https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. In recent years, numerous attempts have been made to use artificial intelligence to decipher the communication of bats, whales, birds and other animals. However, a new study led by a team of researchers from Tel Aviv University points to a fundamental problem with this approach: AI models focus on the physical properties of a sound, but this does not mean they understand the meaning attributed to it by the animal receiving it. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ai-struggles-decipher-animal-language.html Ecology Wed, 16 Sep 2026 17:40:05 EDT news708786001 Some of the most intriguing scientific breakthroughs happen when researchers aren't explicitly looking for them. Take, for example, the pygmy raccoon (Procyon pygmaeus), a critically endangered species that lives only on Cozumel Island, Mexico. Scientists were observing them for a study on the impact of tourism on their populations when they made an accidental discovery. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-critically-endangered-pygmy-raccoons-paper.html Plants & Animals Fri, 04 Sep 2026 10:30:02 EDT news707734698 About 200 million years ago, furry, little egg-laying creatures evolved the ability to feed their offspring with a secretion from special glands: milk. Their evolutionary journey continued, and by about 160 million years ago, the first mammals with a real placenta had come into being. Instead of laying eggs, they gave birth to live young that had been connected directly to their mother via a placenta during pregnancy, allowing the exchange of oxygen, nutrients and waste products. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-early-mammals-werent-loners-pairs.html Evolution Thu, 03 Sep 2026 16:00:02 EDT news707660041 The brain cells you see in the above image help an African fish decode electric signals to spot prey, scan its murky surroundings and communicate with its fellows. By rigorously mapping how these cells in the electrosensory lobe are wired together, scientists at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute and their colleagues reveal how this brain area continually learns to filter out interference that would otherwise blind the fish's electric sense. They report their findings in Nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-electric-fish-brain-cells.html Plants & Animals Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:00:14 EDT news707400715 The Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) tropical forests stretch across an extraordinary landscape of rivers, wetlands, savannas and towering trees. But in a forest this vast, biodiversity doesn't exist on a single plane. It climbs into the canopy. It moves between branches and vines, disappears into the understory and travels across the forest floor. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-forest-floor-treetops-cameras-reveal.html Plants & Animals Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:20:03 EDT news707481541 The sights and sounds of the Jurassic era are long gone, and we will never know for sure what that ancient world looked and sounded like. Fossils can offer clues, and reconstructions can give us a sense of the noises some animals might have made. Now scientists have turned their attention to insects and reconstructed the calls of Jurassic relatives of modern-day crickets and katydids (grasshopper-like insects). https://phys.org/news/2026-08-reconstructed-jurassic-insect-evoke-million.html Evolution Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:50:01 EDT news706966915 Bats are anomalies in the mammalian world—they fly, have long lifespans and rarely get cancer. Scientists now suspect the bat immune system enables them to live longer without disease, according to a new study published today in Nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-dna-virus-defense-longevity-cancer.html Evolution Wed, 26 Aug 2026 11:00:08 EDT news706874342 From the daily weather forecast to a baseball player's batting average to an individual's risk of developing lung cancer, understanding statistics can help people in the United States navigate their lives, according to Mark Ramos, assistant research professor of health policy and administration at Penn State. However, more than half of adults in the U.S. reported knowing little or nothing about basic statistical concepts, according to a recent study led by Ramos. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-adults-lack-basic-statistical.html Mathematics Fri, 21 Aug 2026 11:20:03 EDT news706525741 An African bat whose presence in Sicily had remained an unresolved zoological mystery for almost two centuries has now been documented on Pantelleria Island. A study published in Global Ecology and Conservation reports the first solid evidence of the Egyptian slit-faced bat (Nycteris thebaica) in Europe, adding not only a new bat species but also the first representative of the family Nycteridae to the European fauna. