October is officially Bat Appreciation Month. In the spirit of the season and conservation, a team of biologists in California recently spent time finding bats at Muir Woods National Monument and Samuel P. Taylor State Park. And while Halloween is fast approaching, the activity had nothing to do with spooky festivities and everything to do with tracking hoary (Lasiurus cinereus) and western red bats (Lasiurus blossevillii). 

The goal of their survey was to put GPS trackers on bats from the two migratory species. Hoary bats have grey-white fur and are the most widespread bat species in North, Central, and South America. Western red bats, also known as southern red bats, sport a reddish fur and are found in parts of South America. In redwood forests, bats like nesting within holes inside large trees. 

“When they migrate, those little guys can cover a LOT of ground!” the Golden Gate National Recreation Area writes, referencing both species. “By learning about these migratory patterns, we can better understand entire ecosystems like Muir Woods.”

Bats are important members of such ecosystems. They are pollinators, they spread seeds, and they help manage insect populations. To catch these helpful agents, scientists set up a sheer, delicate net called a “mist net” over a creek at dusk. All bats are nocturnal, and when they went searching for their next meal—bugs—they flew into the net. 

It was a bit of a trick for the winged mammals, but a treat for the human team. “Expert bat wranglers” carefully took them out of the nets, noted their weight and size, presumably attached the GPS tracker, and then returned them to the wild. 

The Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s shared pictures of tiny, disgruntled looking bats carefully pinched between gloved fingers. In one image, an expert holds a bat wing up to the light of a colleague’s headlamp. In fact, illuminated wing membrane patterns literally shed light on the bat’s age and developmental stage.

While this survey focused on two bat species, researchers at the Muir Woods National Monument have previously spotted 10 different species.

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One cold December day in 2021, Colorado carnivorous plant grower Jeremiah Harris shared some pictures of wild Amazonian giant water lilies (Victoria amazonica) plants in the Inírida River in Guainía, Colombia to Instagram. There’s just one problem. No known Victoria water lily species grow there. 

When water lily expert Carlos Magdalena saw the post on Instagram, he suspected a new plant species could be involved. To investigate the matter, he used satellite imagery to remotely search the Inírida River and its surrounding lakes and confirmed the presence of Victorias.

And yes, you can see these enormous plants from space. Victorias grow the world’s second largest single plant leaf. 

Magdalena is a botanical and scientific research horticulturist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the U.K. Along with his colleagues, the team went on a five-day expedition to Inírida. The team included members of the Indigenous reserves del río Atabapo, one of whom had seen the lilies during his childhood. 

However, the trip didn’t exactly go according to plan. By their last night, they had found only two water lily plants, neither of which had flowers. This was a problem, because botanists need a flower to differentiate species. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the water lilies they found seemed to be struggling with a late rainy season. 

But when Magdalena described their situation to the expedition’s boat captain, Gustavo Melo, he said he knew where they could find more of this water lily. They didn’t have much time to do so, with the team’s flight back to Bogotá was at 9:00 a.m. the next morning. Thus at 1:00 a.m., Melo, a member of the Indigenous Tucano community, led them to a small lake. There, they found five more Victorias, one of which was blooming. 

“This is one of those extraordinary stories where indigenous and horticultural knowledge with the help of social media and technology came together to uncover a truly extraordinary botanical achievement,” Magdalena said in a statement. 

The  researchers were able to collect what they needed to start the official scientific description of the new species: Victoria colombiana. They even managed to make that early flight. In their recent study published in the journal Phytotaxa, he and his colleagues also announced the discovery of another new Victoria species, Victoria mattogrossensis. 

The team estimates that there are only between 30 and 50 wild V. colombiana plants, and is extremely vulnerable to extinction. They are currently working to get the plant officially categorized as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List. 

“Now that we know this water lily exists, our responsibility is to understand it better and protect it. With so many plants in the wild threatened with extinction, we simply cannot wait any longer to take action,” Magdalena added. Experts are considering starting a naturalized population in a more accessible lake in Indigenous territory and researchers also are hoping to cultivate the species in Bogotà.

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Some animal rescues are more complicated than others—especially when the creature in peril is about to become a snack for a seagull on a remote Alaskan beach with polar bears lurking nearby. 

That was the sticky situation an orphaned Pacific walrus (a subspecies of Odobenus rosmarus) calf was in when two researchers found it on an island in the region of Point Lay, Alaska. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research walrus biologist Tony Fischbach and Ilisaġvik College student and Point Lay local Violet Anniskett stumbled upon the young male while investigating walrus carcasses on a remote beach. They found the orphan between the remains of two adult walruses, which was a first in Fischbach’s long experience working with walrus herds there. 

