A team of UCLA scientists has resorted to posting content on OnlyFans to raise money for research amid huge federal funding cuts to U.S. science. But the videos aren't of themselves, they're exclusive recordings of marmots.

"I spend a lot of time waiting for marmots to do things and had the idea one slow morning," Daniel Blumstein, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA, who leads the project, told Live Science in an email. "When I came back with this idea, one of my graduate students immediately said we MUST do this! So here we are!"

Researchers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) have been studying yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventer) at a field station in the Rocky Mountains near Crested Butte, Colorado, since 1962. "The RMBL marmot study is the second oldest continuous study of individually marked mammals in the world," Blumstein said. "We have up to 65 years of data on population dynamics, social and anti-predator behavior and ask a lot of questions about how animals respond to a changing environment."

Yellow-bellied marmots are one of 15 marmot species, a group of cat-size ground squirrels that can be found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. This particular species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains and several mountain ranges in California. The species live in social groups and are active during the day, which makes them a great subject for long-term behavioral studies.

"Long-term research like ours is both very valuable to understand how and why things change over time, and our project has been very productive," Blumstein said.

However, collecting data over such long periods comes with a significant price tag. And with federal funding cuts draining research budgets across the country, Blumstein and his team have had to look for other methods to raise money for their research. Enter OnlyMarms.

On June 17, the RMBL Marmot Project announced on Instagram that "the state of funding is so bad we are turning to OnlyFans, or as we like to call it 'OnlyMarms'."

OnlyFans is a subscription platform that allows users to pay creators to see exclusive photos and videos. The platform has become popular with adult-only content creators, but it hosts others too, including musicians, athletes and celebrities — and now marmots.

"We’re trying this out of frustration with an extremely challenging funding environment," Blumstein said. "If we’re lucky, it can help raise money for supplies and some expenses. But unless we are very lucky, it won’t replace the federal funding that has driven discovery in the US since the 1950s."

However, for anyone hoping for spicy marmot content, you might be a bit disappointed. "[It's] almost all G-rated content of marmots playing, being cute, digging, bringing plants to their burrows…normal routine stuff for marmots," Blumstein said. "The occasional scuffle makes it PG rated."

Emily Renkey, who also works on the project, said the team hopes to add videos of marmot pups soon.

"Our 'Onlymarms' page has gotten a bit of engagement since we started it a bit over a month back," Renkey told Live Science. "We've gotten 735 page visits and have 44 fans."

But how much has OnlyMarms actually been able to raise? "Not much," Blumstein said. "We’re letting folks have free subscriptions and ask for tips. They [OnlyFans] take 20% and I have to pay taxes on the balance."

Even so, the team is hopeful that the page is helping to increase public engagement and interest in the project. "Overall I think this can be an amazing way to teach people more about animal social behavior, which can sometimes be hard to observe," Renkey said. "Even we are learning more about marmots through these up close glimpses the game cameras provide."

While it is difficult to get signed consent from the marmots to use this content online, Blumstein said that the funds raised would be used to help protect the creatures in a rapidly changing world. "We are using these funds to help continue the study which provides valuable information about them and how they’re responding to climate change," he said.

The OnlyFans account is just one way the team has tried to share its research with new audiences. "We work hard to translate our research findings to the public," Blumstein said. "Our lab’s running a Fat Marmot Week contest this summer. We're hoping this will let people learn more about these fascinating alpine critters!"

Scientists have discovered how mice survive at extreme altitudes on the tips of icy dormant volcanoes in the Andes.

The area where the mice call home extends more than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) above the world's highest human settlement. The air is thin, temperatures are blisteringly cold, and a desert ecosystem ensures water and vegetation are extremely scarce.

"As a mountain climber standing on the summit of these peaks, the idea that there could be animals living in these barren godforsaken environments is just really mind-boggling," Jay Storz, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, told Live Science.

In 2020, Storz led a team of mountaineering scientists who recorded Andean leaf-eared mice (Phyllotis vaccarum) at a record-breaking altitude of 22,110 feet (6,739 meters). The mice were living on the summit of Llullaillaco, the world's highest historically active — now dormant — volcano, located on the border between Argentina and Chile.

