Odd Creatures: Plants & Animals
August 5, 2025
Top Headlines
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, ...
July 28, 2025 — Eggs are finally being vindicated after decades of cholesterol-related blame. New research from the University of South Australia reveals that eggs, despite their cholesterol content, aren't the dietary villains they've long been made out to be. ...
July 25, 2025 — Fermenting stevia with a banana leaf-derived probiotic turns it into a powerful cancer-fighting agent that kills pancreatic cancer cells while sparing healthy ones. The secret lies in a metabolite called CAME, produced through microbial ...
July 25, 2025 — Millipedes, often dismissed as creepy crawlies, may hold the secret to future painkillers and neurological drugs. Researchers at Virginia Tech discovered unique alkaloid compounds in the defensive secretions of a native millipede species. These ...
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 — 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 — 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 ...
Latest Headlines
updated 1:40pm EDT
Aug. 5, 2025 — Tyrannosaurus rex might be the most famous meat-eater of all time, but it turns out it wasn’t the only way to be a terrifying giant. New research shows that while T. rex evolved a skull designed ...
Aug. 4, 2025 — A new long-necked marine reptile, Plesionectes longicollum, has been identified from a decades-old fossil found in Germany’s Posidonia Shale. The ...
Aug. 4, 2025 — In a surprising twist of conservation success, a U.S. Air Force bombing range in Florida has become a sanctuary for endangered species like the ...
Aug. 3, 2025 — Cosmic rays from deep space might be the secret energy source that allows life to exist underground on Mars and icy moons like Enceladus and Europa. New research reveals that when these rays interact ...
Aug. 1, 2025 — About 9 million years ago, a wild interspecies fling between tomato-like plants and potato relatives in South America gave rise to one of the ...
July 29, 2025 — A fish thought to be evolution’s time capsule just surprised scientists. A detailed dissection of the coelacanth — a 400-million-year-old species ...
July 29, 2025 — Scientists at UC Merced have engineered artificial cells that can keep perfect time—mimicking the 24-hour biological clocks found in living organisms. By reconstructing circadian machinery inside ...
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 ...
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 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 ...
Earlier Headlines
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 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 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 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 ...
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 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 ...
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, ...
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 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 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 ...
June 26, 2025 — South Australia’s tiny pygmy bluetongue skink is baking in a warming, drying homeland, so Flinders University scientists have tried a bold fix—move it. Three separate populations were shifted ...
Friday, July 18, 2025
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Friday, July 11, 2025
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Wednesday, July 9, 2025
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Sunday, July 6, 2025
Monday, July 7, 2025
Sunday, July 6, 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
Monday, July 7, 2025
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
Thursday, June 26, 2025
- Skull Study Shows Chicago's Rodents Are Rapidly Evolving
- 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
- Killer Whales Use Seaweed Tools in Never-Before-Seen Grooming Behavior
Monday, June 23, 2025
Friday, June 20, 2025
- Gravity, Flipped: How Tiny, Porous Particles Sink Faster in Ocean Snowstorms
- Frozen in Time: Transparent Worms Keep Genes in Sync for 20 Million Years
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Wednesday, June 18, 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
- 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
Friday, June 6, 2025
Friday, June 27, 2025
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Sunday, June 8, 2025
Saturday, June 7, 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
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
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Monday, May 19, 2025
- A Head and a Hundred Tails: How a Branching Worm Manages Reproductive Complexity
- 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
Thursday, May 15, 2025
- Dual Associations With Two Fungi Improve Tree Fitness
- Scientists Track Down Mutation That Makes Orange Cats Orange
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
- Fossil Tracks Show Reptiles Appeared on Earth Up to 40 Million Years Earlier
- Australia's Oldest Prehistoric Tree Frog Hops 22 Million Years Back in Time
- An Ink That Boosts Coral Reef Settlement by 20 Times
- UV Light and CT Scans Helped Scientists Unlock Hidden Details in a Beautifully-Preserved Fossil Archaeopteryx
- Light-Driven Cockroach Cyborgs Navigate Without Wires or Surgery
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
- CT Scanning Helps Reveal Path from Rotten Fish to Fossil
- Palaeontologists Discover 506-Million-Year-Old Predator
- Researchers Develop Living Material from Fungi
Monday, May 12, 2025
- Echidna Microbiome Changes While Mums Nurse Puggle
- Flamingos Create Water Tornados to Trap Their Prey
- From Prehistoric Resident to Runaway Pet: First Tegu Fossil Found in the U.S.
Friday, May 9, 2025
Thursday, May 8, 2025
- Robotic Dog Mimics Mammals for Superior Mobility on Land and in Water
- Scottish Shrimp Study Illuminates New Potential for Bait-Less Fishing
- Eco-Friendly Aquatic Robot Is Made from Fish Food
- AI-Designed DNA Controls Genes in Healthy Mammalian Cells for First Time