Apes News

December 26, 2025

Top Headlines

A Silent Ocean Pandemic Is Wiping Out Sea Urchins Worldwide

Dec. 12, 2025 A sudden, unexplained mass die-off is decimating sea urchins around the world, including catastrophic losses in the Canary Islands. Key reef-grazing species are reaching historic lows, and their ability to reproduce has nearly halted in some ...

New Fossils in Qatar Reveal a Tiny Sea Cow Hidden for 21 Million Years

Dec. 12, 2025 Fossils from Qatar have revealed a small, newly identified sea cow species that lived in the Arabian Gulf more than 20 million years ago. The site contains the densest known collection of fossil sea cow bones, showing that these animals once thrived ...

Scientists Capture Stunning Real-time Images of DNA Damage and Repair

Nov. 23, 2025 Scientists have created a live-cell DNA sensor that reveals how damage appears and disappears inside living cells, capturing the entire repair sequence as it unfolds. Instead of freezing cells at different points, researchers can now watch damage ...

Ancient Viruses Hidden Inside Bacteria Could Help Defeat Modern Infections

Nov. 3, 2025 Penn State scientists uncovered an ancient bacterial defense where dormant viral DNA helps bacteria fight new viral threats. The enzyme PinQ flips bacterial genes to create protective proteins that block infection. Understanding this mechanism could ...

Why Women Live Longer Than Men, Explained by Evolution

Oct. 28, 2025 An international team of researchers led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, working with 15 collaborators around the world, has conducted the most comprehensive study yet of lifespan differences ...

How This Odd-looking Animal Outsmarted Aging

Oct. 20, 2025 Naked mole-rats seem to have found nature’s cheat code for longevity. Scientists discovered that small tweaks in one of their proteins make it better at fixing DNA damage, helping the animals resist aging. Even fruit flies with the same changes ...

Scientists Finally Read the Hidden DNA Code That Shapes Disease

Oct. 18, 2025 EMBL researchers created SDR-seq, a next-generation tool that decodes both DNA and RNA from the same cell. It finally opens access to non-coding regions, where most disease-associated genetic variants lie. By revealing how these variants affect gene ...

How Orangutans Thrive in Feast and Famine Without Gaining Weight

Sep. 9, 2025 Orangutans, humans’ close evolutionary relatives, have developed remarkable strategies to survive in the unpredictable rainforests of Borneo. A Rutgers-led study reveals that these apes balance protein intake and adjust their activity to match ...

New “Evolution Engine” Creates Super-proteins 100,000x Faster

Aug. 8, 2025 Researchers at Scripps have created T7-ORACLE, a powerful new tool that speeds up evolution, allowing scientists to design and improve proteins thousands of times faster than nature. Using engineered bacteria and a modified viral replication system, ...

Did Drunk Apes Help Us Evolve? New Clues Reveal Why We Digest Alcohol so Well

Aug. 1, 2025 Ape behavior just got a name upgrade — “scrumping” — and it might help explain why humans can handle alcohol so well. Researchers discovered that African apes regularly eat overripe, ...

Scientists Just Discovered a Secret Code Hidden in Your DNA

July 21, 2025 What scientists once dismissed as junk DNA may actually be some of the most powerful code in our genome. A new international study reveals that ancient viral DNA buried in our genes plays an active role in controlling how other genes are turned on ...

The Fatal Mutation That Lets Cancer Outsmart the Human Immune System

July 2, 2025 Scientists at UC Davis discovered a small genetic difference that could explain why humans are more prone to certain cancers than our primate cousins. The change affects a protein used by immune cells to kill tumors—except in humans, it’s ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:58pm EST

From Biting Flies to Feathered Dinosaurs, Scientists Reveal 70 New Species

Dec. 19, 2025 Researchers announced over 70 new species in a single year, including bizarre insects, ancient dinosaurs, rare mammals, and deep-river fish. Many were found not in the wild, but in museum ...

