How a 3-Ton Mess of Dead Pigs Transformed This Landscape

The unusual ecological experiment took place in Mississippi, and the scientists were awed by the results—especially the rivers of maggots. By Christie Wilcox.

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Raccoons solve an ancient puzzle, but do they really understand it?

Scientists have been using an ancient Greek fable written by Aesop as inspiration to test whether birds and small children understand cause and effect relationships.

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Government makes hurting your pets punishable by up to five years in jail

People who abuse animals will now face up to five years in prison under a tough new crackdown. Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the increase in the present six-month sentence was needed to combat cruelty. The move comes after a series of cases in which courts said they would have liked to impose tougher sentences if they had the option.

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Trump pouring gasoline on climate change fire

It’s always risky to predict historical judgments. Truman fares better than people at the time might have predicted. But most predicted right on Washington and Lincoln. And Buchanan. The Trump presidency has only had seven months. We already know that it will be judged as one of the worst – we just don’t know how much worse it will get. Perhaps Trump will remove himself, or be removed by a brave Republican Congress. If that would happen soon, the damage could be mitigated.

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Monster-sized goldfish are taking over an Alberta city that now has to cull them by the thousands

Workers have dipped nets and a naturally occurring chemical into a storm water retention pond near Edmonton in a bid to kill thousands of unwanted goldfish that have made the water body home. Officials say the aquatic invaders are the result of goldfish reproducing after people released their unwanted pets into the wild or flushed them down the toilet.

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Alarm as study reveals world’s tropical forests are huge carbon emission source

The world’s tropical forests are so degraded they have become a source rather than a sink of carbon emissions, according to a new study that highlights the urgent need to protect and restore the Amazon and similar regions. Researchers found that forest areas in South America, Africa and Asia – which have until recently played a key role in absorbing greenhouse gases – are now releasing 425 teragrams of carbon annually, which is more than all the traffic in the United States.

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2,000-year-old toys discovered inside children's tombs in Turkey's Çanakkale

2,000-year-old ancient toys from the Hellenistic Period have been discovered inside tombs belonging to children in the ancient seaport city of Parion

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E.P.A. Threatens to Stop Funding Justice Dept. Environmental Work

Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator who has aggressively pushed to dismantle regulations and downsize the organization, is threatening to reach outside his agency and undermine the Justice Department’s work enforcing antipollution laws, documents and interviews show.

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'The last place on Earth': how Sumatra's rainforest is being cleared for palm oil

A palm oil company is continuing to clear forest in a fast-diminishing elephant habitat in Indonesia’s Leuser ecosystem despite being the subject of two reports into illegal deforestation, according to a prominent environmental organisation.

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Indonesian official: More than 120,000 flee Bali volcano

More than 130,000 people have fled the region around the Mount Agung volcano on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali, fearing it will soon erupt, an official said Thursday. The disaster mitigation agency's command post in Bali said the number of evacuees has swelled to about 134,200. The figure is more than double the estimated population within an immediate danger zone but people further away are leaving too.

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Substituting Beans for Beef Would Help the U.S. Meet Climate Goals

Ecoanxiety is an emerging condition. Named in 2011, the American Psychological Association recently described it as the dread and helplessness that come with “watching the slow and seemingly irrevocable impacts of climate change unfold, and worrying about the future for oneself, children, and later generations.” It’s not a formal diagnosis. Anxiety is traditionally defined by an outsized stress response to a given stimulus. In this case, the stimulus is real, as are the deleterious effects of stress on the body.

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Opinion: Why we need an international agreement on marine plastic pollution

Plastic pollution is strewn across beaches and in oceans, bays, and estuaries. Tiny particles of plastic debris (often called microplastics) are so pervasive in aquatic ecosystems that we find them in seafood (1) and table salt (2). Marine organisms ingest or are entangled by plastic, sometimes with fatal consequences. Research suggests plastic pollution may impact biodiversity, ecosystem services, food security, and human health. In short, plastic pollution is a global threat.

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Why octopuses are building small “cities” off the coast of Australia

Divers found octopuses building structures out of shells, socializing with neighbors.

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Poodle steals a scooter from a toddler

A toddler in China was trying to use an electric scooter when a small dog ran up, jumped on the toy and slowly rode away. Luckily, the thief was caught and the scooter returned.

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Why is Africa building a Great Green Wall?

Eleven countries are planting a wall of trees from east to west across Africa, just under the southern edge of the Sahara desert. The goal is to fight the effects of climate change by reversing desertification.

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Earth Had Life From Its Infancy

Canadian rocks that are almost 4 billion years old contain clues that organisms were already around on the young planet.

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Analysis | September is the most energetic month for hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic

The month passes September 2004 as the most active for hurricanes.

