News

Archaeology

These South American cave paintings reveal a surprisingly old tradition

Radiocarbon dates point to an artistic design practice that began in Patagonia almost 8,200 years ago, several millennia earlier than previously recorded.

Agriculture

Could a rice-meat hybrid be what’s for dinner?

A hybrid food that combines rice, animal cells and fish gelatin could one day be a more sustainable way to produce meat.

Animals

Does this drone image show a newborn white shark? Experts aren’t sure

If a claim of the first-ever sighting of a newborn white shark holds, it could help solve a mystery of where adult white sharks give birth.

Archaeology

This Stone Age wall may have led Eurasian reindeer to their doom

Hunter-gatherers living 10,000 years ago in what is now Germany probably used the wall to trap reindeer in a nearby lake.

Animals

Migratory fish species are in drastic decline, a new UN report details

The most comprehensive tally of how migrating animals are faring looks at more than 1,000 land and aquatic species and aims to find ways to protect them.

Artificial Intelligence

How do babies learn words? An AI experiment may hold clues

Using relatively little data, audio and video taken from a baby’s perspective, an AI program learned the names of objects the baby encountered.

Neuroscience

A new device let a man sense temperature with his prosthetic hand

A device that can be integrated into prosthetic hands capitalizes on phantom sensations to enable users to sense hot and cold.

Animals

Here’s how many shark bites there were in 2023

The chance of being bitten by a shark is still incredibly slim, according to a new report from the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Animals

The first known scorpion to live with ants carries mini hitchhikers

Small arachnids hitch a ride on the scorpion, possibly to get inside food-rich ant nests.

Plants

Here’s why blueberries are blue

Nanostructures in a blueberry’s waxy coating make it look blue, despite having dark red pigments — and no blue ones — in its skin, a new study reports.

Planetary Science

Saturn’s ‘Death Star’ moon might contain a hidden ocean

A fresh look at Cassini data reveals slight changes in the tiny moon’s orbit that suggest the presence of a vast ocean beneath the satellite’s icy shell.

Plants

This weird fern is the first known plant that turns its dead leaves into new roots

Cyathea rojasiana tree ferns seem to thrive in Panama’s Quebrada Chorro forest by turning dead leaves into roots that seek out nutrient-rich soil.