Wildlife(Page 13)

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

Latest in Wildlife

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

An artist's illustration of an early lamprey's teeth and sucker. The Jurassic lampreys Yanliaomyzon had a feeding apparatus that surprisingly resembles that of the pouched lampreys. It foreshadows the ancestral flesh-eating habit of present day. lampreys.
Fish

Giant prehistoric lamprey likely sucked blood—and ate flesh

By Laura Baisas

Ma Rainey, a post-reproductive female of the Ngogo community of chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda, and her adult son Wes. The two are sitting among trees in a forest.
Wildlife

Wild chimpanzees show signs of potential menopause—a rarity in the animal kingdom

By Laura Baisas

A long torpedo-shaped fish swims among green plants. Knifefish like the black ghost knifefish are known for their shimmying motions and electrical pulses. and live in freshwater lakes and rivers in Central and South America.
Fish

Why electric knifefish ‘shimmy’

By Laura Baisas

AlgaRay robot floating atop water in Antigua
Fish

This seafaring robot ‘eats’ stinky seaweed and dumps it in deep water

By Andrew Paul

A kingfisher with blue and yellow feathers and outstretched wings dives through the air.
Birds

How kingfishers pull off breakneck dives without hurting their brains

By Laura Baisas

a collection of woolly mammoth figurines on petri dishes on a blue background to represent Colossal's de-extinction project
Endangered Species

Is de-extinction only a pipette dream? This startup has a big, expensive plan to find out.

By Andrew Zaleski

A view from the summit of Volcán Salín, one of three Andean volcanoes where researchers uncovered the mummified cadavers of mice. Analyses of the mummies, combined with the capture of live specimens, suggest that the rodents scaled the Mars-like peaks on their own — and are somehow managing to live on them.
Wildlife

How did mummified mice end up on volcanoes in the Atacama Desert?

By Laura Baisas

four of the best bird feeder cameras sliced together against a white background
Birds

The best bird feeder cameras

By Becki Robins

A blue Bird Buddy is mounted on a post in front of a house.
Birds

Bird Buddy Smart Bird Feeder review: A camera that’s not just for the birds

By Abby Ferguson

An illustration of a newly discovered shark species called Strigilodus tollesonae. The shark looks somewhat like a stingray, with outstretched wings, fan-like top fins, and a long tail with black spots.
Sharks

Prehistoric shark called Kentucky home 337 million years ago

By Laura Baisas

Smallmouth bass.
Fish

It’s not too late to stop a bass invasion in the Colorado River

By Ben Goldfarb / High Country News

A group of worker bees surround the queen bee on a honeycomb. All worker honeybees are female and they can go to extreme lengths to serve their queen even shedding their own ovaries.
Wildlife

Female honeybees may pass down ‘altruistic’ genes

By Laura Baisas