The Huaulu people, scientists, and local Indonesian authorities worked together to protect the endangered salmon-crested cockatoo by replacing hunted feathers in sacred ceremony headdresses with naturally shed ones - A rare win for both nature and tradition! 🧪 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

An exceptionally preserved Cretaceous snake fossil, Tametara mirim, reveals evidence of a burrowing lifestyle. Other early snakes inhabited different environments (in water, etc.), showing that snake evolution affected habitat much earlier than previously thought! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Butterfly lilies have two mirror-image forms; Their reproductive parts point in opposite directions, helping the plants cross-pollinate. A small gene region helps control this twist, with the force of gravity also playing a role! 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

These two ancient crocodile relatives had very different skulls: one was better suited for speed, the other for a stronger bite. The latter was identified from a previously overlooked museum fossil and named Eosphorosuchus lacrimosa! 🧪 royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

There is a hidden underground ecosystem of bacteria, tardigrades, worms, and newly discovered fungi hundreds of feet below the Great Lakes region. Some of these fungi break down ancient carbon and may play a bigger role in the carbon cycle than previously thought! 🧪 academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Newly described Australian fossils tell a wild story: an ichthyosaur ate a pterosaur, then was itself torn to pieces by a pliosaur. This is the first evidence of these three animals interacting within the same food web! 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Canopy-penetrating LiDAR reveals widespread ancient earthworks in southwestern Amazonia, suggesting the historical presence of a monument-building civilization with a population in the millions! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sperm whales rest underwater in a vertical position. The bubbles they release while resting likely help them stay neutrally buoyant, making it easier to stay submerged while sleeping! 🧪 journals.biologists.com/jeb/article-...

Lake fly larvae (Chaoborus edulis) in Lake Malawi can survive the crushing pressure 200 meters below the surface thanks to specialized air sacs, which they use during daily deep dives to escape predators! 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Marine biologists in Northeast Greenland used an ROV to observe, for the first time in the wild, a mature female bobtail squid (Rossia moelleri) and her egg masses. This Arctic species is present and reproducing even in subzero waters! 🧪 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Fossils from Japan were first mistaken for a modern giant salamander, but recent analysis shows they belong to a newly described ancient species, Limnospondylus ajimuensis. It grew to about 3.6 feet long and lived 3.5 million years ago during Ajimu's warm, humid past! 🧪 peerj.com/articles/213...

Orcas in the Gulf of California have been observed ramming sharp-tail sunfish at speed, causing them to explode! Marine biologists suggest this behavior may help with prey processing... though it may also be a unique form of play! 🧪 www.frontiersin.org/journals/eth...

Brown bullhead catfish in Vermont's Lake Memphremagog have been found with melanoma at unusually high rates since 2012. Research suggests that the cancer may be contagious, with tumor cells spreading between fish! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Astronomers may have found the first moon-like object outside our solar system, however, it orbits a brown dwarf instead of a planet... and its the size of Jupiter! CD-35 2722 B is so unusual that even the word "moon" may not properly describe it! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Large-scale volcanic emissions drove the end-Triassic mass extinction. European spore/pollen fossils from this period have a "dark zone" marked by forest collapse followed by recurrent Continental-scale wildfires across the ancient fern-dominated landscape! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Adélie penguin poop was tracked from space using satellite imaging. More sea ice means more fish were eaten; less ice means more krill. Results show how 30 years of sea ice loss has reshaped the food web and why protecting it matters! 🧪 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Recently discovered teeth fossils from Australia point to a new marsupial order (Keeunamorphia), demonstrating that marsupial evolution is much more complex than previously thought! 🧪 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Cats groom each other to bond, but also as a power move. In one fifth of cases, the cat being groomed turns its ears back in a sign of tension suggesting that allogrooming can reduce conflict through intimidation as well as appeasement! 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses) are the only mammals that hear well in both air and water. This study suggests that cavernous, blood-filled ear tissue helps make this amphibious sensation possible! 🧪 royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Horses don't need to hear or smell a threat in order to sense danger. Watching wolf behavior raises their heart rates, while wombat videos do not. Visual cues alone can trigger a predator response, especially in males, while older horses respond less fearfully! 🧪 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Naked mole-rat queens use a chemical signal, isopropyl myristate (IPM), to keep other females from reproducing. It affects the hormones of would-be usurpers and stops them from taking over! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A newly discovered Edmontosaurus skull from Montana's Hell Creek Formation has a Tyrannosaurus tooth embedded in its nasal bone, pointing to a powerful face-to-face bite that occurred ~66 million years ago! 🧪 peerj.com/articles/207...

Uragasaurus kalasinensis is a newly described sauropod that lived during the Late Jurassic in northeastern Thailand. Its discovery demonstrates that mamenchisaurids ranged farther into Southeast Asia than previously thought! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Reexamined fossils from New Zealand's St. Bathans deposits reveal a new goose species named Meterchen luti. These fossils suggest that New Zealand’s bird history was more complicated than once thought, with different bird groups arriving at different times! 🧪 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Plant roots can sense and grow away from decaying plant material through a newly described response called saprotropism, which is triggered by pH changes during decomposition! 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This flapping-wing robot has a design inspired by puffins and other diving birds which helps it fly in the air, swim underwater, and launch off the surface! 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Recent studies demonstrate that greater noctule bats catch and eat migrating songbirds. Remarkably, this painting from 1611 depicts one attacking a small bird more than 400 years before these observations were published! 🧪 www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Coinciding with April 2024's seismic crisis, the seafloor near the Southeast Indian Ridge sank, pulled apart, and erupted about 160 million cubic meters of lava over 16 days, making it the first directly observed tectonic rifting event! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Daddy longlegs, also called harvestmen, have been observed catching and eating frogs throughout South America's rainforests. This suggests that these arachnids are opportunistic mesopredators rather than just scavengers! 🧪 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Onboard cameras were used to track pigeon eye movements in the field. During flight, the eyes shift outward in a steady way that reduces motion blur, but when landing, the eyes move inward toward the landing spot, improving binocular depth perception! 🧪 www.cell.com/current-biol...