Odd Creatures: Earth & Climate

May 16, 2024

Top Headlines

Otters, Especially Females, Use Tools to Survive a Changing World

May 16, 2024 — Sea otters are one of the few animals that use tools to access their food, and a new study has found that individual sea otters that use tools -- most of whom are female -- are able to eat larger prey and reduce tooth damage when their preferred ...

Jet-Propelled Sea Creatures Could Improve Ocean Robotics

May 15, 2024 — Scientists have discovered that colonies of gelatinous sea animals swim through the ocean in giant corkscrew shapes using coordinated jet propulsion, an unusual kind of locomotion that could inspire new designs for efficient underwater ...

Iconic Baobabs: The Origin and Long-Distance Travels of Upside Down Trees

May 15, 2024 — The research cracks the code on the iconic baobab tree's origin story, revealing their surprising origins in Madagascar and incredible long-distance dispersals to Africa and Australia. The study unveils how baobabs developed unique pollination ...

Did a Magnetic Field Collapse Trigger the Emergence of Animals?

May 3, 2024 — Researchers uncovered compelling evidence that Earth's magnetic field was in a highly unusual state when the macroscopic animals of the Ediacaran Period -- 635 to 541 million years ago -- diversified and thrived. Their study raises the question of ...

Latest Headlines

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Fading Lights: Multiple Threats to North America's Firefly Populations

Apr. 29, 2024 — Scientists have applied a data-driven approach to understanding firefly population dynamics on a continental scale. Key findings from this new study indicate that fireflies, part of the beetle order, ...

Fixin' to Be Flexitarian: Scrap Fish and Invasive Species Can Liven Up Vegetables

Apr. 29, 2024 — Greening the way we eat needn't mean going vegetarian. A healthy, more realistic solution is to adopt a flexitarian diet where seafoods add umami to ...

Ancient Maya Blessed Their Ballcourts

Apr. 26, 2024 — Using environmental DNA analysis, an international team of researchers identified a collection of plants used in ceremonial rituals in the ancient Maya city of Yaxnohcah in Mexico. The plants, known ...

How Do Birds Flock? Researchers Do the Math to Reveal Previously Unknown Aerodynamic Phenomenon

Apr. 25, 2024 — How do birds fly in a coordinated and seemingly effortless fashion? Part of the answer lies in precise, and previously unknown, aerodynamic ...

Frog Species Evolved Rapidly in Response to Road Salts

Apr. 23, 2024 — When we think of evolution, we think of a process that happens over hundreds or thousands of years. In research recently published, a species of frog that has evolved over the course of merely 25 ...

New Research Shines a Light on How Expert Mapmakers See the World Differently

Apr. 19, 2024 — Researchers have found differences between experienced Ordnance Survey (OS) mapmakers and novices in the way that they interpret aerial images for ...

Lemur's Lament: When One Vulnerable Species Stalks Another

Apr. 19, 2024 — What can be done when one threatened animal kills another? Scientists studying critically endangered lemurs in Madagascar confronted this difficult reality when they witnessed attacks on lemurs by ...

Data-Driven Music: Converting Climate Measurements Into Music

Apr. 18, 2024 — A geo-environmental scientist from Japan has composed a string quartet using sonified climate data. The 6-minute-long composition -- entitled 'String Quartet No. 1 'Polar Energy Budget'-- is based on ...

Making Crops Colorful for Easier Weeding

Apr. 17, 2024 — To make weeding easier, scientists suggest bioengineering crops to be colorful or to have differently shaped leaves so that they can be more easily distinguished from their wild and weedy ...

A Single Atom Layer of Gold: Researchers Create Goldene

Apr. 16, 2024 — For the first time, scientists have managed to create sheets of gold only a single atom layer thick. The material has been termed goldene. According to researchers, this has given the gold new ...

Oxidant Pollutant Ozone Removes Mating Barriers Between Fly Species

Apr. 11, 2024 — Researchers show that ozone levels, such as those found in many places on hot summer days today, destroy the sex pheromones of fruit fly species. As a result, some natural mating boundaries ...

'Teacher Toads' Can Save Native Animals from Toxic Cane Toads

Apr. 9, 2024 — Scientists from Macquarie University have come up with an innovative way to stop cane toads killing native wildlife by training goannas to avoid eating the deadly ...

Mediterranean Marine Worm Has Developed Enormous Eyes

Apr. 8, 2024 — Scientists are amazed at the discovery of a bristle worm with such sharp-seeing eyes that they can measure up to those of mammals and octopuses. The researchers suspect that these marine worms may ...

