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Updated: 19 hours 23 min ago

Watch bees defend their nest by slapping ants with their wings

Thu, 07/18/2024 - 03:00
When ants try to invade their nest, Japanese honeybees flutter their wings and tilt their bodies to beat away their enemies
Categories: Fossils

Sea slugs discovered working together to hunt in packs

Wed, 07/17/2024 - 09:30
Hunting in packs seems like a complex social behaviour, but it isn't limited to large carnivores like wolves. A simple sea slug species teams up to swarm its venomous anemone prey as a group
Categories: Fossils

Last common ancestor of all life emerged far earlier than thought

Fri, 07/12/2024 - 05:00
All life on Earth can trace its origin to LUCA, the last universal common ancestor – and now it seems this organism may have lived a few hundred million years after the planet formed
Categories: Fossils

Woolly mammoth DNA exceptionally preserved in freeze-dried 'jerky'

Thu, 07/11/2024 - 11:00
A complete genome has been extracted from a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth, which might bring us closer to resurrecting the species
Categories: Fossils

Lions' record-breaking swim across channel captured by drone camera

Wed, 07/10/2024 - 15:00
Two lions, one missing a leg, made a 1.5-kilometre swim through crocodile-infested waters in Uganda, probably in order to mate with females
Categories: Fossils

Why you shouldn't believe claims you can grow a rose in a potato

Wed, 07/10/2024 - 13:00
Social media assures us that we can grow a rose cutting in a raw potato. But you're better off sticking with tried and tested methods of rose propagation, says James Wong
Categories: Fossils

Stunning blue-skinned frog is a rare genetic mutant

Tue, 07/09/2024 - 05:47
The magnificent tree frog (Litoria splendida) is normally a vibrant green, but conservationists in Australia have spotted a blue-skinned individual
Categories: Fossils

Evolutionary story of Australia's dingoes revealed by ancient DNA

Mon, 07/08/2024 - 15:00
Dingoes, the native wild dogs of Australia, arrived on the continent more than 3000 years ago and their gene pool has had little input from domestic dogs
Categories: Fossils

Blue whale mother caught feeding her calf on video for first time ever

Thu, 07/04/2024 - 08:31
A snorkelling tourist in East Timor has filmed a pygmy blue whale calf drinking its mother’s milk for the first time
Categories: Fossils

Vivid snake species with blue lips and yellow eyes is new to science

Thu, 07/04/2024 - 06:30
A grass-green snake from Vietnam with yellow eyes, blue lips and a brick-red tail has been identified as a distinct species
Categories: Fossils

Giant salamander-like predator roamed Namibia 280 million years ago

Wed, 07/03/2024 - 11:00
A fossil found in the Namib desert has been described as a 2.5-metre long predator that resembled a giant salamander
Categories: Fossils

More than 100 shark species may face major population declines by 2100

Wed, 07/03/2024 - 09:00
The egg hatch rate of one shark species may plummet by up to 90 per cent by the end of the century, suggesting that other egg-laying sharks are at risk
Categories: Fossils

Ants amputate their nestmates’ limbs to save them from infection

Tue, 07/02/2024 - 11:00
Ants are one of the few animals that tend to the injuries of their peers, and now it seems they are also the first non-humans known to perform life-saving amputations
Categories: Fossils

Trilobites preserved in incredible detail by Pompeii-style eruption

Thu, 06/27/2024 - 14:00
Trilobites are one of the most common fossils we know, but normally only their hard exoskeleton is preserved. Now, researchers have discovered a site that was buried by a Pompeii-style volcanic eruption, leaving the arthropods outlined in exquisite detail
Categories: Fossils

The last woolly mammoths on Earth died from bad luck, not inbreeding

Thu, 06/27/2024 - 11:00
A genetic study of woolly mammoths found on an isolated Arctic island shows they reached a stable population that lasted millennia, so were probably wiped out by a random event rather than inbreeding
Categories: Fossils

Winter ‘sauna’ helps endangered frogs fight off fungal disease

Wed, 06/26/2024 - 11:00
Warm retreats made using bricks in greenhouses give frogs a place to keep toasty in winter, which helps protect them from deadly chytrid fungal infections
Categories: Fossils

Dazzling photos capture the unreal beauty of insects

Mon, 06/24/2024 - 19:01
Sleeping cuckoo bees, colourful cotton harlequin bugs and a thorny lacewing trapped in amber appear in some of the best entries to the Royal Entomological Society Photography Competition
Categories: Fossils

Sick chimpanzees seek out range of plants with medicinal properties

Thu, 06/20/2024 - 14:00
Chimpanzees with wounds or gut infections seem to add unusual plants to their diet, and tests show that many of these plants have antibacterial or anti-inflammatory effects
Categories: Fossils

Watch leeches jump by coiling their bodies like cobras

Thu, 06/20/2024 - 10:00
Researchers have confirmed a centuries-old rumour that leeches can jump, which they may do to land their next blood meal
Categories: Fossils

Triceratops relative had the weirdest horns ever seen on a dinosaur

Thu, 06/20/2024 - 08:00
A new species of dinosaur discovered in Montana and related to Triceratops had one of the strangest, most asymmetrical skulls that scientists have ever studied
Categories: Fossils

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