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There’s a SMILE beaming down from high above Earth. On May 19, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) launched a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana with a payload representing years of international collaboration. Known as the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE), the spacecraft will soon begin studying the sun’s immensely powerful solar winds and their relationship with Earth’s atmospheric safeguards.

You wouldn’t be reading this without our magnetosphere. The protective shield generated from deep inside Earth has protected the planet from the sun’s most destructive solar winds for billions of years. Without this barrier, life could never survive on what would be a barren, irradiated rock. But while it’s clear that the magnetosphere is Earth’s natural defense system against cosmic radiation and geomagnetic storms, astronomers still aren’t sure exactly how it works. 

“We are about to witness something we’ve never seen before—Earth’s invisible armor in action,” ESA director general Josef Aschbacher said in a statement.

Over the next month, SMILE will slowly increase its altitude with 11 engine burns before settling into a large elliptical orbit over the North and South Pole. Actual data collection will start in July using the spacecraft’s four tools, including a pair of X-ray and ultraviolet cameras. 

SMILE is the first mission to examine the magnetosphere with X-rays, and the UV equipment will capture the northern and southern lights for up to 45 hours at a time. By combining the two data sources, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of how the planet is affected by the sun’s constant bombardment of solar winds and frequent coronal mass ejections. The project is planned to last three years.

“The evidence that Smile collects will help us better understand planet Earth and our Solar System as a whole,” explained ESA Smile project scientist Philippe Escoubet. “And the science it uncovers will improve our models of Earth’s magnetic environment, which could ultimately help keep our astronauts and space technologies safe for decades to come.”

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While every bumble bee colony has a queen, the process for becoming that queen bee may be a bit more democratic than monarchical. The worker bees appear to select which baby will be queen one day, according to a new study published in the journal Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

The key to this selection process lies in the juvenile hormone. This hormone in insects is responsible for their development, molting, and eventual reproduction. When the team gave the juvenile hormone to worker bees, they passed it along to all of the larvae in the colony through feeding. The more juvenile hormone the larvae received, the more likely they were to become queen. 

According to the team, this is the first study to show that bumble bee caste is determined by the workers and shifts our understanding of bee colony dynamics. Instead of a top-down hierarchy, the colony appears to be a more decentralized system, where the caregivers and workers can alter the future of baby bees. 

Less like Mean Girls?

Understanding the fate of the bee larvae is key to understanding their social behavior. Their whole system relies on a division of reproductive labor—some females will reproduce, while the others help. 

“Since all these females share the same DNA, it’s a striking example of how the same genotype can produce very different forms,” Etya Amsalem, a study co-author and entomologist at Penn State, said in a statement. “It’s also a practical question since bumble bees are important for pollination, so knowing how to produce queens could improve commercial breeding and management.”

In addition to their different social roles, queen bees and worker bees are also very different physically. Bumblebee queens are larger, live longer lives, and will reproduce. Worker bees are smaller in stature and do not reproduce or live as long.

While it was clear that hormones were involved in how workers determine the queen, the exact mechanisms behind it were more vague. 

“A single female egg in bumblebees holds the blueprint for two completely different life paths: the giant, reproductive queen or the small, sterile worker,” added study co-author and postdoctoral researcher Seyed Ali Modarres Hasani. “We wanted to understand what triggers the change in the female life trajectory, when does it happen and who controls the process.”

A matter of hormones

In the study, the team used three worker bees and a cluster of larvae. They applied juvenile hormone at different doses and times, and administered it either to workers or directly to larvae. They then traced the hormone’s movement, measuring  larval mass and recording which individuals became queens or workers.

“Every colony will produce many new queens at the end of the season,” Amsalem said. “These queens will leave the colony, mate and go into winter diapause, and then each queen will start a new colony in the next spring. In that sense, producing as many queens—and males—at the end of the season is the ultimate purpose of the colony.”

When the juvenile hormone was applied directly to the larvae, not only did they not turn into queens, but the worker bees ended up eliminating most of these larvae.

When the workers were treated with the juvenile hormone, they put it into the food that they make for the larvae. These larvae then ingested the hormone, and were heavier and much more likely to become queens.

“We also determined that larvae are only sensitive to this hormone on days seven and eight of their development,” Hasani said. “By tracing the juvenile hormone, we saw that the workers pass the hormone into the food they make from nectar and pollen.”

Queen development and the colony’s future

These results suggest that queen production is linked to how the colony progresses through the summer’s warmer months until it eventually collapses in the fall.

“Bumblebee workers do not reproduce when the colony is young, but they can activate their ovaries and produce males as the colony ages, which causes an increase in juvenile hormone levels,” Amsalem said. “As a result, over time, they feed larvae more of the hormone. When enough workers do this simultaneously, usually towards the end of the season, larvae receive doses that are high enough during the critical window to develop into queens.”

These results could help improve bee colony management at a hormonal level, explain how complex insect societies evolve, and how hormonal signals interact to shape colony structure.

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Torrance, United States / California, 19th May 2026, CyberNewswire

New York, United States, 19th May 2026, CyberNewswire

For decades, many paleoarchaeologists believed Neanderthals went extinct largely because they just weren’t intelligent enough to compete with their Homo sapien relatives. However, mounting historical evidence suggests this was far from the case. The latest discovery to help the Neanderthal’s reputation ion? The ancient hominins knew when and how to safely snack on shellfish potentially thousands of years before their human descendants.

The findings published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences focus on Neanderthals who lived at Los Aviones Cave in present-day Cartagena, Spain. Researchers discovered the remains of 115,000-year-old mollusks including gastropods and limpets that were clearly harvested as food. This contradicts past theories about Neanderthals, which suggested they had difficulty adapting to coastal environments and utilizing marine resources. What’s more, the Neanderthals here didn’t eat shellfish in large quantities all the time. Instead, they knew to make the most of them between November and April during the colder seasons.

Los Aviones Cave in Spain is a notable Neanderthal archaeological site. Credit: ICTA-UAB

“They consumed marine resources throughout the year, but with a very clear preference for winter and autumn months,” explained Asier García-Escárzaga, a study co-author and archaeologist at Spain’s Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Institute of Environmental Science and Technology.

García-Escárzaga says this seasonal pattern often followed by more modern human populations in Europe wasn’t a coincidence. The winter reproduction cycle of many mollusks also results in higher amounts of meat as well as improved flavor and texture. Summer months increase health risks like toxic algae contamination or rapid spoiling.

But how did researchers determine exactly when these shellfish were harvested? It all has to do with the mollusks’ shell carbonate and their oxygen isotopic levels. This level fluctuates depending on seawater temperature and functions like a “prehistoric thermometer,” according to García-Escárzaga.

The findings reveal that Spain’s coastal Neanderthals relied on a diverse diet featuring high-quality oceanic proteins filled with Omega-3 and zinc, both of which aid in reproductive health and brain development. With that in mind, it’s entirely possible that humans’ closest evolutionary ancestors influenced our own love of shellfish.

“What we see at Los Aviones is a fully modern subsistence strategy,” García-Escárzaga and his colleagues wrote in their study.

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The Garden of Fugitives is one of Pompeii’s most haunting sites. Discovered during archaeological excavations in 1961, the former vineyard quickly became a gravesite for over a dozen people who perished amid the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and its choking, burning hot pyroclastic cloud that enveloped the city in 79 CE.

Although the victims’ bodies eventually decomposed underneath the pumice and ash, the unique burial conditions at their time of death presented a remarkable opportunity for future archaeologists. Shortly after their identification, researchers created chilling, highly detailed casts of their final moments by carefully pouring plaster into the hollowed spaces they left behind. These echoes of the ancient Roman catastrophe have taught historians a lot about life at the time of the eruption, even if much of the Pompeiians’ personal information is lost to time.

