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Plague death confirmed in Arizona, officials urge caution
In a quiet corner of northern Arizona, an ancient killer reappeared. A local resident died at Flagstaff Medical Center on July 11, the first confirmed fatal case of pneumonic plague in Coconino County since 2007. The news is startling, and not just because of the word: plague. For many, it conjures images of the Black
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Florida cat “Pepper” uncovers new virus in backyard shrew
When a black cat showed up with a dead shrew in its mouth, it seemed like any other day in the Gainesville backyard of virologist John Lednicky. But Pepper isn’t just any cat, and that wasn’t just any shrew. The animal turned out to be infected with a virus scientists had never seen before. Lednicky,
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Bush dogs are smaller than a beagle, but they hunt like wolves
You’d be forgiven for thinking the bush dog is a hoax. Rarely seen and once known only from fossils, it spent decades slipping through the cracks of modern science. For much of the 20th century, many biologists believed it had vanished from the planet altogether. But the bush dog, Speothos venaticus, is very much alive.
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Study shows we can hear when a forest is alive
No formal training. No field guides. No binoculars. And yet, we still know the sound of life when we hear it. That’s the premise of a new study out of Germany’s iDiv biodiversity research center. Researchers asked people with zero scientific background to sort forests by how biodiverse they seemed, just based on photos and
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No forest, no deal: Norway rewrites the rules on public spending
Norway just became the first country in the world to make its public spending deforestation-free. That means no government contracts for companies that can’t prove their products were made without razing tropical forests. No palm oil tied to burned peatland. No soy grown on cleared Amazon acreage. No wood cut from unverified logging zones. The
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Trump ousts Musk-backed nominee, names TV host Sean Duffy to lead NASA
The day Donald Trump appointed Sean Duffy as interim head of NASA, the message was unmistakable: space policy in 2025 isn’t just about rockets and budgets. It’s about loyalty, optics, and political turf wars. Duffy, a former congressman, Fox Business host, and reality TV personality, has no formal background in aerospace or science. But he’s
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How bizarre feet made the Eurasian coot a survival machine
They look like something out of science fiction. Long, finger-like toes with rubbery flaps that pulse outward when they hit water, then fold inward like origami when they step on land. These are the feet of the Eurasian coot,a medium-sized waterbird found across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. And while its black body and white
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This tiny frog glows in the dark—and it’s rewriting biology
In the highland rainforests of Borneo, where clouds cling to the canopy and the air thickens with night, scientists have stumbled upon something that seems pulled from myth: a frog that glows. This newly discovered species is the first amphibian ever documented to exhibit true bioluminescence. While some frogs are known to fluoresce under ultraviolet
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What science still can’t explain about the bee hummingbird (Zunzuncito)
It’s lighter than a dime. Smaller than your thumb. And when it flies, it doesn’t flap—it vibrates. Meet the bee hummingbird, or as it’s known in Cuba, the zunzuncito. At just two inches long and weighing less than two grams, it holds the title of the smallest bird on Earth. In the time it takes