Now, in a new study published July 9 in the journal Science, Storz and his colleagues have revealed the biological mechanisms behind the mice's extreme survival. It turns out that the species has evolved a variety of adaptations to survive at such high altitudes, including the ability to eat plants that would normally be toxic.

Before the discovery of the high-altitude mice, researchers had assumed that mammals could only survive up to around 18,000 feet (5,500 m) above sea level. But these hardy animals smashed that record, while also thriving at lower altitudes.

"One of the really notable things about this particular species is that it has such a broad elevational range, from sea level along the desert coastline of northern Chile, all the way up to the summits of some of the highest peaks in the Andes," Storz said.

To better understand these remarkable mice, the researchers studied members of the species at low, middle and high altitudes between 2020 and 2023. The work mixed mountain climbing and animal surveying techniques, with Storz and his team ascending the mountains and setting traps to catch and record the mice.

Storz said that a well-acclimatized mountain climber can tolerate these high elevations for a very short period, but that the conditions are "not remotely compatible with long-term human survival."

The expeditions can be dangerous even for experienced climbers: one of Storz's colleagues was evacuated during a separate expedition in Peru after they developed high-altitude pulmonary edema — a life-threatening form of altitude sickness that causes fluid to build up in a climber's lungs.

The researchers sent some of their specimens to labs in Chile for further analysis. This included putting the mice into small chambers and measuring how they adapted to extreme cold and oxygen deprivation. The team also sequenced the Andean leaf-eared mouse genome, which revealed a variety of local adaptations to different altitudes. For example, the mice living at high elevations were better at maintaining their body heat and oxygen levels than those taken from lower altitudes, according to a statement released by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Another change in the high-altitude mice's genes enabled them to digest food and detoxify plants that would otherwise be harmful to them, according to a statement released by McMaster University in Canada. This special adaptation helps the mice get enough food on the sparsely vegetated volcanoes.

The researchers also revealed that the high-altitude mice were much more active in the daytime, perhaps due to a lack of predators and warmer temperatures during those hours. However, despite local adaptations, the mice were still extremely similar genetically across their elevation range. All of the mouse populations overlapped, which prevented high-altitude individuals from becoming isolated or especially distinct from their low-altitude kin.

Not all of the mice survived the researchers' study. To fully understand the biology of the mice, researchers needed to euthanize them and study their tissues. They also wanted to preserve "voucher" specimens to act as permanent representatives of the species in museums, which researchers can keep returning to for further study. According to the study, the team collected 167 of these voucher specimens.

Storz noted that it's very valuable to have a biological record of specimens archived in museum collections for future generations. He added that their work was not having any impact on the viability of the mice populations, and that the animals were killed humanely, although he did not disclose any details.

"King of the mountains"

Study co-author Graham Scott, a professor of biology at McMaster University in Canada, said that the take-home message of the new research was how life can overcome such extreme environments, and not just survive but thrive. In this case, the mice did this by developing solutions for the cold, oxygen deprivation and food scarcity.

"It just shows the complex ways that evolution has made these animals the king of the mountains," Scott said.

Enduring harsh conditions high in the Andes likely comes with some benefits. Scott said that competition is probably the biggest reason for the mice living at such high elevations. The mice are also pretty much left to their own devices, and thus likely have less to fear from predators.

But this begs the question: Are there any animals living higher than the mice?

"Birds are always a bit hard to nail down because, of course, they can fly and there's certainly records of birds flying at higher elevations than that," Scott said. "But we think this is probably the highest-dwelling animal."

Scientists have identified a new species of monkey that has orange lips and makes unique roars and snorting sounds. The distinctive monkey lives in a remote region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

It is only the fifth new monkey species to be identified in Africa in the past 75 years, and there might be more unknown monkey species in the region, scientists behind a new study suggested. Researchers named the newly identified species of monkey Colobus congoensis, after the region, and it is known by the common name "lik­weli" in the local Kilanga language.

"This is remarkable because it's not very common these days to find a new, never-before-documented primate species, let alone a relatively large species of monkey," said Joshua Linder, an anthropologist and president and co-founder of the The Forest Collective, a nonprofit that aims to conserve and restore tropical rainforests.

