Wildlife(Page 13)

The latest on the fascinating flora and fauna of our planet.

Latest in Wildlife

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

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.
Fish

Can clownfish count?

By Laura Baisas

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

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

By Gavin Naylor/The Conversation

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.
Wildlife

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.
Wildlife

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.
Wildlife

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.
Sharks

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

By Laura Baisas

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

Sex is more important than sleep for these marsupials

By Laura Baisas

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.
Birds

Poop stains reveal four previously unknown Emperor penguin colonies

By Laura Baisas

A blue bottle fly.
Wildlife

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.
Wildlife

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.
Wildlife

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.
Wildlife

We may know what makes tardigrades so darn tough

By Laura Baisas

A mako shark swimming in the ocean.
Sharks

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

By Laura Baisas

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

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

By Laura Baisas

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.
Wildlife

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

By Laura Baisas

An octopus hatchling emerges from a group of eggs at a new octopus nursery. This nursery was first discovered in June 2023 at Tengosed Seamount off Costa Rica.
Wildlife

Four new octopus species discovered in the deep-sea vents off Costa Rica

By Laura Baisas

An Eastern dwarf tree frog covered in seeds.
Wildlife

These Australian frogs get absolutely covered in seeds

By Ethan Freedman

Check out some of the past year’s best close-up photography
Fish

Check out some of the past year’s best close-up photography

By Andrew Paul

A pink hummingbird sits on a perch inside of a tunnel. Green and black stripes are projected on the walls of the tunnel.
Birds

How hummingbirds switch gears at breakneck speeds

By Laura Baisas

An artist’s impression of a group of G. blacki within a forest in southern China. Four of these giant apes sit on the grass near a stream, while an orangutan hangs from a tree branch. They are brown with yellow-ish manes around their faces.
Wildlife

These extinct, nearly 10-foot-tall apes could not adapt to shifting seasons

By Laura Baisas

Fruit bats hanging on tree branches in daylight in Bangladesh on November 6, 2023.
Bats

Why fruit bats can eat tons of sugar without getting diabetes

By Laura Baisas

Microscopic view of Oikopleura dioica
Wildlife

This tiny sea creature builds a ‘snot palace’ to capture food

By Andrew Paul

An illustration of the pelagic ecosystem and the organisms fossilized in Sirius Passet, revealing how Timorebestia was one of the largest predators in the water column more than 518 million years ago.
Wildlife

Extinct ‘terror beasts’ were some pretty formidable worms

By Laura Baisas

Salmon fishing in Alaska, fisherman in gloves handling fish in net on a boat
Fish

As salmon disappear, a battle over Alaska Native fishing rights heats up

By Max Graham/Grist

A jellyfish Cladonema pacificum with multiple branched tentacles.
Wildlife

These fingernail-sized jellyfish can regenerate tentacles—but how?

By Laura Baisas

Three feral hogs in grass. One is black and standing while grazing. The middle is gray and sitting. The third is brown and also sitting.
Wildlife

Wild ‘super pigs’ from Canada could become a new front in the war on feral hogs

By Marcus Lashley / The Conversation

Five new species of soft-furred hedgehogs have been identified
Wildlife

Five new species of soft-furred hedgehogs have been identified

By Laura Baisas

A small brown frog standing on leaves at the water’s edge.
Wildlife

This tiny ‘leaf-nester’ is the smallest known fanged frog

By Laura Baisas

An aardvark with a long nose sits in grass.
Wildlife

Why scientists are studying aardvarks’ poop

By Laura Baisas

Lessons from Lake Tanganyika’s scale eating fish
Fish

Lessons from Lake Tanganyika’s scale eating fish

By Jeffrey McKinnon / MIT Press Reader

A reindeer stands on snowy ground with hills in the distance.
Wildlife

Reindeer can see UV light—and we may know why

By Laura Baisas

A bearded seal swimming in Arctic waters in Svalbard, Norway. Their name comes from the long and sensitive facial whiskers that they use to find food.
Wildlife

Arctic seals have special noses

By Laura Baisas

A bird called a green honeycreeper stands on a tree branch. It has blue male plumage on its left side and green female plumage on its right.
Birds

Rare bird with half male and half female plumage photographed in Colombia

By Laura Baisas

A man holes a 14-inch goldfish removed from the Niagara River.
Wildlife

Releasing pet goldfish into the wild has serious consequences

By Laura Baisas

‘Forever chemicals’ found in freshwater fish, yet most states don’t warn residents
Fish

‘Forever chemicals’ found in freshwater fish, yet most states don’t warn residents

By Hannah Norman / KFF Health News

A circular grey fossil with long linear grooves on it.
Wildlife

Fossil first identified as plant is actually a baby turtle

By Laura Baisas

Glowing blue lights of the tiny ostracods move in sync with one another.
Wildlife

Watch the mucus-filled, synchronized mating dance of bioluminescent ‘sea fireflies’

