The First Look Inside a Whale Never Seen Alive
A routine beach call in New Zealand turned into the first real look inside one of the ocean's most elusive animals, and the anatomy inside was stranger than anyone expected.
Field Notes
Retired conservation biologist in Victoria, BC, and virtual contributor to YGBFKM. Life list: nearly 3,000 species. Known at dinner parties for correcting people about poison vs. venom. Has used exclamation points three times in eleven years.
A Sea Worm Built Metal Jaws Without Any Metal
Half a billion years before we figured out smelting, a marine worm was already building metal-grade jaws from protein. What else has nature quietly engineered that we haven't noticed yet?
The Great White Has a Thermostat Problem
Great white sharks run hot by design. Now that the ocean is heating up, their greatest physiological advantage may be turning against them.
Bull Sharks in Fiji Keep Finding the Same Mates. Every Year. For a Decade.
The DNA said the same two sharks had pups together years apart. Bull sharks were supposed to be solitary. What else have we gotten wrong?
A Shark With No Voice Box Is Making Sounds at 155 Decibels
Scientists assumed sharks were silent. Then a PhD student in a New Zealand lab heard something that sounded like electric sparks. The sharks were the ones making it.
Daddy Longlegs Are Eating Frogs Whole
A daddy longlegs with no venom and no web just pinned down a live frog bigger than itself. Scientists say this might be happening all over South American tropical forests.
Springtime Brings a Rumble to the Hudson River
A mysterious low rumble shakes New York's Hudson River each spring. What's causing it? A fish older than dinosaurs, doing what it's always done.
Moss Has a Fungal Partner
Mosses were supposed to be the only land plants without fungal partners. Scientists just found fungi living inside their tissue.
Single-Celled Cannibal Eats Its Own Clones
One microbe. One cell. Same DNA as every relative it's about to eat.
Deep Sea Whale Necropolis Is Five Million Years Old
Nearly 500 whale fossils, a new species named after the trench, and bone-eating worms thriving 7 kilometers down. What else has been accumulating in the dark?
Zombie Squirrel of the Pleistocene Feasted on Mammoth Meat
Permafrost-preserved squirrel feces just rewrote what we thought we knew about Ice Age ecosystems. What else hides in those frozen burrows?
Bees Have a Water Escape Plan. Pesticides Dampen Their Swimming Skills.
Bees use visual contrast to swim toward shore. So what happens when a common pesticide erases that ability entirely?
A Katydid's Disguise Is Also Its Pickup Line
Survival and sex appeal are supposed to be a tradeoff. One katydid species apparently didn't get that memo. What happens when your disguise is also your best pickup line?
Meet Balrog The Deep Cave Cricket
No natural caves. A 82 foot deep man-made tunnel. Thirty-seven insects clinging to the walls, named to honor Tolkien.
Bomb Fish
Flatfish pulled from the North Sea are turning up with cancer in their tissue. The cause isn't a mystery. It's TNT. And the casings holding it in are still corroding.
Tiny Wrens Turn Giant on Scottish Isles
Four isolated island populations of wrens evolved independently. Same winds, same weather, so why are some wrens ending up twice the size of their mainland relatives?
A New Snake Species Was Named "Unbelievable." The Taxonomists Were Not Wrong.
A newly described snake in China has a tail that looks exactly like its own head. That's not even the most surprising thing about how scientists found it.
Belugas Pass the Mirror Test. The Mirror Test Has a Problem.
Two belugas. One mirror. Twenty-five years of unanalyzed footage. And now a debate about whether the test itself knows what it's testing.