In 2008, conservationists in the dense rainforests of Lomami National Park, within the Congo Basin in the DRC, photographed an unidentified monkey, but it was partially obscured. Then, in 2018 a similar-looking animal was captured on camera, prompting study co-author Junior Amboko, a Lomami National Park researcher and a Florida Atlantic University anthropologist, to set out to find the mysterious monkey.

To see what was already known, Amboko and his colleagues showed the pictures to people from 52 villages around the park.

"These people really know the fauna and flora in the forest," Amboko told Live Science. "In only eight villages, people knew the monkey ‪—‬ and these were hunters, who know the economic value of animals or how much food each animal can provide, but even they didn't know much."

Hunters of the Balanga ethnic group called the monkey "likweli," although the meaning of this name isn't known. Some in the Mituku local communities called the species "kasaba nkoni," which Amboko said means "the branch shaker." This refers to the way colobus monkeys leap from branch to branch, Amboko said.

In their searches between 2018 and 2022, the researchers recorded 114 sightings of the species across an estimated range of about 660 square miles (1,700 square kilometers) naturally isolated between the Lomami and Lualaba rivers. They reported their findings July 15 in the journal PLOS One.

The monkeys, seen hanging out in groups of between one and 20 individuals, are mainly glossy black, but they have a conspicuous orange patch around the mouth and nose. Bare gray skin on their cheekbones makes it look as if they're wearing masks. They also have a patch of white fur around the anus.

"We're going with the face and the rump as the two distinctive traits," said study co-author Kate Detwiler, an anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University. "If you see the face, you see this unique bare skin that's orange cream. And then if you're coming from behind, you see this white patch."

The monkeys, which weigh about 15 pounds (7 kilograms), also make deep, loud roars, punctuated by distinctive snorts. These unique‬ vocalizations distinguish them from other colobus monkeys, Detwiler told Live Science.

By taking samples, and sequencing DNA, from monkeys killed by hunters and destined for the illegal bushmeat trade, and comparing the results with what’s in museum collections and datasets of genetics, skulls, teeth and pelts for other colobus monkeys, the team confirmed that C. congoensis was a previously unknown species.

"My lab got the tissue sample and did the genetics, and we were shocked by how divergent the key area of the mitochondrial genome was from other colobus monkeys," Detwiler said.

The monkeys live in the same forest as the Angola colobus (Colobus angolensis), but their closest relatives are black colobus monkeys (Colobus satanas), which live around 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) to the west, in Cameroon, Gabon and Bioko Island.

"The fact that the results show that the closest living relative to this new species is the black colobus located 1200 km away in West Africa is equally remarkable," Linder, who was not involved in the new study, told Live Science via email.

Detwiler estimates that these close relatives diverged between 5.78 million and 3.44 million years ago ‪—‬ the longest known split between species within the Colobus genus. "The discovery is reshaping our understanding of African monkey evolution," she said.

Given the small geographic range, rare sightings and increasing habitat loss, the researchers recommend that C. congoensis be classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List.

The discovery also emphasizes the importance of Lomami National Park, where another previously undescribed monkey, the lesula (Cercopithecus lomamiensis), was reported in 2012 by a team that included Detwiler.

The Congolian rainforest ranging across this part of Africa is the world's second-largest tropical forest, after the Amazon, and about 60% of it is in the DRC. "It is a paradise for biodiversity," Amboko said, adding that there might be more undescribed primate species there. "If we are able to discover two big new primate species, who knows how many other new mammals, fish, reptiles or plants there could be?"

What do you know about chimpanzees and great apes? Test your smarts with our primate quiz!

Scientists in Australia are deep-freezing koala eggs and sperm as a "genetic backup" to save the wild population from future extinction.

The backup could be used to create healthy koala embryos through artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF), the researchers said in a statement. When koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) die, unique traits and diverse genes that may help them adapt to changing environments are lost, but the new project offers a way to store this valuable material, the team said.

"Losing genetic diversity can weaken future generations and decreases the ability of the species to adapt to challenges," Andres Gambini, a reproductive biologist at the University of Queensland who is involved in the project, said in the statement. "This project will create a safe and systematic way to rescue and preserve koala spermatozoa and eggs to support future conservation programs."

