Animals

Zebras are now walking bar codes

Scientists have come up with a system that can scan zebras in photographs the way cashiers scan cans of peas at the grocery store. It’s thought that zebras developed stripes to elude their predators. Solid-colored animals in herds are hard enough to track when they’re stampeding or milling in circles – but a multitude of…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Apr 8

10 Things Made Possible by Poop

Pooping. Everyone does it, right? Might as well make it count. Here are some ways that poop made a difference in the world. 10. Poop shows when new members of a species are introduced Just recently genetic testing on wolf scat in the Isle Royale National Park showed that what had previously thought to be…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Apr 1

Project Noah App Lets You Learn About Nearby Wildlife and Provide Worthy Research Yourself

This could be an app that makes you relinquish control of your iPhone and see the nearest kid around you begin a lifelong journey in wildlife appreciation. The free Project Noah app lets you snap photos of a plant or animal and submit it to find out details on exactly what it is, and what…

Biology Kat Hannaford Mar 30

10 Animals That Made Significant Contributions to Research

When it comes to animals and research, it’s best to stay away from the subject since most of the time it’s incredibly depressing. However, animal research has given us some fantastic breakthroughs and cool stories. Let’s take the time to honor ten of our furry, feathery, and slimy lab assistants. 10. Pigeons For a long…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Mar 18

Watch a Dog Hunt, From the Dog’s Point of View

This is amazing. A duck hunter attached a GoPro HD to his hunting dog and lets us see what it’s like to hunt from a dog’s perspective. We get to see the whole hunting process from a dog’s perspective: the quick reactions, the animal instincts, the ease of swimming, the grab and even the dizzying…

Biology Casey Chan Mar 12

Terminator Dog: he has come from the future to melt our hearts

You helped Voldermort Cat find a good home — now it’s Terminator Dog’s turn. Hachi, the Chow Chow (mix) was severely burned, leaving him looking like a Terminator. Some folks are calling these marks “unsightly,” but we beg to differ. According to Pet Finder here is Hachi’s tragic back story: County fire fighters brought Hachi…

io9 Meredith Woerner Mar 10

What Animals Do When Humans Aren’t Around

Excellent! The Smithsonian has launched a new database of over 200,000 photos captured by automated cameras around the world, showing what animals are up to when they’re not being weirded out by humans (just weirded out by automated cameras). Smithsonian Wild has candid shots of bears, birds, bobcats, and just about every other animal you…

Biology Kyle VanHemert Mar 9

The Incredible Story of a Dog Named Wall-E Who Resurrected Himself After Being Put Down

That cute little dog, now named Wall-E, isn’t supposed to be alive. He (along with the rest of his littermates) was abandoned in front of a shelter and since the shelter didn’t have any room to care for him, was put to sleep. Wall-E was euthanized twice, with lethal injections to both his heart and…

Biology Casey Chan Mar 5

The Sixth Mass Extinction Has Begun and It’s All Your Fault

Researchers at Cal Berkeley say that we—we being humans—have probably triggered the sixth mass extinction in our planet’s history (the first man-made mass extinction!). Thanks to the last 500 years of over-fishing, overhunting, habitation destruction, and fossil-fuel-induced global warming, we could have the blood of over 75% of Earth’s current living species on our hands.…

Biology Adrian Covert Mar 4

10 Most Bizarre Animal Mating Behaviors

As a group, animals are disgusting. It’s really a shame we’re one of them. But while we only display mating behavior on specially requested internet videos or unused sections of libraries, they have sex in front of biologists. The biologists, of course, can’t keep their mouths shut and tattle all the animals’ dirty dealings to…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Mar 4

Why we have to act right now to stop Earth’s next mass extinction

Earth has had five mass extinction events in the last 540 million years, in which more than three-quarters of animal species went extinct. We’re on the verge of the sixth mass extinction, but it’s not too late to stop it. Paleobiologists at UC Berkeley have examined today’s extinction trends in relation to those at the…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Mar 3

How an Adorable Pig Could Take Down the Internet

Oh, how I love the Onion! It constantly creates fantastic nightmare scenarios detailing how the world as we know it could be destroyed—or in this case, how a cute piglet could take down the Internet.

