On the evening of March 18, as it was growing dark, I went to the window, not knowing what was drawing me. Next to the house stood a shadow, ghost-like, shrunken, at one with the dusk, almost translucent, and I recognized The Girl with the Broken Foot.
I walked out into the falling wet snow, slowly approaching her, and she allowed me to come close. Nine months old, she was the size of a fawn half that age. Starkly emaciated, her body seemed to be collapsing inward, her head held low. Literal hunger and a deeper starvation were palpable. She bore the haunted look of terminal solitude seen in souls driven to the margins of society, among the liv-ing, yet apart. She seemed so frail that I couldn’t imagine she would live more than another day or two.
Going inside and returning with a bowl of apples, I cut them into pieces and placed a few on the ground between us. She was raven-ously hungry and I gave her a few more apples, and still more, until she had eaten a total of eight. After she had finished eating, she stayed with me. We stood about a foot apart. She showed no fear of me, a fact which I would later come to recognize as meaningful. The moment had the compelling quality which has been present at the onset of many enduring connections in my life, of being un-bound by linear time.
“I am watching over you,” I said softly. “If you come here, I will take care of you. You are not alone.”
It was fully dark when we parted, having been together for an hour. I expected that she would recede into the woods, yet the next morning she was sleeping against the house, directly beneath the window closest to where I sit all day to work. Save for the wall separating us, she could not have gotten any closer to me.
Paul feeding Penelope. Image: Paul Bochner.
When I went around to the front of the house, she struggled to her feet and approached. In the morning light, I was better able to assess the state of her health. Months of solitary survival had taken a severe toll. Her body seemed hollowed, her ribs and pelvis sharply visible beneath her skin, and it felt a miracle that she was alive. On her right flank was a hemispherical mass the size of a cantaloupe, which I took to be a tumor, yet it had an open, running wound at its center, which she periodically craned her neck to lick. Her eyes were running and had congealed masses at their inner corners.
I bent to get a look at her injured foot. From not being walked on, the backward-facing cloven hoof had grown to an abnormal length and was curling upward. The wrist, which unnaturally bore her weight, had a flattened forward surface, an oval about two inches across, worn raw, without hair or skin, only pale pink–grey flesh, which, at its center, appeared to have been further abraded to the bone. Her right front foot, forced to compensate, was splayed and rockered, her right scapula protruded, and her front quarters were substantially lower than her hips.
I again placed apple pieces on the ground between us. I spoke very gently to her, saying, “You are the best one of all the deer. You are the most beautiful. You are good.” I continued to talk to her while she ate her apples, and when she had taken all she could, she returned to her resting spot under the window. I went inside to work, keeping periodic watch, pleased that she seemed to have claimed a place. But in a few minutes, from around the corner of the house came the twins, followed by their mother who immediately and ag-gressively charged at her. The Girl with the Broken Foot lurched upright and hobbled down the embankment, across the road and into the woods.
She was once again alone, but a step had been taken. Since the previous evening, things had changed. Even before her second feed-ing she had recognized me on sight. She had approached and had again allowed me near.
Although I had seen her fewer than half a dozen times in the preceding months, from the night of our first connection, she began to come to the house every day. She slowly gained strength and I would watch for her and thrill to the sight of her slow approach. It was our private time. We stood together, and I placed her food on the ground between us. After she ate, she would stare into my eyes for long periods, seemingly entranced. I told her stories. I sang softly to her. I told her she was my beauty.
So began our journey, and one of the greatest loves I have ever known.
Penelope walking into the house. Image: Paul Bochner.
About the Author
Paul Bochner began his professional life early, as a working musician through his mid-teens in Los Angeles, then moving to Montreal at the invitation of the National Film Board of Canada. He has won several international awards for his films and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting. He has written for The New Yorker and The Atlantic.
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.
Victoria colombiana is the fourth Victoria water lily to be described. Image: Carlos Magdalena.
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.
Horiculturalist Carlos Magdalena holds up a giant lilypad. Image: Mauricio Bernal.
“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.
A Victoria colombiana bud. Image: Nilo Rodriguez.
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.
When zoology professor Daniel Baldassarre traveled to the remote Galápagos Islands of Wolf and Darwin with two other researchers, getting there proved quite a challenge. With no beaches to land a boat on, they had to approach the islands’ cliffs in a small dinghy and wait for a lull in the waves before jumping onto sharp, black lava rocks.
But their efforts paid off. On that trip, they saw a bird that very few people have ever set eyes on in the wild: the vampire ground finch. These finches are only found on Wolf and Darwin, and feed on the blood of much larger birds called Nazca boobies that also live on the islands.
Up close, Baldassarre and his colleagues noted the vampire finches’ blood-stained bills and their throats visibly engorged with blood. They also saw them in action.
“We observed scores of vampire finches clamouring all over the backs, tails, and wings of boobies, opening up substantial wounds with their sharp beaks, and drinking their fill of blood,” they wrote in an article for The Conversation.
Why only some birds drink blood
“Blood is a notoriously difficult food source to process and extract nutrients from, which probably partly explains why so few animals have evolved to feed on it,” Baldassarre tells Popular Science. He suspects that on these islands where freshwater is extremely rare, blood might serve as a water source for the finches.
Two Nazca boobies perform their species’ mating call. Vampire ground finches feed on Nazca boobies on the remote Galápagos Islands of Wolf and Darwin. Image: Getty Images / inthedark72
It’s not the only component of the vampire finches’ diet, however. Based on unpublished data collected by Baldassarre and his colleagues, blood makes up about one-tenth of the vampire finches’ diet.
“These finches are quite opportunistic, so they will eat just about anything they can find,” Baldassarre says. “We observed them feeding on everything from seeds to insects to broken seabird eggs.”
One theory is that vampire finches rely more on blood feeding in periods of extreme drought, when other resources are scarce. But more research is needed to see if this idea holds up in practice.
How this strange behavior evolved
Vampire finches weren’t always vampires, scientists think. The relationship between vampire finches and boobies probably started off with the finches eating parasites found on the skin and feathers of the boobies. This would have been mutually beneficial because it provided a cleaning service for the boobies and food for the finches.
But at some point in evolutionary history, in the process of picking off parasites, the finches started to create lesions on the boobies’ skin, and eventually began feeding on their blood.
Over time, their bills became more scalpel-like, perfect for making skin incisions. Their digestive system also changed. When Baldassarre and his colleagues studied the microbes found in vampire finches’ guts, they found that their gut microbiome was very different from that of other, non-blood-consuming finches on the Galápagos Islands, something they attribute to their unique diet.
Until recently, vampire finches were considered a subspecies of the sharp-beaked ground finch (Geospiza difficilis).
“But they have now been designated as their own species [Geospiza septentrionalis] because of the differences they have evolved because of blood feeding,” Baldassarre notes.
Vampire ground finches on Wolf island have been seen drinking nectar from Galápagos prickly pear flowers and other flowers. Image: Peter Wilton / CC BY 2.0
How the boobies cope
Baldassarre and his colleagues have seen vampire finches gang up on and kill nestling boobies,“but that was quite rare,” he points out.
“In most cases, the finches seem to inflict just enough damage to break the skin and extract some blood, but not too much to harm the boobies significantly.” This is similar to many parasite-host relationships, such as fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes on mammals. “You can kind of think of the vampire finches as giant mosquitoes,” Baldassarre says.
“For one, as in large animals being bitten by mosquitoes, often the damage is minimal and not noticeable, so it doesn’t elicit a strong reaction. Also, the boobies sometimes have a vested interest in staying put and guarding their spot in the colony, or perhaps nest or nestlings, so may not want to fly away. Finally, the finches seem to target hard-to-reach areas on the boobies like the base of tail feathers, so it’s likely difficult for the boobies to deter them.”
I, for one, was feeling very sorry for the boobies being constantly hounded by these small vampire birds. Until I learnt that Nazca boobies practice something called “obligate siblicide,” which essentially means that the first-hatched chick routinely attacks and kills its younger sibling. It’s a harsh, bird-eat-bird world in the Galápagos Islands.
In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.
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 a Pacific walrus calf is not for the faint of heart, but can be pretty cute. Image: Kaiti Grant/Alaska SeaLife Center.
“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.
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.
The rescued bat perched on a local porch. Image: Raven Ridge Wildlife Center.
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.
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.”
Your eyes really can betray your thoughts, but don’t get too self-conscious about it. Researchers in Japan believe that the subtle signs our eyeballs make are more useful to neuroscientists than the interrogation room. Based on their findings recently published in the journal iScience, examining the difference physiological responses from “inner” versus “overt” speech may help us better understand everything from linguistic development in children to the efficacy of silent pep talks.
