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 While aerial 1080 drops sharply reduce numbers of rats and stoats, the predators—especially ship rats—can rebound to higher numbers within a few years. Studying 24 years of small-mammal tracking records across New Zealand's public conservation land, researchers found that the timing of these rebounds varies between regions. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-predators.html Ecology Wed, 09 Sep 2026 23:40:01 EDT news708178264 All over the world, from Oregon's old-growth forests to Queensland's eucalyptus groves, creatures depend on trees for shelter. A new analysis from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign suggests that as the climate destabilizes, the world's trees may become an even more important respite. That's because the study finds trees everywhere buffer their animal tenants from temperature extremes. The work is published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-reveals-world-trees.html Plants & Animals Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:00:06 EDT news708090062 What makes more sense when farming wheat—strips of wildflowers along fields or organic farming? Both options provide financial support via the European Union as environmentally friendly and sustainable farming practices. An international research team, including researchers from the University of Göttingen, has compared the ecological and economic benefits of these two farming methods in fields planted with winter wheat. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-farming-outperforms-wildflower-profits-farm.html Ecology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 13:40:01 EDT news707995981 When humans get sick, we change our routines and try various solutions to feel better and get well, like staying in bed to rest, going to the doctor, getting medication from the pharmacy, using home remedies and more. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-medicate-wild-clues.html Ecology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:40:04 EDT news707993047 Labor-intensive harvesting and complex processing make macadamias among the most expensive nuts in the world. This makes it all the more important to protect the trees from pests. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-biological-pest-south-african-macadamia.html Ecology Fri, 04 Sep 2026 13:00:01 EDT news707729701 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 Ever found a bare-nosed wombat napping under your house or heard a possum thumping around in your attic? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-house-haven-wildlife-homes-nature.html Plants & Animals Thu, 03 Sep 2026 22:20:01 EDT news707643067 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 Though they are pivotal to Homer's epic, luring Odysseus with the promise of eternal wisdom, the Greek poet barely described the mysterious Sirens. What might a better understanding of these formless, disembodied feminine creatures contribute to this timeless teaching myth? https://phys.org/news/2026-08-reframing-homer-sirens-gender-nature.html Social Sciences Mon, 24 Aug 2026 10:20:03 EDT news706780921 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 On a warm evening in May, swifts scream over rooftops, chasing insects above the traffic. A fox slips along a garden wall while gulls squabble on a supermarket roof. We tend to treat these animals as visitors. But they're residents too, living alongside us in places designed for people. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-cities-wildlife-people.html Ecology Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:40:03 EDT news706346882 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 Australia's unique animal species are in sharp decline, with more than 40 mammal extinctions over the past 238 years. This atrocious mammal conservation record is the worst in the world. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-feral-cats-australian-native-animals.html Ecology Tue, 04 Aug 2026 17:00:07 EDT news705060705 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 A Taiwan–led study of Mandarin-speaking learners shows that the sounds we hear and produce are deeply shaped by our prior language experience, offering new insights into how humans learn and use language. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-language-human-communication.html Social Sciences Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:30:02 EDT news704040141 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 Scientists have long thought humans have a uniquely difficult birth compared with other primates. And it's true that, from an evolutionary perspective, we face an obstetrical dilemma. As we evolved to walk on two feet, our pelvis changed shape and size, and our birth canal became smaller and oddly twisted. Meanwhile, the evolution of our enormous brain meant that a large-headed baby needed to fit through it. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-primates-tougher-births-humans.html Plants & Animals Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:40:06 EDT news703418822 Human-created hazards are responsible for most wildlife rescues in New South Wales, and researchers are calling for more prevention strategies to save threatened species. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-biggest-danger-wildlife-people-cats.html Plants & Animals Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:40:01 EDT news703338601 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 High above the rainforest floor, tiny ponds form in the leaves of plants perched on tree branches. Frogs breed in these ponds, alongside insects, microbes and even tiny crustaceans, creating miniature ecosystems suspended high in the canopy. These are the bromeliads—the remarkable plant family that also gave us air plants, the towering 12-meter (39-foot) "Queen of the Andes", and the pineapple on your terrible pizza. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-hummingbirds-pineapples-ancient-relationship-evolutionary.html Evolution Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:00:11 EDT news702820861 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 A new study of wild bats reveals that an animal's immune system is shaped by more than its need to fight infections. Researchers from the University of Maryland have found that sex, age and competition for mates influence how bats balance different types of immune defenses—providing new insight into how evolutionary pressures shape immune strategy. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-competition-age-sex-immune-wild.html Evolution Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:40:04 EDT news702136141