However, modern diagnostic imaging technology has yielded unexpected evidence that points to one of the Garden of Fugitives’ professions. Based on recent findings highlighted in the E-journal of the Pompeii Excavations, a man who died fleeing the volcanic destruction carried a bag of tools that indicate he was an ancient Roman doctor, or medicus.

Experts peered into a nearly 2,000-year-old encasement using both X-ray and computer tomography techniques. The images revealed that the plaster mold contained a cloth bag filled with bronze and silver coins, as well as a small container made from organic material and metal fittings. Inside this container was a slate tablet and delicate metal tools. Similar tablets were often used by Roman medical professionals to prepare various treatments and cosmetics. Meanwhile, the metal accessories resembled surgical equipment.

Archaeologists acknowledged that while the cumulative evidence isn’t conclusive, it strongly suggests the man was a medicus in the futile process of attempting to outrun Mount Vesuvius’ pyroclastic cloud. While subtle, the details offer poignant, extremely humanizing context for one of Pompeii’s thousands of otherwise anonymous casualties. 

“As far back as two thousand years ago, there were those who did not merely practice medicine—confined to specific office hours—but simply were physicians at every moment,” park director Gabriel Zuchtriegel said in a statement translated from Italian. “This man brought his tools with him to be ready to rebuild his life elsewhere…but perhaps also to help others.”

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It would make more sense if only a few related cultures exhibited it, but the trait is everywhere. No matter where you are in the world, the humans living there are about 90 percent right-handed while the remaining 10 percent are predominantly left-handed. This curious facet isn’t seen in our primate relatives, either.

Evolutionary biologists and neuroscientists have spent decades trying to understand why the vast majority of Homo sapiens prefer using their right limb, but have since come up…well, empty handed. According to researchers at the University of Oxford in the U.K., the answer may finally be within our grasp. After comparing behavioral, neurological, and social characteristics from 41 species of monkeys and apes with humans, they say the answer isn’t found in our hands at all. It’s in our legs.

Their findings are detailed in a study recently published in the journal PLOS Biology. Using a statistical modeling framework focused on interspecies evolutionary relationships, researchers first considered some of the most prominent theories on handedness. These included aspects like diet, habitat, body mass, social structures, tool usage, and locomotion. In every case, we humans remained outliers in patterns that otherwise might explain the attribute in other primates.

They then introduced two hypothetical influences into their comparisons: brain size and the length ratios between legs and arms. That arm-leg ratio may seem arbitrary, but it’s considered a standard reference point for bipedal movement. Once these traits were included, humanity’s handedness exception disappeared entirely. Basically, big brains and long legs correlate directly with dominant hands.

“This is the first study to test several of the major hypotheses for human handedness in a single framework. Our results suggest it is probably tied to some of the key features that make us human, especially walking upright and the evolution of larger brains,” study co-author and University of Oxford evolutionary anthropologist Thomas Püsche said in a statement. “By looking across many primate species, we can begin to understand which aspects of handedness are ancient and shared, and which are uniquely human.”

The new approach meant that Püsche’s team didn’t have to stop there. With the same modeling, researchers estimated handedness preferences across extinct human ancestors. The results align with a slow evolutionary shift towards the right limb. Early hominin species like Ardipithecus and Australopithecus likely only had slight leanings towards right-hand dominance comparable to present-day great apes. However, the arrival of the Homo genus saw increasing right-handedness through Homo ergaster, Homo erectus and Neanderthals. The culmination can now be seen in Homo sapiens.

The study’s authors did note an interesting exception to the rule in Homo floresiensis, the famous “hobbit” ancestors native to Indonesia. At the same time, their physiology likely explains the outlier. H. floresiensis featured a small body and brain that specialized in upright climbing and walking, not full bipedalism.

With these conclusions, researchers now believe two phases took place for humanity’s transition to overwhelming right-handedness. Ancient ape ancestors first started walking upright, which then allowed them to use their upper limbs more frequently for other tasks. As brains continued to develop and grow, rightward focus solidified in today’s H. sapiens.

“Our findings identify bipedalism and neuroanatomical expansion as likely key drivers of uniquely human lateralization, while also revealing broader ecological patterns shaping handedness across primates,” the study’s authors wrote.

From here, researchers hope to study how human cultures further entrenched right-handed dominance, why left-handed alternatives still exist at all, and if similar limb trends are visible in other animals.

“This work provides a framework for disentangling human-specific adaptations from general primate trends in the evolution of behavioral asymmetries,” the team added.

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The remains of an ancient dingo is shining new light on deep relationships between Australia’s First Nations and the wild dogs. Barkindji ancestors deliberately cared for and buried the dingo along the Baaka (Darling River) about 800 miles west of Sydney. 

The dingo is known as garli in Barkindji language and they lived alongside the Barkindji as part of the community. While burying the dog, the Barkindji took great care in building a midden, or a spot to place organic material. The people living there continued to bring river mussel shells to the midden for hundreds of years after the dingo’s death. Archaeologists believe that this marks the first time this type of post-death feeding ritual has been scientifically documented. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Australian Archeology.

The garli skeleton site before excavation, Kinchega National Park. Image: Dr. Amy Way, Australian Museum.

“While Barkindji people have always known about this cultural practice, this discovery is really powerful because it provides new details on the depth of that relationship between Barkindji people and dingoes,” study co-author Dr. Amy Way, an archaeologist at the Australia Museum and university, said in a statement. “If garli were buried with the same care and respect we see for human ancestors, including mothers and elders, it tells us these animals were profoundly valued and loved.”

The burial site was first identified in 2020 by Barkindji Elder Uncle Badger Bates and National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) archaeologist Dan Witter within a road cutting as erosion exposed the skeleton. Barkindji custodian Dave Doyleand and Elder Barb Quayle worked alongside the team during the analysis and excavation requested by the Menindee Aboriginal Elders Council. Elderlders guided the care of the remains throughout the research, including smoking ceremonies at the beginning of the excavation to honor their departed ancestor. 

The male dingo was deliberately buried sometime between 963 and 916 years ago within a midden along the river. It was about four to seven years old, and his heavily worn teeth suggest a long life spent hunting.

Interestingly, the dingo had several healed injuries, including a broken lower leg and broken ribs. Based on the injuries, the dog may have been kicked by a kangaroo while hunting. This shows that the dingo likely survived with prolonged care by the Barkindji people. 

“This confirms these traditions were much more widespread than we once thought,” added study co-author Dr. Loukas Koungoulos, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Western Australia and research associate at the Australian Museum. “Dingoes like this garli weren’t simply tolerated around camps. They were tamed, lived with people and were embedded in daily life.”

Return to Country of the garli, which can be seen lying on paperbark on the table. Left to Right: Dr Amy Way, Aunty Cheryl Blore, Aunty Patsy Quayle, Uncle Badger Bates, Dr Sam Player, Dr Rebecca Jones, Aunty Evelyn Bates, Dr Loukas Koungoulos, Dave Doyle and Aunty Barb Quayle. CREDIT: Australian Museum.

When the dingo died, he was buried in a midden that appears to have been built right before the burial or at the same time People kept adding to it for hundreds of years after death. Barkindji Elders say that these ongoing additions formed part of a “feeding” ritual that honored the dog as an ancestor and that the site was maintained across multiple generations. After the analysis,  the dingo’s remains were returned to Country. In Indigenous contexts, the word Country is capitalized to include the physical land and deep spiritual, cultural, and social dimensions of the area that are integral to identity and heritage.

“This research reinforces what Barkindji people have always known,” Dr Way said. “These relationships with animals, ancestors and Country were deep, deliberate and ongoing.”

The post 1,000-year-old dingo bones show that it was injured, cared for, and ritually buried appeared first on Popular Science.

