WEIRD ANIMALS
By Nick Lavars – – Scientists are hailing the mucus that coats fish as a potential goldmine of antibiotics. (Credit: magone/Depositphotos). The growing threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is seeing scientists get more and more creative in their search for new drugs that might …
By Ben Coxworth – – Researchers put a zebra-pattern coat on a domestic horse, as part of the study. (Credit: Tim Caro/UC Davis). It was just last month that we heard about a study which indicated that fewer horseflies landed on mannequins with …
A team of Japanese and Russian scientists has successfully “reawakened” cells from a 28,000-year-old woolly mammoth, according to a study published recently in Scientific Reports. The cells came from an extraordinarily well-preserved woolly mammoth discovered in Siberian permafrost in 2012 and nicknamed “Yuka”. Using …
By Ben Coxworth – – Autonomouse is claimed to be able run for over a year, with little human intervention. (Credit: Andrew Erskine). If you want to study a mouse’s natural behaviour, then perhaps it isn’t best to grab the animal and place …
Forty percent of the world’s insect species could go extinct over the next few decades. By Stuart Reynolds, The Conversation – There are an awful lot of insects. It’s hard to say exactly how many because 80 percent haven’t yet been described by …
When insects go extinct, other species follow. By Brian Resnick @B_resnickbrian@vox.com – “Help.” Brice Nihiser/Barcroft Images/Barcroft Media via Getty Images. Insects are the most abundant animals on planet Earth. If you were to put them all together into one creepy-crawly mass, they’d …
Some scientists refuse to accept it. By Peter Hess – Controversial new research shows that a tiny, unsuspecting species of fish can pass a test that’s widely considered the gold standard of intelligence. As far as we can tell, only a few …
Nick Lavars – A new study has found microplastics in the guts of 102 sea turtles. (Credit: lilithlita/Depositphotos). There remains a lot we don’t know about the whereabouts of the all the plastic waste that washes into the ocean each year, but …
By Emma Mills – Two divers encountered a 26ft long deep-sea worm off the coast of Whakaari in New Zealand. The creature is thought to be a Pyrosome, a huge hollow colony made up of thousands of individual organisms. Diver Andrew Buttle, 48, …
By Matthew Robinson, CNN – An endangered Hawaiian monk seal was spotted with an eel lodged up its nostril in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. (CNN) Endangered seals are baffling conservationists with an unlikely predicament — getting eels stuck up their noses. The …
