Articles for tag: Biology, ecology, nature, Oregon

Mountains are covered in lush green forests.

Biologists Uncover 500-Year-Old Trees in Oregon’s Mountains

Suhail Ahmed

  The mountains of Oregon have a way of keeping secrets, but this one towers over the rest: living trees that germinated before the first European maps sketched the Pacific Northwest. Biologists, armed with corers and careful field notes, have verified several giants at roughly five centuries old, their rings stacked like silent annals of ...

The Science Behind Why Cats Always Land on Their Feet

Suhail Ahmed

  There’s a moment – half gasp, half awe – when a cat slips and time seems to stretch. The animal tumbles, twists, and somehow touches down with a soft thud, eyes bright, dignity intact. For more than a century, that miracle has teased physicists and veterinarians alike: how does a cat flip in midair ...

a group of people in a forest

Biologists Find Glow Worms Lighting Up North Carolina Caves

Suhail Ahmed

  On a damp night when the mountains draw their curtains of fog, a team of biologists switched off their headlamps and watched the rock ceiling bloom into a quiet galaxy. The points of light were not stars, but glow worm larvae scattered across limestone like sparks from a hidden forge. The discovery reframes a ...

closeup photography of swarm of jellyfish

The Jellyfish That Lives Forever by Resetting Itself

Suhail Ahmed

It sounds like a fable, but the protagonist is real: a pinhead-sized jellyfish capable of turning back its biological clock. Scientists call it Turritopsis dohrnii, better known as the so‑called immortal jellyfish, and it can revert from adulthood to its juvenile state when life gets rough. That trick doesn’t just dodge death; it rewrites what ...

black and brown animal head

Bats See With Sound, But Some Can See UV Too

Suhail Ahmed

For more than a century, bats were cast as creatures of pure echo – masters of sound who traded sight for sonar in the deep night. Now a quieter revelation is unfolding: a surprising number of bats still use their eyes, and some can even see ultraviolet light that humans can’t. This dual sensory strategy ...

Nature’s Final Whisper? 40 New Moth Species Found in a Land Facing Ecological Crisis

Jan Otte

Buried deep within European museum archives, amidst thousands of mounted insects, was a secret that had the potential to rechart our definition of biodiversity in one of the most imperiled ecosystems on Earth. Researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin have discovered 40 previously unknown moth species in the Philippines, all entirely new to science. ...

Is This the Future of Reproduction? Scientists Create Artificial Amniotic Sacs

Jan Otte

In a landmark move for reproductive biology, researchers have grown the most advanced artificial amniotic sacs yet developed in a lab raising basic questions regarding the future of pregnancy science and treatment for infertility. The sacs filled with liquid, grown from stem cells, mimic the natural protective shell that surrounds an embryo developing, providing scientists ...