As if we needed reminding, new research documenting dozens of previously unknown insect species highlights just how little we know about our fellow planet-dwellers. 

For the first time, researchers have comprehensively revisioned the Platydracus genus of beetles in China. Meaning flat dragon, Platydracus is a genus of rove beetles. In this new review, the team recorded over 100 species, a majority of which are new to science. Their work highlights how it’s not just the small and bland species that get overlooked in taxonomic work—sometimes, even large and colorful animals go unnoticed. 

In fact, these beetles are pretty large (frequently several centimeters long) and a lot of them mimic wasps or have bright colors. And yet, many of them have either gone completely unnoticed in the wild or sat for years unidentified in museum collections.

“It is striking that so many new species can remain hidden among large and colourful beetles. It shows how little we actually know about biodiversity and that even highly visible species can still go unnoticed,” Alexey Solodovnikov, senior author of the study recently published in the journal Insect Systematics and Diversity, said in a statement. 

Solodovnikov is a systematic entomologist at the University of Copenhagen who studies rove beetles. His team’s work puts a spotlight on the Linnean shortfall, or the difference between the number of scientifically named and described species and the number of species that exist in reality. 

Comparison of two newly discovered Platydracus species and one previously known species. Image: Natural History Museum Denmark

For example, Platydracus is part of the rove beetle family Staphylinidae. This large family consists of approximately 70,000 known species, though researchers estimate that these are only 20-25 percent of the actual number of rove beetle species. More broadly, there are about 925,000 formally described insect species. This number is shockingly low compared to how many insect species exist, which is estimated at over five million. What’s more, even the species we do know are frequently insufficiently recorded, according to the study. 

The team also rectified some mistakes, which included cases of species having been described based on, per today’s taxonomic standards, too little knowledge. 

“Many species were originally described on a very limited basis. With more collected specimens and modern methods of examination, we can now test and refine earlier species delimitations while adding new species to nature’s mosaic,” Solodovnikov explained. “This gives us a much more accurate picture of biodiversity, which is crucial both for our understanding of nature and for our ability to protect it.” 

The researchers closely studied the beetle’s bodies and used DNA barcoding—a method that uses an organism’s genetic sequence to recognize the species. They found that sometimes species can look very different despite having the same DNA markers. The oppositescenario—having different DNA markers, but appearing very similar—can also happen.

Ultimately, the study stands as a reminder that we still have a long way to go in mapping out all the life that we share the planet with.

The post 61 new beetles discovered in China appeared first on Popular Science.

Sometime in the last few million years, our ancestors began to get better brains, use tools and weapons, speak language, and live in larger groups in a wider range of environments. A big key to all this was cultural natural selection. Though at first DNA and cultural evolution often pushed in different directions, the fact that culture could drive change so much faster let culture tame DNA, and induce it to make us especially plastic and receptive to culture.

Early on, sufficient brains, culture, weapons, and language let us create social norms, i.e., “good” and “evil”. (I use scare quotes to point to social concepts that may not guide my choices.) At first, our main use of norms was to suppress the often violent internal competition that had previously limited feasible primate group size. Our norms said to help and share, and not hit, threaten, brag, or form subgroup coalitions. “Good” was following moral instincts and prestige incentives to take collective actions and enforce norms to prevent dangerous competition, while “evil” was conspiring in the shadows to compete for power, often by evading norm enforcement.

Funny thing though, while norms did help foragers avoid the worst scenarios of destructive conflict, foragers actually evolved more due to selection pressures that favored doing “evil” well, compared to “good”. That is, foragers mostly got smarter by learning to pretend to do “good” for the whole group while actually conspiring with allies to compete. Non-violently, but fiercely and cleverly. And this has been a consistent historical trend: our strongest selection pressures, inducing the most evolution, have long appeared in relatively “evil” harsh, destructive, norm-violating areas of life, relative to areas we see as driven more by “good”. Our evolutionary engines tend to be “evil”, not “good”, which is why “good” has found it so hard to defeat “evil”, even when everyone gives it such enthusiastic praise.

For example, before humans, predatory animals grew bigger more innovative brains, compared to prey animals and plants. Human foragers evolved more from hidden politics and competition than from cooperating to do “good”. In the farming era, war most drove cultural evolution, even though war was quite destructive, and made us do things we usually consider quite “evil”. In our industrial era, capitalism has driven evolution more than anything else, even though it is widely considered close to “evil” due to selfishness, competition, inequality, creative destruction, and indifference to sacredness. Today “social Darwinists”, who try to make their nations or groups win at Darwinian competition (either DNA or cultural), are now widely seen as max evil.

However, just as the stronger force of culture tamed the weaker DNA force, these harsh “evil” areas of life with stronger selection pressures have often tamed “good” areas. For example, collective forager talk and norm enforcement habits evolved to be manipulatable by covert political coalitions. (Just as in the politics of most small orgs today.) In the farming era, religions and norms evolved to support and not oppose wars. And in the early industrial era, capitalist pressures induced norm changes in many areas of life, to allow more money and capitalism there. “Good” behavior tends to become a hypocritical cover for “evil” forces.

However ~1900 competition between nations became a stronger selection force, with nations more controlling and limiting both capitalism and culture. And since WWII, activist-driven fast-changing culture has surged in strength, coming to control and limit both nations and capitalism. Over the entire industrial era, areas of life not run by capitalism and under strong conformity pressures have plausibly come to suffer from cultural drift into maladaption due to a lack of sufficiently powerful evolution. Eventually, such maladaption will plausibly get fixed by “evil” capitalism, with its stronger power, vitality, and selection pressures, taming conflicting forces of “good”, and then inducing norms that support a wider use of capitalism.

But before then we may suffer a long painful transition period during which much of what we cherish about our civ may be lost. For example, our civ might fall to be replaced by insular fertile subcultures like the Amish, with future civs maybe also rising and falling several times. Even human level AI doesn’t directly solve cultural drift, though the fact that capitalists now make, own, and shape AIs offers hope of a faster cleaner transition to a capitalism-dense AI world.

Why has culture been able to defy and limit capitalism so well over the last few centuries? I’ve suggested that weak cultural selection pressures have allowed a drift back to forager habits and attitudes, which DNA makes still more natural than farmer alternatives. Our increased wealth, health, and peace now makes us unusually willing and able to indulge forager-style moral preferences.

The usual forager view is this: we must coordinate via norms and governance to prevent dangerous competition from undermining our precious stable shared human values. For foragers in a small band, the dangerous competition came from sub-band coalitions. And all my life I’ve heard excess regulation justified in such terms, and heard futurists talk similarly, except that their envisioned dangerous competition comes from capitalism, genetic engineering, population explosion, or AI.

However, as our culture’s shared values today are not at all stable, but instead have been drifting fast into maladaption, they are not so precious. So making a “good” world government to control “evil” competition in their name thus seems bad. The only way to long preserve anything unusual about our civilization (e.g., open inquiry) is to mix it into an adaptive cultural package. And as capitalism is now our most powerful adaptive engine, that means a package where capitalism runs most things. (Other fixes seem variations on this.) Such as via big for-profit governments, capitalists paying parents to make profitable kids, sacred capitalists investing in sacred ventures, or foundations reinvesting all returns to drive interest rates down to growth rates.

Once “evil” capitalism has tamed the “good” norms of culture, we will still have norms that we enforce, norms which may on average mitigate real harms from excess competition. But which still allow strong selection pressures to keep our descendants adaptive. And which, if we are lucky, preserve some of what we today find precious about our civ.

Added 18May: Note the similarity of cooperative explicit good vs passionate powerful evil to near-far theory distinction of weakly-motivated abstract far to strongly-motivated concrete near.

Most sharks have five gill slits on either side. But Hexanchus griseus, a giant and mysterious shark species, has an even six gill slits. These fish, appropriately called the sixgill shark, live in both tropical and temperate waters around the world and can reach up to 14-feet-long. They’ve existed since before the dinosaurs, and yet marine biologists still don’t know very much about them. 