Australia is facing a paradox with its koalas. In some regions of Queensland and New South Wales, koala populations have crashed by as much as 80% since the late 1990s due to deforestation, bushfires, drought and disease. This prompted the Australian government to change koalas' conservation status in their eastern range from "vulnerable" to "endangered" in 2022.

Meanwhile, in parts of southern Australia, koalas are overabundant. However, the places where koalas are currently thriving may not be able to support a booming population much longer, because the animals are overbrowsing and killing the trees they need to survive, recent research suggests.

To protect against koalas' decline, the scientists will freeze koala reproductive cells in liquid nitrogen (LN2), which has a boiling point of minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 196 degrees Celsius). This method would enable the team to cryopreserve the cells for several decades until they are needed, said Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary developmental biologist and associate professor of biological sciences at the University at Buffalo in New York.

"I've successfully woken cells up that were frozen in LN2 a couple of decades ago," Lynch, who is not involved in the koala project, told Live Science in an email.

The sperm and eggs will be supplied by wildlife hospitals that will harvest sex cells from dead koalas or koalas that can no longer breed due to disease or trauma, according to the statement.

"Every year, many koalas are admitted to wildlife hospitals because of illness or injury and sadly, not all of them survive," Gambini said.

The researchers will then test the cells for Chlamydia pecorum, a highly contagious and deadly form of chlamydia. In koalas, this infection causes painful urinary tract infections, gastrointestinal issues, and conjunctivitis, which can lead to blindness. It can also cause infertility in females. C. pecorum is one of the main contributors to koalas' decline in recent years, with infertility driving a sharp reduction in the number of koala joeys being born. In the worst-affected populations, situated mostly in Queensland and New South Wales, almost 90% of koalas are infected with chlamydia.

If the reproductive cells contain C. pecorum, "we have the technology now to remove the infection from the samples," Steve Johnston, an associate professor of animal reproduction and captive husbandry at the University of Queensland who works on the koala project, said in the statement.

In 1998, Johnston was part of a research team at the University of Queensland that created the world's first koala joey born through artificial insemination. The new project also builds on a 2025 study, led by Gambini, that produced the first-ever IVF kangaroo embryos. (These did not result in live births; at the time, the scientists said that would take another decade.)

It's unclear how many sperm and egg cells the researchers plan on freezing, and it's hard to say how many cells they would need to ensure the survival of healthy koala populations, as the number of cells required is probably increasing with time, Lynch said. As koala populations shrink, genetic material is being lost at an accelerating pace, so the team will have to get more samples as time goes on to obtain the same amount of diversity.

The project does not replace more traditional conservation approaches — such as habitat protection, disease management and population monitoring — but researchers cannot afford to wait until populations are smaller and genetic diversity is harder to recover, Gambini said.

Although conservationists are concerned about the fast rate of koalas' decline, "there is a chance" that scientists can save the species through cryopreservation, Lynch said.

"I support multipronged approaches like this," he said. "By preserving the environment with traditional conservation we allow re-introductions because the species have somewhere to live."

Pets form an important part of many people's lives, providing meaningful companionship. However, our pets can sometimes also be a source of unwelcome pathogens and diseases, particularly if they frequently roam outdoors.

We are ecologists and a veterinarian who study wildlife health and the movement of pathogens among wildlife, domestic animals and people. If you let your cat outdoors, or if outdoor cats visit your yard, our recent findings may be relevant.

Zoonotic pathogens are organisms that can infect both animals and humans. From a pathogen's perspective, humans are just another animal host. Wildlife is often emphasized as a source of emerging disease for humans because there are vastly more wild animal species than domestic animal species.

However, even if a pathogen is capable of infecting people, it needs a way to reach us. Humans share more zoonotic pathogens with domestic animals than with wildlife, because domestic animals live close to us. Pathogens benefit even further if they can infect a companion animal.

In our newly published research, we compiled data from more than 400 studies to investigate how a cat's lifestyle, whether they're mostly indoors, outdoor-roaming or feral, affects that cat's likelihood of carrying pathogens that can infect people.

Across this compilation, there were nearly 100 pathogens detected in cats that are considered zoonotic and capable of infecting humans. Familiar examples are rabies, Toxoplasma gondii, roundworms and Salmonella.

