Environment

The changes and wonders of the natural world—and how human interaction influences animals, the ocean, and the rest of the environment.

Latest in Environment

Two sea lampreys. They have circular heads with rows of teeth and a suction cup mouth at the center.
Animals

You might have more in common with the sea lamprey than you realize

By Laura Baisas

‘Lost Bird’ not seen in 20 years photographed for the first time
Animals

‘Lost Bird’ not seen in 20 years photographed for the first time

By Laura Baisas

The mystery of cats and their love of imaginary boxes
Animals

The mystery of cats and their love of imaginary boxes

By Tom Hawking

A single humpback whale calf swimming in the waters off of French Polynesia.
Animals

We finally know how baleen whales make noise

By Laura Baisas

ski resort sunrise sunset yellow
Climate Change

How ski resorts are adapting to climate change

By Tik Root/Grist

Giant Antarctic sea spiders can grow up to 20 inches wide.
Animals

Giant Antarctic sea spiders’ reproductive mystery solved after 140 years of confusion

By Laura Baisas

A purple and white carnivorous plant called Arisaema thunbergii growing in a forest. It has a tube and cup shaped flower and uses a musky odor to lure fungus gnats.
Animals

Bug-munching plant turns insect nurseries into death traps

By Laura Baisas

Fire in a forest
Animals

Fire is driving animals’ evolution

By Kylie Mohr / High Country News

Shark Sense IQ air purifiers in a pattern on a plain background
Animals

This pet-friendly air purifier from Shark is 38% off at Amazon right now

By Stan Horaczek

Tridentinosaurus antiquus was discovered in the Italian Alps in 1931 and was believed to be an important specimen for understanding early reptile evolution.
Animals

Famous 280-million-year-old fossil is partially fake

By Laura Baisas

Hippocampus patagonicus seahorse
Animals

In Brazil, the seahorse black market is bustling

By Marina Wang / Hakai Magazine

Aerial View Of Reforestation And Forest
Climate Change

When planting trees is bad for the planet

By Lauren Leffer

Indian Meal Moth
Animals

The grain moths have finally reached Antarctica

By Ethan Freedman

A clear glass tea cup with steaming brown tea sits on a table next to a green tea leaves.
Agriculture

The ingredients for a tastier, stronger tea could be in the soil

By Laura Baisas

Two lionesses. One tilts her head towards the left, while the other sticks out her tongue.
Animals

Captive big cats can tell voices apart

By Laura Baisas

Pink lab-grown beef rice in white bowl
Agriculture

Scientists swear their lab-grown ‘beef rice’ tastes ‘pleasant’

By Andrew Paul

The skeletal remains of a frog and a human were uncovered at Seminario Vescovile in Verona, Italy.
Animals

Iron Age humans found mysteriously buried with dogs and horses

By Laura Baisas

A Skywalker gibbon in a green and leafy forest. Distinguishing characteristics of Skywalker hoolock gibbons compared to other gibbons include thinner eyebrows, a black or brown beard instead of a white one, and incomplete white face rings on the females, like this adult.
Animals

Scientists tracked the love songs of Skywalker gibbons to find them

By Laura Baisas

MethaneSAT concept art above Earth
AI

A new AI-powered satellite will create Google Maps for methane pollution

By Andrew Paul

A smiling bonobo in a body of water.
Animals

Primates have been teasing each other for 13 million years

By Laura Baisas

Minesto Dragon 4 undersea kite turbine traveling atop water
Energy

Huge underwater ‘kite’ turbine powered 1,000 homes in the Faroe Islands

By Andrew Paul

A mother and calf humpback whale swim underwater.
Animals

Close to half of migratory species are in serious decline: UN report

By Laura Baisas

pleurocystitid soft robot
Animals

A sea creature extinct for half a billion years inspired a new soft robot

By Andrew Paul

Interior of JET fusion reactor with plasma superimposed
Energy

Aging reactor sets new fusion energy record in last hurrah

By Andrew Paul

An illustration of an ancient shark called Glikmanius careforum swimming. It was about 10 to 12 feet long and had a powerful bite.
Animals