One of the problems—for researchers, anyway—is that sixgills usually live in deep oceanic waters, at depths of up to 9,800 feet. It also doesn’t help that they usually favor extremely low-light environments. Among other reasons, these aspects make sixgills difficult to study.

Sixgill sharks (Hexanchus griseus) are older than dinosaurs and are typically found in the deeper parts of the ocean. Image: Seattle Aquarium.

However, these ancient giants have been spotted in Washington State’s Puget Sound year-round, and in water as shallow as 20 feet. Scientists at Seattle Aquarium believe that female sixgills are giving birth in these waters, and new research by the aquarium demonstrates that they have birthing site fidelity. According to the aquarium, they appear to come back to the Salish Sea to give birth numerous times. 

Once the baby sharks—or pups—come into this world, Puget Sound turns into their nursery for some time, though researchers don’t know for how long. The young sixgills spend the summer and fall in more southern locations of the Salish Sea, and migrate more north in the winter and spring. They usually travel less than two miles a day, and frequently come up to shallow waters at dusk before going down into deeper waters at dawn, probably looking for prey. 

“We think these patterns repeat until they eventually depart for the open ocean. This consistency of movement and behavior reinforces the strength of our opportunity to study sixgill sharks in Puget Sound,” according to a statement from Seattle Aquarium. “Through our research, we hope to answer questions about the life history and ecology of sixgill sharks—including migration, growth rates and prey preferences.” 

The aquarium also aims to study previously unexamined physiological aspects of sixgills, and understand human influence. 

The team created a custom “cradle” to safely hold a shark while they work quickly to examine it. Image: Seattle Aquarium.

From May to September, Seattle Aquarium researchers and veterinarians will try to study the elusive species at three different locations in Puget Sound, going to each one once a month. There, the team will lift sharks to the surface, and either bring them onto the boat or keep them at the side of the vessel and flip them upside down. This position triggers a trance-like state in several shark species. Either way, the team will make sure that the sharks can breathe through all of those gills.

Once the sharks are secured, the team will examine them. They should be able to collect measurements, obtain tissue samples, take photos, and deploy wearable tags in only five to 10 minutes. The tags that will then supply information about movement, habitat use, and feeding ecology. The scientists will then return the sharks to the open water. 

“Our goal is to answer as many questions as possible,” Dani Escontrela, a researcher at the Seattle Aquarium, said in the statement. “We’re collaborating with agencies like the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, the Big Fish Lab at Oregon State University, Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium and other researchers to fill gaps in expertise, all while keeping animal health and well-being our top priority.”

The post Mysterious giant sharks that outlived the dinosaurs lurking in Puget Sound appeared first on Popular Science.

Your immune system has one job: to protect you. And most of the time, it does that job like a pro. 

But occasionally it gets a bit overzealous, even paranoid. It mistakes harmless, even wonderful things—flowers, peanuts, cats—for threats, and attacks them (and you—mostly you) with a senseless, chaotic vengeance.

For most allergy sufferers, this might mean giving up a few tasty foods, staying inside during high pollen counts, or rehoming the cat—or, more realistically, the person allergic to the cat. But for a tiny number of people, the immune system decides to take aim at one of the most essential substances on earth: water.

Yes, it is possible to be allergic to water. And the condition is even stranger than it sounds.

“Imagine not being able to go into the pool, or the lake, or the ocean,” says dermatologist Dr. Amir Bajoghli, who has treated a patient with this rare condition. “My patient also has to take much faster showers, as you might imagine. It definitely interferes with quality of life.”

Yes, you can be allergic to water

The medical term for an allergy to water is aquagenic urticaria, a form of hives. The condition is so rare that only an estimated 100 to 150 cases have ever been reported. However, researchers believe many more cases go undiagnosed: When a patient comes in complaining of hives, “it could be water” is probably not the first thing that leaps to mind.

People with this rare condition break out in hives like these when exposed to water. Image: Getty Images / Yuliia Kokosha

“Honestly, a lot of general physicians aren’t even aware of it,” says Bajohgli, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine. “It’s rare, and it’s not on their radar.”

Although scientists don’t fully understand exactly how aquagenic urticaria works, they believe water itself isn’t the culprit. Rather, it appears that certain people’s skin responds differently to water contact, setting off a reaction in the skin’s outermost layer. This triggers the body’s mast cells (immune cells that sound the alarm during allergic reactions), which releases histamine, the troublemaking chemical responsible for allergic responses. 

Within minutes of water touching the skin, a person with aquagenic urticaria will develop raised, intensely itchy welts. The reaction typically lasts anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, and the longer the exposure, the more severe the symptoms.

You can still drink water, but sweating can be a problem

Interestingly, and luckily, aquagenic urticaria does not interfere with the body’s need for life-sustaining hydration. In other words, drinking water is fine. When water is swallowed and processed by the gut rather than absorbed through the skin, it doesn’t trigger the same immune response, Bajoghli says.

“The gut, just like the skin and the lungs, is one of the first forms of defense,” he says, “but in this case, somehow, it’s not eliciting the response in the gut the way it does in the skin.”

Bajoghli notes that some patients with aquagenic urticaria do react to their own sweat, although his patient does not. Sweat, he explains, involves an entirely different biological process than external water making contact with the skin.

Scientists believe an unidentified substance in the skin may be triggering this reaction, although much remains unknown. 

“It’s still, medically, for us, a mystery,” he says.

How to test if you’re allergic to water

For better or worse (mostly better), water is inescapable. Because of its ubiquity, and also because aquagenic urticaria is something of a medical unicorn, it often takes a while for patients or doctors to connect the dots. 

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Once it occurs to the patient and provider that water could be the culprit, diagnostic testing is fairly straightforward. It typically involves applying water-soaked compresses to the skin and waiting. In most positive cases, symptoms appear within five minutes, although the test can take up to 30.

“We wait 30 minutes before we call it negative,” Bajoghli says.

The importance of very quick showers

So, what is life like for a person whose body treats H₂O as a sworn enemy? For Bajoghli’s patient, an active teenager involved in sports, the condition reshapes even the most basic daily routines. Among other things, this means really fast showers. 

“When he showers for about two minutes, the symptoms are more subdued and milder in nature,” Bajoghli says. “If he takes a longer shower, they’re more severe and they persist longer.”

The good news is that aquagenic urticaria is unlikely to cause a major allergic reaction. It is, however, chronic; patients should not expect it to resolve on its own.

Treatment options do exist, however. Bajoghli’s patient takes an antihistamine called cyproheptadine, which reduces symptoms enough to make that two-minute shower manageable. Timing is important: taking the antihistamine about an hour before water exposure helps maximize its effectiveness.

For patients who need more relief, Bajoghli says a newer drug called omalizumab has shown promise.

For now, the mechanisms behind aquagenic urticaria, including the identity of the substance—or antigen—that triggers it, remain poorly understood, and that knowledge gap makes it difficult to develop more targeted treatments.

“We’re really looking forward to finding out what that antigen is,” Bajoghli says, “and hopefully one day solving this.”

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

The post Yes, you can be allergic to water appeared first on Popular Science.

Social media is widely considered to be bad for one’s mental health, at least anecdotally. However, it can have some positive impacts, such as videos of animals chewing food very loudly. What could possibly be better than a closeup of an animal’s snout as it crunches on a carrot? 

This week, zoos around the United States have been using social media to highlight one particularly cute muncher—tree kangaroos. Ahead of World Tree Kangaroo Day on May 21, conservation organization AZA SAFE (Saving Animals From Extinction): Tree Kangaroo of Papua New Guinea is inviting organizations working with tree kangaroos to compete in this year’s International Tree Kangaroo Crunch-a-Thon. 

