Odd Creatures News
May 6, 2025
Top Headlines
May 5, 2025 — Some reef fish have the unexpected ability to move their jaws from side to side, biologists have discovered. This ability -- which is rare among vertebrate animals -- allows these fish to feed ...
May 5, 2025 — Some red algae exhibit structural color that gives their growth tips a blue hue and the rest of their bodies including their fruiting structures a white hue. Moreover, since the color-producing structures are located together with anti-herbivory ...
May 5, 2025 — Snuff tubes uncovered at Chavin de Huantar in Peru reveal how leaders used mystical experiences to cement their ...
May 5, 2025 — The saola, an antelope-like bovine, is one of the world's rarest and most endangered mammals. In fact, it hasn't been observed in over 10 years. Researchers have now mapped the saola's complete genome, and they have used that knowledge to estimate ...
Latest Headlines
updated 8:57am EDT
May 5, 2025 — Endemic to China's Yangtze River, the Yangtze finless porpoise is known for its intelligence and charismatic appearance; it looks like it has a ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — New research questions the evolutionary history of some of our most peculiar ...
May 2, 2025 — Space junk and meteoroids are falling to Earth every year, posing a growing risk as they re-enter the atmosphere at high speeds. Researchers are using infrasound sensors to track these objects, ...
Apr. 30, 2025 — The well-known salmon life cycle has long been described as going only one way at a time. Juvenile salmon hatch and swim down rivers to the ocean, ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — The study found that bird species who nest in tree cavities have independently evolved heightened aggression across lineages, particularly in ...
Apr. 29, 2025 — Scientists found that the fringe-lipped bat, known to eavesdrop on frog and toad mating calls to find its prey, learns to distinguish between ...
May 1, 2025 — The world's oceans are heating faster in two bands stretching around the globe, one in the southern hemisphere and one in the north, according to climate ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Scientists suggest social spiders are more about going with the flow than sticking to a role, after new research challenges the idea of fixed ...
May 1, 2025 — Animal research on biomusicality, which looks at whether different species are capable of behaving in ways that show they recognize aspects of music, ...
May 1, 2025 — A new study links fossilized flying reptile tracks to animals that made them. Fossilized footprints reveal a 160-million-year-old invasion as ...
Earlier Headlines
Apr. 30, 2025 — A new study comparing wild and zoo-housed Sumatran orangutans reveals that life in a zoo significantly alters how orangutans interact with their environment. Researchers analyzed over 12,000 ...
Apr. 30, 2025 — The very first cells obtained their energy from geochemical reactions. Researchers have now managed to recreate this ancient metabolic process in their ...
Apr. 30, 2025 — Researchers have found that drug effectiveness, alcohol tolerance, and carbohydrate metabolism change with the seasons. Their findings are based on a comprehensive seasonal gene expression map, which ...
Apr. 29, 2025 — Imagine a crocodile built like a greyhound -- that's a sebecid. Standing tall, with some species reaching 20 feet in length, they dominated South American landscapes after the extinction of ...
Apr. 29, 2025 — Researchers have shown they can inexpensively nanomanufacture silk microneedles to precisely fortify crops, monitor plant health, and detect soil ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Even under today's climatic conditions, the long-extinct straight-tusked elephant could still live in Europe. This is the conclusion of a recent study. For this finding, the research group ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Forget fleeting friendships the social secrets of the long-tailed tit has revealed an extraordinary level of family commitment even during migratory journeys. Birds that babysit: scientists reveal ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — A technique to cool the planet, in which particles are added to the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, would not require developing special aircraft but could be achieved using existing large planes, ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Scientists have collaborated to analyze the inner workings of Bolivia's 'zombie' volcano, Uturuncu. By combining seismology, physics models and analysis of rock composition, ...
Apr. 28, 2025 — Through intensive breeding, humans have pushed breeds such as pug dogs and Persian cats to evolve with very similar skulls and 'smushed' faces, so they're more similar to each other ...
Apr. 25, 2025 — A recent study provides evidence that some results of behavioral experiments with insects cannot be fully reproduced. So far, possible reproducibility problems have been little discussed in this ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — An international team of malacologists discovered a new snail species, Anauchen picasso, in Southeast Asia that exhibits a highly complex and rectangularly angled shell shape, resembling a ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — Female bonobos team up to suppress male aggression against them -- the first evidence of animals deploying this strategy. In 85% of observed coalitions, females collectively targeted males, forcing ...