Three new ancient shark species discovered in Alabama and Kentucky

By Laura Baisas

Photo illustration of hawkmoth navigating to flower during vehicle exhaust emission.
Animals

Air pollution messes with moths’ ability to smell flowers

By Lauren Leffer

A bunch of wet blueberries.
Agriculture

Why blueberries aren’t technically blue

By Laura Baisas

Desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria)
Animals

Cyborg locusts may one day help search-and-rescue missions

By Andrew Paul

Anchovy sex is a force of nature
Animals

Anchovy sex is a force of nature

By Christina Couch / Hakai Magazine

NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Climate, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite launches aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Fire and smoke are below the spacecraft as it lifts off from the launch pad.
Climate Change

NASA’s PACE satellite takes off to monitor phytoplankton—from space

By Laura Baisas

Eight gray seals and four wild horses stand on a sandy beach.
Animals

See wild horses and gray seals mingle on Sable Island

By Laura Baisas

Abandoned car in aluminum red mud spill
Climate Change

Aluminum’s notorious, toxic red mud could one day help make ‘green steel’

By Andrew Paul

The St. George’s Cross medusa is about four inches wide, three inches long, and has about 240 tentacles. It has a red cross on its body when viewed from above.
Animals

New jellyfish discovered near Japan may contain multitudes of venom

By Laura Baisas

A satellite image of two cyclones over the ocean with land nearby.
Climate Change

Stronger hurricanes may call for a ‘Category 6’

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s illustration of the new pterosaur species Ceoptera evansae. Several of the winged reptiles fly over trees and grass in Jurassic-era Scotland.
Animals

New pterosaur species discovered in Scotland

By Laura Baisas

An ermine moth with white wings and black spots sits on a yellow dandelion.
Animals

Moths fight against echolocating bats with sounds of their own

By Laura Baisas

For many people, bed bugs are becoming a fact of life again.
Animals

Getting rid of bed bugs is trickier than ever

By Ute Eberle / Knowable Magazine

Chronic wasting disease currently is known to infect only members of the cervid family—elk, deer, reindeer, caribou, and moose.
Animals

Possibility of wildlife-to-human crossover heightens concern about chronic wasting disease

By Jim Robbins / KFF Health News

Three common clownfish with orange coloring and white stripes swimming in a sea anemone.
Animals

Can clownfish count?

By Laura Baisas

‘Jaws’ portrayed sharks as monsters 50 years ago, but it also inspired a generation of shark scientists
Animals

‘Jaws’ portrayed sharks as monsters 50 years ago, but it also inspired a generation of shark scientists

By Gavin Naylor/The Conversation

Green dots representing spores are dispersed from a leaf.
Agriculture

Watch ‘tiny tornadoes’ spread plant pathogens

By Laura Baisas

A multiple-exposure photograph of insects circling an artificial light at night. The light can mess with a moth’s sense of what direction is up and which way is down.
Animals

Why artificial light—and evolution—trap moths

By Laura Baisas

H5N1 flu has been confirmed in Gentoo penguins for the first time. Over 20 Gentoo chicks have been reported dead from the virus or are showing symptoms of this highly contagious strain of bird flu.
Animals

Antarctic penguins are now dying from the H5N1 strain of bird flu

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s reconstruction of the locomotor behavior and paleoenvironment of Lufengpithecus. Six primates that resemble chimpanzees are in a wooded area. Some are walking upright on two legs, while others are on all fours.
Animals

Extinct ape’s inner ear holds clues to how humans learned to walk upright

By Laura Baisas

A great white pup swimming in the Pacific Ocean. In July 2023, wildlife filmmaker Carlos Gauna and University of California, Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes took footage of what could be the first newborn great white shark ever recorded.
Animals

