Few creatures on Earth inspire wonder the way a Komodo dragon does. The largest lizards in the world, they can be ten feet long, and their fierce appearance and hunting skills are awe-inspiring, to say the least. They look a bit like a dragon or even a mini-dinosaur, but their looks are not the strangest thing […] More
The Ili pika might be the cutest animal in the world. The teensy mammal, which looks something like a cross between a hamster, a bunny and a teddy bear, was first discovered in China’s Tianshan Mountains in the early 1980s. A scientist named Li Weidong found the first Ili pika in 1983 while studying infectious diseases […] More
Japanese macaque mother and baby interact at the Jigokudani Monkey Park in Yamanouchi, Shimotakai District, Nagano. More
A giant worm-like sea creature the size of a baseball bat was recently spotted by scientists for the first time, and you may wish you’d never seen it. Though their long, tusk-like shells had been first seen more than two centuries ago, scientists didn’t know what lived inside of them — until now. It turns […] More
Go find your own food! This jackal had been preparing to tuck into a fresh kill when another fierce predator showed up: a hungry tawny eagle hell-bent on stealing its lunch. German photographer Ingo Gerlach managed to capture the standoff in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve, as the eagle repeatedly dive-bombed the jackal, but always […] More
Twitter A mysterious hairy-looking sea creature washed ashore on an island in the Philippines, puzzling locals and the internet at large. The massive, unidentified blob measured about 20 feet in length and weighed more than 4000 pounds, according to National Geographic. But while some speculated that the strange creature might be a newly discovered species, […] More
Armed with powerful lasers, scientists recently uncovered new details about bird-like dinosaurs that roamed the earth 160 million years ago. A study published in Nature Communications outlines how the researchers used a new laser technique to examine fossils of small, feathered dinosaurs called Anchiornis, uncovering details such as soft tissues and foot scales similar to those […] More
You’ve probably heard of albino animals, but what about their opposite? Melanistic animals have an excess of a pigment called melanin that makes their skin, hair or fur very dark, or in some cases, completely black. Black King Penguin Penguins are easily identifiable by their trademark tuxedo coloring, but in extremely rare cases, melanism can make […] More
When you think migration, you may picture birds or whales. The largest migration on earth, though, includes much smaller creatures — a lot of them. A study published in the journal Science covers the seasonal migration of insects, which is almost eight times larger than the annual migration of birds that migrate from Britain to […] More
For millennia, humans have been comparing themselves to wolves. It’s not a big stretch; the way wolves behave in their packs isn’t too different from the way human social structures work in tribes and families. But there’s one comparison we’ve been getting wrong. The “alpha-male” stereotype conjures up aggression and strong, loud leadership. It’s someone […] More
Image: Wikimedia Commons Even when they find themselves in unfamiliar waters, sea turtles have a remarkable ability to find their way home. Now, scientists have a pretty amazing theory about their navigational skills; They may be using the sun to set their very accurate internal compasses. Scientists at James Cook University in Australia tagged 22 […] More
