Odd Creatures News
July 24, 2025
Top Headlines
July 23, 2025 Scientists have discovered a sugar compound from deep-sea bacteria that can destroy cancer cells in a dramatic way. This natural substance, produced by microbes living in the ocean, causes cancer cells to undergo a fiery form of cell death, ...
July 17, 2025 Dogs trained by everyday pet owners are proving to be surprisingly powerful allies in the fight against the invasive spotted lanternfly. In a groundbreaking study, citizen scientists taught their ...
July 16, 2025 Scientists have uncovered a surprisingly simple “tissue code”: five rules that choreograph when, where, and how cells divide, move, and die, allowing organs like the colon to remain flawlessly organized even as they renew every few days. ...
July 12, 2025 A cat named Pepper has once again helped scientists discover a new virus—this time a mysterious orthoreovirus found in a shrew. Researchers from the University of Florida, including virologist John Lednicky, identified this strain during unrelated ...
July 11, 2025 Scientists have uncovered DNA from 214 ancient pathogens in prehistoric humans, including the oldest known evidence of plague. The findings show zoonotic diseases began spreading around 6,500 years ...
July 11, 2025 Blue sharks possess a secret hidden in their skin: a sophisticated arrangement of microscopic crystals and pigments that create their brilliant blue appearance — and may allow them to change color. Scientists have discovered that these ...
July 10, 2025 Climate change is silently sapping the nutrients from our food. A pioneering study finds that rising CO2 and higher temperatures are not only reshaping how crops grow but are also degrading their nutritional value especially in vital leafy greens ...
July 8, 2025 As glaciers melt around the world, long-dormant volcanoes may be waking up beneath the ice. New research reveals that massive ice sheets have suppressed eruptions for thousands of years, building up underground pressure. But as that icy weight ...
July 8, 2025 High heat and heavy metals dampen a bumblebee’s trademark buzz, threatening pollen release and colony chatter. Tiny sensors captured up-to-400-hertz tremors that falter under environmental stress, raising alarms for ecosystems and sparking ideas ...
July 8, 2025 Feral water buffalo now roam Hong Kong s South Lantau marshes, and a 657-person survey shows they ignite nostalgia, wonder, and worry in equal measure. Many residents embrace them as living links to a fading rural past and potential conservation ...
July 7, 2025 Danish and Welsh botanists sifted through 400 studies, field-tested seed mixes, and uncovered a lineup of native and exotic blooms that both thrill human eyes and lure bees and hoverflies in droves, ...
July 6, 2025 Kenyan fig trees can literally turn parts of themselves to stone, using microbes to convert internal crystals into limestone-like deposits that lock away carbon, sweeten surrounding soils, and still yield fruit—hinting at a delicious new weapon in ...
Latest Headlines
updated 3:18am EDT
July 24, 2025 Half a billion years ago, a strange sea-dwelling creature called Mollisonia symmetrica may have paved the way for modern spiders. Using detailed fossil brain analysis, researchers uncovered neural ...
July 19, 2025 Ancient Iranians hosted epic feasts with wild boars that had been hunted and transported from distant regions. These animals weren’t just ...
July 18, 2025 Despite our strong belief in dogs' ability to sense good from bad in people, new research shows they may not actually judge human character, at least ...
July 18, 2025 Tourists feeding wild elephants may seem innocent or even compassionate, but a new 18-year study reveals it s a recipe for disaster. Elephants in Sri Lanka and India have learned to beg for snacks ...
July 17, 2025 Neanderthals living in two nearby caves in ancient Israel prepared their food in surprisingly different ways, according to new archaeological evidence. Despite using the same tools and hunting the ...
July 16, 2025 After baffling scholars for over a century, Cambridge researchers have reinterpreted the long-lost Song of Wade, revealing it to be a chivalric ...
July 15, 2025 High in Fiji s rainforest, the ant plant Squamellaria grows swollen tubers packed with sealed, single-door apartments. Rival ant species nest in these chambers, fertilizing their host with ...
July 13, 2025 For centuries, we’ve imagined Neanderthals as distant cousins — a separate species that vanished long ago. But thanks to AI-powered genetic research, scientists have revealed a far more entangled ...
July 12, 2025 A major breakthrough in Maya archaeology has emerged from Caracol, Belize, where the University of Houston team uncovered the tomb of Te K'ab Chaak—Caracol’s first known ruler. Buried with ...
July 12, 2025 A university student on a fossil-hunting field trip in Dorset made a stunning discovery: a 145-million-year-old jawbone belonging to a previously unknown mammal species with razor-like teeth. With ...
Earlier Headlines
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 ...
July 11, 2025 In a bold step toward sustainable space travel, scientists are engineering a radically small, protein-rich rice that can grow in space. The Moon-Rice project, led by the Italian Space Agency in ...
July 10, 2025 Male guppies that glow with more orange aren’t just fashion-forward — they’re also significantly more sexually active. A UBC study reveals that brighter coloration is linked to virility and is ...
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 ...