Finds at Schöningen Show Wood Was Crucial Raw Material 300,000 Years Ago

Apr. 4, 2024 — During archaeological excavations in the Schoningen open-cast coal mine in 1994, the discovery of the oldest, remarkably well-preserved hunting weapons known to humanity caused an international ...

Researchers Envision Sci-Fi Worlds Involving Changes to Atmospheric Water Cycle

Apr. 4, 2024 — Human activity is changing the way water flows between the Earth and atmosphere in complex ways and with likely long-lasting consequences that are hard to picture. Researchers enlisted water ...

Giant Phage Holds Promise as Treatment for Lung Infections

Apr. 3, 2024 — Researchers have discovered a new bacterial killer that can target common lung infection caused by Burkholderia bacteria that has exciting potential for biotechnological ...

Elastocaloric Cooling: Refrigerator Cools by Flexing Artificial Muscles

Apr. 2, 2024 — There is room for just one small bottle in the world's first refrigerator that is cooled with artificial muscles made of nitinol, a nickel-titanium alloy. But the mini-prototype is ...

AI Writing, Illustration Emits Hundreds of Times Less Carbon Than Humans, Study Finds

Apr. 2, 2024 — A group of scholars calculated the amount of energy used by AI tools for the tasks of writing and illustrating and compared it to the average amount of energy humans use for the same processes. Their ...

Rock-Wallaby Bite Size ‘packs a Punch’

Mar. 27, 2024 — Australian rock-wallabies are 'little Napoleons' when it comes to compensating for small size, packing much more punch into their bite than larger relatives. Researchers made the discovery ...

A Solar Cell You Can Bend and Soak in Water

Mar. 27, 2024 — Researchers have developed an organic photovoltaic film that is both waterproof and flexible, allowing a solar cell to be put onto clothes and still function correctly after being rained on or even ...

Scientists on the Hunt for Evidence of Quantum Gravity's Existence at the South Pole

Mar. 26, 2024 — An Antarctic large-scale experiment is striving to find out if gravity also exists at the quantum level. An extraordinary particle able to travel undisturbed through space seems to hold the ...

Bees Use Antennae to Decode Hive Mates' Dances in the Dark

Mar. 25, 2024 — Scientists have discovered how honeybees can decipher dances by their hive mates that relay directions to ...

A Self-Cleaning Wall Paint

Mar. 25, 2024 — Beautiful white wall paint does not stay beautiful and white forever. Often, various substances from the air accumulate on its surface. This can be a desired effect because it makes the air cleaner ...

Research Uncovers a Rare Resin Fossil Find: A Spider That Aspires to Be an Ant

Mar. 22, 2024 — Spiders that disguise themselves as ants live in many locations around the globe but until now most had been able to avoid detection from fossil researchers as well as ...

Tudor Era Horse Cemetery in Westminster Revealed as Likely Resting Place for Elite Imported Animals

Mar. 22, 2024 — Archaeological analysis of a near unique animal cemetery discovered in London nearly 30 years ago has revealed there was an international horse trading network, orchestrated by the elites of late ...

Researchers Name Prehistoric Amphibian Ancestor Discovered in Smithsonian Collection After Kermit the Frog

Mar. 21, 2024 — Scientists have uncovered the fossilized skull of a 270-million-year-old ancient amphibian ancestor in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The team of ...

Decoding the Plant World's Complex Biochemical Communication Networks

Mar. 21, 2024 — A research team has begun translating the complex molecular language of petunias. Their grammar and vocabulary are well hidden, however, within the countless proteins and other compounds that fill ...

Deep Earth Electrical Grid Mystery Solved

Mar. 20, 2024 — To 'breathe' in an environment without oxygen, bacteria in the ground beneath our feet depend upon a single family of proteins to transfer excess electrons, produced during the ...

Eyes Open and Toes out of Water: How a Giant Water Bug Reached the Island of Cyprus

Mar. 20, 2024 — A new visitor was reported on the coast of Cyprus, thanks to the growing power of citizen science. Researchers collected information and specimens through personal communication with amateur ...

Fairy Circles: Plant Water Stress Causes Namibia's Gaps in Grass

Mar. 19, 2024 — Namibia's legendary fairy circles are mysterious, circular, bald patches in the dry grasslands on the edge of the Namib Desert. Their formation has been researched for decades and has recently ...