it bends the body double, and for some people that…
Articles
Orcas Are Appearing off Northumberland — and No One Knows Why
Boat captains off the Northumberland coast have spotted killer whales more times in the past two years than in living…
Articles
The ‘Extinct’ Fox That Reappeared After 20 Years on Cozumel
Scientists believed the tiny Cozumel fox had vanished from the planet, with nothing left but ancient bone fragments to prove…
Articles
From 2 Million to 170,000: Chimpanzees Are Running out of Time
A century ago, millions of chimpanzees roamed across Africa, sharing 98.6 percent of our DNA and even crafting their own…
Articles
9 African Nations Made a Bold Pledge to Save the West Indian Ocean
Several East African governments just made a series of bold ocean pledges in Mombasa, and the ripple effects could reshape…