To learn more, a team at the University of Tsukuba in Honshu enlisted dozens of volunteers for a series of simple counting exercises. After observing the participants at rest while thinking about nothing in particular for a control, researchers then asked them to count sequentially (1, 2, 3…), in number-subject combinations (one dog, two dogs…), and in specific intervals (1, 3, 5…). They also completed each task both silently and aloud. In each phase, the team carefully monitored their pupil dilation.
The results were subtle, but striking. Participants’ pupils dilated during each overt speech task, but this same muscle movement depended across each inner speech directive. Pupils constricted while volunteers silently counted sequentially, dilated for interval counting, and didn’t change at all for number-subject counting. But regardless of the inner speech task, pupil size changes were always smaller than they were during overt speech.
“The results of the present study do not support the initial assumption that inner and overt speech produce equivalent pupillary responses,” the team summarized. “Across the three experiments, overt speech consistently elicited pupil dilation, whereas inner speech did not.”
This collective data indicates that our inner speech isn’t simply the nonverbal counterpart to talking aloud. Instead, it’s a form of communication that appears to correspond to lower levels of brain arousal. If true, measuring pupil dilation may become a valuable tool when attempting to assess internal language and thinking. This could be particularly useful for studying language development in young children and infants who can’t properly describe their experiences to adults yet.
Many of the cutest animals on Earth have one appendage in common. Whether you’re thinking of an adorable raccoon, a kitten, or a puppy, it’s hard to imagine them without their fluffy tail. In fact, the overwhelming majority of animals have tails. Only a select few, like us humans, don’t have an external tail.
Sarah Durn: Think of some of the cutest animals you know, a puppy, a kitten, maybe a little red panda. Now, picture them without their tails.
It’s weird, right?
Tails are such a normal part of the animal world that we barely think about them, and they’re not just adorable accessories.
A kangaroo uses its big muscular tail to help it balance. Opossums can use their tails to grip branches. Fish use theirs to propel them through the water. And your dog can communicate an entire emotional journey with just a few well-timed wags.
Tails can help animals climb, swim, steer, balance, communicate, even swat away an annoying bug.
So what happened to ours? Because humans are part of a huge evolutionary family where tails are basically standard equipment.
We even briefly start developing a tail when we’re embryos. But look behind you now, and unless something has gone very unexpectedly, you probably don’t have one.
And neither do chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, or any of our other ape relatives. So somewhere deep in our evolutionary past, our ancestors lost their tails. But why? And what would life be like if we still had them?
No question is too simple or too out there. I’m Sarah Durn, an editor at Popular Science.
Annie Colbert: And hi, I’m Annie Colbert, editor-in-chief
SD: Here at PopSci, we’re always pondering quirky questions
AC: And this week we’re wondering: Why don’t humans have tails? Because tails are everywhere in the animal kingdom.
SD: And they’re incredibly useful. Beavers use their big flat tails to help maneuver through the water. Some monkeys can basically use their tails like an extra limb, wrapping them around branches as they climb. And rattlesnakes, of course, turn theirs into a built-in warning system
AC: So what happened to ours? Did we just lose them somewhere?
SD: Well, technically, humans never lost them.
AC: Okay.
SD: But that said, we have to go way back in our family tree, tens of millions of years back, to find out why our butts don’t have tails anymore.
AC: I’m guessing the answer isn’t because of pants?
SD: No, you are correct. This goes way beyond pants. We’re talking back to a time when our ancient ape ancestors were still hanging out in trees
AC: So when did tails disappear then? And more importantly, why would you want to give up a perfectly good tail?
SD: That’s the big question because for lots of animals, tails are incredibly useful for balance. But the way our ancient ape ancestors moved through the trees may have actually made a tail kind of pointless.
AC: So evolution really said, “We’re not using this anymore, so just get rid of it.”
SD: Yeah, pretty much. And later we’re going to get into what those ancient apes looked like and why their particular style of tree climbing may have made tails more trouble than they’re worth.
AC: And naturally, we also have to ask the important question: Would life actually be better if humans still had tails?
SD: I have some thoughts.
AC: Same. Many thoughts.
Now, before we swing into our evolutionary past, we want to know what questions are circling in your brain hole. If there’s something you’ve always wanted to know, submit your questions by clicking the “Ask Us” link at popsci.com/ask.
Again, that’s popsci.com/ask and click the “Ask Us” link
SD: We can’t wait to hear your questions
AC: We’ll be back right after this quick break to find out how humans ended up on team no tail.
SD: And stick around to the end because we’ll be joined by Science Friday host Flora Lichtman to discuss what makes a really good tail and whether she’d want one herself.
And we’re back. Okay, Annie, before this episode, how much time have you spent thinking about your tail?
AC: Absolutely none. I can confidently say I have never yearned for a tail.
SD: Yeah. No, I mean, neither have I, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about my tailbone.
AC: Uh-oh, where is this going?
SD: Yeah. Uh, a couple years ago, I was walking my Saint Bernard, Poochie, when he caught a whiff of something and took off. And me, trying to be a responsible dog walker, tried to hold onto the leash.
AC: Oh no.
SD: Yes, yes, yes. Safe to say Poochie, the Saint Bernard, won, and I fell straight onto my butt.
AC: Oh, Sarah. Ouch
SD: Yes, it was un-ideal. I ended up bruising my tailbone pretty bad.
AC: Mm.
SD: And unfortunately for me, this happened about a week before I left for a two-week long trip to Italy.
AC: Oof.
SD: Rome, Pompeii, the Colosseum, the Amalfi Coast, Puglia, all while carrying a little donut butt pillow everywhere I went.
AC: Oh my.
SD: Sometimes I even wore it as a hat.
AC: I mean, obviously.
SD: You know, sun protection is important.
AC: Crucial.
SD: Yeah, so I have actually spent a bit of time thinking about and cursing our teeny-tiny, mostly not there human tail because out we actually do have a tail. Kinda.
AC: Hmm. All right. Tell me more
SD: That tailbone I bruised, the coccyx, is at the bottom of your spine.
It’s basically what’s left of when our ancestors actually had a proper external tail.
AC: But humans had more of a tail at one point, right? Like fetuses have tails in the womb?
SD: Correct. When human embryos are developing, we actually form a little tail that extends beyond the rest of the body. But by around eight weeks, that external tail disappears.
AC: So I briefly had a tail?
SD: You did!
AC: Ugh, RIP. Gone too soon.
SD: We should all have a, like, little tail funeral upon our birth.
AC: Eh, that’s obviously the only normal response here.
SD: I mean, obviously.
Okay, but here’s the thing. Humans didn’t suddenly decide to ditch our tails. We inherited our tailless bodies from our ape ancestors.
So if we really want to figure out why humans don’t have tails today, we have to first figure out how our furry ancestors lost theirs. And for that, we have to go way back.
AC: How far back are we talking?
SD: Well, first let’s go back about five or six million years.
That’s roughly when scientists estimate the last common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos lived, and that doesn’t really help us with our tail mystery
AC: Because chimps and bonobos don’t have tails either.
SD: Exactly. And neither do gorillas, orangutans, or any other modern ape. So we have to keep going back.
AC: So rewind. Whoop, rewind.
SD: And eventually we get all the way back to around 25 to 30 million years ago. Megalodon is stalking the seas. Daeodon, aka “hell pigs,” were roaming North American forests. And keep in mind, we’re still tens of millions of years before the first saber-toothed cats and mammoths pop up.
And this is where things get interesting because around this time, our ape ancestors branched off from the ancestors of modern monkeys.
AC: And monkeys do have tails.
SD: Right. Most do.
So somewhere around this part of our family tree, around 25 to 30 million years ago, we finally crossed over to the tailless side from our tailed ancestors.
The frustrating thing is the fossil record doesn’t give us a perfect family album. We can’t point to one specific ancient ape and say, “There, that’s our ancestor, that’s the one that lost the tail.” But we can find clues, and one of the best clues comes from an ancient ape called Ekembo.
AC: Tell us your secret, ancient ape
SD: Yes! Tell them. So fossils from this genus have been found in Kenya and date back about 17 to 20 million years. And these animals would’ve looked pretty different from modern apes.
One species, Ekembo heseloni, probably had arms and legs that were roughly the same size. It climbed around on tree branches on all fours, and it had a long, flexible lower back, unlike modern apes. But there’s one thing we know it didn’t have.
AC: A tail?
SD: Exactly. And we can tell because of particular bone, the sacrum.
AC: And where is my sacrum?
SD: It’s right at the base of your lower spine, and it’s actually one of the places scientists can look to to figure out whether an animal could have supported a tail or not.
If you look at the sacrum of a cat or another tailed mammal, it leads into a whole bunch of tail vertebrae.