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In the aptly-named competition, participants posted videos on Instagram and/or Facebook of their tree kangaroo eating something. The competition categories are Most Likes, Most Views, and Judges’ Choice, and winners will be announced on May 17, Australian Eastern Standard Time. 

The organizers even provide crunchy food recommendations: bell peppers, celery, romaine hearts, snap peas, green beans, cucumbers, and zucchini—with the caveat that the last two vegetables might not have the best crunch. 

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“In partnership with the AZA Tree Kangaroo SAFE program, we’re participating in the Tree Roo Crunch-a-Thon to help shine a spotlight on this endangered species,” reads a social media post by Roger Williams Park Zoo & Carousel Village featuring three munching, pink-nosed brown and white tree kangaroo. “Our Zoo is home to three Matschie’s tree kangaroos – a species of tree kangaroo native to the cloud forests of Papua New Guinea.”

Tree kangaroos are 14 species in the Dendrolagus genus, the sole arboreal kangaroo group. They are herbivorous marsupials with bushy tails, and usually have long arms and padded back feet. Tree kangaroos live in parts of Australia, Indonesia, and New Guinea’s rainforests. The Golden-mantled tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus pulcherrimus) is among the world’s most endangered mammals and only lives in a small area of Papua New Guinea. 

In the words of the Crunch-a-Thon organizers, “let the crunching begin!” 

The post Watch adorable animals compete for best chewer in 2026 Crunch-a-Thon appeared first on Popular Science.

CATL will invest 5 billion yuan ($735 million) to significantly expand its sodium battery capacity by an added 40 GWh per year. According to a public document released on Thursday by environmental authorities in Ningde, Fujian province — CATL’s headquarters city — the expansion project will add 40 GWh of annual production capacity for sodium-ion ...

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There’s nothing quite like the sound of an airplane toilet flushing. But that incredibly loud sucking sound is actually something of an engineering marvel. These toilets flush, with no water, while zooming along at 500 miles per hour. 

In this episode of Ask Us Anything by Popular Science, we get into all the smelly details of how airplane toilets actually work.

Ask Us Anything answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions—from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. So, yes, there’s a reason we can’t remember being babies and no, not all cats hate water. If you have a question for us, send us a note. Nothing is too outlandish or too ordinary.

This episode is based on the Popular Science article “How do airplane toilets work?”

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Full Episode Transcript

Sarah Durn: You’re six years old, wedged into a middle seat on your very first flight.

Your ears are popping. The engine sounds impossibly loud. Somewhere a baby is crying. And after nervously sipping one too many ginger ales, you realize there’s something else you need to do.

So you make the LONG walk down the NARROW aisle to the airplane bathroom. 

You open the weird sliding door, and this lavatory is tiny. And, after doing your business, you hesitantly hit the flush button.

For one horrifying second, you’re convinced the toilet might actually suck you into the sky.

But what exactly is happening here? How do airplane toilets work?

Turns out, the answer involves physics, pressure differentials, and one surprisingly clever engineering trick. 

Welcome to Ask Us Anything from the editors of Popular Science, where we answer your questions about our weird world, from “why do parrots talk like people” to “what’s the coldest temperature humans can survive?” No question is too ordinary or too outlandish.

I’m Sarah Durn, an editor at PopSci. 

Laura Baisas: And hello, I’m news editor Laura Baisis.

SD: Here at Popular Science, we can’t stop thinking about all the world’s strangest questions, and this week, we’re wondering how the heck airplane toilets actually work, something Laura actually edited a story on. 

So Laura, what’s going on here? What happens when we use the bathroom at 35,000 feet?

LB: First of all, you can relax. The toilet is not strong enough to suck you out of the plane. 

SD: Ah, thank God. Childhood fear officially resolved. 

LB: But that terrifying slurp sound, very real. And it turns out that airplane toilets use a surprisingly clever system that takes advantage of something that planes already have at high altitude, the enormous pressure difference between the cabin and the outside of the plane.

SD: So every time we flush on a plane, physics is essentially doing the dirty work? 

LB: Pretty much. We love physics.

SD: Oh, we do.

LB: And once you learn how the system actually works, from vacuum toilets to something called blue ice, I’m pretty sure you’ll never hear that sound the same way again. 

SD: All right. I’m in. Tell me all the airplane bathroom facts.

LB: I’d be happy to. But before we dive into the science of sky-high plumbing, we want to hear from you. What questions are swirling around your brain? Submit your question by clicking the “Ask Us” link at popsci.com/ask. Again, that’s popsci.com/ask, and click the “Ask Us” link.

SD: We’ll be right back with more about airplane toilets after this quick break.

SD: Welcome back! Okay, Laura, before we get into all the smelly details, I think we need to talk about the history of airplane toilets because early flying was kind of a nightmare.

LB: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that glamorous golden age of air travel, a lot less glamorous if you needed to pee.

SD: Right. So in the very earliest days of aviation, planes just, you know, straight up no bathrooms at all.

LB: Which makes sense if you remember early flights were a lot shorter and planes flew so much closer to the ground.

SD: Yeah, exactly. Pilots were basically flying by sight, and it’s said that early pilots actually peed into their shoes and then would just toss it into the air. 

LB: I still can’t believe that’s real.

SD: Me neither. Or they’d make a hole in the cockpit floor…and just go ahead and, you know, pee through that. 

LB: Correct. This is all so, so bad. So bad. 

SD: But it does get better. I mean, kind of. As passenger air travel became more common in the later 1920s, airlines were like, “Okay, we should probably do something about the bathroom sitch.”

So early passenger planes basically had buckets. Just, you know, a bucket in the back of the plane. 

LB: Ah, truly a luxury travel experience. 

SD: Very chic, very elegant. Then in the late 1930s, the first enclosed plane lavatory debuted on the DC-4 passenger plane. But even those were pretty primitive. The toilet had a removable bowl that crews had to take out and dump after landing.

LB: Yeah, not sure I’d want that job. 

SD: Yeah, same. Eventually planes, though, started using chemical toilets, you know, kind of like a fancy porta potty situation. Waste would sit in these tanks full of bright blue disinfectant liquid.

LB: Ah, yes, we come to the origin of one of aviation’s most disgusting phrases: blue ice.

SD: It doesn’t sound disgusting, which is what throws me. 

LB: It’s kind of a misnomer. 

SD: I know. It sounds like something a superhero would use. But anyways, explain it to us. What is blue ice?

LB: So blue ice forms when waste leaks from a plane at a really high altitude. Since it’s so cold outside, the waste instantly freezes onto the aircraft.

SD: Okay, which is already kinda gross. 

LB: Yeah, and then sometimes, I’m gonna emphasize this, very, very rarely it can break off as the plane descends.

SD: Wait, meaning frozen airplane toilet waste can theoretically fall from the sky? That’s what blue ice is? Frozen human waste raining from above?

LB: Again, gross, but very, very rare, but yes, it can.

SD: Okay. Awful. New fear unlocked. Hate that. Really bad. 

LB: But the good news is that modern airplane toilets are much, much more sophisticated. Most commercial planes today use vacuum toilet systems, which are lighter, cleaner, and honestly kind of ingenious. 

SD: Okay, so let’s get into it. What’s actually happening when we flush while up in the sky?

LB: Okay, so the key thing to understand here is pressure. Airplanes fly at very high altitudes, usually between 31,000 and 42,000 feet up. There, the air pressure outside of the plane is way lower than inside of the cabin.

SD: Because the cabin is pressurized so all of us, you know, can breathe.

LB: Exactly. Breathing equals important. Right. 

SD: Right. 

LB: So engineers realized they could use that pressure difference to their advantage. So when you hit the flush button in an airplane bathroom, a valve opens between the toilet bowl and a waste tank. So because the air pressure is lower on the tank side, everything gets sucked downward incredibly fast.