By Laura Baisas

A dinosaur called poposaurus walks near some trees. The dinosaur comes from a group of extinct relatives of the crocodile known as Poposauroidea.
Wildlife

Tracing the crocodiles’ curious evolutionary family tree

By Laura Baisas

1-guilla eel robot without casing
Fish

Watch this eel robot effortlessly glide underwater

By Andrew Paul

A white axolotl in a tank. Axolotls are sometimes called the ‘Peter Pan of amphibians’ since they do not go through a traditional metamorphosis and keep larval traits like their signature gills.
Endangered Species

Go (virtually) adopt an axolotl, the ‘Peter Pan’ of amphibians

By Laura Baisas

A large rat stands on a tree trunk at night. The Vangunu giant rat is the first new species of rodent described from Solomon Islands in over 80 years.
Wildlife

A legendary Vangunu giant rat was finally caught on camera

By Laura Baisas

All the fish we cannot see
Fish

All the fish we cannot see

By Moira Donovan / Hakai Magazine

An orange California newt sits on a rock. The amphibians are endemic to California.
Wildlife

Female Taricha newts are more poisonous than males

By Laura Baisas

A newborn rhino calf stands under his mother. He is black and does not have his signature horns in yet.
Endangered Species

A critically endangered Sumatran rhino named Delilah welcomes first calf

By Laura Baisas

Six African penguins standing on a rock. They have white plumage with black dots arranged in individual patterns on their chests.
Birds

African penguins may tell each other apart by the spots in their plumage

By Laura Baisas

Tracking bird migration with radio-based technology
Birds

Tracking bird migration with radio-based technology

By Sara Van Note / Undark

An Indian cobra found in the farmlands of Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India. Around 58,000 Indians die from snakebites every year, the highest rate in the world.
Wildlife

In India, a need for new antidotes to curb deadly snakebites

By Kamala Thiagarajan / Undark

A mature Megasyllis nipponica with a developing female stolon.
Wildlife

Why these sea worms detach their butts to reproduce

By Laura Baisas

Broadclub Cuttlefish
Wildlife

Cuttlefish and their amazing technicolor dreamcoats

By Olivia Ferrari / Hakai Magazine

A serotine bat with its mouth open, showing teeth. Serotine bats are widely spread throughout Europe and Asia and have a 15 inch wingspan.
Bats

Scientists are confounded by the sex lives of serontine bats

By Laura Baisas

Two wild bonobos sit in a tree. Researchers examined pro-social behaviors of the smaller species of great ape in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Wildlife

Wild bonobos show surprising signs of cooperation between groups

By Laura Baisas

A bioluminescent sea cucumber called Scotoplanes or the “sea pig.”
Wildlife

Surprise! These sea cucumbers glow

By Laura Baisas

A piping plover walks along L Street Beach in South Boston. The bird is small, with white and grey plummage.
Birds

Piping plovers are in trouble, but there’s some good news

By Laura Baisas

Attenborough's long-beaked echidna, photographed by a camera trap.
Wildlife

Elusive egg-laying mammal caught on camera for the first time

By Laura Baisas

A lateral view of Loncovilius carlsbergi. It is a six-limbed beetle less than an inch long, with two antennae protruding from its head.
Wildlife

These newfound beetles have male genitals shaped like a bottle opener

By Laura Baisas

An Anna’s hummingbird with bright pink plumage flies near some leafy green trees.
Birds

Hummingbirds have two creative strategies for flying through tight spaces

By Laura Baisas

Smallmouth buffalofish caught at Apache Lake, Arizone
Fish

Century-old buffalofish are still living in their prime

By Hannah Seo

Illustration in green, yellow, orange, and purple of big sauropod dinosaurs lifting weights in front of a prehistoric landscape
Wildlife

The mystery of why some dinosaurs got so enormous

By Riley Black

A side view of a great white shark. Regional endothermy in fish has been seen in apex predators like the great white sharks or giant tuna.
Sharks

Megalodon’s warm-blooded relatives are still circling the oceans today

By Laura Baisas

A louse on human hair under a microscope. Humans and lice have coevolved for thousands of years. The oldest human louse known to scientists is a 10,000 year-old specimen from Brazil.
Wildlife

What head lice can tell us about human migration

By Laura Baisas

A baby loggerhead turtle pokes out of a shell on the sand. Its head and front flippers are out of the shell, with the lower half remaining inside.
Endangered Species

Endangered sea turtles build hundreds of nests on the Outer Banks

By Laura Baisas

An illustration of Ekgmowechashala, the last primate to inhabit North America before humans. The animal has a white furry face, with a pink nose, and large dark eyes like a lemur. It is sitting in a leafy tree.
Wildlife

North America was once home to some unusual wild monkeys

By Laura Baisas

An orange starfish, or sea star, on a black backgorund. The unusual five-axis symmetry of sea stars has long confounded our understanding of animal evolution.
Wildlife

The sea star’s whole body is a head

By Laura Baisas