Surfing iguanas, shark-riding octopus, gray seals monitoring their own oxygen levels, how memory works, an ecosystem found after a colossal iceberg broke free from Antarctica, and a new understanding of dark energy are some of this week’s science news. The big reveal of which species is the carbon disrupter isn’t really newsworthy, but environmentalist Paul Hawkens wants to be sure we own that label and figure ourselves out STAT.
Scaly sailors may have made a record-setting oceanic voyage. Tens of millions of years ago, iguanas in North America floated across the Pacific Ocean. Clinging to vegetation washed into the sea, they traveled one-fifth of the way around the world, eventually disembarking and settling in the islands of the South Pacific, researchers report March 17 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The seafaring lizards’ trip may be the longest known transocean emigration among land vertebrates. [...]
All members of the iguana evolutionary family are found in the Americas, with one glaring exception: the Fijian iguanas (Brachylophus). The origins of the four living iguana species in Fiji have been a mystery for researchers, considering all the reptiles’ closest relatives are an ocean away. [...]
The team thinks the lizards set sail between 31 million and 34 million years ago, possibly causing the evolutionary split between Brachylophus and Dipsosaurus.
Knowledge is power?
By revealing for the first time what happens in the brain when an animal makes a mistake, Johns Hopkins University researchers are shedding light on the holy grail of neuroscience: the mechanics of how we learn.
The team pinpointed the exact moment mice learned a new skill by observing the activity of individual neurons, confirming earlier work that suggested animals are fast learners that purposely test the boundaries of new knowledge.
The federally funded work, which upends assumptions about the speed of learning and the role of the sensory cortex, and which the researchers believe will hold true across animal species including humans, is newly published in Nature.
“We are interested in the idea that humans and other animals may know things about the world, things that they choose not to show,” Kuchibhotla said. “Our core question is what is the neural basis of this distinction between learning and performance.”
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
The element carbon, in its oxidized form, is at the center of discussions about climate change. Carbon is often vilified and cast as the culprit for global warming, destruction and loss.
But what we tend to forget is that carbon is the main ingredient for life. And we are the only species on Earth that disrupts the natural flow of carbon, says environmentalist and author Paul Hawken.
Hawken's new book, "Carbon: The Book of Life" (Viking, 2025), shines a spotlight on the countless flows of carbon that power life, from individual cells to vast underground fungal networks and entire human societies. Through the lens of carbon, the author takes the reader on a journey through corporate retreats, the pharmaceutical sector, the food industry and the realms of plants, insects and fungi.
Check out the study design described in the article.
A team of scientists with the Sea Mammal Research Unit, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, in the U.K. has found that gray seals are able to monitor their blood oxygen levels as a means to prevent drowning. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes experiments they conducted at a pool with captured gray seals involving changes to oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the air.
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The genetic heritage of our food system is conserved by US federal employees who are at risk of losing their ability to protect collections of plants and germplasm we require as we face the triple threat of crop disease, climate change, and species extinction. 🧪 🌍 🌱
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/o...
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— Elizabeth Hilborn (@elizabee.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 11:51 AM
...in past animal studies, researchers have shown that the statistical learning pathway, which is found in the more anterior part of the hippocampus (the area closer to the front of the head), develops earlier than that of episodic memory.
Therefore, Turk-Browne suspected that episodic memory may appear later in infancy, around one year or older. He argues that this developmental progression makes sense when thinking about the needs of infants.
"Statistical learning is about extracting the structure in the world around us," he said. "This is critical for the development of language, vision, concepts, and more. So it's understandable why statistical learning may come into play earlier than episodic memory."
Even still, the research team's latest study shows that episodic memories can be encoded by the hippocampus earlier than previously thought, long before the earliest memories we can report as adults. So, what happens to these memories?
Armed with cutting-edge technology, including the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) SuBastian, the scientists embarked on an eight-day, deep-sea survey, plunging to depths of up to 1,300 metres.
What they found was nothing short of astonishing – an abundant and vibrant ecosystem flourishing in total darkness beneath the ice.
“We seized upon the moment, changed our expedition plan, and went for it so we could look at what was happening in the depths below,” says expedition scientist Dr. Patricia Esquete.
"We didn’t expect to find such a beautiful, thriving ecosystem. Based on the size of the animals, the communities we observed have been there for decades, maybe even hundreds of years.”
In Amsterdam, the birds have been constructing nests out of plastic food wrappers, masks and other waste for at least 30 years, researchers report in the February Ecology. The revelation shows not only how much plastic now litters the environment but also the power of using human-made products to learn about the natural world.