Biology Rosa Golijan Feb 25

Mr Fox Found Living Fantastically on 72nd Floor of Europe’s Tallest Building

While it’s still being built, London’s Shard building has already stolen the prize for being Britain’s tallest building. And what better place for a fox with illusions of grandeur, than the 80th floor? The fox has since been captured and released on the streets of London (which, theoretically, are his home), but I’m sure he’ll…

Biology Kat Hannaford Feb 25

At last scientists offer a possible explanation for urban hipsters

We’ve all seen the movie set-ups. Some fresh young thing gets off a bus from nowheresville and walks breathless through the Big City. They gape at the tall buildings, the fast cars, and the strange people. Look! There’s a guy with three assistants all dressed in matching uniforms! There’s a woman with a mohawk! Over…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 24

The Weirdest Animal Expert Who Ever Lived

An eccentric from 18th century Yorkshire, animal-lover and inventor Jemmy Hirst was the greatest eccentric in English history. His bizarre exploits included riding bulls, teaching otters to fish, fixing sails to his carriage, and treating the king like an equal. Prankster Child James Hirst was born in 1738 in the tiny northern England town of…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Feb 23

Animal sex has never looked this good…or bizarre

Deep sea fish assimilating males for extra sperm, flies frozen mid-coitus for 20 million years, and a walrus’s penis bone… it’s all part of “Sexual Nature”, a new exhibition at London’s Natural History Museum that spotlights the many awesomely strange forms that animal intercourse can take. Let’s go on a Valentine’s Day stroll through the…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Feb 14

How Did Dinosaurs Have Sex?

Dinosaurs! They’re big, heavy and spiky in all the wrong places. How in the hell could they have sex to reproduce? Smithsonian Magazine tackled this topic saying: Figuring out how Stegosaurus even could have mated is a prickly subject. Females were just as well-armored as males, and it is unlikely that males mounted the females…

Biology Casey Chan Feb 12

Ten Things Bacteria Can Do That You Can’t

We humans like to think we’re pretty great. We have things like the Mona Lisa, and the Large Hadron Collider, and The Kind of Chocolate Sauce That Turns Solid When You Put It On Ice Cream. Still, it turns out that if aliens were to visit planet Earth and kidnap the dominant species, they’d go…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 11

Over a century ago, the giant cuttlefish put up a spectacular fight

This is an illustration of a giant cuttlefish battling brave sailors, depicted in a popular science book from 1872, called The Ocean World, by Louis Figuier. And that’s not the least of the weirdness that lurks in Figuier’s book. See more insanely cool illustrations from many decades ago at Old Book Illustrations. Thanks, Bec!

io9 Annalee Newitz Feb 11

Scientists find another way to turn animals into psychotic killers

In unholy-army-of-the-night news, scientists have a new way to turn swarming beasts of the sea into unreasoning killers. Nothing is safe from their merciless aggression. Not . . . even . . . you. Image via Brandon Bird. Earlier this week, scientists announced they could use bursts of light to control the aggression centers of…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 11

Zebras are now walking bar codes

10 Things Made Possible by Poop

Project Noah App Lets You Learn About Nearby Wildlife and Provide Worthy Research Yourself

10 Animals That Made Significant Contributions to Research

Watch a Dog Hunt, From the Dog’s Point of View

Terminator Dog: he has come from the future to melt our hearts

What Animals Do When Humans Aren’t Around

The Incredible Story of a Dog Named Wall-E Who Resurrected Himself After Being Put Down

The Sixth Mass Extinction Has Begun and It’s All Your Fault

10 Most Bizarre Animal Mating Behaviors

Why we have to act right now to stop Earth’s next mass extinction

How an Adorable Pig Could Take Down the Internet

Mr Fox Found Living Fantastically on 72nd Floor of Europe’s Tallest Building

At last scientists offer a possible explanation for urban hipsters

The Weirdest Animal Expert Who Ever Lived

Animal sex has never looked this good…or bizarre

How Did Dinosaurs Have Sex?

Ten Things Bacteria Can Do That You Can’t

Over a century ago, the giant cuttlefish put up a spectacular fight

Scientists find another way to turn animals into psychotic killers

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