SD: Which explains the very loud sucking sound.

LB: Exactly. And one reason engineers love this system is because it saves a ton of weight. Traditional toilets need a lot of water, but on airplanes water is heavy and heavier planes burn more fuel.

SD: So instead of gallons and gallons of water, plane toilets mostly use air pressure.

LB: Right, which is why the flush is so dramatic and loud and fast.

SD: Okay, and, you know, silly question, but can you actually get sucked into an airplane toilet?

LB: No. Despite what every child, and honestly some adults, might believe, the vacuum is nowhere near powerful enough to suck a human into the plumbing.

SD: Oh, thank goodness.

LB: Although aviation experts do say that you should close the lid before flushing because the suction can splash some gross things around more than you’d maybe like.

SD: Ooh, yikes. Noted forever.

LB: And that’s… Come on, that’s just good general toilet flushing behavior anywhere. You know, flush with that lid down.

SD: Yeah, I’m a strict lid down girl.

LB: Yep, same. Same. 

And, you know, airplane toilet systems are also designed with a lot of safety features. There are pressure valves, sealed tanks, all kinds of redundancies to make sure the cabin stays pressurized and everything works safely. 

SD: Right, ’cause you don’t wanna mess with the air pressure on a plane. 

LB: Absolutely not.

SD: Okay, so when you flush an airplane toilet, where does everything actually go?

LB: So all the waste gets sucked through pipes into holding tanks elsewhere in the aircraft, and contrary to a very persistent myth, planes do not just simply dump sewage while flying. The waste stays on board until the plane lands.

SD: Unless it’s blue ice.

LB: Unless it’s blue ice. But remember, very rare and not that often anymore. Planes are more sophisticated with their waste.

SD: I’m gonna be so aware of anything falling from the sky. 

LB: I know. 

SD: Watch out. We’re really helping, you know, just assuage a lot of childhood fears on this episode.

LB: You know, we aim to please here.

SD: And okay, so then after the plane lands comes the very misleadingly named honey truck.

LB: The honey truck. Uh, yeah, unfortunately the honey truck is a lot grosser than it sounds. After landing, airport ground crews bring over these specialized service trucks that connect to the aircraft and pump all of that waste out of the holding tanks.

SD: The fact that they’re called honey trucks feels like a crime. Like, who is naming things—blue ice, honey trucks—what the heck is going on?

LB: But, at major airports this happens constantly. Honey trucks are always roving around, pumping waste from planes into their holding tanks for disposal.

Kinda cute, sort of like a poop version of WALL-E happening all along the tarmac without us even knowing. 

SD: Is it cute? Do we think that’s cute? 

LB: I kind… You know what? I kind of do. It’s important. It’s important, so I think it’s cute.

SD: Fair. Yeah, I can’t imagine being the person assigned to the airplane poop truck.

LB: And apparently, as I said, those very important crews also deal with people flushing things they absolutely should not flush. 

SD: Oh, no. 

LB: According to one aircraft engineer, mechanics have found diapers, silverware, soda cans. 

SD: Soda cans? 

LB: Soda cans. And airplane toilet pipes are tiny, so clogs are a huge deal, not to mention they can cause major delays.

SD: Yeah, you do not wanna be the person responsible for grounding a plane because you flushed your ginger ale can.

LB: There are already enough reasons you could get delayed. Do not delay a flight because you decided to flush that can, exactly.

SD: People are crazy.

LB: A clog can even take a plane out of service for days while mechanics fix the plumbing.

SD: It’s honestly incredible that these toilets don’t have more issues. I mean, they’re really clever little pieces of technology. 

LB: And the engineering behind all of this is fascinating. These systems have to work safely, reliably, and hygienically while flying hundreds of people through the sky at 500 miles per hour. It’s amazing.

SD: Airplane toilets are one of those weird engineering marvels most of us never think about unless we’re hearing the very loud slurp sound.

LB: And yep, never gonna hear that sound the same way again. 

SD: Yeah, same. 

LB: Or think of blue ice and honey the same way again, if I’m being honest. And with that image in mind, we’ll be right back after this quick break.

SD: Welcome back. Since this episode is all about flying toilets, we have to talk about the fact that while we were making this episode, NASA sent four astronauts into space, headed to the dark side of the Moon for the first time, and then their toilet basically immediately broke.

LB: Immediately. I mean, that poor crew.

SD: I know. Yeah, Artemis II embarks on this historic mission around the Moon, and then just a few hours into the mission, NASA’s like, “Ooh, guys, quick update, the space toilet fan broke.”

LB: Guessing that’s a sentence that probably caused, you know, some stress at Mission Control.

SD: Yeah, just, you know, a little bit, especially because there was only one toilet on board for four astronauts on a 10-day mission.

LB: Yeah, that toilet had a lot riding on it.

SD: Yeah. And unlike airplane toilets, space toilets can’t really rely on gravity because, you know, space.

LB: Space. In microgravity, nothing naturally goes down, which means space toilets use fans to pull waste in the correct direction, and in this case, the fan stopped doing that, which would have meant urine floating around the cabin. Ew.

SD: Yeah. The good news is NASA fixed it pretty quickly. Astronaut Christina Koch worked with Mission Control to get the system back online within a few hours.

LB: And apparently the astronauts had backup emergency urine bags, just in case. 

SD: Which, fun fact, is basically how Apollo astronauts handled this back in the 1960s. No luxury Moon bathroom, just Neil Armstrong peeing and pooping in a bag.

LB: What an image.

SD: I mean …

LB: I know, right? Humanity can build giant rockets, fly hundreds of thousands of miles through space, and still end up improvising bathroom solutions.

SD: Honestly, it all feels very, very human.

LB: It does. And on that note…

SD: May all of your toilets, earthly or cosmic, function correctly.

LB: And that’s it for this episode, but don’t worry, we’ve got more episodes of Ask Us Anything live in our feed right now. Follow or subscribe to Ask Us Anything by Popular Science wherever you enjoy your podcasts, and if you like our show, leave us a rating and review.

SD: Our producer is Alan Haburchak, and this week’s episode was based on an article written for Popular Science by Tom Hawking, with a link in the show notes if you wanna learn more about airplane bathrooms.

LB: Thank you, team. Thank you, toilets, and thanks everyone for listening.

SD: And one more time, if you want something you’ve always wondered about explained on a future episode, go to popsci.com/ask and click the “Ask Us” link. Until next time, keep the questions coming and close those toilet lids.

LB: And watch out for the blue ice…

The post Why airplane toilets are tiny engineering marvels appeared first on Popular Science.

In 1634, English settlers established St. Mary’s City as the first permanent outpost in the colony of Maryland. Many of these early residents were ultimately buried in the town’s Chapel Field cemetery, including 49 colonists between the town’s founding and 1734. Recently, geneticists collaborating between Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institute, and genetics company 23AndMe analyzed these previously unidentified remains as part of a larger genealogical project tracing colonial migration across the United States.

Their findings illustrate how  such a small original population can have vast genetic influences over time. According to the team’s study published in the journal Current Biology, over 1.3 million living descendents can be traced directly to the handful of settlers buried at St. Mary’s City. What’s more, researchers believe that they potentially identified remains belonging to Maryland’s second governor.

The results come after decades of work that began with the excavation of a trio of extremely rare lead coffins from the cemetery’s Brick Chapel in 1986. These were later revealed to contain the bodies of Philip Calvert, his first wife Anne Wolseley Calvert, and an infant son from Calvert’s second wife, Jane Sewell. Calvert served as Maryland’s fifth governor, and came from one of the colony’s most prominent and influential founding families. Later DNA analysis tied the Calverts to three more bodies buried nearby.