“It’s ironic to think that many of these plastic single-use items have just been used for minutes by people, yet these coots have used them for decades,” says Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a biologist at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands.
Hiemstra has been studying nesting materials used by city birds for years. He’s documented coots adding face masks to their nests during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — a building material that coots and other birds still use — and found rebellious magpies and crows that built their homes out of antibird spikes. Many birds these days use human trash as nest-building material, Hiemstra says.
Check out the graphics
A new analysis shared with The New York Times shows how countries around the world are rapidly adding solar and wind capacity, now cheaper and more reliable than ever.
To track these changes, researchers created Global Renewables Watch, which maps all onshore wind and every large-scale solar farm in the world by using artificial intelligence and detailed satellite imagery to create a “living atlas.”
The collaboration — between The Nature Conservancy, Planet, and Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab — is designed to track the spread of wind and solar over time, so that planners can better understand where and how to build new clean-energy projects, large and small.
It’s the aquatic buddy comedy movie we never knew we needed. Scientists in New Zealand have released footage of an octopus appearing to ride the back of a shortfin mako shark.
Researchers at University of Auckland documented the real-life sharktopus during a December 2023 expedition in the Hauraki Gulf near Kawau Island. The sighting was unusual for several reasons, not the least of which is that octopuses aren’t known for hanging out near the water’s surface.
Rochelle Constantine, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences, detailed her team’s strange encounter in an article published by the university last week. The researchers were studying the area as part of an ongoing project to monitor the animals of the Gulf, including sharks. And that’s when they spotted the pair.
Dark energy, a mysterious force that scientists believe is behind the accelerated expansion of the universe, is weakening — which could result in the universe over the course of billions of years collapsing on itself, according to new research. [...]
Mustapha Ishak, co-chair of DESI and an astrophysics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, tells NPR that current data shows that, at the beginning of the universe, dark energy was very strong. But it has weakened with time and will continue to do so, he says. For that reason, Ishak argues it's time for scientists to update their understanding of the universe.
"Is it just [that] we are missing something big in the model of our universe and we just don't know it? We are just measuring things and it means that we will have to stop, sit down and rethink our model of the universe," Ishak says. "What it's showing us is….it is actually a wild type of dark energy that we need to understand and we don't understand it yet."
In a scattershot pattern that now extends from coast to coast, continental US states have been announcing new hotspots of chronic wasting disease (CWD). The contagious and always-fatal neurodegenerative disorder infects the cervid family that includes deer, elk, moose and, in higher latitudes, reindeer. There is no vaccine or treatment.
Described by scientists as a “slow-motion disaster in the making”, the infection’s presence in the wild began quietly, with a few free-ranging deer in Colorado and Wyoming in 1981. However, it has now reached wild and domestic game animal herds in 36 US states as well as parts of Canada, wild and domestic reindeer in Scandinavia and farmed deer and elk in South Korea.
In the media, CWD is often called “zombie deer disease” due to its symptoms, which include drooling, emaciation, disorientation, a vacant “staring” gaze and a lack of fear of people. As concerns about spillover to humans or other species grow, however, the moniker has irritated many scientists.
“It trivialises what we’re facing,” says epidemiologist Michael Osterholm. “It leaves readers with the false impression that this is nothing more than some strange fictional menace you’d find in the plot of a sci-fi film. Animals that get infected with CWD do not come back from the dead. CWD is a deathly serious public and wildlife health issue.”
Narwhals wield their iconic tusks in surprising ways — possibly even to play with newfound toys.
Aerial videos showed the Arctic whales swinging their “horns” to thwack fish prior to eating them, and in one case, gingerly prodding and flipping a fish. The gentler movements may have been part of a narwhal play session, researchers report February 28 in Frontiers in Marine Science. It’s the first reported evidence of narwhals (Monodon monoceros) likely amusing themselves for fun. [...]
Using a remotely operated flying drone, O’Corry-Crowe and colleagues spent hours filming narwhals swimming in an island bay in the Canadian High Arctic in the summer of 2022. One recording captured three narwhals among several Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus), chasing fish and occasionally swinging their tusks like baseball bats to stun fish before chowing down. Another video showed three narwhals following a large char, with one whale taking the lead in lightly nudging and flipping the fish with the tip or side of its tusk, altering the fish’s path.
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🚨SPEAK UP FOR WOLVES 🚨
On Tuesday, 3/25, the House Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, +d Fisheries will hold a hearing on several bills, 2 of which directly attack wolves + the Endangered Species Act.
Call on your reps to vote NO on HR 845 + HR 1897 ➡️ bit.ly/43UB7gG
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— Wolf Conservation Center 🐺 (@nywolforg.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 2:28 PM
