Nature and ecology
Natural History is Science Blog's desk for the living world. Animals, evolution, and ecology, reported from the field science and the papers rather than the press releases.
Eleven years of surveys on one family-owned field suggest species-rich meadow can return to former farmland without a seed packet, though the researchers cannot yet explain how several of its rarer plants got there.
Sep 24, 2026
Round-the-clock cameras at Monarto Safari Park caught a feast-and-fast rhythm in a small group of zoo lions, and a rise in pacing over the study whose daily peaks the authors tie to keeper routines.
Sep 24, 2026
A geothermal oasis in the deep Pacific has become an unexpected nursery where thousands of octopuses exploit heat from the earth itself to speed up reproduction.
Sep 22, 2026
Restoring a ravaged landscape takes decades, but prairie plants prove stubbornly persistent once given the chance to return.
Sep 22, 2026
The EPA's 2022 inventory reports 6,343.2 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, offset by a land sink absorbing roughly 13 percent of that total. The measurement program behind those numbers is now being dismantled.
Sep 21, 2026
Clumped isotopes in three fossil teeth produced a 36.3°C estimate for T. rex, but the two-animal sample measures enamel formation, not a species-wide metabolic verdict.
Sep 21, 2026
Extreme wanderers crossed a continent, but scientists aren't sure what their journey reveals about African wild dog survival.
Sep 21, 2026
One hypothesis links hiccups to ancient gill-ventilation patterns, but their origin and purpose in mammals remain unresolved.
Sep 21, 2026
Controlled experiments show that atmospheric-strength electric fields move spiders' sensory hairs and can prompt ballooning behavior, although wind remains the dominant force.
Sep 20, 2026
A century after scientists named this deep-sea giant from whale stomach contents, a camera finally captured one alive—and it looked nothing like expected.
Sep 19, 2026
The discovery challenges a century-old assumption that one of Earth's most iconic dinosaurs never left North America.
Sep 19, 2026
Scientists resurrected plants from fruit frozen for 32,000 years—and the flowers that bloomed looked strikingly different from their living descendants.
Sep 19, 2026
On a 2017 cruise off northeastern Greenland, the icebreaker Polarstern had to circle back and break a path to a sea-floor sensor that Arctic ice had quietly sealed under a solid white lid.
Sep 18, 2026
Across one South Tacoma neighborhood, simultaneous temperatures differed by 2.57°C on average, while nearby tree canopy was associated with cooler locations.
Sep 18, 2026
