Animals

Animals

New treatment offers hope for bats battling white nose syndrome

A fungal disease that has wiped out millions of North American bats has a new challenger: antifungal bacteria. Infected bats treated with the germs had a good chance of surviving.

Animals

Some mama whales may whisper to keep calves safe from orcas

Even enormous whales can fear the threat that orcas pose to their babies. It now seems that some have taken to whispering to help their young stay off the killer whales’ radar.

Animals

Scientists Say: Hagfish

Hagfish are eel-shaped fish with many traits that make them similar to long-vanished fossils. When threatened, they can pump out piles of slime.

Animals

A fungus plus a spider toxin equals a weapon to kill mosquitoes

A new weapon could help fight mosquitoes that spread malaria. It’s an engineered fungus that infects the insects — then kills them with a spider poison.

Animals

Bats are now the primary source of U.S. rabies deaths

Although human rabies is not common in the United States, it still occurs. But here dogs are no longer the likely source of this oft-lethal infection: Bats are.

Animals

A million species could vanish, and people are to blame

Human activities are putting a million plant and animal species at risk of extinction, a new study finds. But it’s not too late to save many of them, scientists add.

Animals

Young aphids sacrifice themselves to make home repairs

Young aphids swollen with fatty substances save their colony by self-sacrifice. They use that goo to patch breaches in the wall of their tree home.

Animals

Tiger sharks feast when migratory birds fall out of the sky

Migrating land-based birds that fall from the sky as they cross the Gulf of Mexico can end up in the belly of a young tiger shark.

Animals

This tiny dinosaur is officially T. rex’s cousin

A newly identified dinosaur species fills a gap in the tyrannosaur family tree.

Animals

Slimy fish could aid the search for new drugs

Fish slime could teach scientists about bacteria that live on fish and aid in the hunt for new kinds of antibiotics.

Animals

Analyze This: Amphibian populations are on the decline

The chytrid fungus has been wiping out amphibians around the world. Scientists have tallied up the declines and found that the fungus is responsible for dozens of extinctions.

Animals

In a first, scientists keep cells alive in the brains of dead pigs

They’re not true zombies — but these pig brains showed signs of cellular life long after the animals had died.