The researchers requested permission to rehabilitate the walrus from the local Inupiaq community and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Once the approval arrived, the next hurdle was getting the mammal to the Alaska SeaLife Center. The center is the only marine mammal rehabilitation facility in Alaska, and was over 800 miles away. As if things could get any more difficult, stormy weather left Anniskett, Fischbach, and the walrus stuck on the island for days. In the meantime, the researchers guided the calf to an abandoned building to shelter from predators.

“When we found him, a determined flock of gulls was intent on scavenging him. He was in immediate peril of suffering this fate had we not gotten approval to intervene. Two polar bears were also active on the island,” Fischbach said in a statement. 

“He bonded with us fast and wouldn’t sleep unless one of us were in the room. It was just us two for three days, stuck in a storm with the young walrus,” Anniskett added. 

The calf was finally transported to the local airport, and made it to Alaska SeaLife Center on September 14 after a flight and van ride. The 200 pound baby arrived dehydrated, but in good physical condition. They treated some superficial wounds, gave him fluids, and applied other stabilizing treatments. 

But the calf’s journey wasn’t over. In fact, orphaned Pacific walrus calves are one of the most specialized patients in marine mammal rehabilitation.That’s because in the wild, calves are very attached to their mothers, with whom they usually stay for one to two years. Close physical contact both with their mothers and others of their king is a crucial element in a calf’s early life. In the case of an orphaned calf, humans (who are authorized specialists) can act as surrogates, but it’s a tough babysitting job. Someone has to be around all the time to provide physical contact, social interaction, feeding support, and any veterinary care. 

“Caring for an orphaned walrus calf is truly a team effort and requires around the clock commitment,” said Jane Belovarac, an Alaska SeaLife Center wildlife response curator. “At least two staff members have been working shifts around the clock to stay with him and provide the care he needs. This means long days and some unusual sleeping schedules for our team.”

It also means that the calf becomes comfortable with humans and thus cannot return to the wild. Now in a new long term home (whose location hasn’t been announced yet), he will be an ambassador for his species by teaching people about Pacific walruses. 

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The 13,800-year-old archaeological site points to an ancient cultural connection spanning the Bering Land Bridge.

It takes a village to raise a child, and sometimes it takes more than one wildlife rehabilitation center to care for a bat. Even if the bat in question weighs only six grams (about two ounces). 

The recent rescue of the juvenile bat in Lancaster, Pennsylvania involved teamwork from the beginning. The “sky puppy” had been hanging on a local porch for two days. While that might not sound off, the bat’s exposure to the elements in a single location for that period of time made the situation an emergency, according to Raven Ridge Wildlife Center in southern Pennsylvania. 

Pennsylvania Bat Conservation and Rehabilitation contacted Raven Ridge, who sent a team member to get the bat. The winged mammal was very dehydrated and underweight. It was also unlike the bats that typically arrive at Raven Ridge. The team stabilized her, recontacted PA Bat Conservation and Rehabilitation, and the two organizations realized that they had a northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) on their hands.  

“Sadly, northern long-eared bats are now critically endangered in North America, with their population dropping by as much as 97% to 100% because of white-nose syndrome,” Tracie Young, Raven Ridge Wildlife Center director, tells Popular Science. White-nose syndrome is a fungal disease that has killed millions of bats in the U.S. and Canada. 

“They are now protected at both the state and federal levels,” Young adds.

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A Raven Ridge volunteer ultimately drove the youngster to the PA Bat Conservation and Rehabilitation facility about an hour away, where the team is expert in critically endangered bats. The bat was eventually returned to the wild, with a video featuring the little bat launching from a woman’s gloved hand into the night. 

“Even though this is just one bat, it was important to get this bat to the rehabber who specializes not only in bats but also in those in a critically endangered status,” Young adds. “The video shows her flying beautifully. This effort was a wonderful partnership between Raven Ridge Wildlife Center and PA Bat Conservation and Rehabilitation.”

Happy bat appreciation month!

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Nothing is quite as joyful as watching a dog get caught up in a bout of “zoomies,” zipping around a living room or backyard in a burst of energy. But our canine pals aren’t the only animals subject to these hyperactive displays. 

Young condors can also engage in zoomies, as demonstrated in a recent Facebook post from the Ventana Wildlife Society in California. The video shows clips of two young California condors (Gymnogyps californianus), Chert and Pumice, seemingly having a blast in their release pen. 

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“We observe the zoomies in both captive and wild condors. It’s just a sudden expression of pure excitement for young condors and very fun to watch,” Joe Burnett, California Condor Recovery Program Manager at the wildlife society, tells Popular Science. “Zoomies come out of nowhere and they just can’t contain themselves and totally let loose. They hop, run in circles, or flap around, or all the above! It’s just pure fun!”

It’s not just about the fun, however. Zoomies allow the young condors to release energy and grow stronger, as well as help them figure out their wings, according to the team. 

The two zoomie condors are 1.5-year-old males who were raised in zoos before arriving at Ventana Wildlife Society’s San Simeon release pen in early September. It’s called a release pen because Chert, Pumice, and three other captive condors will be kept in the pen to acclimate until their release on October 24 at 10 a.m. The release will also be livestreamed. 

