FLORA FAUNA

5,060 articles

Future uncertain for Australia's unique platypus
Nov 29, 2018 (AFP)
A three-year survey of the duck-billed animal suggested its numbers had fallen by 30 percent, to around 200,000, since Europeans settled the continent two centu...
Single-cell asymmetries control how groups of cells form 3D shapes together
Nov 28, 2018 (SPX)
The research is a major advance in understanding the processes that allow a single cell to develop into an entire organism, and could help understand what happe...
Mushroom enzymes help scientists make other organisms glow in the dark
Nov 28, 2018 (UPI)
The ability to light up at night is called bioluminescence. Until now, scientists weren't exactly sure how organisms generate luminescence, but a rather ordinar...
Termites fart methane, but their mounds filter it from the air
Nov 27, 2018 (UPI)
Some estimates suggest termites are responsible for between 1 and 3 percent of global methane emissions. But according to the latest research, roughly half of t...
Ancient viruses inspired THC production in marijuana plants
Nov 26, 2018 (SPX)
Marijuana and hemp are two chemically distinct varieties of the same species, Cannabis sativa. Marijuana contains elevated levels of the psychoactive compound t...
Gigantic mammal 'cousin' discovered
Nov 26, 2018 (SPX)
Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden, together with colleagues in Poland, have discovered fossils from a new genus of gigantic dicynodont. The new specie...
Arrested lion poachers in S.Africa to appear in court
Nov 26, 2018 (AFP)
Police found lion bones, lion meat, a tiger skin, gas cylinders, gas burners, containers, a saw, knives and other equipment when they intercepted the suspects' ...
Human ancestors not to blame for ancient mammal extinctions in Africa
Nov 26, 2018 (SPX)
Tyler Faith, curator of archaeology at the Natural History Museum of Utah and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah, l...
Sotheby's latest auction house to end rhino horn sales
Nov 24, 2018 (AFP)
The auction house had been due to put three lots of rhinoceros horn under the hammer at a sale next week. "The company will no longer offer rhino horn artefacts...
Scared rodents have more babies
Nov 21, 2018 (UPI)
Researchers in Finland and the Netherlands studying the effects of fear on behavior and population dynamics among small mammals found female voles exposed to th...
Lancelets help scientists uncover the secrets of vertebrate gene regulation
Nov 21, 2018 (UPI)
But when and how did vertebrates and mammals evolve the kinds of gene regulatory mechanisms that made human complexity possible? New research -- published Wedne...
Skeletal imitation reveals how bones grow atom-by-atom
Nov 21, 2018 (SPX)
The bones in our body grow through several stages, with atoms and molecules joining together, and those bigger groupings joining together in turn. One early sta...
4,000-year-old termite mounds found in Brazil are visible from space
Nov 21, 2018 (SPX)
The mounds, which are easily visible on Google Earth, are not nests. Rather, they are the result of the insects' slow and steady excavation of a network of inte...
Thai prosecutor among trio jailed for $1.4m rhino horn haul
Nov 20, 2018 (AFP)
The smugglers were caught with bulging bags of the contraband at Suvarnabhumi airport, accompanied by the senior justice official who tried to sneak them throug...
Eel trafficking in the EU, the world's 'biggest wildlife crime'
Nov 20, 2018 (AFP)
Stocks of European eel (anguilla anguilla) have plummeted 90 percent in three decades as mankind has developed the wetlands and dammed the rivers it needs to gr...
Giant viruses has been found in a soil ecosystem
Nov 20, 2018 (SPX)
Reported November 19, 2018, in Nature Communications, giant virus genomes have been discovered for the first time in a forest soil ecosystem by researchers from...
Sumatran elephant found dead with missing tusks in Indonesia
Nov 17, 2018 (AFP)
The 10-year-old male's rotting corpse was found in Blang Awe village in Aceh province earlier this week. "His tusks were missing and there were traces of blood ...
Vale ordered to pay tribes $26.8 mn over river contamination
Nov 17, 2018 (AFP)
The Onca Puma nickel mine in Brazil's northern Para state, in operation for a decade, is blamed for contaminating the Catete river, which prosecutors said had a...
Mice raised communally fare better as adults
Nov 16, 2018 (UPI)
The new research was published this week in the journal Scientific Reports. "Female house mice pursue two flexible social strategies, either raising their offsp...
UK supermarket's viral orangutan ad slammed by palm oil giant
Nov 16, 2018 (AFP)
The Christmas ad -- which features a cartoon orangutan telling a little girl that its jungle home had been destroyed -- has racked up millions of views on socia...
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