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-african-overlooked-centuries-europe.html Plants & Animals Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:10:01 EDT news706282441 It is a mystery that has puzzled scientists for years. How can the world's only winged mammals carry viruses that cause severe disease while rarely becoming seriously ill themselves? https://phys.org/news/2026-07-antibody-gene-vesper-unusual-viral.html Plants & Animals Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:00:04 EDT news704473621 Imagine searching for a gemstone in a dark cave: You use a flashlight, looking for a rainbow-colored glint in the darkness. Now, imagine 10 other people in the cave with you, using different-colored flashlights at the same time. Suddenly, you can no longer tell which light is coming from your gemstone, which light is from another flashlight or which light is coming from a reflection off another unknown object. That is what echolocation with multiple, overlapping frequencies would be like. But now, imagine if every person in the cave were using a flashlight of the same color. The glint from the gemstone would be much easier to see. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-noise-horseshoe-echolocation-behavior-colonies.html Plants & Animals Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:20:04 EDT news704117701 Scientists have known for years that birds like geese and ibises gain an aerodynamic advantage from flying in a "V" formation. Now, researchers from Brown University have provided new insights into the nature of that advantage. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-birds-flying-formation-energy-flatter.html Plants & Animals Tue, 21 Jul 2026 21:00:05 EDT news703868585 For nearly a century, astronomers have known that the universe is expanding. In the late 1990s, two independent teams, the Supernova Cosmology Project, led by Saul Perlmutter, and the High-Z Supernova Search Team, led by Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, discovered something strange: The expansion is speeding up. The finding earned them the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. The leading explanation for this acceleration is "dark energy," a mysterious force usually modeled as a constant called Lambda, pushing space apart. Combined with cold dark matter, this gives us the LCDM model, the standard picture of the cosmos for the past 25 years. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-dark-energy-flips-hubble-tension.html General Physics Fri, 10 Jul 2026 17:40:01 EDT news702895965 Hummingbirds make bromeliad plants split into new species twice as fast as other pollinators do, scientists at the University of Reading have found. The research team gathered records of which animals pollinate 403 types of bromeliad, which include pineapples and more than 3,700 species, and found three in four of these plants are visited by hummingbirds. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-hummingbirds-pineapple-family-evolution.html Plants & Animals Mon, 06 Jul 2026 19:00:03 EDT news702539370 Biologists have long puzzled over how organs develop into their final shapes, and the nearly transparent bodies of young sea stars may offer a unique window into the organ development process. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-sea-stars-rare-view-embryonic.html Evolution Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:20:08 EDT news702563735 Bugs run rampant in the summer, and if you have ever suffered a mosquito bite and regretted not putting on bug spray, you should know about nature's insect repellent: the Indiana bat. Federally endangered since 1967, the Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) helps with pest control and supports tree growth in forests, but its habitat has been shrinking. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-tree-size-age-habitat-recovery.html Plants & Animals Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:20:09 EDT news702137060 Natural historians have many observational techniques in their toolkit for learning about the natural world: tagging animals with tracking devices, recording sounds, analyzing droppings or simply watching and counting. As technology has advanced, these methods have grown far more precise and wide-reaching, letting researchers capture details that were once impossible to detect. Even today, however, these cutting-edge tools aren't the only route to discovery. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-year-reveals-secret-diet.html Plants & Animals Wed, 01 Jul 2026 10:00:04 EDT news702116718 In ecology, the principle holds that the more diverse and heterogeneous a habitat is, the more different species it supports. To promote species diversity in forests, clearings are therefore created for nature conservation purposes, or deadwood is deliberately left in place. For many species, such as birds, bats and beetles, this structural diversity is indeed beneficial. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-spiders-benefit-seemingly-monotonous-forests.html Plants & Animals Mon, 29 Jun 2026 14:00:06 EDT news701953868 A unique cache of plant fossils from volcanic deposits in New Mexico contradicts the common narrative that flowering plants were minor players in Earth's forests until dinosaurs disappeared 66 million years ago. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-fossils-upend-catastrophist-narrative-flourished.html Evolution Thu, 25 Jun 2026 14:00:11 EDT news701590742 Pterosaurs, the first vertebrates to fly, would have had more diverse wing shapes than current scientific reconstructions suggest, according to new University of Bristol-led research. The study is published in the journal Paleobiology. