Mammal

GotchaPhoto: Kurit afshen (Shutterstock)Billions of years of evolution has given rise to us, the millions of species that persist on planet Earth today. Some of us are small, some of us are big, and some of us have huge ears, flat tails, compound eyes, or infrared vision. Each of these adaptations has its merits, but only a handful of them can be considered the most fun, in my (totally scientific) opinion.I consider these the 15 most delightful inventions evolution has bestowed on extant species. Please let me know which…

January 20, 20243 min readPink fairy armadillos evolved a unique double skin millions of years ago as they moved underground in response to a drying climateBy Richard Pallardy & LiveSciencePink fairy armadillos found to have strange double skins, scientists reveal. Pink fairy armadillos — the smallest species of armadillo — have a unique double skin, scientists have revealed.In a new study, published Dec. 19, 2023 in the Journal of Zoology, researchers studied the microscopic anatomy of sections of pink fairy…

The Environmental Protection Agency has scrapped a plan to phase out mammal testing for studying chemical toxicity, . In 2019, the regulatory agency vowed to completely phase out animal testing for toxicology studies by 2035 in favor of non-animal “test subjects” programmed into computer models.The call to challenge the status quo was controversial from the start — it not only was going to impact thousands of studies and experiments, but many scientists argued that computer models were nowhere near ready to replace…

Researchers believe they’ve found the oldest known fossilized skin, hidden away in a limestone cave system in Oklahoma. The skin sample dates to the early Permian Period, between 289 million years ago and 286 million years ago.Are You Rich Enough to Buy This Folding TV?The skin belonged to an ancient reptile and is epidermis—the outer layer of skin in amniotes, a group that includes terrestrial reptiles, mammals, and birds. A study describing the skin as well as several other fossils found in the cave system is published…

Dr. Tyler Faith, NHMU’s chief curator, examines elk bones inside Skeleton Cave in the Uinta Mountains, Utah. Faith and a research team from NHMU collected bones from the site but left the elk skeleton in place given that it is the namesake of the cave. Credit: Randy IrmisNew study by NHMU utilizes cave data to set standards for understanding modern climate effects on mammal populations.Scientists from the Natural History Museum of Utah have taken a deep dive into the not-so-distant past thanks to a friendly tip from…

It looks like flying isn’t the only unusual thing that bats can do compared to other mammals. New research has found a bat species whose males use their large penises like an arm during sex. Rather than have penetrative sex, these bats and their genitals seem to engage in close-contact “kissing”—a method widely seen in birds but never before in mammals.Inspiration Behind the Reality-TV Style for The Hunger GamesBats are one of the most plentiful mammal groups around, accounting for 20% of known species (second only to…

With spines like a hedgehog, feet like a mole and snout like an anteater, this bizarre-looking animal is hard to miss. But that’s exactly what it has been excelling at for more than half a century, eluding scientists to the point that this weird hybrid-looking species had been presumed extinct.Now, remarkably, the animal has been spotted casually strolling past the field of view of a movement-triggered camera trap, one of 80 such devices deployed during research project Expedition Cyclops, in the remote and inhospitable…

Here is a peculiar film based on a peculiar real-life case: the “talking mongoose” hoax that became a newspaper sensation in the 1930s, the crop circle story of its day. The Irvings, a farming family in the Isle of Man, claimed there was a mongoose called Gef in their farmhouse that could speak – although no independent observer ever saw the creature, but only heard its bizarre voice in the walls or under the floorboards. The obvious explanation was close at hand: the daughter of the family made no secret of being a…

Oh, the Hugh manatee. A long-time fixture at the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, the manatee named Hugh, died back in April. The 38-year-old sea creature was a fixture as the site’s “resident manatee,” but new, graphic details about his death are pitting federal agencies against the local aquarium about how best to preserve the vulnerable species.Samsung Galaxy Fold 5: Hands-on first Impressions of Samsung's Big-Screen Flagship FoldableAfter Hugh’s death in April, the FWC’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute’s…

A badger-like mammal died while chomping into the ribs of a hapless horned plant-eating dinosaur struggling to escape more than 100 million years ago. The pair were perfectly preserved, still locked in combat, in "China's dinosaur Pompeii," researchers report.Dating to the Cretaceous Period, the dramatic fossil unearthed in northeastern China shows the four-legged mammal Repenomamus robustus — the size of a domestic cat — ferociously entangled with the beaked two-legged dinosaur Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis, as big as a…