But in humans and apes, the sacrum just ends in a, you know, little point. And scientists see that little point in Ekembo heseloni. So even though this animal lived up to 20 million years ago, we know they didn’t have a tail.
AC: So by 20 million years ago, the tail was already gone.
SD: At least in Ekembo.
AC: Mm.
SD: And it’s not alone.
Another ancient ape called Nacholapithecus shows up in Kenya around 15 million years ago, and fossils of its sacrum show the same thing. It couldn’t have supported a tail either.
So we don’t know exactly which one of these ancient apes ultimately gave rise to later hominids, aka our ancestors, but we do know that tailless apes were already walking or climbing around millions and millions of years before humans existed.
AC: Okay, so we know the tail disappeared way back in our evolutionary history, but that still leaves the biggest question, which is why? Like, why would you give up a tail? They seem kind of awesome.
SD: And this is where we get into a little bit of scientific speculation because we don’t have one definitive answer.
One possibility is that it has to do with the way these early apes moved. Think about modern animals that really benefit from tails.
If you’re a cheetah sprinting and making incredibly fast turns, a tail can help you balance. Or if you’re a monkey moving quickly through the trees, a tail can be really useful. But these early apes weren’t moving like modern monkeys.
AC: So what were they doing?
SD: Well, millions of years ago, these apes probably had arms and legs that were about the same length, and scientists think they walked on all fours.
They were also climbing through trees looking for fruit. And if you’re trying to get some delicious fruit growing way out on the edge of a branch, you don’t necessarily want to go flying through the canopy.
You want to move slowly and carefully they could support their weight across multiple branches and deliberately work their way towards the good stuff.
AC: So less swinging dramatically through the jungle…
SD: …and more very cautious trip to the fruit bowl.
AC: Got it.
SD: And if you’re moving that slowly and deliberately, a tail might not give you much of an advantage. In fact, it could actually come with costs.
Your body has to spend energy growing this whole extra appendage, and then you’re dragging it around behind you where a predator could potentially grab it.
So as the University of Missouri anatomist Carol Ward told Popular Science, for these slow-moving, careful climbers, the tail just didn’t offer an advantage.
AC: So after all of this, the answer to why don’t humans have tails is basically because our ancestors stopped needing them.
SD: That’s one theory, but the important thing is that we didn’t lose our tails because humans started walking upright or because of something that happened recently in human evolution.
By the time anything resembling a human showed up, tails had already been absent from our branch of the family tree for millions and millions of years
AC: So I never really stood a chance.
SD: Nope. You were born into a long, proud lineage of tailless apes.
AC: Yet after this whole conversation, I’m starting to feel like we kinda got a bad deal.
SD: Yeah, well, before you get too jealous of Team Tail, there is someone I want us to talk to because last year Science Friday host Flora Lichtman went looking for an answer to a very important question. If you are gonna have a tail, what’s the best one to have?
AC: Ooh, yes. Let’s talk upgrades.
SD: Yes, let’s. We’ll talk with Flora about the science of tails, whether there really is a best tail for balance, and whether she’d actually want one herself. That’s after this quick break.
And we’re back with Flora Lichtman. Flora is a podcaster extraordinaire, an Emmy-nominated writer for Bill Nye’s Netflix show, Bill Nye Saves the World, and one of the hosts of Science Friday, a public radio program and podcast about science, nature, technology, and health.
Flora, thank you so much for making the time to come on Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything podcast.
Flora Lichtman: I am delighted to be here. Thank you for the invitation, and I love tails, so glad to talk about them.
SD: So yes, as you know, throughout this episode, we’ve been talking all about why humans don’t have tails when so many animals do, and last year you actually explored an important piece of this puzzle on a Science Friday episode called “In Search of the Best Tail for Balance,” which we’ll link in the show notes.
In the episode, you talked with roboticist Dr. Talia Moore and developmental biologist Dr. Ceri Weber about their work into figuring out what’s the best tail, and how a tail could actually help us build better robots.
So obviously I have to ask: Is there actually a best tail for balance?
FL: You know, of course, if you ask scientists, they’ll never give you a best because that’s their, their whole job is to find the nuance and the complicated elements of every story. But what I did learn from them is that there are ways to design tails so that they do their job better.
SD: Hmm.
FL: And the thing that I didn’t know about tails is that they’re an inertial appendage, which is not a term I’d heard.
But the way these researchers described it is that it’s like a tightrope walker’s stick.
SD: Hmm.
FL: That you use to sort of regain your balance. Like that, for animals with tails, that is a primary reason why they have a tail.
SD: Yeah.
FL: The difference, though, between a tightrope walker stick and a tail is that most tails aren’t rigid rods, right? Like, they’re curvy and they’re twisty.
So what these researchers did is this simulation to try to compare, you know, what tails work best as this inertial appendage, and they found that design matters, and, like, you can optimize basically the bones in the tail to make them work better. And they found, it turns out if you have, like, short bones, then long bones, then short bones, that gives you a very good tail.
And it turns out that a lot of mammals in the animal kingdom have tails just like this.
SD: Wow. Amazing. So after spending all of this time thinking about tails: Would you want one?
FL: You know, Sarah, I’ve been thinking about that. Here’s the problem. I already have such a problem finding pants that I like and that fit, so I feel like the tail is just not a challenge I need.
On the other hand, I’m also very clumsy, and I do feel like maybe a tail would’ve helped me in the past.
SD: Yes.
FL: …keep my balance.
SD: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like theoretically, pants aside, if you did have a tail as a human, what would be different? What would be harder? What would be easier?
FL: I mean, besides my look, I think, the thing that would be easier is walking on a slippery, icy day in the Northeast.
SD: Mm-hmm.
FL: I think they do really help you regain balance. I like the idea of being able to swing from the trees.
SD: Yeah.
FL: I’m at the playground a lot with my kids. I feel like it would be a real flex to get on those monkey bars with a tail.
SD: Oh my God, you’d be the coolest mom.
FL: The something-ist mom for sure.
Would you want a tail?
SD: I think, yeah, I mean, I guess, like, I think I would. I think it’d be fun. I feel like it’s kinda like having wings, you know?
You’d be definitely, like, ostracized a little bit. Like, people would look at you funny, but you could do a lot of cool stuff. I don’t know. I look at squirrels, and they’re basically flying,
FL: That’s true.
SD: Okay, so you also encountered a lot of impressive tales, I’m sure, in your reporting. Do you have a favorite tale from the animal world?
FL: I’m really love seahorse tails.
SD: Oh, yeah.
FL: They’re so iconic and twisty and beautiful and they really need them because they’re these lightweight little animals that are, like, being, you know, battered by ocean waves, and they can use them to hang on.
But I was reading that not only that, which is like, that’s all cool, but actually, while most tails are cylindrical, the seahorse tail actually has a square profile, which I thought was cool, too.
So it’s… I don’t know. I’m into the seahorse tail.
SD: Yeah, no, excellent choice. Excellent, excellent choice. Flora, thank you so much for taking the time to talk tails with us. It was absolutely lovely.
FL: Delighted to be here. I would love to come back anytime.
SD: Oh, we’d love to have you.
AC: Okay, I started this episode having never really thought about having a tail, and now I definitely feel like maybe I’m missing out. Like, when I need help holding things, give me a tail.
SD: Same. Although after my tailbone incident, maybe I shouldn’t be trusted with an additional appendage.
AC: Yeah, that’s maybe for the best.
And that’s it for this episode. But don’t worry, we’ve got more episodes of Ask Us Anything live in our feed right now. Follow or subscribe to Ask Us Anything by Popular Science wherever you enjoy your podcasts.
And if you like our show, please leave a rating and a review
SD: If you could have any animal’s tail, which one would you want? Tell us in the comments.
AC: Yes, we want to know.
SD: We wanna know. Our producer is Alan Haburchak. This week’s episode was based on an article written for Popular Science by Sarah Kiley Watson, and a big thank you to Flora Lichtman for joining us.
AC: Thank you team, thank you tails, and thank you everyone for listening
SD: And one more time, if you want something you’ve always wondered about explained on a future episode, go to popsci.com/ask and click the “Ask Us” link. Until next time, be careful with your tailbone and keep the questions coming.
AC: Wait, if we had tails, what would chairs look like? And pants, and car seats.
SD: Planes? It’d be kind of cute to see all the tails lined up.
AC: I feel like we need tails. It’s time to change up humans.
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.
“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.
A small puncture wound through a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal shoulder blade may be the earliest evidence of death by spear on humanity’s family tree. Given forensic details such as the entry angle and overall damage, researchers believe the injury was made as an intentionally fatal “heart shot” that killed the ancient hominin within moments. The discovery is detailed in a study published today in the journal Scientific Reports.
