Three otter attacks were reported in September alone. State authorities are searching for a group of violent river otters (Lutra canadensis) that have been mysteriously attacking adults, children and dogs in Anchorage, Alaska. Three otter attacks —including one which injured a child — were reported across the city in September,Continue Reading
You’ve heard of disappearing ink. Now get ready for suddenly appearing ink. Using a clear liquid, researchers can print a full rainbow of colors on transparent surfaces. The trick is printing the liquid in precise, microscale patterns that create structural color. Structural colors arise from the way different wavelengths ofContinue Reading
The release of the butterfly brought four species to the island. An ecologist’s blunder led to the release of a “Russian doll” set of stomach-bursting parasites onto a remote Finnish island, a new study has revealed. Thirty years ago, when ecologist Ilkka Hanski introduced Glanville fritillary butterflies (Melitaea cinxia) ontoContinue Reading
An angel shark has never been filmed in this part of the world before. A young shark glides to the ocean floor, slaps the sandy ground with its head and disappears in a cloud of dust. A pause. A small fish swims by. And then… SNAP! The fish doesn’t knowContinue Reading
Nearly 60% of the world’s oil and methane gas reserves and 90% of its coal reserves must remain in the ground by 2050 in order to meet the climate goals set by the Paris Agreement, a new study finds. Leaving these fossil fuel reserves untouched would give the world aContinue Reading
It was nearly 30 feet long. About 90 million years ago, a gigantic apex predator — a meat-eating dinosaur with serrated shark-like teeth — prowled what is now Uzbekistan, according to a new study of the behemoth’s jawbone. The 26-foot-long (8 meters) beast weighed 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), making itContinue Reading
Climate change is not only a human problem; animals have to adapt to it as well. Some “warm-blooded” animals are shapeshifting and getting larger beaks, legs, and ears to better regulate their body temperatures as the planet gets hotter. Bird researcher Sara Ryding of Deakin University in Australia describes theseContinue Reading
Ordinary human dilemmas are tougher to solve than the most difficult problems of physics and mathematics\ As a boy, I was a rock hound, and I learned how to identify minerals with the Mohs hardness test, named after the mineralogist who invented it. You take a known specimen, like quartz,Continue Reading
When Decio Eizirik began treating patients with type 1 diabetes in the 1980s, he was pretty sure about what was behind the disease: an immune system gone haywire. People with the illness lacked insulin, a crucial hormone, because beta cells in the pancreas—the body’s insulin factories—were being attacked and destroyedContinue Reading
Self-targeting antibodies attack part of the immune system that plays a key role in fighting infection Antibodies that turn against elements of our own immune defences are a key driver of severe illness and death following SARS-CoV-2 infection in some people, according to a large international study. These rogue antibodies,Continue Reading