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Scientists spent a month terrifying guppies to prove that fish have personalities

Five minutes in the life of a guppy in the terrible spring of 2015: You’re swimming around with your friends in a tank. You’ve been here for days. Food falls from the sky. Everything is fine. Then suddenly, you’re netted up and dropped into an alien world, all alone, just you and the glass. You panic at first, but in time your courage returns and you investigate. Glass wall; glass wall; glass wall; glass wall. A scrap of plastic on the aquarium floor provides the only scant shelter. Hmm …

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Continued denial leaves Florida in climate change crosshairs

Property owners in some Florida counties were in a lather over restrictions on new coastal construction after Hurricane Eloise took dead aim at the Panhandle in 1975, leaving rubble where older structures had stood. "The Lord showed them the setback line," said the state's natural resources director, Harmon Shields. Once again, Floridians — and the nation — are getting a message. Whether one thinks it's divine or natural doesn't matter.

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Fish have complex personalities, study suggests

Fish appear to be individuals with complex personalities, according to new research. Researchers tested the idea that Trinidadian guppies all had a fairly standard response to potential dangers. The theory went that they had a “simple spectrum” of reactions to danger – some things were more frightening than others but the fish basically all responded in the same way.

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The Streets Are ‘Not Safe’—San Juan Is Forgotten By the U.S.

On this American island still suffering terribly from mighty Hurricane Maria’s devastating impact, the feeling of despair and anxiety is now mixed with fear at night, when looters rule the streets. Hector Velez owns one of the seven gas station near San German, a municipality on the southwest part of the island. Half of the rooftop of his gas station was stripped away by Hurricane Maria but the storm didn’t cause most of damage he now has to deal with.

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Quitting coal: a health benefit equivalent to quitting tobacco, alcohol and fast-food

Imagine, for a moment, that climate change was not synonymous with doomsday scenarios, but rather presented an opportunity to radically transform society for the better. This is not an attempt to downplay the seriousness of the risks facing our climate. Rather, it is about reframing the choice we face, away from the prospect of bleak minimalism often associated with a low-carbon future.

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“Hysteria is starting to spread”: Puerto Rico is devastated in the wake of Hurricane Maria

No power, little access to water, dwindling food: the situation in Puerto Rico right now.

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Birds Beware: The Praying Mantis Wants Your Brain

Tom Vaughan, a photographer then living in Colorado’s Mancos Valley, kept a hummingbird feeder outside his house. One morning, he stepped through the portico door and noticed a black-chinned hummingbird dangling from the side of the red plastic feeder like a stray Christmas ornament.

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Ancient Papyrus Reveals How The Great Pyramid Of Giza Was Built

In a new documentary, aired by Channel 4 on British television last week, archaeologists presented new evidence describing how the Great Pyramid was constructed. The new insight comes from papyrus discovered in the ancient port of Wadi al-Jarf, on the Red Sea. Among the documents discovered there over the last six years, a joint French-Egyptian team unearthed the diary of Merer, an official involved in the construction of the Great Pyramid.

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Australia failing to meet Paris targets and more renewables needed, report says

With the Coalition still hamstrung by internal divide over a clean energy target, a new report shows Australia is in danger of not meeting its Paris agreement commitments unless it acts soon. A report by the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program examined the government’s own modelling of the nation’s greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and found Australia could either transition to a 66-75% renewable energy target by 2030 to meet its commitments, or push the responsibility on to other sectors, such as agriculture or manufacturing.

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Thousands flee 'imminent' Bali volcano eruption

Thousands of people are fleeing Bali's Mount Agung precinct in eastern Indonesia, with the volcano threatening to erupt at any moment. The warning was raised to the maximum level four on Friday night, which means a hazardous eruption is imminent for the first time in 54 years. This could happen within 24 hours.

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Court rules that imported solar panels are bad for US manufacturing

This paves the way for a tariff on Chinese solar panels

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The world's only dog collar museum

Kent’s Dog Collar Museum is a tiny – but telling – look at how people have treated, and sometimes spoiled, their pets over the centuries.

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The Etruscans Were Expert Beekeepers, Ancient Honeycombs Suggest

The charred remains of 2,500-year-old honeycombs, as well as other beekeeping artifacts, have been discovered in an Etruscan workshop in northern Italy.

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The ancient abandoned city Teotihuacan was designed in a remarkably modern way

Entire city was planned on a carefully thought-through grid system.

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100-Year-Old Frost Maps Show How Climate Change Has Shifted the Growing Season in the United States

Published in a 1936 Atlas of American Agriculture, put together by the United States Department of Agriculture, these 1916 maps of the average dates of ...

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Modern Humans and Neanderthals May Be More Similar Than We Imagined

A remarkably preserved 49,000-year-old skeleton shows that Neanderthal kids may have grown slowly, like us

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Assumed safety of pesticide use is false, says top government scientist

The assumption by regulators around the world that it is safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes is false, according to a chief scientific adviser to the UK government. The lack of any limit on the total amount of pesticides used and the virtual absence of monitoring of their effects in the environment means it can take years for the impacts to become apparent, say Prof Ian Boyd and his colleague Alice Milner in a new article.