In addition to the grisly injury, the nearly translucent bone itself makes this evidence even more striking.
“It’s extraordinary to have a perfectly preserved scapula from 75,000 years ago. These bones are so thin that you often don’t get complete scapulae from modern burials,” explained University of Cambridge archaeologist and study co-author Emma Pomeroy. “We were able to lift it out in one piece from under almost eight meters [roughly 26 feet] of rock and sediment.”
Pomeroy and her colleagues excavated the remains from inside Shanidar Cave, an archaeological site in Iraqi Kurdistan famous for containing evidence of ritualistic Neanderthal burials. The roughly 0.6 inch, nearly circular perforation on the bone was likely made with a wooden spear, since a stone or flint tip would create a flatter injury and leave behind microscopic mineral shards. The individual who inflicted the fatal injury drove the spear downward through the victim’s left chest cavity from the front, piercing major arteries and the lungs before creating the hole in the left scapula.
Located in Iraqi Kurdistan, Shanidar is a famous cave containing what appears to be early examples of Neanderthal funeral rituals. Credit: Graeme Barker
Remnants of a wooden spear weren’t found near the Neanderthal’s remains, which is understandable since the material often decomposes so quickly. That said, prior archaeological digs have revealed similar prehistoric wooden weapons dating as far back as 400,000 years. Pomeroy’s team believes a rounded spear carved from wood almost certainly caused the killing blow.
“Holes left by recreations of spears from this time are an excellent fit for the one we found in the Neanderthal scapula. That early technology absolutely works for this wound,” said Pomeroy.
Although it’s possible that a mishap like a hunting accident was the cause of death, Pomeroy argues the cumulative details suggest something far more purposeful.
“The position of the wound and the force required to push it right through the Neanderthal’s body bear the hallmarks of an intended kill shot directed towards the heart,” she added.
Another major injury the victim sustained before the possible stabbing supports this hypothesis—and complicates the story. In addition to the scapula, archaeologists documented a pair of left ribs, a right rib fragment, a nearly complete right hand, and seven teeth. Collectively, the remains indicate the Neanderthal was about 45 years old at the time of death. However, dental damage reveals the individual suffered a severe blunt-force blow to the front of the face at least a year before death. This injury split a lower front incisor lengthwise and even rotated some teeth inward.
“There’s no doubt that [they] would have had difficulty communicating and been in absolute agony for a long period of time,” said Pomeroy.
Despite this blow to the mouth, the Neanderthal survived for months or even years. This was only possible because others must have cared for the individual, including duties as simple as preparing softer foods to eat. In this sense, there is a distinct possibility the spear wound was a final, merciful act by someone close to them. According to Pomeroy, the prehistoric scene showcases both the highs and lows of what it means to be a human.
“On the one hand, we have evidence of a terribly violent end,” she said. “On the other, this was clearly an individual who was cared for during their lifetime.”
In the mid-1970s, Linnda Caporael was a college student facing a seemingly mundane decision.
A science major at U.C. Santa Barbara, she needed a humanities course to graduate. The course she chose, on women in American history, came with a term paper, and she had to pick a topic.
Caporael’s first choice—Lydia Wardell, a Quaker woman who protested Puritan persecution by walking naked into a meeting house in the 1660s—was intriguing, but already taken. So Caporael instead settled on her second choice: Ann Putnam, one of the accusers in the 1692 Salem witch trials. In doing so, Caporael reshaped the way millions of people view a nearly 300-year-old chapter of American history.
Caporael’s paper introduced the theory that the visions, convulsions, and distress the “afflicted” girls reported might not have been supernatural after all. Instead, she proposed, they could be explained by ergot, a fungus that grows on rye grain and produces a hallucinogenic toxin. In other words, blame moldy bread.
The ergot theory, despite being debunked within a year of being published, has continued to spread and thrive like fungus on rye. As recently as 2023, comedian-turned-podcasting-juggernaut Joe Rogan discussed the theory enthusiastically on his show, effectively reanimating a story that seems destined to never fully die.
“It’s sexy,” says historian Margo Burns about the enduring appeal of Caporael’s ergot theory. “It’s about drugs. It’s about witches. It’s about killing people. Also, we like to think that when there’s an unjust sentence or execution, there’s someone or something to blame.”
Burns, a Salem scholar who has spent years tracing how the ergot theory took hold and persisted, says she rarely gets through a talk on the trials without someone in the audience bringing up moldy bread.
It was long thought that Ann Putnam, one of the primary accusers during the Salem witch trials, had grown up in this house, but historians now know this house was built much later, around 1891, near the Putnams’ original home location. Image: Public Domain
How a term paper went viral
The fact that a single undergraduate college paper could have such a lasting and wide-ranging impact on our understanding of the Salem witch trials seems bizarre, but it can be explained in part by a thoroughly modern phenomenon: virality. Although the World Wide Web was still decades away, Caporael’s paper found a way to spread fast through newspaper wire services.
After she started graduate school, Caporael submitted the paper to Science, which, to her surprise, published it in April 1976. That alone might have kept the theory confined within academic circles. Instead, newspaper editors saw a story with mass appeal.
“Editors and newspapers just grabbed it, saying, ‘Oh, here’s a human interest thing,’” Burns says. “And when they put it in their papers, like The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, it got syndicated. And the syndication of those articles went through the whole country and Canada within a matter of weeks.”
Caporael, who had explored the topic through the lens of the scientific method, wasn’t claiming to know what had happened at Salem. At the suggestion of a pre-med friend, she began looking into ergot poisoning as a possible explanation, not a definitive answer.
According to Burns, who has spoken with Caporael directly, she was only testing whether ergot could be ruled out. Working from the limited sources available to her, Caporael determined that she couldn’t rule it out. Even then, though, she called her own findings “suggestive,” not conclusive.
But that nuance didn’t survive exposure to the public, which in 1976 was already fixated on LSD and what it might do to young people. The press coverage essentially retrofitted 1692 with the anxieties of 1976, recasting the Salem girls as teenagers on a bad trip.
“You give that to the American public, which doesn’t understand there’s a difference between scientific inquiry and historical storytelling, and it’s just so compelling,” Burns says.
Debunked, but far from dead
Not all the viral attention was positive, though. Within that same year, researcher Nicholas Spanos and graduate student Jack Gottlieb published a rebuttal in Science, dismantling Caporael’s argument point by point. By their reckoning, various aspects of the Salem girls’ symptoms did not add up.
“There are a couple of different kinds of ergot poisoning, and one of them is gangrenous, so people’s fingers would start rotting,” Burns says. “And they would have gastrointestinal problems, and we don’t have any instances in the records that either of those things happened.”
This 1880 print shows Martha Corey and her prosecutors in Salem, Massachusetts, during the witch trials. Martha Corey was accused of witchcraft, found guilty, and executed by hanging. Her husband, Giles, who defended Martha against the allegations, was also put to death. Image: Print Collector / Contributor / Getty Images
The problems for the theory didn’t end there. Ergot poisoning was thought to hit hardest among people with vitamin A deficiencies, but Salem’s residents had dairy cows and the sea nearby, and likely plenty of vitamin A. (Ironically, Burns notes, that the vitamin A argument was itself based on a discredited 1930s source that relied on circumstantial evidence and has never been replicated.) And while whole families ate from the same supply of rye, usually only one or two people per household fell ill.
The rebuttal, though methodical and logical, was little more than a momentary speed bump for the runaway popularity of the psychedelic bread story. In fact, it may have helped.
Arguing with a claim, however insubstantial, implies that it’s worth arguing about, and a formal rebuttal in Science can make a student’s term paper look like one side of a valid scientific debate.
“It’s really hard to refute something,” Burns says. “If anything, it just sort of nails it and makes it more permanent.”
“They were eating their own”
Whatever was causing young women in Salem to convulse, the atrocities that followed are much harder to grasp. By the time the panic ended, 152 people had been formally accused, 19 had been hanged, and one man, Giles Corey, had been pressed to death with stones for refusing to stand trial. Several more died in jail.
“The people who were responsible were the adults in the room,” Burns says.
To the modern eye, this looks like lunacy. To most people in 1692, though, witchcraft wasn’t superstition. It was an accepted fact, part of an invisible world in which Satan and his agents wreaked havoc on everyday life. Conflict with Indigenous peoples on the Maine frontier had sent traumatized refugees into the region, relating horror stories of attacks on their homes. Many colonists thought Satan engineered those attacks, too.
In a way, the people of Salem did exactly what Americans would do nearly 300 years later, when the psychedelic era latched onto the ergot theory: They explained strange behavior through the lens of what frightened them most.
In such a charged social climate, suspicion could fall on just about anyone, and it did. The accused weren’t just outcasts, Burns says. Many were fully covenanted members of the Puritan church.