July 8, 2025 Hovering fish aren’t loafing—they burn twice resting energy to make micro-fin tweaks that counteract a natural tendency to tip, and body shape dictates just how costly the pause is. The discovery ...
July 7, 2025 Scientists have decoded the sea spider’s genome for the first time, revealing how its strangely shaped body—with organs in its legs and barely any abdomen—may be tied to a missing gene. The ...
July 6, 2025 Immersing stressed volunteers in a 360° virtual Douglas-fir forest complete with sights, sounds and scents boosted their mood, sharpened short-term memory and deepened their feeling of ...
July 4, 2025 Preserving strips of native vegetation beside avocado orchards gives insects a buffet of wild pollen when blossoms are scarce, doubling their plant menu and boosting their resilience. Using ...
July 2, 2025 Locked-down Hungarians who gained or lost pets saw almost no lasting shift in mood or loneliness, and new dog owners actually felt less calm and satisfied over time—hinting that the storied “pet ...
July 2, 2025 Wild orcas across four continents have repeatedly floated fish and other prey to astonished swimmers and boaters, hinting that the ocean’s top predator likes to make friends. Researchers cataloged ...
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 ...
June 29, 2025 Scientists have uncovered a surprising new way that urea—an essential building block for life—could have formed on the early Earth. Instead of requiring high temperatures or complex catalysts, ...
June 27, 2025 Zooplankton like copepods aren’t just fish food—they’re carbon-hauling powerhouses. By diving deep into the ocean each winter, they’re secretly stashing 65 million tonnes of carbon far below ...
June 27, 2025 A groundbreaking study suggests that the famous Cambrian explosion—the dramatic burst of diverse animal life—might have actually started millions of years earlier than we thought. By analyzing ...
June 27, 2025 At Flinders University, scientists have cracked a cleaner and greener way to extract gold—not just from ore, but also from our mounting piles of e-waste. By using a compound normally found in pool ...
June 26, 2025 Urban wildlife is evolving right under our noses — and scientists have the skulls to prove it. By examining over a century’s worth of chipmunk and vole specimens from Chicago, researchers ...
June 27, 2025 Beneath the Afar region in Ethiopia, scientists have discovered pulsing waves of molten rock rising from deep within the Earth — a geological heartbeat that could eventually split Africa in two. ...
June 26, 2025 Experiments and simulations show Paleolithic paddlers could outwit the powerful Kuroshio Current by launching dugout canoes from northern Taiwan and steering southeast toward Okinawa. A modern crew ...
June 26, 2025 Farming didn t emerge in the Andes due to crisis or scarcity it was a savvy and resilient evolution. Ancient diets remained stable for millennia, blending wild and domesticated foods while cultural ...
June 26, 2025 Cats overwhelmingly choose to sleep on their left side, a habit researchers say could be tied to survival. This sleep position activates the brain’s right hemisphere upon waking, perfect for ...
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Friday, July 11, 2025
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Wednesday, July 9, 2025
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Monday, July 7, 2025
Sunday, July 6, 2025
Friday, July 4, 2025
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
- The Pandemic Pet Boom Was Real. The Happiness Boost Wasn’t
- Why Do Killer Whales Keep Handing Us Fish? Scientists Unpack the Mystery
- How Female Friendships Help Chimp Babies Survive
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Friday, June 27, 2025
- Tiny Creatures, Massive Impact: How Zooplankton Store 65 Million Tonnes of Carbon Annually
- These 545-Million-Year-Old Fossil Trails Just Rewrote the Story of Evolution
- This Breakthrough Turns Old Tech Into Pure Gold — No Mercury, No Cyanide, Just Light and Salt
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Friday, June 27, 2025
Thursday, June 26, 2025
- This Team Tried to Cross 140 Miles of Treacherous Ocean Like Stone-Age Humans—and It Worked
- Farming Without Famine: Ancient Andean Innovation Rewrites Agricultural Origins
- Why Cats Prefer Sleeping on Their Left Side—and How It Might Help Them Survive
- Can These Endangered Lizards Beat the Heat? Scientists Test Bold Relocation Plan
- New Test Unmasks Illegal Elephant Ivory Disguised as Mammoth
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
- New Viruses Discovered in Bats in China Could Be the Next Pandemic Threat
- Mammals Didn't Walk Upright Until Late—here's What Fossils Reveal
- Scientists Reprogram Ant Behavior Using Brain Molecules
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
- Mining the Deep Could Mute the Songs of Sperm Whales
- Ancient Carbon ‘burps’ Caused Ocean Oxygen Crashes — and We’re Repeating the Mistake
- Killer Whales Use Seaweed Tools in Never-Before-Seen Grooming Behavior