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Dogs Recognize Themselves in Test Based on Smell, Not Sight

Canines don’t seem to perceive their reflections in mirrors. But they do better with a ‘smell mirror.’

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Evacuation as Puerto Rico dam bursts

A failing dam is causing "extremely dangerous" flooding on a Puerto Rico river in the wake of Hurricane Maria, authorities say. The National Weather Service (NWS) said the "imminent failure" of the Guajataca Dam is a "life-threatening situation". More than 70,000 people live in the nearby areas of Isabela and Quebradillas.

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Strong 6.2-magnitude earthquake hits Mexico City

A powerful 6.2-magnitude earthquake has hit Mexico City, a Mexican monitoring body has said, and there are reports from witnesses of buildings shaking. It wasn't immediately clear if the trembler, which was centred in the southern state of Oaxaca, had caused any damages or injury. "I was frightened because I thought, not again!" Alejandra Castellanos, who was on the second floor in a central neighbourhood of the city, told the Associated Press. Ms Castellanos ran down the stairs and to the street with her husband as soon as she felt hte earthquake.

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Indonesia’s Owl Trade Jumps 10,000% Thanks To Harry Potter

You remember Hedwig from Harry Potter, right? – Harry Potter’s mail-fetching Owl companion. Well, a tragic downside to JK Rowling’s wizard phenomenon is the increase in wild-caught birds being used as pets – particularly Owls like Hedwig.

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Explainer: what are mitochondria and how did we come to have them?

To explain why we have a mitochondria, we have to go back about two billion years to a time when none of the complexity of life as we see it today existed.

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Hedge fund asks climate deniers to put their money where their mouth is

In an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson challenged former GM executive — and ardent climate denier — Bill Lutz to make a bet. “You take all the scientists who author these papers, get them to pool their money and invest in companies that would benefit from global warming,” Tyson said. “And take all the people who are in denial of global warming, take all their money and invest in companies that would presume there is no global warming. And I would predict [the climate deniers] will all go broke in the next 50 years.”

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Why Is Autumn the Only Season With Two Names? Did Other Seasons Ever Have Two Names?

Before it was autumn and fall, it was harvest. While the modern names of winter and summer have been around for more than 1,000 years, the names of fall and spring are more recent—and less constant.

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7 countries are banning fossil fuel-based cars

Within the last 10 months, a number of countries announced huge plans to tackle emissions. Apart from generating energy from renewable and clean sources, they are targeting fossil fuel-based cars with the hope of eradicating them in the near future.

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Why Poison Frogs Don’t Poison Themselves

The answer provide clues for developing better drugs to fight pain and addiction

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Isle of Dogs - Official Trailer

ISLE OF DOGS tells the story of ATARI KOBAYASHI, 12-year-old ward to corrupt Mayor Kobayashi. When, by Executive Decree, all the canine pets of Megasaki City are exiled to a vast garbage-dump called Trash Island, Atari sets off alone in a miniature Junior-Turbo Prop and flies across the river in search of his bodyguard-dog, Spots. There, with the assistance of a pack of newly-found mongrel friends, he begins an epic journey that will decide the fate and future of the entire Prefecture.

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Experts find 60 preserved ancient shipwrecks at the bottom of the Black Sea

Dozens of perfectly preserved ancient shipwrecks have been found at the bottom of the Black Sea. A total of 60 wrecks were discovered dating back as far as 2,500 years, including galleys from the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires.

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Evolution Isn’t Always Slow. Sometimes It Happens Overnight

There are still people out there who don't believe in evolution, and frankly, we don't want to start that argument. Instead, we'd prefer to just point to those moments when natural selection made itself suddenly, dramatically known.

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To save the planet, scientists figured out how to fix cow farts

The secret to climate-friendly cattle.

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Scientists just discovered the first brainless animal that sleeps

The research could reveal where sleep came from and why we must spend so much time doing it.

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San Francisco, Oakland sue major oil companies over rising seas

The cities of San Francisco and Oakland are suing some of the world’s largest oil companies over climate change, joining an emerging legal effort to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the damages wrought by rising seas. The suits, filed separately in Superior Court in San Francisco and Alameda County and announced Wednesday, claim that a slate of oil, gas and coal producers not only caused the heat-trapping gases that drove sea level rise but knowingly did so, a challenge akin to litigation against big tobacco companies in the 1990s.

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Summer in the Heartsick Mountains

On a nearly moonless night in late May, as I stumbled down a wide, smooth path near a large campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, it suddenly occurred to me that I can’t see in the dark anymore... By Ellie Shechet.

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