“We’re not talking about going after ‘The Other,’” she says. “They were eating their own.”
Someone to blame
Burns knows the cost of Salem’s betrayals about as well as anyone. An associate editor of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, the definitive collection of the trials’ legal records, she is also the 10th-generation great-granddaughter of Rebecca Nurse, who was hanged on the charge of witchcraft in 1692.
The Rebecca Nurse Farmstead still stands and is open to the public in Danvers, Massachusetts. Image: Fletcher / CC BY 4.0
Nurse, a respected member of the church in Salem Town, was tried and found not guilty. But Chief Justice William Stoughton refused to accept the verdict. He sent the jury back to reconsider a remark Nurse had made when confessed witches Deliverance Hobbs and her daughter, Abigail, were brought in to testify against her: She had said the two were “of our company.” Nurse meant that they had been jailed together, but the court heard that they were fellow witches.
When jurors asked her what she meant, the courtroom was in such an uproar that Nurse didn’t hear the question. At the time, failing to answer an accusation was treated as a confession, and the jury returned a guilty verdict. In a later appeal, Nurse wrote that she was “something hard of hearing, and full of grief,” and didn’t realize she was being asked to explain herself.
It was the kind of injustice no mere fungus could cause.
“[Chief Justice] Stoughton was singularly, individually responsible for her execution,” Burns says.
The question of who is to blame is rarely so straightforward, though. Which might be part of the ergot theory’s appeal; it offers “one silver bullet” that tidily explains everything.
“There are just so many reasons that all came together,” Burns says.
But when pressed on why she thinks it happened, she offers an answer that’s part joke, part harsh reality: “People are mean.”
In That Time When, Popular Science tells the weirdest, most surprising, and little-known stories that shaped science, engineering, and innovation.
The Ojai Raptor Center released the final necropsy results for Jackie, an internet-famous bald eagle mother who was in their care this summer. Jackie was brought into the bird rehabilitation center weak and dehydrated following an altercation with another eagle in July.
Officially designated as Patient 26-519, Jackie’s necropsy revealed a “complex and unusual disease process involving severe, chronic inflammation and ulceration of the stomach, persistent internal bleeding, anemia and secondary bacterial sepsis.” She was also diagnosed with Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) commonly called bird flu, which was behind severe stomach ulceration. Raptors (eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, etc.) are highly susceptible to the virus
All of these medical complications developed over time and ultimately contributed to her death on August 10.
“These findings have helped connect many of the pieces we were seeing throughout her hospitalization and provided a better understanding of the challenges she faced,” the Ojai Raptor Center wrote. “We are grateful to the many veterinary specialists, laboratories, wildlife agencies and partner organizations who worked alongside our team to understand her illness and provide her with the best possible care. Caring for her was an extraordinary privilege for our entire team.”
The full report can be read in Jackie’s veterinary medical journal. The necropsy was preformed by veterinary pathologists at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV), the non-profit organization that runs the live cameras where viewers from all over the world watched Jackie and her partner Shadow, said that they will follow up with their thoughts once their team has had time to process the report.
“The story of the Big Bear bald eagle reflects the powerful connection people feel to these iconic birds,” California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Meghan Hertel added. “We’re grateful to everyone who cared for her and worked to support her well-being. Understanding the results of these tests is an important part of learning from this case and can help inform the care and treatment of other eagles and wildlife in the future.”
Jackie on a perch at the Ojai Raptor Center in July. Image: Ojai Raptor Center.
Jackie’s story
Jackie was born, raised, and lived in Big Bear Valley in Southern California. Prior to the 2011-2012 nesting season, no bald eagle chicks were known to have ever hatched in Big Bear Valley. Then came Jackie, named after a forest ranger and born to parents Ricky and Lucy in 2012.
During the 2016-2017 nesting season, Jackie took over a nest where Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV) had a camera stationed. In 2018, she had two chicks named Stormy and Big Bear Baby (or BBB) with her first mate, Mr. B.
Her long-time partner Shadow entered the picture in summer 2018. He showed up at the nest and would not leave. FOBBV called the new male Shadow because he appeared so determined to stay in the nest, and the team initially believed he was one of Jackie’s siblings, also named Shadow. The eagle’s plumage indicated he was one year older than the other Shadow and not Jackie’s sibling, but the name stuck.
Shadow continued to hold his ground and Mr. B gave up and eventually left. Jackie then accepted Shadow as her new mate.
Wildlife cameras documented Jackie and Shadow’s life together, offering viewers a direct look into the brutality and beauty of nature. The pair successfully raised chicks in 2019 (Cookie and Simba) and 2022 (Spirit). The pair’s eggs failed to hatch in 2023 and 2024. In 2025, Jackie laid three eggs that all hatched in early March. However, a strong snowstorm dumped up to two feet of snow and battered the nest with strong wind and only two of the chicks (Sunny and Gizmo) survived.
In January, Jackie laid two eggs in the nest, but ravens destroyed them. She later laid two more eggs that hatched in April and named Luna and Sandy. The name Sandy is in honor of FOBBV’s former executive director Sandy Steers who died from cancer in February.
Jackie, Luna, and Sandy on their nest in May 2026. Image: Friends of Big Bear Valley.
Jackie’s injury and death
On July 17, Jackie was found injured on the ground near Dana Point Park, California. Cell phone video from a witness confirmed that she had an altercation with two other subadult eagles. She successfully fended off the other eagles by turning over and using her talons, but could not fly far away.
She was transferred to the Ojai Raptor Center, where she was diagnosed with severe anemia. Her anemia worsened during the first week of August, the Ojai Raptor Center said that she was in unstable condition on August 9. Her packed cell volume (PCV) fell below percent, before rising to nine percent.
On July 17, Jackie was found injured on the ground near Dana Point Park, California. Cell phone video from a witness confirmed that she had an altercation with two other subadult eagles. She successfully fended off the other eagles by turning over and using her talons, but could not fly far away.
She was transferred to the Ojai Raptor Center for care, where she was diagnosed with severe anemia. Her anemia worsened during the first week of August, the Ojai Raptor Center said that she was in unstable condition on August 9. Her packed cell volume (PCV) fell below percent, before rising to nine percent.
Jackie died early in the morning on August 10. The necropsy did not reveal a single cause of death, and instead pointed to several factors including severe anemia, blood clots in her wing and one kidney, and liver and lung abnormalities.
It’s a fungi-filled world and we are just living in it. There are roughly 150,000 to 157,000 known species of fungi, and now there is a new giant species to add to that tally.
A team of scientists exploring the forests of Yunnan in southern China discovered the new fungus, which shows just how large these organisms can grow. The new species Dianjunus rex grows vertical fruiting bodies (the top part of the fungi that we usually see as a mushroom) that can grow as high as a foot (50 centimeters) and weigh close to five pounds (2.2 kilograms).
This new fungus is the largest known species within the phylum Ascomycota, the largest known phylum of fungi with over 64,000 known species. The new fungus is described in a study recently published in the journal Frontiers in Fungal Biology.
“This remarkable species represents a new fungal family, Dianjunaceae, and provides a rare window into the evolution of extreme fungal body forms,” Indunil C. Senanayake, a study co-author and mycologist at the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species of the Kunming Institute of Botany in China, said in a statement. “The discovery illustrates how much fungus biodiversity remains to be discovered in East Asian forests.”
The scientists spotted the fungus during fieldwork in the temperate coniferous forests near Damaidi and Yipinglang and in a tropical rainforest near Nanbang in southern China. They noticed large whitish fruiting bodies (called stromata) coming out of some fallen wood that belonged to an unknown species of Ascomycete fungus.
Stromata of Dianjunus rex in the field. (a, c, d, f) Stromata attached to host roots. (b, e, g, h) Stromata around host plant. (a) Collectors. (i) Total weight of largest bilobedstromata. Image: Song, Yan, Pérez-Moreno, Zhang, Yang, Xie, Su, Liu, Wang, Liu, Yang, Yang, Liu, Shi, Wan, Cheewangkoon, Dai, Senanayake and Yu
Ascomycetes don’t always sprout traditional mushrooms, but release their spores from tiny, sac-like structures inside or on the surface of such fruiting bodies instead. They typically grow on woody roots of Chinese cork oak trees.
The team collected the curious fruiting bodies, and grew spores back in the lab to study the fungus’ morphology and its genome. The genetic tests and a detailed study of its morphology revealed that the fungus is a new species, a new genus, and even a new family.
They named it Dianjunus rex (which the team calls D-rex for short), for its regal size and the ancient Dian kingdom. This ancient civilization in Yunnan reached its height during the second and first centuries BCE.
