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Plentiful Shark Links
While Discovery is offering all of the large monster sharks and blood and gore you need this week, remember that sharks are fighting for their lives in the wild. The scariest thing in the world isn’t...
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A Busy Shark Scientist
By Molly Michelson We’re ending our shark celebration week with one of the most tireless shark researchers out there: Dave Ebert, Academy Research Associate and Director of the Pacific Shark Research...
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Talking Turtles
By Molly Michelson Giant South American river turtles (Podocnemis expansa) are very social creatures. They aggregate in huge numbers during the nesting season, leaving the Amazonian flooded forest and...
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Digital Learning: Specimen Preparation
This video was produced by youth participating in the 2014 Science in Action Summer Intensive. A project of the California Academy of Sciences’ Digital Learning Program.
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Arapaima Extinctions?
By Molly Michelson Arapaimas are huge fish—among the largest freshwater fish in the world—that live in the Amazon. They can reach up to three meters (almost ten feet) in length and often weigh over 200...
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Elephant Trouble
By Molly Michelson Yesterday we wrote about how the arapaima’s size works against it in the wild. The same could be said of African elephants. A new study, published this week in the Proceedings of the...
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A Whiff of Something Good
By Molly Michelson Scents trigger our memories and identify if food has gone bad, but what if we could also sniff out a good home? A new study by Georgia Tech researchers says that juvenile corals and...
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Digital Learning: Dog Evolution
This video was produced by youth participating in the 2014 Science in Action Summer Intensive. A project of the California Academy of Sciences’ Digital Learning Program.
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Drought Causes Shifting Landscape
By Molly Michelson Water is a precious resource in the American West, and is becoming more so as the region’s severe drought intensifies. A few weeks ago, we reported on the large groundwater depletion...
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Big City, Big Spiders
By Molly Michelson Are you afraid of spiders? Well, if you live in a city, this won’t come as welcome news. It turns out that big-city life is good for spiders—they’re not only getting bigger, they’re...
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Contagious Yawns
By Molly Michelson Yawns are contagious. In fact, even just seeing the word “yawn” can make you yawn. (I dare you to make it through this article without yawning! I won’t be offended—go ahead.)...
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Zombies, Brains and Fungus
By Molly Michelson Several years ago, we reported (here and here) on Ophiocordyceps, a genus of fungus that zombifies ants, taking control of the insect’s brain and forcing the ant to travel to a...
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Octomom of the Deep
This deep-sea octopus set a record for brooding her eggs for over four years!
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Universe Update, August 2014
By Ryan Wyatt The third Thursday of every month, the Morrison Planetarium hosts “Universe Update” at the 6:30 planetarium show during NightLife. I select my favorite astronomy stories from the past...
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Fungus Among Us
By Molly Michelson Malassezia is a pesky genus of fungus. It’s behind dandruff and eczema and a lot of human irritation—see what I mean by pesky? Scientists assumed that the fungi evolved to inhabit...
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Moving Rocks
By Molly Michelson It’s a research assignment that sounds like a practical joke—or an Onion story in the making: watch rocks (many of them weighing hundreds of pounds) move. “The most boring experiment...
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Cockatoo Smarts
By Molly Michelson We use the term bird-brained to imply someone is “lacking in seriousness or maturity” or “not having or showing an ability to absorb ideas readily,” according to Merriam-Webster. But...
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Bats: Hearing Is Believing
By Molly Michelson As nocturnal animals, bats have evolved to live without light. They emit echolocation sounds and use the delay between the reflected echoes to measure distance to obstacles or prey....
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Blue whale population rebounding
By Molly Michelson Blue whales are bouncing back—if a 100-foot, 190-ton aquatic animal can bounce, that is. Not all blue whale populations are increasing (especially near Antarctica, where the...
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Assuring an Endangered Frog’s Future
Academy scientists are collecting, breeding and studying Lake Oku clawed frogs.
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