Ghost Shark Sports a Shorter Snout and a Very Long Head Start
Three museum specimens, two decades on a shelf, and one biology student who looked closer revealed a new shark species in the Costa Rican Pacific.
Nature
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.
Germany's Parks Are Closed. The Heat Is Record-Breaking. The Culprit Is a Caterpillar.
Record heat, no AC, and closed parks have Berlin residents caught between heatstroke and a caterpillar that doesn't need to touch you to send you to the ER.
Iberian Ant Queen Laid an Egg. A Different Species Hatched.
A queen ant in Sicily has been cloning a species she's never been. What does "mother" even mean when the offspring belong to someone else's genome?
The Blob That Doesn't Need a Brain to Run
No brain, no nerves, no muscles, and yet it runs. What is Trichoplax actually using to feel danger, and what does the answer tell us about the origins of life itself?
Megalodon Was Two School Buses Long
The vertebra that established megalodon's maximum size was in Copenhagen the whole time. Scientists spent four decades working from the photographs.
Nobody Had Ever Filmed a Mediterranean Great White. Until Now.
Volunteer divers were hauling abandoned fishing gear from a Mediterranean shipwreck when an adult great white appeared. The species is so rare in the region, no one had ever filmed one.
Walking Sharks Gain a Cousin: Lazy Shark
Scientists confirmed a tenth reef-walking shark off Papua New Guinea, but surveys at a nearby island where it was once common turned up nothing.
Ballista Spider Catapult Uses Prey's Aggression Against Itself
A spider that can't overpower a notoriously aggressive ant builds a trap the ant triggers itself. The biomechanics are stranger than the headline suggests.
Sharks Use Manta Rays as Back Scratchers
Galapagos sharks were caught on video using manta rays as scratch posts for sea lice.
Cnidaria Frankenstein: Sea Anemone Builds Second Body From Jellyfish Tissue
The cellular command that tells a developing embryo which way is up works across animal groups so distantly related they share almost nothing else.
The Fungus That Eats the Fungus That Eats the Ant
A fungus in Borneo parasitizes the zombie fungus that hijacks ants, and it may hold the key to next-generation antimicrobial drugs.
Goblin Shark Makes Film Debut
Scientists just filmed a goblin shark alive in the wild for the first time. One showed up 2,300 feet deeper than expected.
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.
BoorYul-Bah-Bilya Came for the River. It Left with Quokkas.
A water-health program run by Aboriginal Traditional Owners set camera traps along a Perth river and found the mainland's most iconic marsupial hiding in plain sight.
Single-Celled Cannibal Eats Its Own Clones
One microbe. One cell. Same DNA as every relative it's about to eat.
110 Quadrillion Kilometers of Fungal Threads Under Your Feet
Scientists mapped Earth's fungal networks for the first time. What they found underground reframes life above it.
Every Amazon Molly Is Female. The Name Tracks.
An all-female fish has been cloning itself for 100,000 years. It uses a genetic trick to keep its DNA suspiciously, impossibly clean.