The quintet will become a part of the wild condor population of central California, which today includes 104 individuals. But it won’t be a total goodbye. Scientists will be able to keep an eye on Pumice and Chert’s locations via wing-mounted radio & GPS transmitters and ID tags. 

California condors are North America’s largest land bird. They measure 9.5 feet from wing tip to wing tip. But their size didn’t spare them from a precipitous population drop. In 1982 there were only 23 condors left in the world. All wild condors were captured and included in a captive breeding program. 

“Condor releases are critical to achieving our ultimate goal- to reestablish a self-sustaining condor population in the wild,” Burnett concludes. 

At the end of 2025, there were 607 California condors. We’d say Pumice and Chert earned their right to party. 

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An endangered mouse is slowly returning to the Golden State. Pacific pocket mice (Perognathus longimembris pacificus) are about as large as a human thumb and about as heavy as three pennies. Unsurprisingly, they are the smallest mammals in North America and are one of many pocket mouse subspecies. But they are also one of the most endangered. 

Pacific pocket mice have lived in and around Los Angeles and San Diego but before 1993, the species was believed to be extinct. When a small population was found in Orange County,  the tiny rodent was listed as endangered. 

Today, there are only three original populations in the wild, but groups are being reintroduced into the wild. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and their partners recently established their third reintroduced population of Pacific pocket mice at North San Mateo, a training area within Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

“This spring, we provided 50 mice to USGS [United States Geographical Survey] to establish a third reintroduced population at North San Mateo, and we’re very encouraged that reproduction has already been documented there,” Debra Shier, associate director of recovery ecology for San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, tells Popular Science. 

The two other reintroduced populations are also doing well. They are the Water Tank population in Laguna Coast Wilderness Park and the Wire Mountain population on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Mice there are reproducing, and the Water Tank population has a high to very high density. Additionally, the Wire Mountain population has a medium to high density, according to Shier. 

The Pacific pocket mouse’s recovery is good news for the subspecies, but also for their ecosystem. Their burrows contribute to improving soil hydrology and nutrient cycling and also shelter other species, Shier added in a statement. An additional population helps return these crucial ecological functions to their native coastal ecosystems. 

Since the start of its Pacific Pocket Mouse Conservation Program in 2006, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has released over 500 of these tiny mammals into the wild, adding them to both new and established populations.  

“We’re now beginning to allow the established populations to expand beyond their original fenced release areas. That’s especially important this year because of the potential for heavy winter rains associated with the forecasted El Niño,” Shier says. “We’ve found that high winter precipitation can be associated with lower overwinter survival, so allowing mice to spread out and settle in a larger area may help make these populations more resilient.”

The greatest threat to Pacific pocket mice is the loss and fragmentation of their specialized coastal habitat. Habitat loss diminishes their range and makes them vulnerable to inbreeding. 

“So, recovery isn’t simply about breeding more mice,” Shier points out. “We need to protect and restore suitable habitat, establish additional populations, and maintain genetic diversity across those populations.” 

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As the summer drew to a close, aerial surveyors with the New England Aquarium saw more than 2,000 animals across 15 different marine species in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, southeast of Cape Cod. Among that vast diversity, the team spotted Chilean devil rays (Mobula tarapacana). This ethereal fish is “one of the ocean’s best-kept secrets,” according to the aquarium.

“We rarely see Chilean devil rays on our aerial surveys,” Katherine McKenna, a researcher in the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, tells Popular Science. McKenna was one of the observers on the team that saw the Chilean devil rays from above. 

“The Monument’s deep sea canyons, complex oceanographic conditions, and productive waters support a remarkable diversity of marine life, especially in the summer months when warm water protruding from the Gulf Stream draws in seasonal visitors like Chilean devil rays,” she says.”

Chilean devil rays, also called sicklefin devil rays, are olive-green- or brown-colored and are found in the planet’s tropics and warm temperature seas. These large fish have an 11- to 12.5-foot-wide wingspan and weigh 715 to 1,100 pounds. They’re named after the country where they were first scientifically documented, and McKenna says that the “devil” was inspired by the horn-shaped cephalic fins around their mouths. They are classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, and mainly threatened by by-catch and overfishing.

What’s more, the species is relatively difficult to study. They can travel very far, and they are frequently solitary and usually found offshore. When rays like these are found in a group, however, it’s called a “fever.” One thing we  do know is that Chilean devil rays are the deepest diving ray species. They can dive almost 6,000 feet deep. 

“This is possible due to a specialized network of blood vessels surrounding their brain that allows them to keep their brain warm even at very cold water temperatures at deep depths,” says McKenna.

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While fall officially began only a few weeks ago, many of us have come to expect pumpkins and Halloween decorations in stores as early as August. And this year, an adorable baby turtle joined in on the early autumnal festivities.