The team also found a connection to dinosaurs beyond its nickname which sounds like T. rex. It appears that this fungi family arose around 65 million years ago, or only one million years after the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event. This most famous of Earth’s mass extinctions wiped out the dinosaurs and countless other animals and plants.
“This timing raises an intriguing possibility. After the mass extinction, forests experienced dramatic changes, including the sudden availability of large amounts of dead plant material,” added Senanayake.
For fungi, this kind of environmental disruption may have created new ecological opportunities for it to fill.
As for its size, D-rex’ fruiting bodies grow about 20 to 30 centimeters taller than other Ascomycetes. The team thinks this size might help the wind disperse their spores better in dense forests. However, a large fruiting body like D-rex requires a lot of energy, so the strategy may have evolved if the ecological benefits outweighed the energy costs.
The team also believes that there are more fungi waiting to be discovered in subtropical China—we just need to keep looking.
They’re some of Earth’s most powerful athletes, traversing thousands of miles of rough terrain in sub-zero temperatures, through blinding snow, and biting winds. Sled dogs have been helping humans travel across the planet’s coldest regions for centuries, hauling supplies, people, and equipment across the snow and ice. In the process, this important role that goes above and beyond simply being “man’s best friend” could have a visible impact on their evolution.
Sled dogs may have evolved shorter legs to help them pull loads more efficiently. Currently working sled dogs and those that lived about 2,000 years ago have six percent shorter leg bones than similar species, according to a study published today in the journal iScience. These findings could help biologists trace the origins of sled dogs and understand more about how dog-powered transportation spread over the past 9,000 years.
“Sled dogs have played an indispensable role in communities in the Arctic,” Mitya Kletzerman, a study co-author and an archeologist at the University of Haifa in Israel, said in a statement. “Without dogs, people couldn’t move as efficiently to hunt, relocate as conditions changed, or travel between communities to exchange knowledge and share new ideas. Understanding how the practice evolved could give us new insights into how people adapted to life in the Arctic.”
As of now, our earliest archeological evidence associated with dog sledding comes from 9,000-year-old sled parts and dog remains uncovered in 2017 on Zhokhov Island (present-day Russia). Sledding equipment like this is rarely found in the archaeological record, so it has remained difficult to pinpoint when and where the practice first emerged or spread.
Earlier studies have shown that work associated with humans can leave traces in an animal’s skeleton. Reindeer used for racing, carrying loads, and pulling have limb bone differences compared to those that do not pull. Kletzerman and her team were curious if sled dogs have also developed particular skeletal traits that have helped them adapt to all of the physical demands of pulling a sled.
In the study, the team developed a biomechanical model to help them understand how a dog’s body handles the work of pulling a sled. The model showed that one effective way to pull a sled loaded with material is for a dog to lower its center of gravity. This increases the canine’s ability to generate pulling force.
“When people or animals pull a load, it tends to tip them backward. A lower or more forward position of the center of mass counteracts this effect, allowing greater pulling force,” Kletzerman explained.
They then tested whether modern sled dogs have skeletal proportions that can lower their center of mass. They analyzed bones in 60 different modern canids, including sled dogs, wolves, spitzes, and mongrels. They then compared the lengths of five leg bones. Three in the forelegs (the humerus, radius, and ulna) and two in the hind legs (femur and tibia).
After accounting for overall skeletal size, they found that sled dogs have relatively shorter radius, ulna, and tibia bones than their non-sled pulling counterparts. These bones measured about six percent shorter on average.
“It’s unclear how this trait developed, but selective pressure may have preserved it, because it gave sled dogs an advantage over other dogs,” Kletzerman said.
To see if this characteristic already existed in ancient dogs, the team analyzed 82 ancient dog bones and three skeletons. The three skeletons were from ritually buried dogs uncovered from three archaeological sites associated with ancestral Inuit populations in present-day Chukotka, Russia, and date to 2,000 to 500 years ago.
Nearly 89 percent of the bones were consistent with the modern sled-dog pattern of shorter leg bones, as were all three ritually buried dogs. According to the team, this suggests that the skeletal pattern may be an effective way to identify that canine remains belonged to a sled dog, even when archaeological remains are incomplete or do not have any direct evidence of sled equipment.
“Dogs have been working alongside humans for thousands of years, but we’re only beginning to understand how that partnership shaped them,” Kletzerman concluded.
Explore.org and Polar Bears International run eight different livestreams from Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. Known as the polar bear capital of the world, Churchill’s Wapusk National Park is home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of polar bear (Ursus maritimus) maternity dens. During October and November, viewers can watch bear families wait for sea ice to form.
Twenty populations of polar bears live in the Arctic. The population living along the Western Hudson Bay is one of the most comprehensively studied and best known. It is part of Canada’s “Seasonal Ice Ecoregion.” In this area of the Arctic, the sea ice completely melts in the summer, typically in July. While the bears may remain sporadically active on land, in the summer, they generally create day beds or curl up in the bush to rest. The pregnant females will often settle in or near their dens for several months to rest where it is cooler and with less mosquitoes. Many of these dens were first excavated by bears generations ago.
In the fall, all of the bears except the pregnant female will increase their activity and move closer to the coast. Here, the bears will hunt for seals once the bay freezes over again. From early October onward, they will gather on the tundra along the shores of Hudson Bay, waiting for ice to form. As soon as the first coastal ice is thick enough to support their weight, they will head out to find seals. They may continue to trek back and forth between ice and land at first, but they primarily head out onto the bay until it begins to thin and they ashore again in the summer.
These cameras are one way for scientists and the public to aid in real scientific research. In December 2025, scientists here confirmed that a wild female polar bear adopted a cub that was not her own. This rare behavior was captured on cameras during the polar bear’s annual migration along Western Hudson Bay.
The mother bear (designated as bear X33991) was first spotted in spring 2025, when she came out of her maternity den with one tagged cub. When scientists saw her again in the fall, she had two cubs. One cub had a tag and one did not, indicating that the untagged cub was not hers. The survival rate for a polar bear cub into adulthood is about 50 percent, so only time will tell how this blended family will do.
Viewers can also take a virtual ride on the Tundra Buggy Lodge from two different angles. The lodge is made of tundra buggies that are linked together like a train. This moving hotel includes staff quarters, a dining area, a supply cart, and two carts for guests.
By night, viewers can also take in another of the north’s natural wonders with the aurora borealis cam. The northern lights livecam is on top of the Churchill Northern Studies Center and located directly underneath the aurora oval. This spot is considered one of the best places to watch the aurora dance across the night sky. The aurora season is only just beginning, with late winter and early spring being the best times to tune into this camera.
And if birds are more your thing, a raven cam is streaming from Cape Churchill Wapusk National Park. The resident ravens selected the topside of a radar reflector attached to the Cape Churchill observation tower for their nest. This “cabin in the sky” has also been home to numerous biologists researching the local wildlife since the 1970s. This camera will be switched off at night to preserve power.
The organizations also provide highlight reels to help viewers catch up on what to watch for this winter. Happy polar bear season!
A migrating monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) recently brought into Sweetbriar Nature Center in Smithtown on New York’s Long Island came with a unique backstory. The male butterfly flew into a nearby house and landed on a pot of refried beans. The man living there took the butterfly out of the pan, but by morning the butterfly still could not fly. There was only one thing left to do for the injured insect—bring him to the professionals.
“Butterflies are incredibly delicate, and even handling them can cause additional damage or leave them unable to fly,” Janine Bendicksen, Sweetbriar Nature Center’s Director of Wildlife Rehabilitation, tells Popular Science. “That makes butterfly rehabilitation especially challenging—we have to be extremely careful with every step.”
The team got to work on fixing this unusual patient. They started by checking the butterfly for a parasite called OE (Ophryocystis elektroscirrha) that can live on monarchs. If the insect is parasite-free, the team can then assess the injuries and determine whether rehabilitation is possible. Butterflies are very delicate, and just handling them can cause additional damage.
“In cases where a monarch has lost part of a wing, we may be able to transplant a portion of a donor wing,” says Bendicksen. “When the circumstances are right, we can carefully attach the donor wing to the injured butterfly.”
The team gently sprayed the butterfly’s wings with water several times to remove the bean residue that prevented him from flying. Then, a challenge arose. How do you remove the greasy residue from such delicate wings? The solution came from a common powdery substance found in kitchen pantries—cornstarch.
“We use starch regularly in wildlife rehabilitation to help dry out materials, and we had also previously used starch when replacing a wing on another monarch,” Bendicksen explains. “Because we already knew it was safe and effective in that context, we felt it was a good option for this particular situation. We were looking for something that would help remove the remaining moisture and residue without causing additional damage to the delicate wings.”