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-pterosaur-wing-modern-reconstructions-major.html Paleontology & Fossils Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:30:05 EDT news701449741 At first glance, bat sea stars, the nubbly, orange, many-footed creatures often found on the seafloor, seem about as far from humans as one can get. Appearances can be deceiving, however. Scientists have found evidence showing human and sea star ovaries share similar genetics, cell types and signaling processes, despite their ancient evolutionary split. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ovary-blueprint-ancient-sea-stars.html Evolution Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:40:07 EDT news701438461 Many bat species emit echolocation calls and use the returning echoes to find their way, detect the presence of fluttering insects, and locate and catch them. A new study investigated this behavior in greater horseshoe bats foraging in the wild. An international team, including researchers from the University of Tübingen, "flew" with bats via GPS recording tags with microphones. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-horseshoe-echolocation-background-echoes-fluttering.html Plants & Animals Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:20:07 EDT news701437262 Even in darkness, many animals retain a sense of orientation because their nervous system sustains a memory of heading encoded by the activity of head-direction (HD) cells. Animals continuously update this internal compass by temporally integrating angular head velocity relayed by vestibular, optic flow and motor efference signals. External cues, such as visual landmarks, are used to counteract cumulative integration errors. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-zebrafish-fruit-flies-internal-compass.html Evolution Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:40:21 EDT news701436841 Like humans, wildlife is increasingly vulnerable as climate change fuels longer and more intense heat waves, disrupting feeding and breeding and, in extreme cases, proving fatal. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-birds-fish-extreme-wildlife.html Environment Fri, 19 Jun 2026 17:40:01 EDT news701084918 Disorder brings more life to the forest: Birds and bats react to this in different ways. This is shown by a new study from the University of Würzburg's Biocenter. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-forest-gaps-deadwood-boost-bird.html Plants & Animals Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:20:03 EDT news700399621 New research has unearthed new insights into the disruptive and detrimental effects that human-produced electromagnetic noise can have on the ability of bats to migrate effectively. The study, published in the journal Science, and led by researchers at Bangor University, the University of Latvia and the University of Oldenburg, in Germany, has revealed unexpected effects of exposure to electromagnetic noise that is an ever-present feature of urban environments. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-electromagnetic-noise-migrating-effects-hours.html Plants & Animals Thu, 28 May 2026 14:00:08 EDT news699182761 Bats are the only mammals that can actively fly, enabling many species to perform seasonal migrations. In migratory birds, remaining airborne for many hours is supported by burning fatty acids, something most mammals are incapable of. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-distance-migration-fatty-acids-limits.html Plants & Animals Wed, 27 May 2026 16:00:06 EDT news699112022 Sound plays an important role for many animals, helping them navigate and hunt. Echolocation is the ability of animals like bats and dolphins to locate objects by emitting sound waves and interpreting the returning echoes. But detecting meaningful information in a noisy environment poses a major challenge for them. Bats operate by identifying weak prey echoes among complex background sounds generated by surrounding objects and their own movement during flight. To overcome this issue, these bats have evolved a highly sophisticated echo detection system that uses ultrasonic voices to perceive their surroundings with remarkable precision. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-silent-frequency-zones-prey-noisy.html Plants & Animals Tue, 19 May 2026 05:00:04 EDT news698344021 In the spring of 2025, baseball fans were treated to a surprise when the New York Yankees began the season with a unique style of bat. Termed "torpedo bats," these new designs tapered slightly toward the end, so the widest points of the bats were closer to the "sweet spot"—the optimal place to hit to send the ball flying. In theory, this shape was more ergonomic, giving the Yankees an advantage at the plate. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-torpedo-shift-baseball-sweet-acoustic.html General Physics Wed, 13 May 2026 11:30:02 EDT news697794026 Firework shows are controversial in this day and age. While beautiful, fireworks are loud, bright, and smoky, and they can be dangerous to the surrounding environment, releasing contaminants into the air and frightening both pets and wildlife alike. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-brown-fireworks.html Plants & Animals Tue, 12 May 2026 10:20:09 EDT news697707301