In August, Florida native Michael Landress spotted a loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) hatchling making its way toward the water. “This little one, surprisingly, had an earthy tone of autumn. ‘Pumpkin Spice’ sprang to mind as the little orange hatchling raced to its ocean home,” Landress wrote in a statement sent to Popular Science, despite the fact that he doesn’t like pumpkin spice lattes or pumpkin pie.

Loggerhead turtle hatchlings usually have dark to light brown top shells (called a carapace) and dark flippers that can be pale along part of their edges. Their bottom shells (or plastron) is typically a tan or faded yellow, according to Daniel Evans, a biologist at the Sea Turtle Conservancy. Very different shell colors, like “pumpkin spice” or in albino turtles, are rare, Evans adds. 

“For hatchling loggerhead sea turtles, coloration is important for camouflage and hiding from predators while floating in mats of seaweed, such as sargassum,” Evans tells Popular Science. “The common coloration, even with slight variation, provides very good camouflage, while coloration that is different won’t provide that same level of protection. This is most likely why we don’t see such drastic differences in coloration in adult loggerheads.”

Adult loggerhead turtles usually have a more reddish-brown carapace and pale yellowish plastron, as well as brown to yellowish flippers.

Loggerhead turtles are named in honor of their large heads. They live in subtropical and temperate oceans, and Florida is home to one of the largest loggerhead nesting aggregations on the planet. Nonetheless, they are classified as Endangered by the IUCN and federally-designated as Threatened by the United States. A significant threat to the species is bycatch in commercial fisheries. 

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Squid skin behaves a bit like a large, 10-armed human ear. While scientists at Case Western Reserve University were probing these enigmatic cephalopods, they discovered that squid have significantly more hair cells than was previously known. 

Hair cells are cells with bundles of hair-like protrusions, and researchers already knew that squid had  them on their heads and arms. Now, it looks like the invertebrates have hundreds more of them all over their bodies, with potential insight for understanding human hearing. 

“Squid are cephalopods with a diverse population of hair cells on the surface of their bodies, which may yield insights not only into how these fascinating animals detect water movement to survive, but also into how hearing and deafness occur in humans,” Brian McDermott, a biologist and co-author of a quid study recently published in the journal Current Biology, said in a statement. That’s because these squid hairs are similar to those inside the human ear, which enables us to hear things. 

McDermott (who investigates hair cells) and his colleagues used an imaging technique called light sheet microscopy to probe the cells. During this process, a thin sheet of light lights up one plane of a specimen at a time and researchers can produce detailed 3D images while minimizing tissue damage. Their work also included the first full-body mapping of lateral lines (features made up of hair cell clusters) on squid.

Understanding these hairs have implications for our own ears. Human hearing involves sound vibrations moving to a snail-shaped organ in the inner ear called a cochlea. The cochlea is filled with thousands of hair cells, each of which has a collection of small hair-like features called stereocilia, or cilia. The length of cilia depends on where they are found. If they are in areas where low pitches are detected, the cilia are longer. If they are in high-pitch areas, the cilia are shorter. This positioning helps orient each cell to a specific sound frequency. 

When the sound vibrations reach the cochlea, the cilia move. The hair cells then transmit the signals to the brain via the nervous system, where the messages are turned into meaningful sounds. Marine animals such as squid and octopuses feature similar cilia bundles on their bodies. Their survival appears to depend on detecting various frequencies of water movement, akin to how human ears pick up on sound pitches. 

In other words, squid skin appears to behave like a human ear. This new research even suggests that squids regulate the length of the hair bundles to tune the hair cells to various frequencies, similarly to human ears. The hair bundles in fish lateral lines, on the other hand, are all the same length. So by studying squids, researchers could learn more about human hearing. 

“Often, when a child is born deaf or a hearing person loses their hearing, it is the hair bundle that has been damaged,” McDermott concluded. “So, studying the squid’s hair bundle holds promise for understanding how hearing loss occurs.”

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It’s common to find things among the sand while strolling along a beach: shells, seaglass, bits of and seaweed. But in Essex, England, a beachgoer found something quite different on the coast of Southend-On-Sea: a World War II explosive.

Southend-On-Sea’s HM Coastguard intervened over the weekend after someone reported a “shell-shaped object” less than half a mile south of a local monument called “The Crowstone.” The team first showed up early in the morning to locate the object and send pictures to the Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams. 

The Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams decided that disposal officers should remain on the scene, but that everyone should go back at low tide to identify the object and execute a plan. When they returned that evening, Southend Coastguard Rescue Officers accompanied Explosive Ordnance Disposal officers to the suspected explosive. 

“It was confirmed to be an old WWII shell that was approximately six inches in diameter,” HM Coastguard Southend On Sea explained in the social media post. “The decision was made to detonate it in situ, where it posed no risk to passing members of [the] public.”

