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. When a young golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) finally leaves its parents' territory, it leaves behind the only safety net it has ever known. Until now, biologists had assumed that eagles took this step as soon as they could fly well enough to survive on their own. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-young-golden-eagles-parents-territory.html Plants & Animals Tue, 25 Aug 2026 10:20:03 EDT news706868519 For dolphins, the ocean is a world of sound. Their whistles carry social information, helping them communicate and stay connected, while echolocation—rapid-fire clicks—functions like underwater sonar, helping them navigate their surroundings and detect potential prey. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-snooping-dolphins-acoustic-clues-hotspots.html Plants & Animals Tue, 18 Aug 2026 10:40:07 EDT news706263421 The first bird to inhabit Earth used its robust hind legs to make two or three powerful leaps while flapping its way to flight, according to a study by the University of Southampton published in Developmental Biology. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-evidence-earliest-birds-flight.html Evolution Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:20:01 EDT news705752805 In a rare study of snakes as nest predators, scientists found nesting birds were loath to strike rattlesnakes even though they likely had no previous experience with vipers. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-unfamiliar-rattlesnakes-blackbirds-defending.html Plants & Animals Wed, 12 Aug 2026 10:40:03 EDT news705745921 Nearly 30 years ago, a simple question sent University of Washington researchers into the Puget Sound lowlands to look for birds. With Seattle's population swelling and housing developments pushing into once-forested suburbs, researchers wanted to know how land conversion was affecting birds and whether the type of development mattered. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-decade-seattle-suburbs-sensitive-bird.html Plants & Animals Tue, 11 Aug 2026 16:10:01 EDT news705680222 A few years ago, the first ceramic finds came to light during construction work in the Burg district of the municipality of Hannersdorf. Geomagnetic surveys in subsequent years provided evidence of numerous kilns thought to lie hidden beneath the field. In a recent educational excavation led by Basema Hamarneh from the University of Vienna, archaeologists uncovered two pottery kilns. Another 100 kilns are thought to remain buried—an unprecedented discovery of a local production center for utilitarian pottery from the Roman period. The finds date from the mid-1st century to the mid-2nd century CE. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-roman-workshop-reveals-large-scale.html Archaeology Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:00:04 EDT news704632681 In the humid jungle of Vietnam, Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela and Monte Neate-Clegg spent hours patiently waiting to spot the rare "Halloween bird." Officially known as the collared laughingthrush, this songbird has striking orange, silver and black coloring and a distinct, singsong call. It's extremely valuable and heavily traded as a pet in Vietnam, and is considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). https://phys.org/news/2026-07-songbirds-higher-extinction.html Plants & Animals Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:20:05 EDT news702205470 The modern Colorado moose is often considered just that: modern—brought to the state by wildlife officials in the late 1970s, preceded by very occasional reports of moose sightings in the 19th and early 20th centuries. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-moose-native-colorado.html Plants & Animals Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:40:04 EDT news701443921 Many young adults are familiar with common species such as dandelions or sparrows. In contrast, plants and birds typical of fields, meadows and other agricultural habitats are significantly less well known. This is shown by a new study from the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) published in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine. For the study, the research team surveyed 463 adults of various age groups in an agricultural region of Germany. The results suggest that knowledge of typical agricultural landscape species is declining, particularly among younger generations. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-younger-adults-overlook-nearby-biodiversity.html Ecology Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:30:01 EDT news701086275 The first few billion years of Earth's history saw the rise of life, the atmosphere and the oceans. Still, that time is shrouded in mystery: Not many rocks remain that preserve a record of those early iterations of our modern world. Dynamic geologic processes like erosion, subduction and burial mean the surface is constantly being reshaped, and older rocks aren't very common. But that time period is critical to understanding our own origins and how catastrophic events like asteroid impacts might have affected early life on the planet. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientists-billion-year-asteroid-impact.html Earth Sciences Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:00:06 EDT news700233527 A fossil bed in northwestern China is littered with the remains of hundreds of prehistoric birds—including some whose broken bones were crushed into pellets, similar to those coughed up by modern owls. For years, scientists guessed that a larger predatory animal must have hunted these ancient birds, but they never found direct fossil evidence of this predator. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-newfound-velociraptor-cousin-glided-wings.html Paleontology & Fossils Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:20:04 EDT news699792422 Urbanization is rapidly transforming natural habitats and poses growing challenges for wildlife. One lesser-known consequence is its potential impact on bird song, which plays a crucial role in communication, reproduction, and survival. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-city-life-bird-song-species.html Plants & Animals Wed, 20 May 2026 12:40:05 EDT news698495281 Geologists have solved the mystery of the disappearance from the geological record, millions of years ago, of one of North America's most important waterways: the Colorado River. A paper published in Science shows that the river flowed into an upstream lake over the course of a few million years, then likely flowed for the first time into the Grand Canyon. The moment marked the Colorado River's transition to a continental-scale river as it made its way down to the Gulf of California. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-colorado-river-geological-million-years.html Earth Sciences Fri, 17 Apr 2026 10:00:03 EDT news695637782 When the environment changes dramatically, animals from mollusks to crows can make big changes in their behavior that enable them to survive. For example, marmots and ground squirrels in California are spending more time in wet vegetation and on steep slopes to counteract warmer temperatures. Polar bears, losing their floating ice habitats, are spending more time on land and adding birds' eggs and reindeer to their diets. And lake trout in Ontario, which rely on external water temperatures to maintain a healthy internal temperature, shift to cooler, deeper waters and eat smaller prey when the water becomes hotter than usual. