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All in Nature
The cicadas have arrived. Slightly earlier than predicted, but the first bugs have been reported in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. In the coming weeks, two distinct bug broods, which usually emerge in separate years but in 2024 their disparate cycles are in sync, will infest the US southeast and midwest.
When vandals chopped down the famous “Sycamore Gap” tree in the UK last September, local horticulturist Rachel Ryver immediately collected young twigs and buds from the felled tree, thinking it was possible to graft genetic copies of the specimen.
In August 2017, a total solar eclipse dazzled and baffled animals across much of the country. Even the US president at the time lost his head (momentarily?), and stared directly at the sun without using ocular protection.
Because the spider called daddy longlegs has a particularly salient trait – namely its long legs – biologists never really considered the creature’s eyes, which were assumed to be a standard-issue pair situated at the top of the head. Now researchers have discovered two more sets of peepers, vestigial and useless, on the side.
Urban architecture often uses bird-unfriendly materials – spiky wires and nails, e.g., on ledges, statues, and elsewhere – to discourage birds from nesting and pooping on human structures. It mostly works, but now some clever crows and magpies have been removing the anti-bird bits and are using them to build their nests.
The grand prize winner in Audubon’s annual photography contest is remarkable for its banality: a pair of rock pigeons, one of the most common birds on the planet.
There are only a few hundred pink iguanas on Earth, and all of them live on the slopes of Wolf Volcano in the Galápagos. Now rangers from the Galápagos Conservancy and national park have spotted nesting sites and hatchlings of this critically endangered species for the first time.
We’ve known for some time that the Toxoplasma gondii parasite can infect the brains of rodents, forcing them via mind control into fatal encounters with predators. Now scientists have observed that wolves infected with T. gondii are also altering their behavior, in their case by taking more risks.
Researchers at Simon Fraser University have been watching the mating rituals of the false widow spider (Steatoda grossa). They find that the female spins her web, douses it with pheromones to attract males, then tweaks the composition of her come-hither chemicals as necessary to elicit the desired sexual response.
Ornithorhynchus anatinus is one odd duck. With a tail like a beaver’s, webbed feet, nostrils that can clamp shut for underwater foraging, this egg-laying mammal seeks prey by detecting electrical fields using receptors on their bills. Having no nipples doesn’t stop them from nursing their young, which feed through pores in mama’s skin.
A female African lion named Zuri has raised eyebrows (and other bodily hair) at the Topeka Zoo & Conservation Center. For the past two years the 18-year-old has been growing a mane, just like a dude.
In March, a new species of fish was discovered off the coast of the Maldives. More specifically, a misidentified fish discovered in the 1990s has been properly identified as a new species.
When you hear birds sing, it’s always a good idea to stop and listen. New research published in Scientific Reports demonstrates that birdsong reduces both anxiety and irrational thoughts.
When the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition rolls around, there’s always (at least) one image of a species we had never seen before. In this year’s competition – the 58th by the UK’s Natural History Museum – that animal is the houbara of the Canary Islands.
Dallas-based biotech company Colossal Biosciences says it is “combining the science of genetics [as they] endeavor to jumpstart nature’s ancestral heartbeat.” In other words, they want to resurrect the extinct wooly mammoth.
The winner was the stuff of nightmares: a parasitic fungus erupting from the body of a fly. Evolutionary biologist Roberto García-Roa captured the moment when “spores of the so-called ‘Zombie’ fungus infect arthropods by infiltrating their exoskeleton and minds. … Here, they await death, at which point the fungus feeds on its host to produce fruiting bodies full of spores that will be jettisoned to infect more victims—a conquest shaped by thousands of years of evolution.”
It is a little strange that the world’s largest plant has only just been discovered. Where was it hiding all this time? The answer is underwater, just off the coast of Western Australia.
