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Nature

What Happens When You Shoot a Water Bear Out of a Gun?

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tardigrade - deposit photos

Tardigrades, those adorable, chubby water bears, are notoriously hardy — they may even survive an apocalypse that wipes out humanity. But can these hardy water bears survive being shot from a gun? New research has found that yes, these hardy critters can make it out alive, but they also have a breaking point. The new study was inspired by uncertainty about the fate of tardigrades that were aboard Israel’s Beresheet probe when it crash-landed on the moon in 2019, according to Science magazine. Had the tardigrades, also called “water bears,” survived and contaminated Earth’s lifeless companion? After all, these teensy … Read more

SCIENCE: There’s Now a Bionic Vulture

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Bionic Vulture

A wild vulture recently had surgery in Vienna to implant a bionic leg. While still a nestling, Mia suffered a major injury to her right leg. Her parents had used sheep wool to hold the nest together, and some of the fibers became tangled around the young vulture’s ankle. With her strangled foot starved for oxygen, her toes began to die. Fortunately for Mia, a team of veterinarians treated her injury. However, the foot was beyond repair; an amputation left her with a right leg ending in a stump. For a bearded vulture, lacking a foot is a death sentence, … Read more

Scientists Unravel Mystery Of One of Nature’s Weirdest Wangs

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Echidna

Scientists in Australia have uncovered the mystery behind the bizarre four-headed echidna penis by creating an advanced 3D model of the peculiar organ. There are four species of echidnas that, along with platypuses, make up a unique group known as monotremes — the smallest of the three mammal groups — whose members lay eggs like birds and fish, but also produce milk like other mammals. Much about this group remains a mystery, the study researchers said. One of the biggest monotreme mysteries is the echidna penis, which has four separate heads, or glans, at the end of the shaft. If … Read more

There’s Plastic in the Air You Breathe

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Plastic - Deposit Photos

Millions of tiny pieces of plastic are swirling around in Earth’s atmosphere and traveling across entire continents, according to a new study. This environmental problem is likely to get much worse and could have serious effects on human health, experts say. Microplastics measure less than 0.2 inches (5 millimeters) long, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And previous studies had shown that these microscopic particles can be found in the ocean, bottled water and even our poop, but until now, the atmospheric section of this “plastic cycle” had been poorly understood. The new study revealed thousands of … Read more

SCIENCE: Do Octopuses Dream?

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octopus - pixabay

When octopuses snooze on the seafloor, their skin sometimes pulses with an array of colors, and at other times, they become pale and plain. These alternating patterns mark two distinct stages of the octopus sleep cycle, a small study suggests. During “active sleep,” when an octopus’s skin ripples with dazzling colors, the cephalopod may experience something similar to our rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, the authors wrote in the study, published March 25 in the journal iScience. Humans do most of their dreaming during REM sleep, but for now, we don’t know if cephalopods also drift off to dreamland — or … Read more

Storing DNA on the Moon

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earth from moon - deposit photo

A “lunar ark” hidden inside the moon’s lava tubes could preserve the sperm, eggs and seeds of millions of Earth’s species, a group of scientists has proposed. The ark, or gene bank, would be safely hidden in these hollowed-out tunnels and caves sculpted by lava more than 3 billion years ago and would be powered by solar panels above. It would hold the cryogenically preserved genetic material of all 6.7 million known species of plants, animals and fungi on Earth, which would require at least 250 rocket launches to transport to the moon, according to the researchers. Scientists believe the … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Dire

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Dire wolf in the snow.

So, I learned something cool the other day. Which, to no one’s surprise, lead me down an even cooler rabbit hole of information. Facts and tidbits I’m stoked to have as I plot a pretty big (for me) series that involve extra-dimensional beings and evolution. In a war where magic and biological advantage is supreme, this is the stuff which awesome details are made of. Convergent evolution is a known thing in the word of biological science. Two, or more, species that look and act the same but are genetically different. What I didn’t know about was the massive reclassification … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Asymmetry

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Cute cartoon spider on a web.

Not gonna lie, spiders are both really curious to me and creepy as hell. Just my opinion and I’m not making a judgement on anyone who likes these little guys. They aren’t my jam, that’s all. However, they’re very interesting once I get past the makes-my-scalp-crawl part. So, here’s a content warning for anyone who doesn’t like spiders: the links have spiders. You’re warned. When the news piece that spawned this little post came across my feed, I scrolled down quick because spider! But then my brain kicked in and I remembered seeing space in the headline. What I found … Read more

This One’s for Frank

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Platypus Glow

Duck-billed, egg-laying platypuses just got a little weirder: It turns out their fur glows green and blue under ultraviolet (UV) light. Under visible light a platypus’s extremely dense fur — which insulates and protects them in cold water — is a drab brown, so the trippy glow revealed under UV light on a stuffed museum specimen was a big surprise. Biofluorescence — absorbing and re-emitting light as a different color — is widespread in fish, amphibians, birds and reptiles. But the trait is much rarer in mammals, and this is the first evidence of biofluorescence in egg-laying mammals, also known … Read more

NATURE: Tiny Animal Superpowers

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ant and dog - pixabay

Nature documentaries showcase the most exciting moments of daily life in the natural world, and a new series reveals that survival for some of the tiniest creatures can be as harrowing, suspenseful and dramatic as it is for big animals. Apple TV+’s “Tiny World” introduces a fresh look at how the world looks when glimpsed from the point of view of its smallest wildlife inhabitants, such as minuscule scampering lizards; wee flyers like bees, dragonflies and hummingbirds; and rainforest primates that are so small they’re dwarfed by a katydid. The series is narrated by actor Paul Rudd, who embraced the power … Read more