Ancient bald cypress trees tower along the Black River in the state of North Carolina in the United States. Many of these living trees are over a thousand years old,…
In the extremely cold, seemingly barren Antarctic continent, poop powers life. Literally. Where colonies of penguins and elephant seals aggregate, their droppings, rich in nitrogen, enrich the soil and support…
Sometimes looking for rare plants can mean taking extreme steps. And for decades, botanists at the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG), a nonprofit based on the island of Kauaʻi in…
When Rohan Pandit and Wangchu Phiang accidentally stumbled upon a brown snake on a steep slope of a forest in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh in India, little did…
The ocean is increasingly becoming too hot to handle. And coral reefs are suffering as a result. Above-normal sea surface temperatures due to human-induced climate change are creating conditions that…
In the East African savanna landscape, hippos and their poop play a critical role. By chomping on large amounts of silica-rich grass at night, then defecating into the Mara River…
In January this year, a drone surveying a cliff face in a remote part of Kalalau Valley on the Hawaiin island of Kaua‘i chanced upon something unexpected: In one of…
Six grassroots environmental activists will receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize today. Dubbed the Green Nobel Prize, the Goldman Prize honors environmental activists from each of the six continental regions:…
Antarctica’s second-largest colony of emperor penguins has likely not produced any chicks over the last three years, a new study has found. Until recently, the emperor penguin colony at Halley…
In the ocean, both the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) and the killer whale or orca (Orcinus orca) are fearsome top predators. But of the two massive animals, the killer…
Between 2005 and 2010, 24 huemul deer in Chile’s Bernardo O’Higgins National Park developed a mysterious foot disease. Their hooves swelled, they limped and appeared to be in pain. In…
For a long time, some of the fossil remains that had been excavated from a site in western Kenya in the late 1970s languished in a drawer at Nairobi National…
In one of the biggest busts in recent years, Chinese officials have seized 2,748 elephant tusks weighing more than 7 tonnes, the General Administration of Customs announced earlier this week.…
Until recently, there were just four known Yangtze giant softshell turtles in the world. On April 13, the only known female among them died in China’s Suzhou Shangfangshan Forest Zoo…
The waters off the Galápagos Islands have nearly 10 times more alien marine invertebrates than previously recorded, a recent study has found. Located 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) off Ecuador, the…
Over the past decade, archaeologists have dug out several pieces of bones and teeth from a cave on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. These fossil remains, all estimated…
Russian authorities have announced that they will release all 97 whales currently being held captive in the country’s Far East. The whales made news in November last year when an…
The government of Belize has approved a plan to nearly triple the area under its strictly protected waters, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced in a press release. According to the…
The yellow-bellied three-toed skink is not your typical lizard. Vertebrates or animals with backbones usually reproduce in one of two ways: they either lay eggs or they give birth to…
Researchers have finally described a new species of skink from Angola, specimens of which have lurked on museum shelves for more than 70 years. Belgian herpetologist Raymond Laurent first suspected that…