This could be the first newborn great white shark ever captured on camera

By Laura Baisas

Biohybrid robot legs in underwater container
Animals

Watch this cool, useless biohybrid robot take a stroll

By Andrew Paul

This photograph shows a male dusky antechinus in a naturalistic enclosure located in Cape Otway, Australia.
Animals

Sex is more important than sleep for these marsupials

By Laura Baisas

Elephants navigate a landscape invaded by big-headed ants at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Laikipia, Kenya. Following invasion by big-headed ants, whistling-thorn trees are rendered vulnerable to elephants, whose browsing and breaking of trees promotes savanna openness.
Animals

Invasive ants leave lions scrambling for prey on the savannah in an ecological chain reaction

By Lauren Leffer

A colony of Emperor penguins in Antarctica. The larger black, white, and yellow adult penguins are standing behind the small and fuzzy black, white, and grey chicks.
Animals

Poop stains reveal four previously unknown Emperor penguin colonies

By Laura Baisas

A blue bottle fly.
Animals

How bug ‘wranglers’ help document the lives of flies, dung beetles, and more

By Laura Baisas

A colorful orange pink, and purple butterfly rotates against a dark screen. A new camera system and software package allows both researchers and filmmakers to capture and display animal-view videos.
Animals

How animals see the world, according to a new camera system

By Laura Baisas

A sea otter resting in a kelp bed in Monterey Bay, California.
Animals

Sea otters can help conserve vital kelp forests

By Laura Baisas

A brownish-gray tardigrade swimming. These microscopic invertebrates have eight limbs and shriveled skin.
Animals

We may know what makes tardigrades so darn tough

By Laura Baisas

A mako shark swimming in the ocean.
Animals

The ‘meg’ may have been longer and less chonky than previously thought

By Laura Baisas

The burgeoning science of search and rescue
Environment

The burgeoning science of search and rescue

By Sarah Scoles/Undark

YouTube is riddled with false claims.
Climate Change

How YouTube’s climate deniers turned into climate doomers

By Kate Yoder/Grist

A yellow salamander with a brown stripe on its back sits on a green leaf.
Animals

Why small, scary, and ‘non-charismatic’ lost species are harder to rediscover

By Laura Baisas

The bow of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Duane, a decommissioned ship deliberately sunk off Florida to serve as an artificial reef.
Conservation

Not all underwater reefs are made of coral

By Avery Paxton and D’amy Steward / The Conversation

Dense thickets of the reef-building coral Desmophyllum pertusum make up most of the deep-sea coral reef habitat found on the Blake Plateau in the Atlantic Ocean. The white coloring is healthy–deep-sea corals don’t rely on symbiotic algae, so they can’t bleach. Images of these corals were taken during a 2019 expedition dive off the coast of Florida.
Biology

World’s largest known deep-sea coral reef is bigger than Vermont

By Laura Baisas

A new evolutionary theory could explain the mystery of shrinking animals
Animals

A new evolutionary theory could explain the mystery of shrinking animals

By Lauren Leffer

Water skimmer inspired robot atop water
Animals

These micro-robots were inspired by mini-bugs and water striders

By Andrew Paul

A blizzard with brutally cold temperatures hit Iowa and neighboring states on Jan. 12, 2024.
Environment

Extreme cold still happens in a warming world

By Mathew Barlow/The Conversation

Dead elephant seal pups in the front line with an adult male carcass contrasting in size, and another adult individual in the background. The beach in Argentina is empty of living seals that should be thriving in the area at this time of the year.
Animals

Seal pup die-off from avian flu in Argentina looks ‘apocalyptic’

By Laura Baisas

A colorized view of the DOLCE structure finalizing its uncoiling process, as seen from the boom camera, over Antarctica, on August 22, 2023.
Energy

The first-ever space solar power tests are finished after a year in orbit

By Andrew Paul

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