The house cat (Felis catus) slunk into China in the eighth century. But long before that, the ancient Chinese were by no means catless. Leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis) might have…
Category: Animals
Cuddly koalas had a brutal, blade-toothed close cousin
The koalas clambering around eucalyptus canopies may be cuddly herbivores, but their extinct relatives were horrifying predators. The charismatic marsupials are the closest living relatives of marsupial lions — powerful…
Rats are snatching bats out of the air and eating them
Bats beware. The ability to fly won’t save you from hungry, determined rats. In a first, brown rats were filmed hunting bats by catching them midair. The finding, published in the…
Here’s how Rudolph’s light-up nose might be possible
This time of year, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is a nearly inescapable earworm. Rudolph, the old song goes, is bullied for having a nose so bright it glows (like a…
Lions have a second roar that no one noticed until now
The thunderous roar of the MGM lion that has opened Hollywood films for nearly a century has conditioned us to hear the big cat’s call as a blunt declaration: a…
A wolf raided a crab trap. Was it tool use or just canine cunning?
One damp spring evening last year, a wolf hauled a crab trap ashore off the central Pacific coast of British Columbia. The rangy animal made a delectable meal of the…
This parasitic ant tricks workers into committing matricide
Overtaking a throne sometimes takes a touch of matricide. Some newly mated ant queens sneak into other ant colonies and spray their queens with a liquid that sends workers into a…
40,000-year-old woolly mammoth RNA offers a peek into its last moments
Ancient RNA from Yuka, a 40,000-year-old woolly mammoth preserved in permafrost, can offer new biological insights into the Ice Age animal’s life.
Deep-sea mining might feed plankton a diet of junk food
Mining the seafloor for valuable metals could send dangerous ripples through ocean food webs. Tiny floating plankton, the base of the food web, can accidentally ingest particles of sediment kicked…
AI eavesdropped on whale chatter. It may have helped find something new
Dolphins whistle, humpback whales sing and sperm whales click. Now, a new analysis of sperm whale codas — a unique series of clicks — suggests a previously unrecognized acoustic pattern.…