The video in the Facebook post showcases a significant explosion in the distance, shooting a cloud of debris into the air. It’s not the first time this year that the violence of World War II makes itself known again. In the spring, experts safely detonated a 250 kilogram German explosive in Plymouth, UK. But possibly another World War II find in Indonesia had a drastically less fortunate outcome. A suspected shell killed five people when it detonated in a fishing village. 

“As these items can be so dangerous, if you ever see something suspicious or out of place on the beach or in the sea, do not touch it, move it or take it home,” the post continued. “Let the experts decide if it is safe.” 

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Diplodocus is a famous genus of giant sauropod dinosaurs with small heads and long, whip-like tails that lived in the Late Jurassic period (155 to 145 million years ago). Since its discovery in 1878, all confirmed Diplodocus remains have been unearthed from the Morrison Formation fossil hotspot in the western United States. Now, however, paleontologists have identified Diplodocus remains in Spain.  

The remains came to light in the El Castellar municipality of the Spanish city of Teruel, and represent the first evidence of Diplodocus beyond the borders of North America. They consist of 14 well-preserved tail vertebrae and several chevron bones (bony arches in the tail). Through traditional anatomical comparisons and advanced phylogenetic analyses, the researchers confidently categorized them as Diplodocus and a close cousin of Diplodocus hallorum. 

“As we looked more closely at the anatomy, we began to identify a combination of features characteristic of Diplodocus species. Then, as we carried out different evolutionary analyses, they kept pointing in the same direction,” Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, lead author of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology study and a graduate student in biodiversity and evolutionary biology at the Joint Paleontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis research foundation, said in a statement. “With each new result, the picture became clearer: we were looking at a Diplodocus.” Dinópolis is a huge paleontological museum and theme park in Teruel, about 200 miles east of Madrid.

This particular individual dates back to around 150 million years ago. Its place of death indicates that during the Late Jurassic, dinosaurs could migrate from between North America and Europe, probably making use of temporary land bridges that sometimes emerged in the proto-North Atlantic Ocean. During the Jurassic (201.4 to 145 million years ago), the ancient supercontinent Pangea started pulling apart into the Laurasia and Gondwana landmasses, and the Atlantic Ocean also started forming. 

Diplodocus are a subgroup of sauropods, which were among the longest land animals to ever walk the Earth. The recent finding sheds light on Iberian Mesozoic (252 to 66 million years ago) ecosystems and sauropod dinosaur diversity in the European Jurassic, Fenollosa explained. 

“The Diplodocus from El Castellar was approximately 25 meters long [82 feet] (comparable in size to its North American relatives), making it another of the giant sauropods of the Spanish Jurassic,” said Alberto Cobos, co-author of the study and managing director of the Joint Paleontology Foundation Teruel-Dinópolis. Its remains are now on display at the Aragones Museum of Paleontology at Dinópolis.

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There’s nothing better than sinking your teeth into a sweet, creamy chocolate bar. Rats think so, too—and they may announce their chocolate-infused joy to the world at ultrasonic frequencies. 

Researchers have previously linked ultrasonic rat vocalizations with different emotional and motivational states in the animals, such as in reaction to rewarding stimuli. For example, the rodents vocalize in this way when eating something sweet. 

Now, a team of researchers in Japan have discovered that rats emit a particular ultrasonic vocalization while eating chocolate. Their findings are detailed in a study recently published in the journal eNeuro.

To come to this conclusion, the researchers compared ultrasonic vocalizations that rats emitted when they had access to chocolate, with those they made when they didn’t have access to the candy. The team also compared them with a chocolate-free control group of rats. Researchers then used AI to analyze the vocalizations’ acoustic features, identifying a distinct ultrasonic vocalization—officially 40 kHz inverted-U—strongly associated with chocolate snacking. 

“When rats eat something delicious such as chocolate, they emit a distinct ultrasonic call that humans cannot hear,” Koshi Murata, a study co-author and researcher at the University of Fukui, said in a statement. “This call drops sharply when the brain’s opioid ‘pleasure’ system is blocked. This suggests that rats may be vocally expressing the enjoyment of eating, offering a new window into whether animals experience pleasure as we do.”

To see if this distinct vocalization was related to the tastiness of food or just eating in general, Murata and colleagues compared chocolate-eating vocalizations with the sounds the rats produced while eating regular food. And while the rats ate similar amounts of both, they emitted significantly more 40 kHz inverted-U USVs while eating chocolate. 

In a separate food-choice test, the rats also demonstrated an obvious preference for chocolate: 15 out of 16 rats picked chocolate over the regular food (and can we blame them?). In two experiments, researchers also found that the vast majority of 40 kHz inverted-U USVs were emitted within one second of a feeding event. 

“Our discovery suggests that animal vocalizations could serve as a real-time, non-invasive readout of internal emotional states—specifically, how much an animal is enjoying its food,” said Murata. “Such a tool would allow researchers to measure ‘pleasure’ more directly than current methods permit, and could accelerate research into the brain mechanisms that generate positive emotions.” 