Apr. 24, 2025 — A 113-million-year-old hell ant that once lived in northeastern Brazil is now the oldest ant specimen known to science, finds a new report. The hell ant, which was preserved in limestone, is a member ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — Researchers discovered tiny features on sculpins' fins which may enable them to cling firmly in harsh underwater ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — Bite marks found on a skeleton discovered in a Roman cemetery in York have revealed the first archaeological evidence of gladiatorial combat between a human and a ...
Apr. 23, 2025 — If you haven't heard of a tardigrade before, prepare to be wowed. These clumsy, eight-legged creatures, nicknamed water bears, are about half a millimeter long and can survive practically ...
Apr. 22, 2025 — Scientists have identified a novel species of bacteria that acts as electrical wiring, potentially ushering in a new era of bioelectronic devices for use in medicine, industry, food safety, and ...
Apr. 22, 2025 — Researchers are testing a new type of cattle feed that could help dairy cows release less methane gas from burps and flatulence and use nutrients more efficiently. Because methane traps heat in the ...
Apr. 21, 2025 — Use of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic chemical found in what is known as 'magic mushrooms,' has increased significantly nationwide since 2019, according to a new ...
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
- Zoo Life Boosts Object Exploration in Orangutans
- Geobiology: Iron, Sulfur, Heat -- And First Life
- Seasonal Changes Affect Alcohol Tolerance and Your Waistline
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
- Giant Croclike Carnivore Fossils Found in the Caribbean
- Will the Vegetables of the Future Be Fortified Using Tiny Needles?
Monday, April 28, 2025
- Elephant Instead of Wild Boar? What Could Have Been in Europe
- Family First: Scientists Reveal Long-Tailed Tits' Remarkable Family Bonds
- Geoengineering Technique Could Cool Planet Using Existing Aircraft
- Anatomy of a 'zombie' Volcano: Investigating the Cause of Unrest Inside Uturuncu
- Evolution of Pugs and Persians Converges on Cuteness
Friday, April 25, 2025
Thursday, April 24, 2025
- Tiny New Species of Snail Named After Picasso
- Female Bonobos Keep Males in Check -- Not With Strength, but With Solidarity
- The Oldest Ant Ever Discovered Found Fossilized in Brazil
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
- New and Surprising Traction Trait in Sculpin Fish
- Skeletal Evidence of Roman Gladiator Bitten by Lion in Combat
- Scientists Have Found a Way to 'tattoo' Tardigrades
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
- New Species of Electricity-Conducting Organism, Name It After Tribe
- Better Feed, Fewer Burps: Scientists Target Dairy Gas Emissions
Monday, April 21, 2025
- More Americans Are Using Psilocybin -- Especially Those With Mental Health Conditions, Study Shows
- How Activity in Earth's Mantle Led the Ancient Ancestors of Elephants, Giraffes, and Humans Into Asia and Africa
- What If Mother Earth Could Sue for Mistreatment?
- Wild Chimps Filmed Sharing 'boozy' Fruit
Thursday, April 17, 2025
- Extreme Drought Contributed to Barbarian Invasion of Late Roman Britain, Tree-Ring Study Reveals
- Personality Test for Bees
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
- Strongest Hints Yet of Biological Activity Outside the Solar System
- Sunscreen, Clothes and Caves May Have Helped Homo Sapiens Survive 41,000 Years Ago
- New Giant Virus Isolated
- Holiday Flights Could Carry Fewer Passengers as World Warms
- A Step Toward Harnessing Clean Energy from Falling Rainwater
- Living Fungus-Based Building Material Repairs Itself for Over a Month
- Bite-Sized Chunks of Chicken With the Texture of Whole Meat Can Be Grown in the Lab
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
- First Confirmed Footage of a Colossal Squid -- And It's a Baby!
- Scientists Find Evidence That Overturns Theories of the Origin of Water on Earth
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
- Studying How Seals Adapt to Extreme Environments Could Lead to Benefits in Human Reproductive Health
Monday, April 14, 2025
- Scientists May Have Solved a Puzzling Space Rock Mystery
- Footprints of Tail-Clubbed Armored Dinosaurs Found for the First Time
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
- Sink or Swim: The Fate of Sinking Tectonic Plates Depends on Their Ancient Tectonic Histories
- Prehistoric Rhinos Lived in Super-Herds
- Do 'optimistic' Versus 'pessimistic' Medical Detection Dogs Perform Differently?
