Animal Life news stories

Scientists Translated Spiderwebs Into Music, And It’s Beyond Stunning
13th April 2021 | sciencealert.com | Animal Life, Humans, Weird

Spiders rely quite significantly on touch to sense the world around them. Their bodies and legs are covered in tiny hairs and slits that can distinguish between different kinds of vibrations.

How to Survive a Killer Asteroid
12th April 2021 | wired.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs would probably have killed you too—unless you were in the exact right place and had made the exact right plans.

Asteroid, Volcano or Both? Scientists Can’t Agree on the True Dinosaur Killer
9th April 2021 | discovermagazine.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

A 6-mile-wide space rock and colossal eruptions racked Earth at the same fateful moment. Scientists have tried for decades to determine the primary suspect behind the Cretaceous Extinction.

The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs Created the Amazon Rain Forest
3rd April 2021 | scientificamerican.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Fossilized pollen and leaves reveal that the meteorite that caused the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs also reshaped South America’s plant communities to yield the planet’s largest rain forest

Mummified Birds in The Atacama Desert Reveal a Dark Side of History
2nd April 2021 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

The more we look into the harsh extremes of Chile’s Atacama Desert, the more we find. Phenomena both mystifying and wonderful, occasionally bordering on alien.

Scientists zero in on the role of volcanoes in the demise of dinosaurs
30th March 2021 phys.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Earth has experienced five major mass extinction events over the past 500 million years. Massive volcanic eruptions have been identified as the major driver of the environmental changes that precipitated at least three of these extinction events.

Welsh rabbits serve up prehistoric finds on tiny Skokholm Island
30th March 2021 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

Stone age tool used 9,000 years ago dug up by burrowing bunnies on an island off Pembrokeshire.

Humans Have The Biological Toolkit to Have Venomous Saliva, Study Finds
30th March 2021 | sciencealert.com | Animal Life, Humans

Could humans ever evolve venom? It’s highly unlikely that people will join rattlesnakes and platypuses among the ranks of venomous animals, but new research reveals that humans do have the tool kit to produce venom – in fact, all reptiles and mammals do.

Did ancient primates walk alongside T. rex? New evidence backs up theory.
28th March 2021 | nationalgeographic.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

The oldest known primate fossils were dated to just after the extinction event 66 million years ago—suggesting some primate ancestors lived even longer ago.

Fossils Reveal Cephalopods May Be 30 Million Years Older Than We Thought
25th March 2021 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

The class of marine animals known as cephalopoda – which today includes squids, octopuses, and cuttlefishes – could have been around on Earth 30 million years earlier than previously thought, according to new research.

Fungi are key to our survival. Are we doing enough to protect them?
21st March 2021 | nationalgeographic.com | Animal Life, Earth, Humans

For almost a decade, one lone mushroom was classified as an endangered species, and scientists say more could be in trouble.

Image from Sasata (Wiki Commons)

Meet the swirlon, a new kind of matter that bends the laws of physics
19th March 2021 | livescience.com | Animal Life, Earth, Humans

Fish school, insects swarm and birds fly in murmurations. Now, new research finds that on the most basic level, this kind of group behavior forms a new kind of active matter, called a swirlonic state.

Arctic was once lush and green, could be again, new research shows
19th March 2021 | eurekalert.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

As the Arctic warms much faster than everywhere else on the planet in response to climate change, the findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may not only be a glimpse of the past but a snapshot of our potential future.

‘Rarest of the rare’ dinosaur fossil found brooding on its eggs
16th March 2021 | livescience.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

About 70 million years ago, an ostrich-like dinosaur brooding atop a nest of blue-green eggs met its doom, perishing with its nearly-hatched babies in what is now southern China.

From cats to cows to crocodiles, ancient Egyptians worshipped many animal gods
14th March 2021 | nationalgeographic.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

Sobek, crocodile-headed god of the Nile; Sekhmet, leonine goddess of war; Anubis, jackal god of the underworld; and Hathor, mother goddess with a cow’s horns: The ancient Egyptian pantheon of gods was filled with divine animals.

Research shows we’re surprisingly similar to Earth’s first animals
10th March 2021 | eurekalert.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

The earliest multicellular organisms may have lacked heads, legs, or arms, but pieces of them remain inside of us today, new research shows.

News stories covering Animal Science, bacterial life, DNA.