Understanding more about how the brain processes rewarding experiences could shed light on behaviors like overeating, as well as conditions like anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure and a common symptom of depression.

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Staff at St. Louis Zoo in St. Louis, Missouri recently opened up a very special delivery in the mail: an overnight shipment of 500 adult Partula snails. 

Their journey began at the Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak, Michigan, and it’s not quite over yet. The small invertebrates’ final destination is Tahiti, where they will be released into the wild as part of an international effort to reestablish wild populations of Partula snails. 

“The snails are sent ‘priority overnight’ via either FedEx or UPS. The snails are carefully packed using insulating materials and special ‘phase change’ packs to stabilize the temperature inside,” Mark Vassallo, Curator of Amphibians at the Detroit Zoological Society, tells Popular Science. “Currently the Detroit Zoological Society bred snails are taking a pit-stop at St. Louis Zoo where they will be fed a special diet in order to prepare them for the wild.”

Partula snails are small, tree-dwelling native to islands in French Polynesia. In Polynesian cultural heritage, each unique Partula snail shell represents an island. When humans introduced the predatory rosy wolf snail to the region to manage another invasive snail species, it wrecked Partula snail populations. 

For decades, the Detroit Zoo has been breeding and raising Partula snails and helping return them to their native habitat by the thousands in Tahiti. In fact, the 500 en route right now were all bred at the zoo. Each of their shells features an orange dot of animal-safe paint that glows in UV light, which identifies them as one of the snails released in 2026. Each year has a different color, and the dots also allow conservationists to easily monitor them in their natural habitat. 

This upcoming release is part of an international recovery program that has returned 11 different Partula species formerly deemed extinct in the wild to their native environments, consisting of over 17,000 individual snails. The Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans, Louisiana, also recently sent 200 Partula snails to Tahiti. 

When asked what “success” looks like, Vassallo explains that, “Success for a conservation project can be defined in stages but ultimately, a self-sustaining population with consistent reproduction and very importantly, proper habitat that is protected to sustain that species to allow long term recovery and stabilization of that population.”

Some species of Partula snails are already extinct in the wild, such as Partula nodosa. In the wake of reintroductions of the species, however, experts were excited to observe offspring born in the wild. 

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Wild condor parents usually make a great parenting team. But when one female California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) in Pinnacles National Park in Central California found herself in the role of a single mother, park biologists stepped in to help.

The condor mother wasn’t able to provide sufficient care and food for her chick while on her own. Field biologists realized that when hunting for food, she returned to the nest less frequently. The chick needed more nutrition to grow and develop appropriately. 

“Based on her behavior, she had largely abandoned the nest, and the chick was unlikely to survive without intervention,” a spokesperson for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance tells Popular Science. 

Pinnacles National Park biologists took the chick when it was around one month old and sent him to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s California condor breeding facility. There, he’s receiving care in a specialized puppet-rearing program. 

“The puppet-rearing program is a specialized care method used to raise young California condor chicks without allowing them to see or bond with human caretakers,” says the spokesperson. “Wildlife care specialists use hand-crafted puppets that resemble adult California condors and completely cover the caretaker’s hands and arms. Caretakers use the puppet’s beak to deliver food directly to the chick, mimicking the way an adult condor parent would feed its young in the nest.”

The chick was named Cayic (pronounced Chai-eech), meaning “strong” in the Mutsun language of the Indigenous people of California’s Central Coast. Thankfully, Cayic is demonstrating normal growth and development, and experts plan on returning him to the wild next fall.California condors are still considered critically endangered, after nearly going extinct.

As for the chick’s father, he had stopped returning to the nest and eventually died while receiving treatment for suspected lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is the greatest cause of death for California condors and a severe obstacle in the species’ recovery. The species is also threatened by the consumption of microtrash. 

California condors, or “thunderbirds” for Native Americans, are North America’s largest flying birds. Their wingspan is almost ten feet long, but their mighty reach didn’t keep them from reaching the brink of extinction. During the 1980s, there were fewer than two dozen of them in the wild. In 1986, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put them all in a captive breeding and release program, including at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Six years later, the program had bred enough chicks to return the first condors to the wild. 

As of the end of 2025, there are 607 California condors in the world, 392 of which are in the wild. One of them is Cayic’s mom. 

“The mother may go on to pair with another male, and we hope she will have another opportunity to breed during a future breeding season,” says the spokesperson.

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Like humans, elephants are famously social creatures. But unlike teenage humans, Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) can think before they act.

Scientists in Thailand discovered this after 16 Asian elephants at the country’s National Elephant Institute successfully participated in a detour test. In this sort of challenge, the animal has to resist an obvious but ineffective strategy (an impulse) to get a treat and follow an effective but indirect alternative—an ability called inhibitory control. 

