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Dec 3, 2024 | 
earthtouchnews.com | Ethan Shaw |Ian Dickinson |Sarah Keartes
Reanimated corpses tend to be the stuff of fictional Halloween-y dread: horror stories about zombies and other sundry revenants, staggering about to usher in one brand of apocalypse or another.
As it happens, the dead can (sort of) come “alive” again for the good of the actual flesh-and-blood living. Researchers at New Mexico Tech (NMT), in the USA are experimenting with converting taxidermied birds into drones in the service of wildlife science and conservation.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
earthtouchnews.com | Ethan Shaw |Sarah Keartes
The megamouth shark – a sluggish but arresting-looking filter-feeder that basically puts the head of a majorly oversized frog on the body of a mackerel shark – only emerged on the scientific radar in 1976. That's an astonishingly late date for such a big animal, thought to reach at least five metres in length and possibly more.
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Sep 26, 2024 | 
earthtouchnews.com | Ethan Shaw |Sarah Keartes
Last month, a group of beachgoers on the eastern seashore of Nantucket Island in Massachusetts noticed what they initially thought might be a beached whale in the surf. In fact, it was the largest macropredatory shark in the sea: a great white, very much alive but apparently in dire straits.
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Feb 29, 2024 | 
earthtouchnews.com | Sarah Keartes
Rhett H. Bennett, Rhodes UniversityA rarely seen megamouth shark (Megachasma pelagios) was recently spotted in east Africa for the very first time. It was recorded in a market in Zanzibar, where it was being sold after being captured and killed. The recent sighting was only the sixth time a megamouth had ever been found off the coast of Africa. Marine biologist Rhett H. Bennett of the Wildlife Conservation Society explains the implications of the find.
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Feb 9, 2024 | 
earthtouchnews.com | Ethan Shaw |Sarah Keartes
The harbour seal is the world’s most widely distributed pinniped, and that’s not the only reason it’s also among the most familiar: Throughout its vast Northern Hemisphere range, it commonly loafs and lolls about in the same inshore waters we humans like to frequent.
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Jan 26, 2024 | 
earthtouchnews.com | Maximillian Theo |Andy Jeffrey |Sarah Keartes
The HuntFrom above the tiger shark’s grey silhouette stands stark against the sun-drenched sands of the sea-floor below. With flowing, almost lethargic, strokes of its tail the shark cruises slowly through the water. As it drifts past a sea turtle, its behaviour suddenly shifts. This time the shark doesn’t continue on its way, as it has done during previous turtle encounters, rather its attention locks in on the reptile.
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Dec 18, 2023 | 
earthtouchnews.com | Ethan Shaw |Sarah Keartes |Andy Jeffrey
You might presume a sea otter mainly lives in fear of a lethal bolt from the blue in the form of an orca or white shark. Turns out, though, that some threats come on four legs. A recent paper in Ecology underscores the dietary (and strategic) versatility of the gray wolf – historically among the most widely distributed large carnivores on Earth – and, more specifically, just how marine-oriented the menus of coastal wolves along the Pacific margin of northwestern North America can be.
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Sep 15, 2023 | 
earthtouchnews.com | Sarah Keartes
A good way to make that kayak you’re nestled in feel super-small? Add an amped-up great white shark to the mix. Footage from northeastern New Zealand’s Eastern Cape waters last month illustrates this point pretty darn dramatically. A kayak fisherman, Greg Potter, found himself becoming something of a third-wheel participant in a vigorous predatory dance playing out between a juvenile white shark and a fur seal.
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Aug 15, 2023 | 
earthtouchnews.com | Sarah Keartes |Ethan Shaw
The coastal brown bears of southern Alaska are probably most iconically associated with salmon-eating, but seasonally available fish are only part of the diverse diet of these swaggering omnivores. Dramatic video, taken and shared by fly-fishing guide Sam Vassar, shows a bear taking down an apparently full-grown cow moose along – and, more often than not, in – the Alagnak River.
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Aug 6, 2023 | 
earthtouchnews.com | Sarah Keartes
Stefan Lovgren, University of Nevada, RenoRivers have been the lifeblood of human civilization throughout history, and yet we know surprisingly little about what lives in many of them – including the giant creatures that prowl their depths. While we know the biggest animal in the ocean is the blue whale and the largest marine fish is the whale shark, the identity of the world’s largest freshwater fish species long remained a mystery.