- With New Database Researchers May Be Able to Predict Rare Milky Seas Bioluminescent, Glowing Event
- Mediterranean Hunter Gatherers Navigated Long-Distance Sea Journeys Well Before the First Farmers
- Mammoth Genetic Diversity Throughout the Last Million Years
- 8 Million Years of 'Green Arabia'
- Scientists Discover That Fruit Fly Larvae Can Sense Electric Fields
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
- Life Recovered Rapidly at Site of Dino-Killing Asteroid: A Hydrothermal System May Have Helped
- New Research Finds Fluorescence in Feathers of Long-Eared Owls
- In Guatemala, Painted Altar Found at Tikal Adds New Context to Mysterious Maya History
- Dinosaurs' Apparent Decline Prior to Asteroid May Be Due to Poor Fossil Record
Monday, April 7, 2025
- Scientists Discover Microbes in Earth's Deep Soil
- Saturn's Moon Titan Could Harbor Life, but Only a Tiny Amount, Study Finds
- The New Season of The Last of Us Has a Spore-Ting Chance at Realism
Thursday, April 3, 2025
- Revealing Capillaries and Cells in Living Organs With Ultrasound
- Western Diet Causes Inflammation, Traditional African Food Protects
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
- Monkeys Are World's Best Yodellers -- New Research
- Microplastics Detected in Cat Placentas and Fetuses During Early Pregnancy
- Biodegradable Fake Fingernails Make Manicures More Sustainable
- Miso Made in Space Tastes Nuttier
- First Ancient Genomes from the Green Sahara Deciphered
Monday, March 31, 2025
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
- New Species Revealed After 25 Years of Study on 'inside Out' Fossil -- And Named After Discoverer's Mum
- Earliest Days of Earth's Formation
- Rare Disease Drug Nitisinone Makes Human Blood Deadly to Mosquitoes
- Cuttlefish 'mesmerize' Their Prey With a Moving Skin Pattern, Study Finds
- Making Sturdy, Semi-Transparent Wood With Cheap, Natural Materials
- Getting Hit by Lightning Is Good for Some Tropical Trees
- New Study Shines a Light on the Mechanics of Bioluminescence in the Rare Fish Vinciguerria Mabahiss
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
- Fluorescent Caves Could Explain How Life Persists in Extraterrestrial Environments
- Were Large Soda Lakes the Cradle of Life?
Monday, March 24, 2025
- Organic Molecules of Unprecedented Size Discovered on Mars
- Chimpanzees Act as 'engineers', Choosing Materials to Make Tools Based on Structural and Mechanical Properties
- Scientists Engineer Starfish Cells to Shape-Shift in Response to Light
- New Research Reveals Secrets About Locust Swarm Movement
Thursday, March 20, 2025
- Galapagos Birds Exhibit 'road Rage' Due to Noise
- Insomniac Fruit Fly Mutants Show Enhanced Memory Despite Severe Sleep Loss
- From Dinosaurs to Birds: The Origins of Feather Formation
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
- Tiny Musky Rat-Kangaroos Hold the Key to Explain Why 'roos Hop
- Marine Animals Help Solve Ocean Issues
- Unknown Microorganisms Used Marble and Limestone as a Habitat
- Science Behind 'Polly Want a Cracker' Could Guide Future Treatment Design for Speech Disorders
- Squirrel-Inspired Leaping Robot Can Stick a Landing on a Branch
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
- How to Stop Being Surprised by Extreme Weather
- Scientists Uncover Principles Underlying the Toxicity of 'selfish' Genes
- New Fossil Discovery Reveals How Volcanic Deposits Can Preserve the Microscopic Details of Animal Tissues
Monday, March 17, 2025
- RNA Origami: Artificial Cytoskeletons to Build Synthetic Cells
- Magnetic Microalgae on a Mission to Become Robots
- How a Hummingbird Chick Acts Like a Caterpillar to Survive
- How Big Brains and Flexible Skulls Led to the Evolution of Modern Birds
- Iguanas Floated One-Fifth of the Way Around the World to Colonize Fiji
Friday, March 14, 2025
Thursday, March 13, 2025
- Dozens of 3-Toed Dinosaurs Leave Their Mark in Australia
- Violent Supernovae 'triggered at Least Two Earth Extinctions'
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
- Signs of Alien Life May Be Hiding in These Gases
- Scientists Develop Solar-Powered Method to Convert Sewage Sludge Into Green Hydrogen and Animal Feed