Average size of wild animals predicted to fall by a quarter in 100 years through extinctions Humanity’s ongoing destruction of wildlife will lead to a shrinking of nature, with the average body size of animals falling by a quarter, a study predicts. The researchers estimate that more than 1,000 larger species of mammals and birds […]

Urban living can pressure flora and fauna to adapt in intriguing ways. Biologists are starting to take advantage of this convenient laboratory of evolution. Every student of evolution knows the story of the peppered moth. The species comes in two colors: one a peppered white, the other black. During Britain’s industrial revolution, hungry birds spotted […]

Authorities in the Novaya Zemlya islands, home to a few thousand people, said there were cases of bears attacking people and entering residential and public buildings. Polar bears are affected by climate change and are increasingly forced on to land to look for food. Hunting the bears is banned, and the federal environment agency has […]

Cancer is a disease that has been around for millions of years. And humans aren’t the only ones affected by cancer. “In a 2003 study, researchers used fluoroscopy and computed tomography to screen over 10,000 dinosaur vertebrae specimens for tumors. They found tumors in approximately 3% of the duck-billed dinosaur (Cretaceous hadrosaurs) specimens, including hemangiomas, […]

Some of the world’s most unusual sharks and rays are on the brink of extinction because of threats such as commercial fishing, scientists have said. A shark that uses its tail to stun prey and a ray half the length of a bus are on the list of 50 species. The scientists say sharks have […]