Bowhead whales have the greatest life span of any mammal on Earth. They can reach over 200 years in age thanks in part to their slow metabolism and cancer-suppressing genes.

Falcons are lauded for their speed and agility. The Eurasian Hobby (Falco subbuteo), skilled at snagging birds and insects out of the air, is no exception. However, during twilight on one day in October, researcher Apostolos Christopoulos observed several hobbies feeding on something else in a protected wetland in Greece—bats from the genus Pipistrellus.

New research has found that masturbation among bird species, including parrots, is natural, despite prevailing assumptions that it is a harmful behavior in response to environmental factors.

Changing market conditions are increasing the need for cost-effective ways to produce biorenewable chemicals, biofuels and materials that can serve as alternatives to oil-based products. According to Costas Maranas, Robert V. and Gloria H. Waltemeyer Chair and Donald B. Broughton Professor of Chemical Engineering at Penn State, solutions to these problems could come from applying tools used in synthetic biology to plants and their microbial partners across the globe.

Turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) may not be beautiful, but they are certainly adaptable. A new study published in the Journal of Raptor Research, titled "Turkey Vulture Aggregations at a Water Barrier Provide Evidence of Later Migration and Increasing Population Size Over 25 Years," suggests that turkey vultures in western North America are increasing in number and delaying their migration departure date.

A team of scientists have discovered and named three new "leaf-planking" praying mantis species and recorded another mantis species turning up far from its assumed habitat. JCU Ph.D. candidate Matthew Connors recently discovered and named three new Snake Mantis species from the Kongobatha genus (K.serpens, K.spinosistyla and K.rufilinea), publishing his detailed observations of each species in the journal Zootaxa.

Research led by Professor Michelle LaRue from the School of Earth and Environment at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury (UC) published in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation shows that high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery can track emperor penguins through the Antarctic winter, opening a new way to monitor an endangered species during a critical stage of breeding.

Newly created grassland habitats that compensate for nature lost to development can effectively support wild pollinators like bees and hoverflies, according to a first of its kind study in the Netherlands. The findings are published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.