Apr 24th, 2026 - Languorous tree dwellers from Guyana and Peru died from 'cold stun' in warehouse with no power or running water Wildlife officials in Florida said in a newly released report that dozens of sloths taken from South American rainforests for display at a controversial new tourist attraction in Orlando died in the care of their new owners. An incident report from the Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (FWC) said that 31 of the mammals procured from Peru and Guyana by the owners of a forthcoming attraction called Sloth World perished in a storage warehouse more than a year ago, ... [Read More]

Apr 23rd, 2026 - Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The comet that rambled past us from another star last year likely originated in a cold, isolated corner of the galaxy that had yet to gel into its own solar system, astronomers reported Thursday. Comet 3I/Atlas is only the third interstellar visitor to be confirmed and quite possibly the oldest. Scientists estimate it could be up to 11 billion years old, more than twice as old as the sun. A team led by the University of Michigan used the ALMA observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert ... [Read More]

Apr 22nd, 2026 - A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com Rotavirus, a potentially deadly gastrointestinal pathogen, is being transmitted at an alarming rate across the country. Young children are the most at risk of severe infection. Experts believe that reduced vaccination rates are behind the trend. Every year, rotavirus is "responsible for 20 to 60 deaths in the U.S., more than 400,000 doctor visits, more than 200,000 emergency room visits and between 55,000 and 70,000 hospitalizations among children under 5," said Newsweek . Infection ... [Read More]

Apr 22nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Researchers have found that a six-month-old Neanderthal infant already had the body size of a modern toddler. The discovery recasts early Neanderthal life around unusually fast growth, showing that infants reached larger bodies and heavier needs far earlier than our own species does. Studying Neanderthal babies Inside Amud Cave in northern Israel, one of the caves called Amud 7 preserved teeth, skull pieces, ribs, arms, and legs in one rare infant skeleton. Reading those remains together, Dr. Ella Been at Ono Academic College showed that the infant's body had advanced ... [Read More]

Apr 22nd, 2026 - A stretchy, mid-level layer of nanodiamonds allows the typically hard, brittle crystal to bend, not break, under pressure. Reading time 2 minutes Familiar materials will act differently at the smallest scales. Notably, diamonds—typically hard and brittle—grow strangely soft at the nanoscale. After years of not quite understanding why, a team of physicists finally managed to decode this behavior. Using a custom-built electron microscope, researchers found that tiny diamonds had a relatively weak chemical bond between their surface layer and their core. Placing nanodiamonds under ... [Read More]

Apr 21st, 2026 - Cambodia has reported a new human case of H5N1 bird flu in a woman, the country's fourth confirmed case so far this year. said Tuesday that the patient is a 66-year-old woman from Trapaing Thkov village in Svay Rieng Province, near the border with Vietnam. She has been hospitalized and is receiving intensive care. Health officials said sick and dead chickens were found both in the woman's village and at her home, where some of the birds had also been used for cooking. Officials are collecting samples from people who had contact with the patient, while close contacts are being given Tamiflu ... [Read More]

Apr 21st, 2026 - Welcome! Log into your account Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. Hedgehog Behavior Explained: Huffing, Anointing, Quilling, and What Normal Looks Like Hedgehog Behavior Explained: Huffing, Anointing, Quilling, and What Normal Looks Like Pet African pygmy hedgehogs are nocturnal, solitary, scent-driven, and defensive-by-default. Expect huffing, popping, and a tight ball on first contact; 12 to 16 hours of daytime sleep; wheel activity at dusk and overnight; and odd self-anointing episodes in response to novel smells. Behavior is the earliest sickness signal, so knowing ... [Read More]

Apr 21st, 2026 - Scientists once thought it would take a century or more for animals to return to deforested land in the tropics. Now, new research has found ecosystems can recover in mere decades. "It's been a huge surprise for all of us," said Timo Metz, a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA and first author of the study, published in the journal Nature. "None of us expected it to be so impressive and so quick." Rainforests have been disappearing at an alarming pace for at least a century, and millions of acres a year are still burned or cut down for logging, farming or ranching, or are lost to wildfires. In ... [Read More]