Giant Sea Monsters Lived in Rivers at the End of the Dinosaur Age

Dec. 15, 2025 Giant mosasaurs, once thought to be strictly ocean-dwelling predators, may have spent their final chapter prowling freshwater rivers alongside dinosaurs and crocodiles. A massive tooth found in North ...

Male Bonobos Use Hidden Clues to Boost Mating Success

Dec. 14, 2025 Male bonobos have an impressive ability to detect when females are most fertile, even though the usual visual cues are unreliable. Researchers tracking wild bonobos in the Congo discovered that males ...

Human Brains Light Up for Chimp Voices in a Way No One Expected

Dec. 10, 2025 Humans don’t just recognize each other’s voices—our brains also light up for the calls of chimpanzees, hinting at ancient communication roots shared with our closest primate relatives. ...

Wild Chimps Consume More Alcohol Than Anyone Expected

Dec. 1, 2025 Chimpanzees naturally ingest surprising amounts of alcohol from ripe, fermenting fruit. Careful measurements show that their typical fruit diet can equal one to two human drinks each day. This ...

A Strange Ancient Foot Reveals a Hidden Human Cousin

Nov. 28, 2025 Researchers have finally assigned a strange 3.4-million-year-old foot to Australopithecus deyiremeda, confirming that Lucy’s species wasn’t alone in ancient Ethiopia. This hominin had an ...

Scientists Reveal Kissing Began Millions of Years Before Humans

Nov. 21, 2025 Scientists have traced kissing back to early primates, suggesting it began long before humans evolved. Their analysis points to great apes and even Neanderthals sharing forms of kissing millions of ...

Chimps Shock Scientists by Changing Their Minds With New Evidence

Nov. 16, 2025 Chimps may revise their beliefs in surprisingly human-like ways. Experiments showed they switched choices when presented with stronger clues, demonstrating flexible reasoning. Computational modeling ...

Scientists Stunned as Island Spider Loses Half Its Genome

Nov. 2, 2025 On the Canary Islands, scientists discovered that the spider Dysdera tilosensis has halved its genome size in just a few million years—defying traditional evolutionary theories that predict larger, ...

Scientists Discover 14 Strange New Species Hidden in the Deep Sea

Nov. 2, 2025 Scientists are revolutionizing how new marine species are described through the Ocean Species Discoveries initiative. Using advanced lab techniques, researchers recently unveiled 14 new species from ...

Humans Evolved Faster Than Any Other Ape

Oct. 29, 2025 UCL scientists found that human skulls evolved much faster than those of other apes, reflecting the powerful forces driving our brain growth and facial flattening. By comparing 3D models of ape ...

MIT Scientists Discover Hidden 3D Genome Loops That Survive Cell Division

Oct. 24, 2025 MIT researchers discovered that the genome’s 3D structure doesn’t vanish during cell division as previously thought. Instead, tiny loops called microcompartments remain (and even strengthen) ...

Surprising Giant DNA Discovery May Be Linked to Gum Disease and Cancer

Sep. 13, 2025 Scientists in Tokyo have uncovered “Inocles,” massive strands of extrachromosomal DNA hidden inside bacteria in human mouths. These giants, overlooked by traditional sequencing, could explain how ...

Fossil Reveals a 310-Million-Year-Old Fish That Ate With a Hidden Second Jaw

Sep. 4, 2025 Scientists uncovered a 310-million-year-old fish fossil with a “tongue bite,” teeth on the roof and floor of its mouth that worked like a second jaw. This adaptation, previously thought to have ...

Scientists Uncover the Secret to Orangutan Survival in the Trees

Aug. 30, 2025 Young orangutans master the art of building intricate treetop nests not by instinct alone, but by closely watching their mothers and peers. Researchers tracking wild Sumatran orangutans over 17 years ...

