Tech News

Rare Mutation Among Bajau People Lets Them Stay Underwater Longer

The Bajau people of Malaysia and the Philippines are renowned for their free-diving abilities, often working eight-hour shifts in search of fish and other sea critters. Underwater sessions can last upwards of two minutes, with accumulated daily totals of breath-holding often reaching five hours. New research suggests these impressive feats aren’t the result of training, … Continued

ScienceBiology

This Bizarre Fish Hides a Nasty Switchblade on Its Cheek

The scientists who discovered the strange feature are calling it a “lachrymal saber,” but for the predators who dare to mess with this type of stonefish, the unique switchblade just means trouble. “We report on the discovery of a remarkable defensive specialization in stonefishes that was identified during a [genetic] study of scorpionfishes and their … Continued

ScienceBiology

Holy Shit, These Triassic Ocean Reptiles Were Big as Hell

Paleontologists working along the UK’s southwest coast have unearthed a 205-million-year-old jawbone that belonged to an absolutely enormous species of ichthyosaur, a very successful group of aquatic reptiles. At approximately 85 feet in length, these monsters were one of the largest animals to have ever appeared on Earth. No animal, either past or present, has … Continued

Tech News

Why Neanderthals Had Faces That Were So Different From Ours

Compared to modern humans, Neanderthals had heavy eyebrows, huge noses, and large, long faces that bulged forward. Using 3D computer models, an international team of scientists has analyzed these facial features in detail, uncovering some likely explanations for these dramatic physical differences. Neanderthals and modern humans, or Homo sapiens, diverged from a common ancestor sometime … Continued

ScienceBiology

Freaky Ancient Lizard Had Four ‘Eyes’

An ancient species of monitor lizard that went extinct some 34 million years ago had four eyes, according to new research. It’s the first time that scientists have ever seen such a thing in a jawed terrestrial animal—an observation that’s filling a gap in our understanding of how these features evolved. In addition to its … Continued

ScienceBiology

Newly Sequenced Cockroach Genome Explains Why They Are So Goddamn Hard to Kill

Cockroaches have been one of humanity’s most unwanted, yet admirably persistent, roommates for thousands of years. But despite our reluctant intimacy, there’s still a lot we don’t understand about these insects. A new study, published today in Nature Communication, unpacks the genes that make roaches tick—and helps explain why they’re so damn hard to get … Continued

ScienceBiology

These Hawaiian Stick Spiders Have a Profound Case of Evolutionary Déjà Vu

Environments make species. This was the fundamental biology lesson that was drilled into Charles Darwin when he visited the Galápagos Islands back in 1835, a trip that ultimately inspired his theory of natural selection. Nearly 200 years later, scientists in Hawaii have stumbled upon a fascinating evolutionary quirk that would’ve made Darwin proud—the discovery of … Continued

ScienceBiology

Termites Are Finally Being Recognized for What They Really Are: Social Cockroaches

Very quietly, and without any formal announcement, the Common Names Committee of the Entomological Society of America has decided to list termites in the same category as cockroaches. It seem weird to lump the two together, but it’s a move that scientists have been considering for nearly a century. If you call up the ESA’s … Continued

ScienceBiology

Ancient Elephants and Mastodons Were Totally Down With Inter-Species Boning

The history of elephants—from gigantic woolly mammoths through to modern forest-dwelling pachyderms—is more complicated than we thought. An analysis of modern and ancient elephant genomes shows that interbreeding and hybridization was an important aspect of elephant evolution. New research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that ancient elephants were very … Continued

Tech News

Earth’s First Land Plants May Have Sprouted 80 Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought

For hundreds of millions of years, life on Earth was a purely aquatic phenomenon. The jump from the oceans to the continents was a monumental event, one that would irrevocably change the face of our plant. A new study suggests the first plants to make this evolutionary leap appeared much earlier than we thought. Our … Continued

EartherConservation

We Now Know Where Snow-Loving Species Could Adapt to Climate Change

Thanks to climate change, the hallmarks of winter’s end—snow melting and plants budding and flowering—are occurring earlier and earlier. While humans might cheer a little less time dealing with snow and slush each year, the animals that have evolved to sync their coat color with their seasonal surroundings are in mortal danger. New research has … Continued

ScienceBiology

No One Really Knows When Wild Rabbits Became Fluffy Domesticated Bunnies

Rabbits are a treasured source of companionship, entertainment, and—if you’re living most anywhere besides the U.S.—food. But a new analysis published Wednesday in Cell Press Reviews suggests that whether you turn to folk tales or DNA, there’s no easy way to tell when rabbits actually became part of our domesticated stable. Researchers in the U.K. … Continued

ScienceBiology

New Species of African Titanosaur Solves Cretaceous-Era Mystery

Say hello to Mansourasaurus shahinae, a 14,000-pound titanosaur that rumbled across the African landscape during the final days of the dinosaurs. Its discovery is answering a long-standing mystery about dinosaur evolution at a time when Earth’s continents began drifting further and further apart. New research published in Nature Ecology and Evolution shows that Cretaceous-era dinosaurs … Continued

ScienceBiology

Holy Crap These Leech Cocoons Are Incredible

Nature’s beauty can originate from the most unlikely places. Take leech cocoons, the sacks in which leeches lay their eggs. They have an incredible solid-foam surface, as the image below shows: A team of researchers at Rutgers University, Camden (and one scientist from Turkey) took a look at these structures to figure out how they … Continued

Tech News

India’s Education Minister Slammed After Claiming That Evolution Is ‘Scientifically Wrong’

Scientists in India are in a furor following comments made by a junior minister who’s openly questioning the theory of evolution by natural selection. India’s Minister of State for Human Resource Development—a position that oversees university education—wants the theory of evolution to be removed from school curricula. Needless to say, this stance isn’t going over … Continued

ScienceBiology

How Evolution Turned Lions and Cheetahs Into Such Formidable Killing Machines

When we see a large cat capturing its prey on the African savannah, we’re literally watching millions of years of evolution in action. But these attacks don’t always end in a meal, as “survival of the fittest” sometimes means the target gets to make a daring escape. New research uncovers the athleticism involved in these … Continued

Tech News

Here’s Why Most Animals Don’t Use Their Tails as Weapons

Humans tend to rely on crafted tools in order to harm one another, but most other species have evolved weapons right on their bodies. Normally, these bashers, spikes, and other instruments of attack appear on heads or limbs. But only rarely do they end up on tails—and scientists want to know why The tail might … Continued

Tech News

Life Could Have Evolved From These Ancient Chemical Reactions

Fundamentally, your body is just a crazy chemistry experiment. You put in food and oxygen, chemical reactions happen, and out comes energy and poop. But how did these reactions first begin? Some scientists think they have an idea. You might remember learning about cellular respiration, the process by which your body turns sugar into energy … Continued

ScienceBiology

These Birds Evolved Feathers So Dark, They’re Like A ‘Black Hole’

If you’ve seen BBC’s Planet Earth, you may recall of one of its sillier scenes: the superb bird-of-paradise mating dance. A female hops up to a male, who unveils a mane of feathers and puts on a performance like a drunk rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody” at a karaoke bar. But when the male bird faces … Continued

ScienceBiology

How These Deafening Shrimp Evolved Their Own Deadly Sonic Weapon

There are some shrimp species equipped with truly remarkable weaponry. The pistol shrimp’s massive claw closes with a powerful snap—louder than a gunshot, at 210 decibels—temporarily creating an air bubble with so much energy that it pops with an underwater shock wave and a flash of light and heat temporarily hotter than 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit. … Continued