Nature

When you put a tardigrade under a microscope, you never know what you’re going to get. These weird-looking ‘water bears’ are some of the strangest creatures on the planet, and they are constantly surprising us. Even once you see them with your own eyes, it can be hard to figure out what the heck is

In 2015, David Hole was prospecting in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia. Armed with a metal detector, he discovered something out of the ordinary – a very heavy, reddish rock resting in some yellow clay. He took it home and tried everything to open it, sure that there was a gold nugget inside the

Lizzie Daly was diving Saturday off the coast of Cornwall in Britain when she saw something large in the distance and did a double take. Daly had seen a barrel jellyfish before but nothing of this size. Daly, a biologist and broadcaster, swam up to the peach-colored creature gliding through the water, as cameraman Dan

It’s not enough for humans to pump less carbon into the atmosphere. To address climate change, many experts say we’re going to need to find a way to remove some of the emissions already polluting our air. While some scientists are focusing on mechanical solutions to carbon capture, researchers at the Salk Institute’s Harnessing Plants

When you think of loud sounds you probably imagine earsplitting screams or whole-body-vibrating booms. Not necessarily the abrupt pop that belongs to a tiny 29-millimetre marine worm (Leocratides kimuraorum). But when marine biologist Ryutaro Goto from Kyoto University and colleagues measured the sounds made by these polychaete worms they came in at a whopping 157

Feasts are rare on the barren landscape of the ocean depths. So researchers couldn’t believe their luck when they recently stumbled on a feeding frenzy of deep-sea sharks chowing down on a fallen swordfish off the US coast. But they never imagined they would also capture footage of one of those sharks becoming the prey

In a post-apocalyptic future, what might happen to life if humans left the scene? After all, humans are very likely to disappear long before the sun expands into a red giant and exterminates all living things from the Earth. Assuming that we don’t extinguish all other life as we disappear (an unlikely feat in spite

The diversity of life here on Earth is constantly in flux, but this universal pattern of evolution and extinction is not easily explained. Some scientists have reasoned that mass extinction events occur on our planet every 26 to 30 million years and that biodiversity changes every 62 million years. But the marine fossil record suggests

A weird-looking foot preserved in 99 million-year-old Burmese amber has revealed a new species of ancient bird with one insanely long middle toe. The newly-named Elektorornis chenguangi is a small bird distinct from all others, either extinct or living – simply because of its hindlimb. The third digit on its foot, researchers say, is twice

Earth’s magnetic field protects and makes our planet habitable by stopping harmful high-energy particles from space, including from the Sun. The source of this magnetic field is the core at the centre of our planet. But the core is very difficult to study, partly because it starts at a depth of about 2,900 kilometres (1,800

California is a land shaped by seismic activity. A history of earthquakes is written in its landscape in the form of rifts, folds, and cracks. But major tremors also tend to leave less dramatic fingerprints. While two of the most recent earthquakes to strike the state’s south damaged infrastructure and land, they also warped the crust

In the space of a decade, Snowball the dancing parrot has gone from internet sensation to scientific marvel. The medium sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita eleonora) is not only adorable to watch, the way he busts a move has caused us to stop and rethink the very nature of dance. ‘True dancing’, as scientists understand it,

They’re one of the weirdest, most incongruous-looking natural phenomena you could ever see on Earth’s surface: massive dagger-shaped blades of vertically aligned ice, assembled in mysterious flocks in the middle of the desert. These strange ice spire formations – called ‘penitentes‘ due to their resemblance to penitent, praying folk – take shape at high altitudes

A sunburst-colored bird was stranded on a British highway when passersby spotted him, which wasn’t difficult. The Good Samaritans called an animal rescue hospital to report the bird, along with a strange description of his appearance: He was a vivid but uneven orange, like a winged Cheeto. Was he some exotic bird that escaped from

Seismologists in California have recorded more than 3,000 earthquakes since the Fourth of July, when a 6.4 magnitude temblor rattled the southern part of the state. Officials now believe that the initial jolt was a foreshock. Since Thursday morning, there have been 340 earthquakes with a magnitude stronger than 3, 54 with a magnitude stronger

These days, it seems like everything’s coming up sloths. The tree-dwelling mammals are fodder for all sorts of loving memes and online jokes. And don’t be surprised if a visit to your favorite retailer includes tempting merchandise of sloths being, well, sloths: sleepy, slow-moving and cute. But meme makers aren’t the only people intrigued by

