A soft, thick coat of snow makes a lot of the world seem to slow down or even stop — at least temporarily. The fluffy piles absorb sound and make the world…
Category: Life
‘In Botanical Time’ explores the ways Earth’s oldest plants cheat death
In Botanical TimeChristopher WoodsChelsea Green, $40.00 On a talus-strewn slope in eastern California’s mountains, a gnarled tree twists toward the sky. It is Methuselah, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus…
This tool-using cow defies expectations for bovine braininess
Veronika the cow uses a brush as a tool to scratch herself, revealing rare problem-solving skills and expanding what we know of tool use in animals.
This fish may play a hole in its head like a drum
For the rockhead poacher, the noises are all in its head. The fish is a pint-size, unassuming inhabitant of nearshore shallows, but it has a conspicuous divot in the top…
Viewpoint — Lysenkoism 2.0: RFK, Jr. is more dangerous than the 1930s Soviet scientist Trofim Lysenko, whose crackpot views killed millions of people and set back Russian science for decades
We don’t need to look to dystopian authoritarian theocracies portrayed in science fiction novels and movies to know that it is not uncommon for humans — and particularly their authoritarian…
Animal personalities can play a big role in saving species
Citations C. Neto et al. Impact of behavioral differences on white-lipped peccary reintroduction success in the Atlantic forest. Scientific Reports. Vol. 15, March 5, 2025. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-90853-z A. Sih, A.…
How cheetah mummies could help bring the species back to Arabia
The fastest land animal on the planet lies frozen in time beneath blistering desert sands. Researchers have discovered dozens of ancient cheetah skeletons and dehydrated bodies preserved in caves on…
Wande Li | The night shift: how nocturnal arboreal mammals reshape seed dispersal networks in a fragmented forest – Functional Ecologists
In this ‘Behind the Paper’ blog post we uncover the hidden contributions of nocturnal foragers. Author Wande Li, a PostDoc at East China Normal University, guides us through the fascinating…
Viewpoint: COVID vaccines caused ‘turbo cancers’? MAHA disinformers revive long-debunked claims
… I saw a post on X, the disinformation hellsite formerly known as Twitter, by eminent oncologist and cancer researcher Dr. Wafik El-Deiry (whom we’ve met before here) touting his review article…
Plants packed close enough to touch are more resilient to stress
For a plant growing on the forest floor, a beam of light from an opening canopy can be concerning. But new research suggests that plants growing together may be able…
