In a dense Salvadoran rainforest, a conservation detection dog named Niffler was engrossed in a peculiar training exercise. Like a determined scavenger hunt participant, his mission was clear: locate carnivore scat samples that his handler, Kayla Fratt, co-founder of K9 Conservationists, had hidden along a trail. Niffler searched tirelessly for his target, signaling his find by laying in front of the sample, paws and nose framing it on three sides. This critical exercise was not just a game – ...read more

Archaeologists have recently confirmed that a Japanese society that prospered between roughly A.D. 200 and A.D. 600 on the island of Tanegashima modified craniums for mysterious reasons. While the recent paper explains that the modified skulls reinforced group identification and belonging, they may also have something to do with the local shellfish trade. The Hirota people clearly valued mollusks, as they lined their graves with funerary goods made from shellfish brought from hundreds of miles a ...read more

During the late Jurassic period around 150 million years ago, a small tyrannosauroid called Stokesosaurus lived in North America. This tiny carnivore had to keep an eye out for the much larger Allosaurus while hunting and scavenging.But by the late Cretaceous period, around 66 million years ago, Allosaurus was long gone and tyrannosauroids had evolved into hulking, ferocious top predators. Case in point: the infamous Tyrannosaurus rex.  For many decades, scientists could not find any North Ame ...read more

Wouldst thou … learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery!Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was talking about sailors in that 1850 verse, and it was indeed the mariners of ancient times who braved the uncharted dangers of the ocean, encountering mysteries aplenty.But they didn’t always fully comprehend what they saw. In a time when uncharted areas on maps were decorated with dragons and other mythical creatures, sailors of old likewise embellished th ...read more

One of the workhorses of in any biology lab is Caenorhabditis elegans or nematode worm just 1mm long. Biologist regularly use C. elegans to gain insight into topics ranging from embryonic development and aging to genetics and neurobiology. In 1986, C. elegans became the first to have its entire nervous system mapped out. This creature, it turns out, contains just 302 neurons with 7000 synaptic connections between them, the fewest of any animal. Scientists hoped that such a map — a connectome � ...read more

Long before the Ancient Egyptians walked the Earth and the great pyramids were constructed, something else inhabited what is now Egypt. Some 41 million years ago, Egypt's desert was covered by an ancient sea and was once home to the now-extinct whale species, Tutcetus rayanensis.According to a recent study published in Communications Biology, the newly discovered T. rayanensis is the smallest basilosaurid whale species known to date, and one of the oldest specimens of the whale family fou ...read more

The Atlantic hurricane season could be busier than normal, with as many as 11 hurricanes, five of which could be major storms. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting this busy hurricane season with 70 percent confidence.NOAA’s forecast might have residents on the Atlantic or Gulf coasts thinking this is the year to invest in storm shutters or thicker garage doors.Hurricanes, however, aren’t new, and people have been coping with these fierce storms for thou ...read more

If you hang around on the right parts of YouTube for long enough, you may come across the web district of rat tickling. You’ll see scientists tickling rats in the lab to boost their well-being and owners tickling their pets, among other things.Now, new research has identified the parts of the brain that may be responsible for play and laughter by tickling rats in the lab, according to a study published recently in the journal Neuron. “Play is really a not-well understood behavior,” says Mi ...read more

Against the backdrop of Southeast Alaska’s glacier-capped peaks, Dana Bloch leans over the side of a small boat and scoops up a clump of orange fecal matter floating in the ocean. “It’s my best sample yet,” she says, peering at the humpback whale poop in her net. “This one’s been feeding on krill instead of fish, so it’s pretty solid.”Bloch is a fellow with the Alaska Whale Foundation and a graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She’s also the first person to s ...read more

This story was originally published in our Sept/Oct 2023 issue as "Hypnotizing the Gut?" Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.Ashley had just begun to dig into the cream-sauce pasta when it occurred — that familiar, urgent need to find the bathroom. She was dining at a friend’s house, with many other guests. “I need to get out of here,” the teenager thought as she started to sweat.To avoid unwanted questions, Ashley devised an excuse to leave and rushed out of ...read more