Our research

We found that outdoor-roaming pet cats had three to five times the odds of carrying a zoonotic pathogen compared with indoor-only cats. More surprisingly, cats allowed to roam outdoors had similar odds of carrying at least one zoonotic pathogen as feral cats. Outdoor-owned cats carried fewer types of pathogens than feral cats, but the same pathogens that infect feral cats can also infect owned cats.

These risks become a large-scale problem because pet cats that roam freely interact closely with people, wildlife and other domestic animals. Across the studies we reviewed, about 60 per cent of owned cats had unsupervised outdoor access; in some regions, that rate exceeded 90 per cent.

Roaming cats hunt, interact with wildlife or other domestic animals, and move through environments contaminated with pathogens and toxins. Research suggests that cat owners may underestimate hunting by around 80 per cent, meaning that many prey captures and animal contacts go unnoticed.

These interactions are not uncommon and not limited to so-called pest species. Single-country estimates of wildlife killed by cats run into the billions, with more than 2,000 wildlife species documented as prey for domestic cats.

Cats hunt animals that can carry zoonotic pathogens, including rodents, birds and bats, many of which would otherwise have little direct contact with people. Owned cats might bring home rodents carrying viruses, and there are documented cases of cats bringing rabies-positive bats into homes. A cat returning home with prey can therefore create a pathway by which pathogens circulating in wildlife populations reach people.

In addition, it is not only owners who are at risk. Outdoor cats defecate in gardens, parks, playgrounds and other shared spaces, potentially leading to high contamination rates. One study estimated that outdoor cats deposited more than 60 tonnes [60 tons] of feces per 10,000 households each year.

Depending on the parasite, feces can contain hundreds to hundreds of thousands of parasite eggs that can persist in soil or water for months to years, which can infect people or other animals that come in contact with those eggs.

What cat owners can do

The most straightforward intervention is also the most economical and humane: prevent unsupervised roaming. That does not mean denying cats access to the outdoors. It can mean building "catios" or enclosures, leash walks, supervised time outside or other forms of contained outdoor access.

Veterinary care still matters. Treating existing parasitic infections and vaccinating against diseases like rabies are essential precautions, even for indoor cats. Since neither vaccines nor anti-parasitic treatment cover the full spectrum of wildlife-associated pathogens, managing exposure remains the more comprehensive protective approach.

The free-roaming debate is often framed as a false choice: either cats roam freely, or they are deprived of a natural life. That framing is misleading and inconsistent with how we manage other companion animals.

We do not assume dogs need unrestricted access to roads, neighbors' yards or to hunt wildlife to have good welfare. Indoor cats and cats with supervised outdoor access can live healthy, enriched and longer lives.

Policies and strategies that address how and where owned cats roam outdoors can help safeguard biodiversity, feline and wildlife welfare and public health. That is the central insight of One Health, that the same choices that protect ecosystems can also protect the animals and people who share them.

This article was co-authored by David Lapen, who works for and receives research funding from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How much of a cat fan are you? Find out by taking our cat quiz!

A camera trap in an ancient Polish forest has captured extremely rare and unexpected footage of wolves attacking a bison herd made up of adults, youngsters and a newborn calf, a new study shows.

The event took place on Sept. 15, 2025. Five wolves (Canis lupus) enter the camera frame, closely followed by three bison cows and the newborn calf. In the footage, the cows chase after the wolves, leaving the calf alone and exposed. The wolves then surround the calf, bite its neck and try to drag it away, but two cows come to its rescue. The wolves return and seize the calf a second time in the background of the video — however, this time the entire bison herd comes to its defense to end the attack.

The clip is from the Bialowieza Primeval Forest, the oldest and best-preserved temperate lowland forest in Europe, which hosts the world's biggest population of European bison (Bison bonasus). The forest covers 350,600 acres (141,900 hectares) on the border between Poland and Belarus. There are more than 870 bison on the Polish side, according to the new study, while the Belarussian side has roughly 730 bison.

Also known as "the king of the forest," the European bison is typically considered a non-prey species, meaning it has no predators except humans. But the footage calls this into question.