From about 1550 to 1850, a global cold snap called the Little Ice Age supersized glaciers throughout the Arctic. On Canada’s Ellesmere Island, Teardrop Glacier extended its frozen tongue across the landscape and swallowed a small tuft of moss. Since 1850, the plant lay frozen under a 100-foot-thick slab of ice as humans discovered antibiotics,

Down in the deep ocean, where the Sun’s rays don’t penetrate, there dwells a beast so perfectly efficient it has remained practically unchanged for 200 million years. It’s called the bluntnose sixgill shark (Hexanchus griseus), and, like many deep-sea creatures, its lifestyle remains something of a mystery. Scientists have managed to bring them up to

During winter time, some snapping turtles like to hibernate in ponds and lakes. Safely tucked away underneath a thin layer of ice, these freshwater reptiles can survive up to six months without any oxygen to speak of. How their bodies can cope with this depends on the way they were raised, it turns out. New

When it comes to survival, the denizens of the animal kingdom have a number of different strategies to stay safe. Some creatures use bright colours and get all puffed up to make themselves intimidating. Some disguise themselves as other, more dangerous creatures. And some make themselves invisible. Not by literally disappearing, of course. But by

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.1 magnitude hit Southern California Friday evening, just one day after another massive quake (6.4 magnitude) hit the region on the Fourth of July. According to United States Geological Survey, the quake, occurred around 8:19 p.m. local time, with the epicentre 11 miles away from Ridgecrest, California, approximately

For most animals, the structure of their day – and indeed their year – depends on the light-dark cycle. These regular and rhythmic cycles in the length of days tell animals when they should be foraging, when they should be asleep, when it’s time to migrate and when it’s time to breed. Animals can tell

Scientists working in the field of connectomics – the study of connections inside the nervous systems of organisms – have announced they’ve mapped out the complete nervous system of a tiny creature. The nervous system in question belongs to the Caenorhabditis elegans roundworm, which has a rich history as a model organism: a simple life

Earth is full of bizarre landscapes. Some are land formations moulded over thousands of years, while others are human-made creations that have altered the planet in strange ways. From the bubbling lava lakes of Ethiopia, to a lake that has been nestled in the desert for 2,000 years, here are 29 landscapes that are so incredible,

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 rattled Southern California on Thursday and prompted a series of aftershocks that sprawled across the region. The quake centered near the California town of Ridgecrest, roughly 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles, according to the US Geological Survey. Ridgecrest has a population of roughly 29,000 people. The

A new report argues that the way plant cells signal isn’t something we can easily compare with nervous systems in animals, an idea that goes directly against the little-known discipline of plant neurobiology. If we’ve learned one thing about the chemistry of greenery over recent decades, it’s that plants are far more dynamic than we ever

When we think about volcanoes, we tend to conjure visions of bubbling pools of molten lava ready to consume anything that ventures too close. The reality is a bit different. Such terrifying lava lakes do exist, but they’re a lot rarer than you might imagine. Only a handful of persistent lava lakes exist among the

In the centre of the South Pacific, there’s a place as far away from land as anyone on Earth could ever hope to get. The ocean is different there. These distant waters lie at the heart of the South Pacific Gyre, the centre of which holds the ‘oceanic pole of inaccessibility’: the ocean’s remotest extreme,

At first, the scientists wondered whether it was a mistake. Just 21 days after leaving the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, an arctic fox had arrived in Greenland. And in less than three months, it made it to Canada. The fox averaged nearly 30 miles a day (50 kilometers) – some days, though, it walked almost

For thousands of years, humans have flocked to the Dead Sea to immerse themselves in one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world. Amazingly enough, the Dead Sea – which is actually a hypersaline lake cut off from the ocean waters of the Mediterranean Sea – is actually getting saltier with time, even

The last time something like this happened was 2006. Most years, Alabama sees only one or two wasp ‘super nests’: giant wasp fortresses that sometimes even professional pest controllers won’t touch. In 2006, things were different. Nature kicked into overdrive that year, and Alabama turned out at least 90 of these dangerous super-formations. Now, it

Crocodilians today are fearsome meat-eating reptiles, but new research shows that wasn’t always the case. Turns out some of the ancestors of crocodiles and alligators had a preference for a vegetarianism that was hard to shake. “Our work demonstrates that extinct crocodyliforms had an incredibly varied diet,” lead author of the new study, University of