“Although additional work is needed to determine exactly how these individuals were related to Philip, this finding is significant given that several members of the extended Calvert family, including Philip’s half-brothers Leonard (1610–1647) and George (1613–1634), died in St. Mary’s during this period,” explained Douglas Owsley, the Smithsonian’s biological anthropology curator.

Further genetic examinations identified relatives among five other families, including one that spanned three generations.

“Because mortality was so high in the early days of the colony, finding a multigenerational family was a surprise,” Owsley said. “It’s a discovery that simply wouldn’t have been possible without genetic study.”

From there, the team was able to move forward through the centuries by comparing the DNA information at St. Mary’s City with more than 11.5 million participants from the 23AndMe genetic database. The results show that there are now around 1.3 million living relatives of Maryland’s first European residents. They were also able to corroborate a major migration that occurred between 1780–1820, when many of the colony’s Catholics fled south to Kentucky due to economic stressors and anti-Catholic sentiments.

One of the study’s more groundbreaking facets involved researchers’ ability to assess unknown remains through a combination of genetic material and multiple family trees that include still-living individuals. First, they identified people in the database who shared the strongest genetic relationships to the three related cemetery bodies. They then examined overlaps in anthropological information and known lineages to narrow down the mystery remains. Based on their findings, the team now believes the remains belong to colonial Maryland’s second governor, Thomas Greene, his first wife, Anne, and their son, Leonard.

“This is the first time that ancient DNA has been used to help identify unknown individuals, without any prior knowledge of who they might have been. And it just so happens that one of those individuals turned out to be one of colonial Maryland’s most prominent figures,” said Éadaoin Harney, a senior scientist at the 23andMe Research Institute.

Study co-author and Harvard Medical School geneticist David Reich added that their latest work showcases how vital ancient DNA analysis can be to expanding our understanding of history. 

“While written records are extraordinarily rich, genetic data can still address gaps in that record and yield surprises,” said Reich.

The post 1.3 million people share DNA with Maryland’s earliest colonists appeared first on Popular Science.

Coral reefs may soon have new swimming visitors observing their life-rich aquatic metropolises. But  that visitor isn’t a fish—or even a human. It’s an autonomous, multi-sensor survey robot. Developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Reef Solutions Initiative, this new underwater surveyor uses a combination of hydrophones, high-resolution cameras, and an onboard computer to find signs of marine life hotspots. It then moves in closer for a better look, creating data-rich maps that would likely take many human divers multiple trips to produce.

The system, appropriately called the Curious Underwater Robot for Ecosystem Exploration (CUREE), does all this all by itself. Well, that’s the goal, at least. In actual testing around Joel’s Shoal in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the curious robot was able to home in on the distant crackle of shrimp, and even tailed a barracuda for more than 984 feet. That last barracuda tracking bit required some human intervention to get it back on course, but the majority of the barracuda tracking occurred totally autonomously. The findings were published this week in the journal Science Robotics. 

Keeping tabs on coral reef’s inhabitants 

Coral reefs are like a busy neighborhood or bustling bar in the ocean. Though they account for less than 0.1 percent of physical ocean space, roughly a quarter of all marine species spend some part of their lives there. But overfishing, human development, and warming ocean temperatures are putting those bustling ecosystems at risk. Because of this threat, it’s more important than ever for marine biologists to have an accurate and timely sense of what those environments look like.

Getting a clear sense of what species are where in a reef isn’t simple, though. At any given time, most of a reef is barren, with marine life typically clumping into hotspots distributed throughout the reef. Currently, researchers primarily track those hotspots with  trained human divers, though that approach isn’t perfect. Our pesky lungs and limited oxygen tanks mean human divers run  on a short clock. It’s also costly for research teams to properly train and equip a human diver, which limits the amount of time and frequency with which they can take a plunge.

CUREE (Curious Underwater Robot for Ecosystem Exploration), an autonomous underwater vehicle navigates using information from its cameras and outstretched hydrophones to gather audio and visual information about a coral reef environment. Image: Photo by Austin Greene, © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

An underwater robot could potentially solve both those problems, but it would need the right tools for the job. That’s where CUREE comes in. Engineers outfitted the robot with a variety of sensors that can detect both visual and auditory signals. The system can analyze far-off audio signals in real time to hear distant noises as subtle as fish calling out to each other. It can then triangulate that data using an onboard computer system that moves toward areas it suspects have a high chance of containing marine life. If it spots life once there, it can then use its cameras to provide more precise data about the species and their behavior.

“In some sense, they’re almost a perfect compliment for each other,” WHOI roboticist Seth McCammon said of the multiple sensor method in a statement. “Passive acoustics gives you a broad sense of the environment, while vision is short range, but is this really information-rich data stream.” 

Curious robot stalks a barracuda 

The team put CUREE to the test near Joel’s Shoal, a coral reef located on the coast of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In one test,  the robot could accurately find and count the number of fish in a region. It was able to detect signs of fish from up to 82 feet away and then use those clues to identify life hotspots.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientist and WARP Lab lead Yogesh Girdhar tests the CUREE (Curious Underwater Robot for Ecosystem Exploration) autonomous underwater vehicle in the U.S. Virgin Islands in November 2021. Members of the WARP Lab designed CUREE to navigate and sense complex coral reef environments autonomously to identify biodiversity hotspots. Image: Photo by Dan Mele © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

However, the  most interesting result was CUREE’s successful barracuda tracking. Once locked on to its target, CUREE followed the apex predator for a total of nine minutes and 55 seconds, as the fish weaved its way around, looking for lunch. The tracking video in the study shows the barracuda traveling first to a hotspot and then backtracking to another spot where it had previously startled a large reef snapper. And while a human diver had to initiate the robot’s lock on the barracuda,and had to re-lock on the target several times, CUREE did most of the work on its own. The team says eight minutes and 59 seconds of the tracking was done with full autonomy.

Though this isn’t the first underwater robot, its use of multiple sensor types makes it unique because it’s eventually a jack of all trades. Researchers can, in theory at least, drop the robot in a broad area of water and let it get to work surveying. 

The post It’s a barracuda! It’s a shrimp! It’s a robot helping coral reefs. appeared first on Popular Science.

Only around 600 of the nearly 4,000 known snake species are venomous. The recently discovered Guangxi reed snake (Calamaria incredibilis) in China is not one of those species, but its alternative defense mechanism is strange enough to keep most predators at bay. According to a study recently published in the journal Zoosystematics and Evolution by biologists at the Natural History Museum of Guangxi, C. incredibilis wields its wide, stubby tail like a second head to scare away potential threats.

Researchers first spotted the Guangxi reed snake during a biodiversity study in China’s Huaping National Nature Reserve near the nation’s southern border with Vietnam. The mostly nocturnal, non-venomous serpent grows to about eight-inches-long, and is identifiable by its small brown scales and seven darker stripes. Largely docile, it prefers to hide away between rocks and underneath leaves, and prefers a diet of insect larvae and earthworms.

Although largely timid, the Guangxi reed snake has evolved a strategy to bluff its way out of dangerous situations. Whenever it feels threatened, the reptile raises its tail off the ground and begins waving it like an additional head. The tail even features similar markings to those seen on the snake’s head, which adds to the overall realism. 

As People recently noted, the reed snake is far from the first new snake species discovered in 2026. Earlier this year, researchers identified both a vibrantly turquoise pit viper and a flying snake in a Cambodian cave alongside previously unknown geckos, millipedes, and microsnails.

The study’s authors explained the Guangxi reed snake “highlights the underestimated diversity” in the reptile’s larger family, as well as underscores the region’s role as an “ important hotspot” of unique animals.

The post ‘Two-headed snake’ confuses predators appeared first on Popular Science.