"To our knowledge, we present the first video-recorded evidence of wolves attacking a European bison herd in the Białowieża Primaeval Forest," researchers wrote in the study, published May 29 in the journal Ecology and Evolution. "Although the video did not capture a direct kill, it suggests that other attacks on European bison could potentially be successful."

Historical documents show that wolf attacks on European bison used to be more common, with about 8 kills recorded annually in the Bialowieza Primeval Forest between 1840 and 1849. The forest was a popular hunting ground for monarchs from the 14th century onward, explaining why such detailed records exist.

European bison went extinct in the wild in 1919, but they were reintroduced in the Bialowieza Primeval Forest in 1952. The first confirmed bison kill since then dates to the mid 1990s, and after that, it seems as though wolves stuck to a diet of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), red deer (Cervus elaphus) and wild boar (Sus scrofa), likely because these are much easier prey than bison, the researchers wrote in the study.

But now, "our observation demonstrated that the European bison is in fact a potential prey for wolves," they wrote. "This raises questions about why predation attempts are so rare, whether the bison can still be described as a non-prey species, and what this could mean for conservation and management of the species."

An intriguing trend in the Bialowieza Primeval Forest is that wolf packs are growing in size, possibly thanks to a late 1980s hunting ban. This shift could increase wolf predation on bison in the future, because bigger packs can handle bigger prey.

"If predation on European bison, specifically young animals, occurs more frequently than previously assumed, wolves could play a small but potentially important role in the natural regulation of bison numbers," the researchers wrote in the study. "In turn, such regulation could possibly lead to mitigation of human-bison conflicts."

An elusive dwarf fox that was feared extinct has been photographed for the first time, after being spotted near a highway in Cozumel, Mexico.

The tiny animal was part of the mysterious Cozumel fox population, a potentially undescribed species that had not been officially sighted in more than 20 years.

Cozumel foxes live only on Cozumel, an island near Cancún. Researchers know very little about these mysterious predators, which are roughly 20% to 40% smaller than their gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) cousins that live on the mainland.

Park and museum officials spotted and captured the fox in 2023 and, after a health assessment, released it back into the wild. Researchers have now shared the photographs and documented the encounter in a new study published May 4 in the journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation.

Although the rediscovery confirms that Cozumel foxes are still alive, they are likely on the brink of extinction, the study authors noted; the photographs highlight the need for focused research and conservation efforts.

"The biggest challenge facing the Cozumel fox is that we still know almost nothing about it, including its remaining population size, distribution, or ecology," study first author Travis Bayer, executive director of the conservation organization Pathos Wildlife, said in a statement. "That uncertainty alone is dangerous, because it makes effective conservation extremely difficult."

Cozumel foxes are an example of insular dwarfism, an evolutionary process in which larger animals, including fox-sized mammals, evolve to be smaller after colonizing islands, where there are limited resources and less space than on the mainland. The foxes aren't the only mammals that have shrunk on Cozumel over time; other examples include the island's critically endangered pygmy raccoons (Procyon pygmaeus) and dwarf coatis.

Archaeological evidence suggests that Cozumel foxes have lived on the island for at least 5,000 years, likely since before the arrival of the Maya within the past few millennia, and potentially for tens of thousands of years before that. Prior to this rediscovery, the last confirmed sighting of a Cozumel fox was in 2001, according to the study.

The rediscovery began with reports of a disoriented animal wandering near the highway on the southeastern side of the island. Officials with the Parks and Museums Foundation of Cozumel located and captured the fox, an adult male, on Sep. 14, 2023. They checked its health and later released the fox in the Laguna Colombia State Reserve, a protected area just south of where it was captured.

Recent and historical sightings suggest that Cozumel foxes could have an extremely restricted range in the island's South, where nature is increasingly threatened by development, land-use change, invasive species and natural disasters, the study authors noted.

The researchers recommended surveys to determine the current distribution and size of the Cozumel fox population, along with morphological and genetic assessments to establish its evolutionary status and conservation efforts to protect its assumed habitat in southern Cozumel and minimize human-wildlife conflict.

"Ultimately, we hope this work helps move the Cozumel fox from a little-known, uncertain presence on the island to a better-understood key part of Cozumel's ecosystems," Bayer said. "We also hope it demonstrates that conservation is often most urgent when certainty is lowest and that uncertainty itself can be a call to action."