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-behavioral-flexibility-affects-animal-evolution.html Evolution Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:10:08 EDT news694277401 In the icy waters of Alaska's Bristol Bay, a new study reveals how a small population of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) survive the long haul through a surprising strategy: they mate with multiple partners over several years. The combination of long-term genetics, observation and careful analysis is starting to reveal some of the most intimate insights into one of the Arctic's most elusive whales. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-strategic-sex-alaska-beluga-whales.html Plants & Animals Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:01 EST news688051776 A yearslong surge in displaced roosters is overwhelming animal sanctuaries in Maryland and across the country, fueled by a pandemic-born boom in backyard chicken coops and the noisy realities of owning a male bird. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-rooster-epidemic-fueled-backyard-coops.html Plants & Animals Thu, 11 Dec 2025 07:22:49 EST news684660149 What is the evolutionary advantage of our consciousness? And what can we learn about this from observing birds? Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum published two articles on this topic. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-species-consciousness-conscious.html Evolution Mon, 24 Nov 2025 16:49:04 EST news683225342 Ultrathin structures that can bend, focus, or filter light, metasurfaces are reshaping how scientists think about optics. These engineered materials offer precise control over lights behavior, but many conventional designs are held back by inefficiencies. Typically, they rely on local resonances within individual nanostructures, which often leak energy or perform poorly at wide angles. These shortcomings limit their usefulness in areas like sensing, nonlinear optics, and quantum technologies. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-waveguide-physics-metasurfaces-advanced.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:37:03 EDT news678983821 A new study published in the journal Science of The Total Environment has significant bearing on the hackneyed joke about chickens and their numerous reasons for crossing roads. In Florida, there's a good chance that the chicken crossed the road because it had completed its year-long conscripted service as a disease sentinel, a sort of early alarm signal for mosquito virus activity across the state. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-disease-experts-team-museum-west.html Ecology Tue, 16 Sep 2025 17:02:07 EDT news677260921 Animal training can teach carrion crows to use a stick tool to retrieve food. With increasing practice, they not only demonstrate great skill and achieve their objective in a few steps, they also respond flexibly to varying conditions in the experiment. These were the findings from behavioral experiments with tame birds by Dr. Felix Moll, Julius Würzler and Professor Andreas Nieder from the Institute for Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-carrion-crows-precise-tool.html Plants & Animals Wed, 10 Sep 2025 12:34:03 EDT news676726442 For the first time, researchers have uncovered direct genomic evidence of the bacterium behind the Plague of Justinian—the world's first recorded pandemic—in the Eastern Mediterranean, where the outbreak was first described nearly 1,500 years ago. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-ancient-dna-plague-justinian-mystery.html Archaeology Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:00:05 EDT news675529201 A University of Tennessee researcher documented an immature Cooper's hawk using vehicle traffic and pedestrian signal patterns as concealment during hunting behavior at a suburban intersection. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-street-smarts-cooper-hawk-pedestrian.html Plants & Animals Mon, 26 May 2025 10:30:01 EDT news667471295 Many of us as children may have wondered what's going on inside the mind of an animal—what are they thinking and feeling? Most animal researchers study science because of their fascination with animals, but for a long time scientific norms made it impossible to even raise the question of animal consciousness without losing scientific credibility. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-philosophers-scientists-collaborate-consciousness-perception.html Plants & Animals Fri, 23 May 2025 10:19:03 EDT news667214341 A trio of animal physiologists at the University of Tübingen, in Germany, has found that at least one species of crow has the ability to recognize geometric regularity. In their study published in the journal Science Advances, Philipp Schmidbauer, Madita Hahn and Andreas Nieder conducted several experiments that involved testing crows on their ability to recognize geometric shapes. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-crows-geometric-regularity.html Plants & Animals Mon, 14 Apr 2025 09:20:08 EDT news663841191 A new genomic study has uncovered long-lost genetic diversity in mammoth lineages spanning over a million years, providing new insights into the evolutionary history of these animals. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-genomic-snapshots-mammoth-diversity-million.html Evolution Wed, 09 Apr 2025 11:00:05 EDT news663414721 Follow-up research on a 2023 image of the Sagittarius C stellar nursery in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, has revealed ejections from still-forming protostars and insights into the impact of strong magnetic fields on interstellar gas and the life cycle of stars. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-webb-explores-effect-strong-magnetic.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Apr 2025 12:02:03 EDT news662814121 Sagittarius C is one of the most extreme environments in the Milky Way galaxy. This cloudy region of space sits about 200 light-years from the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Here, a massive and dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust has collapsed on itself over millions of years to form thousands of new stars. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-sagittarius-webb-closet-milky-extreme.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Apr 2025 11:03:04 EDT news662810581 The narwhal (Monodon monoceros), an iconic whale of remote Arctic waters, is widely known for its long, spiral tusk, which is really an elongated tooth. The tusk, which is predominantly found in males and can grow up to 10 feet long, is one of the most fascinating traits in nature and the inspiration for myths such as the unicorn. It is believed to play a role in competition for mates, including mating displays. The tusk may have other uses and its function is still debated, primarily because few people have observed how these elusive animals use their tusks in the wild. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-drone-captures-narwhals-tusks-explore.html Plants & Animals Fri, 28 Feb 2025 02:00:02 EST news659895664 A giant flying squirrel—about the size of today's house cats—once soared through the skies over what is now Southern Appalachia, gliding above rhinos, mastodons and red pandas. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-discovery-reveals-giant-flying-squirrel.html Evolution Mon, 24 Feb 2025 13:23:03 EST news659625782 Large birds—our closest relations to dinosaurs—are capable of technical innovation, by solving a physical task to gain access to food. This is the first time scientists have been able to show that palaeognath birds such as emus and rheas can solve tricky problems. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-dumb-birds-emus-rheas-technical.html Plants & Animals Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:00:06 EST news659264461