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Do animal parents stress out like humans?
As every parent knows, bringing up children can be a draining business. Now researchers have found that banded mongoose parents find it so stressful, they have no energy left to care for the next litter. It seems the energetic demands of caring for pups pushes up the mongooses’ stress hormone levels.
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Scientists reveal how females store sperm for decades
Scientists have discovered that all sorts of females – from birds to reptiles to insects – have a nifty trick to prolong the lifespan of sperm, letting them store it for weeks, months or even years on end. They found that females do this by lowering the metabolic rate of sperm, so it can survive…
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Scientists call for better management of the deep sea
The deep sea is in trouble. A recent study has found that it’s being damaged by human activities, and that this is only likely to get worse. Scientists are now calling for better management and conservation of entire deep-sea ecosystems.
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Human activity can’t always be blamed for coral reef decline
The decline of coral reefs over the last few decades is often squarely blamed on human activity. But a recent study suggests the picture is in fact a little more complex. Researchers have found that our actions aren’t always responsible for the decline of coral reefs; some reefs stop growing simply because they’ve reached the…
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Warm summers shown to slow down glaciers
Hotter summers may not be such a disaster for the Greenland ice sheet after all, if the latest research is anything to go by. Scientists have found that Greenland glaciers flow slower in warmer summers than they do during cooler ones. Although this seems counter-intuitive, the researchers explain that during cooler summers, a small amount…
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Atlantic leatherbacks at risk from fisheries
Scientists have used satellites to track the world’s largest nesting population of leatherback turtles across the South Atlantic for the first time. Their results reveal the routes the critically endangered creatures take make them more vulnerable to commercial fishing in the South Atlantic than previously thought.
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Birds’ lifespans are written in blood
How long a Southern Giant Petrel is likely to live comes down to the length of a particular sequence of DNA in their blood cells, researchers have found. If these sequences of DNA are long, a giant petrel probably still has a while left before it has to leave this mortal coil. But if they’re…