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How Ancient Sea Creatures Licked Their Way onto Land
Weird. Cool. Science. A team of biomechanists thinks it has found a new clue about how fish evolved to live on land 400 million years ago by watching the way mudskippers feed. The fish comes onto land...
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From Space, Whales Look Much Smaller
Someone told me that last week’s edition of Perrin’s Awesome Science Week was the most depressing thing she’d read in years. Environmental news, alas, can be like that. We’ve kinda botched the job of...
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A Sloth Smorgasboard
I went down a three-toed sloth internet K-hole this week, thanks to a brief but densely hyperlinked post in Science. I learned that these animals snack on algae that grows in their fur. The algae is so...
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Chewing the Cud on Wild Yaks
I’m very curious about what it will mean for the environment if California starts building desalination plants off its coast. Turning saltwater into freshwater is a process well underway in places like...
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Trees Bloom Big (Just Before They Bust)
How do trees know when it’s spring? This video from The Atlantic taught me that it’s the seasonal changes in daylight, not temperature, that cue a tree to bloom. Also, a heavy bloom doesn’t mean a tree...
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Some Trees Are Better Than Others (but They're All Pretty Good)
The New England Aquarium is known for its seals and amazing location in Boston Harbor, but its lesser-known offerings include conservation micro grants to marine researchers around the world. The...
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When civil war broke out in Syria, scientists scrambled to save a seed bank
This piece in Wired, about how Syrian scientists saved a seed bank from their country’s civil war, is fascinating. It’s moving to know there are people so devoted to tending to these resources for...
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Catching waves while tracking ocean acidification, surfing meets citizen science
A neurologist–turned–environmental filmmaker and a surfer/structural engineer have teamed up to create a data-collecting device that could turn surfers into citizen scientists. Outside reports that...
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Why Send Antarctica More Ice? Because, Science.
What do you put inside a freezer in Antarctica? Ice, dummy.A seed bank in the Arctic Circle that aims to preserve the genetic resources for food in the event of a global agriculture crisis has been all...
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When cow pee particles take to the wind, lakes turn green
Big bad wolf? Nah, don’t mind him.Photo: Laika ac/FlickrA wolf walks among them, but that doesn’t faze gelada baboons. Scientists from Dartmouth College have found that when a solitary Ethiopian wolf,...
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It’s Raining Lamprey!
A jawless bloodsucker is falling from the sky. Seriously.Alaskans have found four Arctic lampreys that have fallen from the sky in Fairbanks over the last few weeks. Lampreys are jawless, toothy,...
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Welcome to the sixth mass extinction (and yes, it’s our fault)
We might be going the way of the dinosaur if we don’t get our acts together.Studies suggesting that the planet is in the middle of a sixth mass-extinction event have gotten a lot of flak lately. So a...
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A young beetle’s best defense? A poop shield.
When you’ve got a highly mobile anus, you build a poop shield on your back with it. That’s just what you do. “It’s hard to deny the effectiveness of a poo stick in warding off attackers.” There’s no...
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If You Don’t Use Your Bones, You Lose Them—Unless You’re a Hibernating Bear
During its long winter’s nap, a bear’s bones remain summer-strong.Bones seem pretty solid and stable, but they’re actually in constant flux, as our skeletons regularly replace old tissue. As your bones...
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Less Mercury Pollution, Less Mercury in Bluefish. Hmm…
Curbing pollution makes fish less poisonous. Win-win. The levels of mercury found in bluefish in the Atlantic have fallen 43 percent since 1972. The authors of a new study, published Tuesday in the...
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This Plant Defends Its Sexual Organs with an Army of the Dead
This plant creates a booby trap by coating itself with the bodies of its victims.The serpentine columbine, which grows in wet areas along the northern California coast, has beautiful red, pointy...
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Wildfires are taking the frost out of permafrost
NPR has a great story about the aftermath of wildfires in Alaska, which have already burned through five million acres this summer. The ground up there has thick layers of duff, which is...
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Species Are on the Move and Northward Bound—Then What?
Hey there, plankton—what are your plans?As all manner of living creatures, from invertebrates to trees to mammals, start heading toward the poles, habitat range is becoming a hot topic (precisely...
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Humans take the SUPER out of SUPERPREDATOR
You may eat your baked halibut at a table with silverware while discussing important worldly matters, but you’re no less of a predatory animal than an orca or a cougar.The way you hunt down your meaty...
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Hang in There, Cousin!
Counting chimpanzees is no small task: Getting to know and adding up who’s who is a long and involved process; tallying “nest” numbers can be inaccurate; and we haven’t quite gotten all the kinks out...
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