Monday, June 23, 2025
- No Kings Buried Here: DNA Unravels the Myth of Incestuous Elites in Ancient Ireland
- From Cursed Tomb Fungus to Cancer Cure: Aspergillus Flavus Yields Potent New Drug
Friday, June 20, 2025
- Scientists Create Living Building Material That Captures CO₂ from the Air
- Gravity, Flipped: How Tiny, Porous Particles Sink Faster in Ocean Snowstorms
- The Atlantic's Chilling Secret: A Century of Data Reveals Ocean Current Collapse
- Frozen in Time: Transparent Worms Keep Genes in Sync for 20 Million Years
Thursday, June 19, 2025
- Thinking AI Models Emit 50x More CO2—and Often for Nothing
- Microscopic Heist: How Lung Bacteria Forge Weapons to Steal Iron and Survive
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Friday, June 27, 2025
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Friday, June 20, 2025
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
- These Beetles Can See a Color Most Insects Can’t
- Monster Salamander With Powerful Jaws Unearthed in Tennessee Fossil Find
- Rainbow Reefs Revealed: The Secret 112-Million-Year Saga of Glowing Fish
Monday, June 16, 2025
- Cluck Once, and the River Shakes: Inside the Amazon’s Giant Snake Saga
- 600-Million-Year-Old Body Blueprint Found in Sea Anemones
Saturday, June 14, 2025
- Fruit-Eating Mastodons? Ancient Fossils Confirm a Long-Lost Ecological Alliance
- Space-Laser AI Maps Forest Carbon in Minutes—a Game-Changer for Climate Science
- Africa's Pangolin Crisis: The Delicacy That's Driving a Species to the Brink
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Friday, June 13, 2025
Thursday, June 12, 2025
- Something More Toxic Than Gators Is Hiding in the Swamps
- Pincer Plot Twist: How Female Earwigs Evolved Deadly Claws for Love and War
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Sunday, June 15, 2025
- Tiny Wasp’s Shocking Reproductive Trick May Transform Global Agriculture
- 83% of Earth’s Climate-Critical Fungi Are Still Unknown
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
- What a Dinosaur Ate 100 Million Years ago—Preserved in a Fossilized Time Capsule
- 2,000 Miles Through Rivers and Ice: Mapping Neanderthals’ Hidden Superhighways Across Eurasia
Friday, June 6, 2025
Friday, June 27, 2025
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
- Forever Chemicals' Toxic Cousin: MCCPs Detected in U. S. Air for First Time
- Clever Worms Form Superorganism Towers to Hitch Rides on Insects
Sunday, June 8, 2025
- Earth's Core Mystery Solved: How Solid Rock Flows 3,000 Kilometers Beneath Us
- How Outdated Phones Can Power Smart Cities and Save the Seas
- 160 Million Years Ago, This Fungus Pierced Trees Like a Microscopic Spear
Saturday, June 7, 2025
Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Monday, June 2, 2025
Thursday, May 29, 2025
- Long Shot Science Leads to Revised Age for Land-Animal Ancestor
- Birds Nested in Arctic Alongside Dinosaurs
- Could 'pausing' Cell Death Be the Final Frontier in Medicine on Earth and Beyond?
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
- Nearly Five Million Seized Seahorses Just 'tip of the Iceberg' In Global Wildlife Smuggling
- Europe's Most Complete Stegosaurian Skull Unearthed in Teruel, Spain
- Chemists Recreate How RNA Might Have Reproduced for First Time
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
- Cryogenic Hydrogen Storage and Delivery System for Next-Generation Aircraft
- Oldest Whale Bone Tools Discovered
Monday, May 26, 2025
Friday, May 23, 2025
- Mystery of 'very Odd' Elasmosaur Finally Solved: Fiercely Predatory Marine Reptile Is New Species
- Earliest Use of Psychoactive and Medicinal Plant 'harmal' Identified in Iron Age Arabia
Thursday, May 22, 2025
- The Scent of Death? Worms Experience Altered Fertility and Lifespan When Exposed to Dead Counterparts
- An Artificial Protein That Moves Like Something Found in Nature
- Scientists Have Figured out How Extinct Giant Ground Sloths Got So Big and Where It All Went Wrong
- 'Selfish' Genes Called Introners Proven to Be a Major Source of Genetic Complexity
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
- Shrinking Nemo: Clownfish Survive Heatwaves by Shrinking
- Can Plants Hear Their Pollinators?
- Why Some Spiders Are More Venomous Than Others
- Toothache from Eating Something Cold? Blame These Ancient Fish
- A New Technology for Extending the Shelf Life of Produce
- Hand2: Positional Code That Allows Axolotls to Regrow Limbs Found
- Extreme Weather Cycles Change Underwater Light at Lake Tahoe
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Monday, May 19, 2025
- A Head and a Hundred Tails: How a Branching Worm Manages Reproductive Complexity
- Nimble Dimples: Agile Underwater Vehicles Inspired by Golf Balls
- How to Swim Without a Brain
- Capuchin Monkeys Develop Bizarre 'fad' Of Abducting Baby Howlers
- Mice Use Chemical Cues Such as Odors to Sense Social Hierarchy
Friday, May 16, 2025
- Light-to-Electricity Nanodevice Reveals How Earth's Oldest Surviving Cyanobacteria Worked
- Wild Orangutans Show Communication Complexity Thought to Be Uniquely Human