Death Valley National Park’s ephemeral spring superblooms get most of the attention, but another national park in California has its own impressive floral show this year. Redwood National Park in northern California is awash in a purple riverbank lupine (Lupinus rivularis) superbloom. It was first spotted earlier in May and is expected to last through the end of the month. 

The park six hours north of San Francisco is home to over 30 species of plants, including to the state’s famous redwood trees—the tallest trees in the world. The landscape features open prairies, oak woodlands, wild rivers, and untamed coastline. 

Purple riverbank lupines help attract important pollinators. Image: NPS photos / O. Seweryn.

This year’s purple riverbank lupines are blooming at the Lyons Ranch Trailhead and covered the Bald Hills with purple flowers. Riverbank lupine is a fast-growing and multi-stemmed member of the pea family (Fabaceae) that can grow up to five-feet tall. Its seeds provide food for birds, while its dense patches give rabbits, birds, and other small animals cover. Bees are also attracted to its pollen and nectar, and the plants possibly host two species of butterflies—the orange sulphur (Colias eurytheme) and the western tailed blue (Cupido amyntula).

This year’s lupine super bloom is more than just pretty purple flowers coloring the landscape. Lupine also demonstrates how prescribed burns play an important supporting role in prairie ecosystems.

“The prairies of the Bald Hills have been managed using fire since time immemorial, revealing a fascinating trend in the relationship between fire and flowers,” park rangers wrote in a Facebook post. 

These flowers consistently bloom “in abundance” two years after a prescribed fire. The fire likely helps the hard-coated seeds germinate, leading to a super bloom. 

Purple riverbank lupine superblooms typically occur two years after a prescribed burn. Image: NPS photos / O. Seweryn.

According to SF Gate, a prescribed fire was set two years ago to burn off flammable materials and help prevent wildfires. 

“We are returning fire to this landscape, and we’re realizing that one year after a fire, we end up with a lot of vegetative lupines,” an unnamed botanist told SF Gate. “But two years post-burn, just like the burn that they did in this drainage two years ago, we end up with a lupine superbloom.”

When visiting any national park or superbloom, it is critical to “take only photographs, leave only footprints.” Visitors should stick to designated trails to keep the delicate flowers safe for pollinators and try to disturb the plants and wildlife as little as possible. While lupines are beautiful, these wildflowers are not there for picking. Viral social media posts of previous superblooms in Death Valley and other parks have led to serious damage to the flowers that influencers claim to love.

Photography news site Fstoppers offers several tips on how to photograph superblooms without disrupting them, including using telephoto lenses and shooting from low angles. 

The post Superbloom turns Redwood National Park’s hills purple appeared first on Popular Science.

Every week, without fail, the three-toed sloth takes a breathtaking, almost suicidal risk—all for the sake of a bowel movement. Or, to put it in terms familiar to anyone who has sat through a long Zoom meeting, a “bio-break.”

With fast-moving predators lying in wait, being on or near the ground is the number one cause of mortality in sloths. And because sloths have among the slowest metabolisms ever recorded in animals, the climb down the tree and back up represents one of the biggest energy expenditures of their entire week.

“It’s like if I had to go on a 5K run down the middle of an interstate, just to use the bathroom,” University of Wisconsin-Madison wildlife ecologist Dr. Jonathan Pauli tells Popular Science. “It’s really costly, and it’s really risky.”

Which begs the question: Why do three-toed sloths take such risks for a poo? Why not just do the sensible thing and poop from the trees?

The answer involves mutualism—a relationship where all parties benefit—between sloths, moths, and that precious pile of dung sloths risk their lives to leave behind. 

Sloths are home to flightless moths

The key to this whole system turns out to be a much smaller and less glamorous creature: sloth moths (Cryptoses choloepi). These moths spend their entire adult lives in sloth fur—yes, entire. The moment a moth finds and colonizes its slow-moving host, it loses the ability to fly. Permanently.

That’s OK, because sloth moths don’t need to fly once they find their sloth homes. Instead, the moths hitch a ride with the sloth to the base of the tree for its weekly poop session. 

Some sloths do a little wiggle or dance when they’re trying to poop. Video: Have you ever seen a Sloth POOP Dance?, The Sloth Conservation Foundation

After the sloth has deposited its dung on the forest floor, pregnant female moths jump off the sloth into the dung pile (because they can’t fly, they literally hop), lay their eggs, and that’s pretty much the end of the moth. 

Meanwhile, a new generation of sloth moths is dreaming big dreams. After hatching within the dung, the newborn larvae quickly commence chowing down on the dung that spawned them. 

“Larvae will feed off the sloth dung. They actually chew a chamber into the sloth dung,” Pauli says. “The larvae then pupate and emerge as moths.”

And then, for one fleeting moment, sloth moths can fly. The newly emerged moths drift up into the canopy of the tree, find and inhabit a sloth host, and the cycle begins again. The moths are permanently grounded. Until, one day, their offspring will make that brief, one-way flight all over again. 

Algae creates a sloth’s green camo coat

Enter the third player in this strange triumvirate: algae.

Because the moths are flightless, many of them live out their entire lives in the sloth’s fur and die there. As they decompose, they release nitrogen and phosphorus directly into the sloth’s coat. 

Pauli describes the sloth’s peculiar water-absorbing hair as “almost like a hydroponic growth area” for algae. 

More moths means more fertilizer, and more fertilizer means more algae, specifically Trichophilus, or “hair-loving algae,” a species found nowhere on earth except sloth fur. Pauli likens the effect to a ghillie suit (the head-to-toe camouflage gear snipers wear to vanish into foliage). The algae turns the sloth’s fur green enough to disappear into the forest canopy.

The algae living on sloths gives their fur a green hue, helping the slow-moving animals blend into the forest canopy. Image: Getty Images / zen rial

But that algae also serves another purpose beyond being cool living camo. It’s also a potential food source for these slow-moving mammals.

Do sloths farm algae on their bodies? Maybe.

To find out whether sloths were actually eating this nutrient-rich algae, Pauli and his colleagues did something that sounds alarming but is apparently just a normal Tuesday in wildlife ecology: They pumped the stomachs of roughly a dozen three-toed sloths. 

What they found wasn’t all that surprising: lots of Cecropia leaves, a staple of sloths’ diet. But they also found Trichophilus algae. And since Trichophilus exists nowhere on earth except sloth fur, there was only one way it could have gotten there: The sloth ate its fur. Testing the algae, Pauli and his team found it to be digestible and lipid-rich—a potentially valuable supplement to a diet of nutritionally poor leaves.

What the team of researchers don’t know is whether it matters. Is the sloth cultivating, munching on, and extracting nutrition from its own self-grown snack?  

“It could be totally trivial and unimportant,” Pauli says. “It could be that they incidentally get a little bit in their stomach, it’s all by accident. It would be like the equivalent of me eating a Snickers bar too quickly and accidentally eating part of the wrapper.”

Or it could be that sloths are deliberately consuming it, extracting real nutrition from the algae growing on their own bodies. Whatever is driving it, Pauli is fairly certain of one thing: The sloth isn’t doing it on purpose.

“It’s not conscious—I don’t think the sloth is ever thinking ‘Time to re-up my algae.’ I think it’s more that individuals that have these behaviors, that fortify these relationships with these other species, see fitness benefits. That’s why we see these behaviors persist.”

In other words, this whole system—from flightless sloth moths to algae to sloth diets—may be helping sloths survive. 

Which brings us back to that suicidal weekly commute. It turns out the sloth’s trip to the forest floor may be doing a lot more than answering nature’s call. In fact, it may be the key to maintaining the entire system. No ground trip, no moth-to-dung delivery. No moth delivery, no fertilizer. No fertilizer, no algae. And no algae means no camouflage, and possibly no nutritional supplement for an animal that can barely afford to lose either. Not bad for a bathroom break. 

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

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