Jake Buehler

3 weeks ago | sciencenews.org | Jake Buehler

Rhino poaching may be substantially reduced by removing the reason so many rhinos are poached in the first place: their highly valued horns. Dehorning rhinos dramatically drops the poaching rate compared with other tactics, researchers report June 5 in Science. The researchers suggest that no other anti-poaching intervention — such as protective fencing or higher concentrations of rangers — has such a measurable effect.

3 weeks ago | sciencenews.org | Jake Buehler

On a hot day, a few glugs from a park drinking fountain can be a major relief — and some of Sydney’s cockatoos agree. The brainy city-dwelling parrots have figured out how to twist on drinking fountains for a sip, researchers report June 4 in Biology Letters. Lucy Aplin — a cognitive ecologist at the Australian National University in Canberra — and her colleagues had been studying sulfur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) and their relationship with the urban environment.

3 weeks ago | newscientist.com | Jake Buehler

Life Two of the most destructive invasive termite species are interbreeding in the US – they can survive a wider range of temperatures and could easily spread across the globe Florida’s newest termite is two for the price of one, but nobody’s celebrating. Two species of globally invasive, timber-chewing insects are interbreeding there, creating hybrid colonies that could create incredibly hardy termites that threaten buildings and forests alike.

1 month ago | sciencenews.org | Jake Buehler

The earliest cities may have had plenty of parasitic, six-legged tenants. Common bedbugs (Cimex lectularius) experienced a dramatic jump in population size around the time humans congregated in the first cities. The wee bloodsuckers were probably the first insect pests to flourish in a city environment and possibly one of the first urban pests overall, researchers report May 28 in Biology Letters. Originally, bedbugs fed on bats.

1 month ago | newscientist.com | Jake Buehler

A cooling, drying climate turned sloths into giants – before humans potentially drove the huge animals to extinction. Today’s sloths are small, famously sluggish herbivores that move through the tropical canopies of rainforests. But for tens of millions of years, South America was home to a dizzying diversity of sloths. Many were ground-dwelling giants, with some behemoths approaching 5 tonnes in weight.