Scientists Just Found Rare Spores Inside a Fossil Older Than Dinosaurs

Sep. 27, 2025 Scientists reclassified a long-misunderstood fossil from Brazil as a new genus, Franscinella riograndensis. Using advanced microscopy, they discovered spores preserved in situ—a rare find that ...

Scientists May Have Found the Tiny DNA Switch That Made Us Human

Aug. 15, 2025 Scientists at UC San Diego have discovered a small but powerful section of DNA, called HAR123, that could help explain what makes the human brain so unique. Instead of being a gene, HAR123 acts like ...

Great White Sharks Have a DNA Mystery Science Still Can’t Explain

Aug. 16, 2025 Once on the brink during the last ice age, great white sharks made a remarkable recovery globally, but their DNA reveals a baffling story. Classic migration explanations fail, leaving scientists with ...

700,000 Years Ahead of Their Teeth: The Carbs That Made Us Human

Aug. 2, 2025 Long before evolution equipped them with the right teeth, early humans began eating tough grasses and starchy underground plants—foods rich in energy but hard to chew. A new study reveals that this ...

Did Humans Learn to Walk in Trees?

July 29, 2025 In the quest to understand how and why early humans started walking on two legs, scientists are now looking to chimpanzees living in dry, open savannah-like environments for clues. A new study ...

Lemurs Age Without Inflammation—and It Could Change Human Health Forever

July 10, 2025 What if humans didn’t have to suffer the slow-burning fire of chronic inflammation as we age? A surprising study on two types of lemurs found no evidence of "inflammaging," a phenomenon ...

Why Monkeys—and Humans—can’t Look Away from Social Conflict

July 9, 2025 Long-tailed macaques given short videos were glued to scenes of fighting—especially when the combatants were monkeys they knew—mirroring the human draw to drama and familiar faces. Low-ranking ...

2 Million-Year-Old Teeth Reveal Secrets from the Dawn of Humanity

Nov. 1, 2025 For decades, Paranthropus robustus has intrigued scientists as a powerful, big-jawed cousin of early humans. Now, thanks to ancient protein analysis, researchers have cracked open new secrets hidden ...

How Female Friendships Help Chimp Babies Survive

July 2, 2025 Female chimpanzees that forge strong, grooming-rich friendships with other females dramatically boost their infants’ odds of making it past the perilous first year—no kin required. Three decades ...

Microscopic Heist: How Lung Bacteria Forge Weapons to Steal Iron and Survive

June 19, 2025 Researchers investigating the enigmatic and antibiotic-resistant Pandoraea bacteria have uncovered a surprising twist: these pathogens don't just pose risks they also produce powerful natural ...

These Frozen Wolf Cubs Ate a Woolly Rhino—and Changed What We Know About Dogs

June 24, 2025 Two Ice Age wolf pups once thought to be early dogs have been identified as wild wolves, thanks to detailed DNA and chemical analysis. Surprisingly, their last meals included woolly rhinoceros ...

83% of Earth’s Climate-Critical Fungi Are Still Unknown

June 15, 2025 Underground fungi may be one of Earth s most powerful and overlooked allies in the fight against climate change, yet most of them remain unknown to science. Known only by DNA, these "dark ...

DNA Floating in the Air Tracks Wildlife, Viruses -- Even Drugs

June 3, 2025 In the heart of Dublin, scientists have discovered that the air holds more than melodies and Guinness-infused cheer it carries invisible traces of life, from wildlife to drugs and even human ...

Leprosy Existed in America Long Before Arrival of Europeans

May 29, 2025 Long considered a disease brought to the Americas by European colonizers, leprosy may actually have a much older history on the American continent. Scientists reveal that a recently identified second ...

Cannabis Pangenome Reveals Potential for Medicinal and Industrial Use

May 29, 2025 Scientists analyzed almost 200 cannabis genomes to create the most comprehensive, high-quality, detailed genetic atlas of the plant to date. The atlas reveals unprecedented diversity and complexity ...