Science

A Leopardus tilcayo cat walks at the Senda Verde animal refuge in the Yungas region, Bolivia (Picture credit: Reuters) Scientists have identified a previously unknown species of wild cat in Bolivia’s cloud forests, marking the first time in more than a century that a new living cat species has been formally named and described.The cat,…

Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) at Alibel Tortoise Park, Mahe, Seychelles (2025). Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons Madagascar began rebuilding a giant tortoise population in 2018 with only 12 founder animals at the Anjajavy Reserve in the north-west of the country. The small group faced an important challenge because a population started from so few animals…

For generations, vultures were part of the everyday landscape across India. They gathered around cattle carcasses, circled above rubbish dumps and cleared away animal remains before they had time to linger. Then, in the 1990s, their numbers began to collapse at an extraordinary rate. A veterinary painkiller called diclofenac was eventually identified as a major…

In 1986, captive-bred bearded vultures began returning to the Alps after the species had disappeared from the mountain range decades earlier. The reintroduction programme released young birds at sites across the region, with the first successful wild breeding recorded in 1997. By 2021, researchers estimated that 344 bearded vultures were living in the Alps, including…

The Moon is covered with impact marks from ancient collisions, including some of the largest craters in the Solar System. One enormous lunar basin stretches more than 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) across. The Moon has been taking hits for billions of years, but one of its newest scars managed to escape notice entirely. An asteroid…

Researchers at the University of Florida are deploying high-tech rabbit decoys across the Everglades, designed to mimic the signals Burmese pythons associate with prey. The fake rabbits can produce movement, scent, vibrations, and heat, all cues that pythons use while hunting for food. The goal is simple, lure the invasive snakes out of hiding so…

The birds live in the Sand Sagebrush Ecoregion, which stretches across southeastern Colorado, southwestern Kansas and a small part of western Oklahoma. (American Bird Conservancy photo) Colorado’s lesser prairie-chicken population has fallen from more than 80,000 birds in 1975 to just 89 breeding males, according to a 2024 data. To restore the population of the…

In the latest 2025 monitoring data, St Agnes and Gugh recorded 225 apparently occupied breeding sites (AOBs) for Manx shearwaters In 2013, a major conservation effort began on St Agnes and Gugh in the Isles of Scilly to remove brown rats that had been harming nesting seabirds. According to the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust,…

Image: ABC News/ Kent Hups A high school science teacher exploring a fossil-rich region of North Dakota made a discovery that could change what scientists know about how adult Tyrannosaurus rex moved. In 2025, Kent Hups spotted unusual impressions while volunteering on a fossil dig in the Hell Creek Formation. What initially appeared to be…

Recent Hubble images of Saturn reveal a 10-sided atmospheric wave at its south pole, stretching across several atmospheric layers (Image Credit: NASA) A mysterious ripple spotted on Saturn from an amateur astronomer’s backyard in Australia has helped lead to the identification of a giant, 10-sided atmospheric wave around the planet’s south pole. Trevor Barry, a…