The Yao Ming of penguins has been born and is thriving in an Australian aquarium. You’ve got to see Pesto the penguin, a baby King Penguin at Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium. You are not prepared for the height and girth of this absolute unit. Feast your eyes like Pesto feasts …
Read More »Why we’re all in love with a little hippo named Moo Deng
The internet loves cute animals. (Shocking, I know.) But more than a fact of life, it’s practically a pillar supporting the weight of the online world’s entire infrastructure. Some of the earliest internet moments — Keyboard Cat, for instance — centered on critters. And that hasn’t changed, even as the …
Read More »Somehow, the Dog Situation on Airplanes Has Gotten Even Wilder
Americans love their pets. More than 60 percent of US households have them; more than half of pet owners say they’re as important to their families as any human. So maybe it makes sense that more people are taking their pets on flights. More than 1 million pets travel by …
Read More »The internet has fallen in love with baby hippo Moo Deng
The internet has fallen in love with a baby hippo — yes, again — and this time, it’s an adorable little girl named Moo Deng. Moo Deng is a two-month-old female pygmy hippopotamus at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand. And, to be fair, she is so freaking cute. …
Read More »Fat bear ate 135,000 calories in 10 hours. And he's not done.
Imagine not eating for half a year. For the Alaskan bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve, the long winter famine always looms large. So they eat. And eat. And attempt to grow profoundly fat, because they must subsist off their fat stores for months. That’s why, in this wild …
Read More »Flying spaghetti monster and unworldly life filmed in deep sea footage
Scientists discovered a giant underwater mountain. And it’s teeming with deep sea life. An endeavor aboard the Falkor (too) — a 363-foot (111-meter) research vessel operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute — has returned vivid imagery from its latest exploration mission around a variety of seamounts, including in the Nazca …
Read More »Urban Birds Are Harboring Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Urban ducks and crows might offer us a connection to nature, but scientists have found wild birds that live near humans are more likely to harbor bacteria resistant to important antibiotics. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is …
Read More »Jane Goodall Thinks It’s Not Too Late to Save the World
Jane Goodall understands better than most the impact humans have had on the planet. The world, the primatologist says, isn’t what it used to be. Having witnessed so much environmental deterioration during her lifetime, today Goodall is as much an activist as a scientist. She warns tirelessly of accelerating environmental …
Read More »The Bird Flu Threat Keeps Growing
Ongoing outbreaks of avian influenza have decimated poultry flocks and wild birds across the United States and worldwide. The virus, known as H5N1, is also increasingly adapting to mammals and has been found in cats, goats, and raccoons. In the US, it has spread to at least 170 dairy herds …
Read More »This shark lives for centuries. Scientists discover how it resists aging.
There are Greenland sharks older than the United States. This deep sea species has an expected lifespan of at least 270 years. Some may live longer than 500 years. And biologists have identified an important reason for their impressive longevity. The sharks, an Arctic species dwelling thousands of feet underwater, …
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