“Although we are beginning to understand how intelligent elephants are, we still know very little about their capacity for inhibitory control,” Sydney Hope, a postdoctoral researcher at Hunter College in New York, tells Popular Science. “Understanding elephant inhibitory control will help us understand how this aspect of cognition may have evolved across species, including humans. It will also help us understand how elephants may cope with environmental—including anthropogenic—changes.”

In their new study published today in the journal PLOS One, Hope and her colleagues presented Asian elephants with a transparent box filled with fruit. The box also had small holes, so that the elephants could see and smell the goodies inside. The temptation here was to reach directly through the barrier, whose holes were presumably too small for the elephants’ trunk to fit through. The elephants could consistently resist this impulse, and instead used an opening on the side of the box, as they had previously been taught to do. 

In a second version of the trial, the researchers rotated the box. Initially, the elephants gave in to the urge to reach for where the opening used to be, but then rapidly amended their behavior. This fix came slower in older elephants. That’s potentially because of cognitive decline with age, though the team says that further research is necessary on this point. 

More broadly, the study shows that elephants are able to resist an impulsive, ineffective action (like reaching through a perforated, transparent barrier or continuing a no longer successful approach) in favor of e indirect effective behaviors, even if they must change a previously effective strategy. And they’re in good company—inhibitory control is important for humans’ and other animals’ decision-making and cognitive flexibility. For elephants, it might play a significant role in their famous problem-solving and socializing capabilities, according to the researchers. 

“These results may also help conservation efforts,” Hope points out. “One major threat to Asian elephants is human-elephant conflict, often occurring when elephants navigate around barriers (e.g., electric fences) to enter agricultural lands. Understanding how elephants detour around barriers in controlled experiments may help with developing new techniques to mitigate conflict.”

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In The Lion King, the hyenas Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed were at the evil lion Scar’s every beck and call. And while the Disney team probably didn’t spend an extensive amount of time observing lions and hyenas interacting in the wild while making the beloved movie, a zoologist and her colleagues just did—and they found something unexpected.

The long-standing assumption about the relationship between the carnivores involves hyenas following lions for their food scraps. However, male African lions (Panthera leo) are the ones going after spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta), who move away from the big cats. These new findings are detailed in a  study published today in the journal Frontiers in Ethology.

Nancy Barker, an ecologist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and lead author of the study, observed lions actively tracking hyenas while she was studying brown hyenas (Parahyaena brunnea). 

“When I shared my observations with other leading researchers, I was often told that I had the relationship backwards: that hyenas are the ones tracking lions, primarily for scavenging opportunities, and that what I had seen was simply a series of chance encounters,” Barker said in a statement “I felt there was more to the story.”

Barker then put GPS-collars on socially high-ranking African lions and spotted hyenas at Namibia’s Etosha National Park, as well as lions in Linyanti Conservancy in northern Botswana and northeastern Namibia, and  Chobe National Park in Botswana.. The study included data from 17 lions and 14 hyenas collected across four years. 

The collars mapped the animals’ movement by capturing a location snapshot every five minutes during their peak activity hours, and Barker also maintained camera traps and conducted behavioral observations for context. Barker identified 23 pairs of simultaneously tracked animals from the GPS collar data, including 10 lion-hyena pairs. Her team classified the direction of every paired animal’s movements, consequently revealing and studying thousands of interactions.

“Our GPS collar data shows that African lions and spotted hyenas leave a clear, measurable signature in the way they move around one another,” said Barker. “Spotted hyenas consistently move away from lions, while male lions tend to move toward hyenas.” 

Female lions, on the other hand, weren’t as consistent. Barker’s observations revealed that lionesses’ reactions to hyenas were based on which other pride (a group of lions) members were around, though more data is necessary to bolster this determination. 

Because the study includes a limited amount of data, Barker says that some of the findings should be viewed more as trends instead of firm scientific conclusions.  

“I would love to extend this approach to other members of the carnivore guild, to understand how the entire community negotiates space and risk,” she said. “Ultimately, I want to connect these movement patterns to what matters most for the animals: their survival and reproduction.”

The post New data flips the narrative on how lions and hyenas interact in the wild appeared first on Popular Science.

They’re called cornflakes. These overlooked scraps of papyri (texts written on paper made from the papyrus plant) carry partial snapshots of ancient worlds. 

For archeologists, cornflakes deserve care and attention as much as their complete cousins do—and that’s exactly what took place this summer, at the University of Michigan’s (U-M) Papyrus Conservation Summer Seminar. An international group of nine researchers acquired and practiced the latest papyrus preservation techniques on papyrus fragments held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. 

“Most of them [the researchers] came to Ann Arbor with zero papyrus experience, but the group ended up conserving more than 150 big and small papyri in just two weeks,” Giuliano Sidro, curator of the U-M papyrology collection, said in a statement. 