The cornstarch trick worked. The monarch was able to fly again. The team gently transported him outside and he took to the skies. Monarchs are currently on their way to the overwintering grounds in the forested mountains of Central Mexico. Their migrations are multigenerational, with roughly four generations of monarch butterflies emerging throughout the year. This butterfly may have been in the third generation (lays eggs in the north, but does not migrate) of the fourth generation that treks south.
“It’s not often that we are called upon to rehabilitate a butterfly,” Bendicksen says. “Most butterflies have relatively short lifespans, but when we receive a monarch in the fall—especially one that will travel thousands of miles on its migration to Mexico—we do everything we can to give it the best possible chance.”
In exactly a month, on November 13, 2026, the world will end. Fittingly, our impending apocalypse falls on Friday the 13th.
At least, that was the prediction made by University of Illinois physicist Heinz von Foerster in a highly cited Science paper published in 1960. Though talks of supposed doomsday have renewed in recent months thanks to hyperbolic anxieties over runaway, sentient artificial intelligence, von Foerster had a much different calamity in mind.
For more than a century, the prevailing fear, dating back to English economist Thomas Malthus who lived between 1766 to 1834, was of a booming population outrunning its food supply. Famine would ensue. But Von Foerster broke from that view. He assumed (correctly, as it turns out) that human ingenuity would keep the world mostly fed. The problem, he argued, was that the population would keep accelerating, toward “infinity.”
In a now infamous quote, von Foerster predicted, “Our great—great—grandchildren will not starve to death,” von Foerster and his co-authors wrote. “They will be squeezed to death.” Homo sapiens’ last gasping breath, they predicted, would peter out in the fall of 2026.
It’s pretty clear that von Foerster’s estimate was dead wrong. Not only is the global population (around 8.3 billion people) not expanding near the rate it was when he was writing, but there are actually concerns it’s moving in the opposite direction. In dozens of countries around the world, from South Korea and Japan to much of Western Europe, the concern among demographers has shifted from worries about overpopulation to decliningbirth rates.
So how was a prediction so wrong and still so influential? Human population experts speaking with Popular Science say von Foerster and his contemporaries based their prediction on real trends from the past while utterly failing to see the world changing right before their eyes. Though they may have accurately measured growth rates up to that point, that only tells part of the story.
“He got the picture right just as that picture ceased to be right,” Rockefeller University and Columbia University professor and mathematical biologist Joel Cohen tells Popular Science. Cohen has studied human population changes for years and published the influential 1995 book How Many People Can the Earth Support?
“Von Foerster didn’t know at the time, and in fact, nobody knew” that the all-time population growth had already happened, Cohen adds. “The all-time peak happened in the early 1960s.”
Factory employees work at the Stepney Wheel Factory building tires for early automobiles in Wales during the Industrial Revolution. Image: Heritage Images / Contributor / Getty Images Heritage Images
Why did experts think the world would end on Friday the 13th?
Von Foerster and his colleagues published their “Doomsday” paper on November 4, 1960. The dramatic pronouncement hinges on an equation that projects the human population into the future based on past trends.
The team gathered 24 estimates of world population dating back 2,000 years. The key assumption underpinning their logic was that humans differ from other animals because of our unique ability to cooperate and innovate.
Fruit flies in a jar eventually level off as crowding and competition take their toll. Humans, on the other hand, the authors argue, work the other way. The more of us there are, the better we get at cooperating. And the better we get at cooperation, the faster our population grows.
Follow that curve forward, and the population doesn’t just grow; it rockets toward infinity, hitting the so-called mathematical wall on November 13, 2026, give or take five years.
Von Foerster wasn’t alone in sounding the alarm either. Eight years later, biologist Paul R. Ehrlich would publish The Population Bomb, arguably the most influential single text fueling overpopulation fears.
“Both of those guys were right looking backward, but wrong looking forward,” Cohen says.
At a glance, thinking the future will resemble the past seems pretty reasonable. The human population grew steadily but slowly over much of our roughly 300,000 years of humanity. But that changed radically with the onset of globalization, colonization, and the Industrial Revolution.
How fast is the human population growing?
As Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson note in their 2020 book Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, human population passed the one billion mark somewhere around 1800. That doubled to two billion by 1927. Then doubled again just less than 50 years later in 1974. It would then only take another 13 years to cross the five billion mark. And in 2022, we surpassed eight billion.
That remarkable explosion had many causes, Cohen says, but among the most important was the spread of cheap, calorie-dense crops like potatoes and corn from the Americas.
The proliferation of cheap, calorie-dense crops like potatoes and corn from the Americas helped fuel a population boom in the 20th century. Image: FPG / Staff / Getty Images FPG
Crucially, though, humans weren’t necessarily having way more kids. They were just far better at keeping them alive.
Human population booms weren’t because people were having more kids
“Humanity got better at keeping the people who were born alive through simple, but important innovations like the germ theory of disease, sanitation, nutrition,” University of Texas Associate professor and economic demographer Dean Spears tells Popular Science.
Demographers like Spears study human populations and how they change over time. He published a book on the topic titled After the Spike, earlier this year. Advances in nutrition and medicine “caused early life mortality rates to fall, so more of the humans who were born survived and that caused the population to grow.”
Factoring in longer life expectancy and reductions in child mortality around the world blows a huge hole in Von Foerster’s calculations. Death rates can only fall so far, and once most children survive, families tend to have fewer of them.
The population boom was a one time explosion, not an ever-accelerating loop.
Overpopulation fears are actually based on a misunderstanding
Von Foerster’s assumption of endlessly accelerating growth, Spears says, was “based on a misunderstanding of where population growth comes from.”
Experts specializing in human population studies at the time actually knew that was the case, Spears notes.
Neither von Foerster’s nor Ehrlich (who wrote The Population Bomb) were human population experts. Von Foerster’s background was in physics and philosophy. Ehrlich was a biologist. But they were both great at getting attention.
Cambridge-educated Malayan medical doctor Wu Lien Teh was among the first to start using medical face masks during a deadly outbreak of the Manchurian plague in 1910. Image: Public Domain
“There was never, even at that time, any reason to think that it would keep growing fast like that.” Spears says. “Paul Ehrlich was a biologist who studied butterflies, not human demography.”
Why people are worried about declining birth rates now
In the later 20th century, population growth actually started declining quite rapidly thanks to a convergence of a variety of factors.
The “Green Revolution” in farming meant that more food could be grown on the same plot of land, which extinguished fears of humanity suddenly starving itself. The first birth control pill, approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. in 1957, also gave women more autonomy to decide when and how many children to have.
These trends, along with global population shifts away from rural areas and towards more urban areas, would eventually shift concerns away from overpopulation and towards declining birth rates.
Although demographers and policy experts debate how much people should worry about declining birth rates, it is generallyagreed that an older population that significantly outnumbers younger people can lead to long-term strains on the country’s economy and social services.
With fewer workers needed in the field, more and more people moved to cities. Historically, families living on farms or agricultural communities tend to have more children than those in urban areas because those children could work the land and, in a purely economic sense, provide more labor and, hopefully, make the family more money. In more urban areas, another child meant another mouth to feed rather than an extra pair of hands.
In the later part of the 20th century, women in many parts of the world gained far more autonomy through education, work, and access to contraception, which demographers agree is among the biggest drivers of demographic change over the past half century.
Some governments went further. China’s one-child policy (introduced in 1979) and India’s forced sterilization campaigns (between 1975-1977) were heavy-handed responses fuelled by overpopulation panic. What makes those coercive policies all the more tragic, Spears notes, is that birth rates likely would have fallen without them.
“What we’re seeing now, a world of low and falling birth rates, is actually nothing new, but just the latest moment in a decades-long or longer trajectory of falling global birth rates on average happening essentially everywhere,” Sears says.
“I would say that the coercive [state-sanctioned] school [of thought] was counterproductive,” Cohen adds. He went on to say he believes similar government-led initiatives encouraging families to have more children today, like the Trump administration’s proposed baby medal, are “counterproductive.” Real, meaningful generational changes in population, Cohen notes, are more often the product of society-level macro trends beyond the scope of any one politician or party.
Today, about a month shy of von Foerster’s doomsday, around 55 percent of the world’s countries, home to more than two-thirds of its people, have fertility rates below replacement level. That’s the rate (about 2.1 children per woman) demographers use to denote where a population replaces itself from one generation to the next.
In other words, not only is the human population not hurtling towards infinity, but in much of the world, it’s actually on track to eventually shrink. Experts largely agree birth rates are falling. Whether that’s a problem to be solved is less clear-cut.
At the family level, having fewer children can mean more money, resources, and personal attention invested in each one. It can also mean more independence, opportunity, and choice for those who decided parenthood just isn’t for them.