Just when you think orcas couldn’t possible be any more awesome, they get even better. New evidence shows these whales are really good at scaring off the most feared beast in the sea. Yep. Orcas have toppled the great white shark off their ‘apex predator’ throne. A team of marine scientists has found that great

You’d think it would be easy to spot a whale shark having sex – after all, they’re amongst the largest creatures on Earth. But to this day, we have no record of their encounters, even though this week one human did get tantalisingly close. Flying above the remote Ningaloo reef in Western Australia, pilot Tiffany

You’ve got to hand it to the cockroach. Human progress might be an apocalypse for other animal species, but not these guys. And now it’s clear they’re having a jolly good laugh at our puny attempts to control them with pesticides. A study on how quickly populations of German cockroach (Blattella germanica) bounce back after

For the first time, scientists have found a blue-feathered bird in the fossil record, thanks to a new discovery that lets us tell which fossilised pigments are, in fact, blue. After millions of years of fossilisation, feathers are long gone, but melanin pigment packages called melanosomes can be preserved – up until now the problem

As far as feathered animals go, Pachystruthio dmanisensis was a monster. With an estimated mass of about 450 kilograms (nearly half a tonne), it would make a 150-kilogram adult ostrich – the world’s largest living bird – look like a canary. Bigger birds have existed, but it’s not so much its size that makes this flightless

In latest gruesome nature news, scientists have discovered new details on a fungus that compels its cicada hosts to mate long after their genitals have gone and their bodies have turned into what one researcher colourfully describes as ‘flying salt shakers of death’. The fungus is called Massospora cicadina, and its effects read like an abstinence

With the ability to use tools, solve complex puzzles, and even play tricks on humans just for funsies, octopuses are fiercely smart. But their intelligence is quite weirdly built, since the eight-armed cephalopods have evolved differently from pretty much every other type of organism on Earth. Rather than a centralised nervous system such as vertebrates have,

Tucked away in a remote valley of Brazil’s Serra da Capivara National Park, a group of bearded capuchin monkeys use round quartz stones to crack open cashew nuts on tree roots or other rocks. Beneath their feet, archaeologists have found at least 3,000-years-worth of discarded tools. The chimpanzees of Côte d’Ivoire have been using stone tools like

It’s called the ‘White City’: a fabled settlement hidden deep in the lush rainforests of Honduras, said to be all that now remains of a mysterious civilisation that existed in Central America long before the Europeans came. But this lost city has its non-believers. For much of the last century, doubts have swirled around disputed

Paul McCully was having a relatively normal Tuesday in Myrtleford, Australia. Then he looked up. “It looked like inverted waves moving quickly across the sky,” wrote McCully, who was driving at the time. He pulled over to snap a remarkable photo. “It was a stunning sight.” The wavelike ripples resembled choppy seas, as though the

There aren’t many North Pacific right whales left, with vague estimates in the low hundreds. Those last few populations aren’t known for waxing lyrical either, so when scientists heard a population recently break out into song, they had to go see them live in concert. For the first time, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

The harsh bark of the seal certainly doesn’t spring to mind when you’re thinking of melodious singing voices in the animal kingdom. But it seems the puppies of the sea have been holding out on us: When it comes to replicating a tune, they’re surprisingly talented. While studying the vocal learning of grey seals (Halichoerus

On the French island of Corsica in the Mediterranean, a strange, rarely seen beast stalks the night. Locals call it ghjattuvolpe – the cat-fox – and for the last decade, scientists have been hot on its trail, trying to unravel the mystery. Now agents with France’s National Hunting and Wildlife Office (ONCFS) have revealed their

A skull long suspected of belonging to a rare Arctic hybrid has now had its unusual biology confirmed via DNA analysis. According to the results, this strange beast had a beluga whale for a dad and a narwhal for a mum, and would have forged its own path, distinct from the lifestyles of both parents.

Most clams are happy to make their burrow in a nice, soft bed of sand or mud. Not this mollusc. A recently uncovered relative of the shipworm puts the hard into hardcore, chewing holes into rocks and excreting the debris as sand. Lithoredo abatanica joins a short list of freshwater animals capable of literally weathering

Once again, Australian fauna have provided the world with a gruesome surprise. This time, it comes at the expense of a tiny little possum, who fell prey to a large and ubiquitous spider. While we’re all wary of spiders, knowing their bites can pack a punch, seeing a big spider capture a small vertebrate is