The university’s papyrology collection is the largest collection of ancient papyri in the Western Hemisphere. texts and documents dating back to sometime around 1000 BCE to 1000 CE, including  personal letters, school primers, and sales contracts are all preserved within its walls. 

One of the researchers worked on a fragment of a copy of “Against Ctesiphon,” a famous speech from an Athenian orator Aeschines delivered in 330 BCE. Another researcher connected a U-M cornflake to one from his home collection in Milan. 

The seminar was led by Marieka Kaye, director of preservation services for physical collections at the U-M Library. According to the team, Kaye and Sidro’s collaboration at U-M is a unique dynamic. Usually, conservators and papyrologists work sequentially and independently, not together. The conservator restores and preserves the papyri, and then the papyrologist studies the pieces.  When the two can join forces, it also helps the seminar participants understand the material they’re handling in real time. 

“The papyrologist can read the texts and guide the conservator’s hand in placing complex, fragmentary puzzles, while the conservator not only makes papyri accessible and readable but also offers a material perspective that can inform, or even correct, a papyrologist’s assessment of a text,” Sidro explained.

The post How ‘cornflakes’ can help decode ancient writing appeared first on Popular Science.

On June 19, the Aquarium of the Pacific took in almost 500 animals in one go. Fish, marine invertebrates, and sharks were all brought into the facility in Long Beach, California, but the aquarium hadn’t just gone on some big marine shopping spree. 

These animals were rescued from animal trafficking, and were in urgent need of a home. At the aquarium, the staff worked through the night to stabilize and care for them. 

“Every animal that arrives at the Aquarium, whether through a carefully planned acquisition or a last-minute confiscation, receives the same high standard of care. What can differ is the condition in which those animals arrive,” Johnathan Casey, Aquarium of the Pacific curator of fish and invertebrates, tells Popular Science. 

Many trafficked animals have been traveling in stressful or poor conditions, so the aquarium’s experts immediately check their physical condition, water quality, and individual needs. They usually know little about an animal’s origin or history, so the team needs to be prepared for anything. The rescued animals are also quarantined to avoid the potential spread of diseases, according to Alyssa Tillman, the assistant curator of fish and invertebrates. 

The species included brownbanded bamboo sharks (Chiloscyllium punctatum), ocellaris clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris), and Banggai cardinalfish (Pterapogon kauderni). The IUCN Red List classifies brownbanded bamboo sharks as Near Threatened and Banggai cardinalfish as Endangered. 

While the arrival of almost 500 animals was a standout event, the Aquarium of the Pacific has received rescued animals from over 30 confiscation events since September 2024.  This means they saw one confiscation event every three weeks, though the first eight months of 2026 have already seen over a dozen cases. Overall, the aquarium has taken in over 3,600 rescued trafficked animals in the past two years. 

The Aquarium encourages “the public to become informed consumers to help avoid wildlife trafficking of exotic pets. This includes researching the protected status of the species and ensuring purchases are through a reputable vendor,” Casey explains. “If the vendor cannot provide proof of where the animal came from, refraining from purchasing it is a way to help.” 

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In 2009, tourism operators in Australia spotted more and more humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) “fluking,” when a whale floats upside down, holding its tail above the water. Confused by the behavior, they reached out to scientists for help, triggering a research effort that solved one of the biggest mysteries about humpback whales on the Great Barrier Reef. 

The Whitsundays, where the fluking was taking place, is a region with dozens of islands between the Great Barrier Reef and Australia’s north-eastern coast. 

“It was an unusual behaviour they had never seen before. Not even the whale scientists knew what it meant at the time,” Crystal Lacey, Master Reef Guides program manager, said in a statement. “So that uncertainty sparked a major research effort, which combined citizen science through the tourism operators’ observations, and scientific research. It was one of the region’s largest citizen science efforts.” 

The efforts included tourism operators counting whales and calves, and scientists mapping the seafloor, monitoring water temperatures, tracking whales by satellite, and surveying the region from the air. The joint mission found that the Whitsundays is one of the Great Barrier Reef’s most important humpback whale calving areas. In other words, they’d revealed a previously unknown whale maternity ward. 

“The fluking the operators observed was actually a breeding behaviour,” explained Lacey. “We discovered the Whitsundays provides the sheltered, warm and shallow waters humpback whales need to give birth and raise newborn calves.”

Their results also resolved one of the biggest enigmas associated with humpback whales on the Great Barrier Reef—the question of where they give birth. The findings ultimately led to the creation of the Whitsundays Whale Heritage Area within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. 

Humpback whales are found in all the world’s oceans. They’re a whale-watcher favorite because they can be observed close to shore, and frequently put on a show near the surface of the water. Humpback whales mate while “hugging” face-to-face, and the gestation period of females is 11 to 12 months. When they give birth—once every 2 to three years—the calf comes out tail first. 

The post Australia’s humpback whales were acting weird. What happened next surprised scientists. appeared first on Popular Science.