Stabilizing birth rates isn’t a fix all
At the broader economic or societal level, though, Spears argues there are good reasons to want birth rates to stabilize rather than keep falling. Pay-as-you-go social programs like Social Security depend on young workers to fund older people’s retirements. Fewer people also means fewer shared resources and services for everyone else.
“If you want to go out and eat lunch at a taco truck, but you’re the only person nearby who wants it, then the taco truck’s not going to be there,” Spears says. “And if you’re a school child wanting to go to school, there might not be enough other children for there to be a classroom nearby that’s suitable for you.”
Those are legitimate concerns, though Cohen warns that focusing too much on abstract numbers and trends can blur a more immediate issue directly in front of us. Globally, children are still regularly going underfed, so much so that the World Health Organization estimates around 22 percent of children under the age of five experience stunted growth from malnutrition.
“We are doing so poorly by the children we have that I can’t understand why the emphasis is on making more children,” Cohen says. “We’re talking about having more children when we don’t take care of the children we have. What the heck is that?”
But even for those who do worry about falling birth rates, Spears cautions against politicians promising quick fixes. This isn’t a short-term emergency, he says, but a “generational challenge.” One thing is clear though: Neither Spears nor Cohen are losing sleep over von Foerster’s November 13 death date.
“I’m sure not acting as if I’m too concerned about it,” Cohen says. “I’m still paying my bills. I’m still paying my taxes.”
In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.
It’s one of nature’s seemingly magical tricks. A honey bee (Apis mellifera) stings a victim, and the stinger will still pump venom into a wound even after it has fully detached from the bee’s body. Thanks to some high-speed video, we may finally know the secrets behind this sting.
A team in Australia found that the tiny 2 millimeter (or only 0.08 inch) stinger of a honey bee works like a double-piston micro-pump. It pumps in two different directions and can deliver a continuous flow of venom. The findings are described in a study published today in the journal PNAS.
“We’ve known since as early as 1910 that the venom sac of a honey bee stinger empties into a chamber with little pumping elements called valves, but until now we didn’t know exactly how they work,” Fiorella Ramirez-Esquivel, a study co-author and entomologist at Macquarie University, said in a statement. “If you’ve ever been stung by a bee, you’ll know it’s a very painful process, but now we’ve been able to identify all the working parts packed into the tiny stinger.”
In bees, autotomy is when a worker bee thrusts its stinger into a target and then leaves the stinger behind. The stinger then continues to penetrate into the target tissue and inject venom all on its own.
To better understand how autotomy works, the team from Macquarie and the University of New South Wales had bees sting a clear gel that mimics human skin, while taking high-speed video. They saw that the tiny stinger itself contains several different components including one venom sac and a pumping chamber, muscles, and nerves. The stinger also has two sharp, pointed lancets. These lancets slide backwards and forwards on a system of rails (called the olistheter), similar to a reciprocating saw. These saw-like lancets are what pushes the stinger deeper into the skin and also pumps the venom.
Each of the two long lancets has a valve attached to it that sits inside of the pumping chamber. The team found that these valves change shape to form a seal during the downstroke. They then collapse during the upstroke, creating pressure for pumping while minimizing backflow when refilling.
“Finally, and perhaps most dramatically, as the valves meet in the middle of the stroke, they change shape again to push past each other,” said Ramirez-Esquivel. “This is a remarkable strategy to pump fluid since maintaining a seal is vital to effectively transmit pressure. The unique geometry of the valves is the key; they act as collapsible pistons and—by pumping in opposite directions—they’re able to deliver a continuous flow of venom.”
The team continued to explore the mechanics and flow of the stinger with microCT scans. They then used these scans to 3D print a small robot of the bulb chamber and lancets. The tiny bee-bot confirmed these key features of the pumping cycle.
“The double piston design adds complexity but it’s the key to the stinger being able to deliver venom continuously in a compact, autonomous unit,” said Dr Ramirez-Esquivel.
Understanding this mechanism could inspire designs for new micropumps to deliver medicine to human patients in a less invasive way.
A first-of-its-kind genetic analysis of dog breeds presents the clearest insights into why larger dogs rarely outlive their smaller relatives. According to a team of biologists writing in the journal Science, the longstanding size–age correlation is likely due to “jumping genes” that inevitably begin sowing chaos inside canine DNA as dogs get older.
Most dog owners are aware of an unfortunate rule of thumb—the bigger the pooch, the shorter the lifespan. While this trend isn’t always the case, breeds like the Great Dane generally don’t stick around as long as smaller relatives like golden retrievers or even pugs. Larger dogs are also much more prone to age-related health issues and diseases. These canine traits starkly contrast with what biologists often see in other mammals, where larger species like whales frequently live much longer than tiny animals such as rodents. But these mysteries make your favorite furry friend’s genetics incredibly intriguing to researchers.
“Dogs provide an extraordinary model for understanding aging because they show dramatic variation in lifespan within a single species,” explained study co-author and Arizona State University (ASU) evolutionary biologist Noah Snyder-Mackler.
Dogs’ longstanding 30,000 plus years of companionship with humans also poses a unique opportunity for scientists. Pets and their owners share many of the same day-to-day experiences, environments, and physical habits, so it stands to reason that a better understanding of canine genes could guide future studies of human biology. Knowing this, Snyder-Mackler and his colleagues recently examined genetic data from 864 dogs stored in the Dog Aging Project. They specifically focused on mapping genome-wide DNA methylation, which allows genes to express themselves without altering their DNA sequence. DNA methylation is part of the larger epigenome influenced by external factors like stress and diet, and it’s also a widely known indicator of aging and DNA regulation.
Snyder-Mackler’s team discovered a dog breed’s aging is specifically tied to losing regulation in a class of transposable elements, or “jumping genes,” called LINE1s. These genes copy and intersperse throughout the genome by leaping between chromosomes, which damages DNA. This initially isn’t too problematic thanks to the regulation from DNA methylation, but that ability decreases with age. Less regulation means more damage in the form of genetic instability, diseases, and cancer.
“What we found is that the epigenetic regulation of transposable elements—especially LINE1s—appears to be a major factor shaping how quickly different dogs age,” Snyder-Mackler said.
Over 40 percent of LINE1-related portions of the genome lose DNA methylation as a dog ages, but the speed of decline is much faster in bigger breeds. The team’s findings showed larger dogs lost an average of 35 percent more LINE1 methylation than smaller canines.
“It suggests that faster aging in larger dogs may be driven, at least in part, by reduced control over these ‘jumping genes,’” concluded ASU genomicist and study co-author Blaise Mariner.
It’s still unclear if LINE1 behavior causes species to age, but the recent work emphasizes these genetic areas are focal points in biological aging. Beyond understanding aging differences among dog breeds, the discoveries may guide research into similar genetic changes in humans.
“If that’s the case, targeting these elements or the mechanisms that regulate them could be a promising avenue for future therapies to extend the health span in humans,” said Snyder-Mackler.
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.”
Nature. It’s beautiful. It’s awe-inspiring. And it’s really scary. The new book Nature is Metal: It’s A Life-Eats-Life World features full-color photographs and vivid descriptions of the physical features, survival adaptations, and hunting skills innate to 75 of nature’s most metal plants, animals, and natural phenomena.
Browse through some of these raw and real images in the gallery below. (Click to expand images to full screen.)
A golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) eating the remains of a bison. They are hypercarnivores whose diets are at least 70 percent meat. Image: Natasha Mace.Stoats (Mustela erminea) may look pretty cute, but these short-tailed weasels are known for opportunistic and frenzied killing. Image: Grayson Smith/UWSFWS. A giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) holds a swamp eel in its powerful grip. Image: Parks Marilla.Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have been known to eat cubs when food is extremely scarce. Image: Jacob Zoller Jake ZollerLeopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) may look like cats, but they hunt their prey like sharks. They are at the top of the food chain in the seas around Antarctica. Images: Kristian Gillies.A great blue heron (Ardea herodias) eating a banded water snake. Image: Marcos Rodriguez. Stygian owls (Asio stygius) are found across Latin America and the Caribbean and called coruja-diabo or “devil’s owl” in Brazil. Image: Eigi Iwasaki. Red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) help keep small rodent populations in check. Image: Alexander Collyer.
Ettore R. Paolucci(Rick) is the founder of Nature Is Metal, the viral phenomenon with 7.5M subscribers on Instagram (@natureismetal) and 1.23M on YouTube (@natureism3tal). A self-taught storyteller with a sharp eye for viral content, he’s created his own unique voice that’s defined a new way of seeing nature online.
Hans Aschim is a writer and creative director based in Vancouver, BC. When he’s not at his desk, he’s trail running in the Coast Mountains—always with bear spray.
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