Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 10, 2021

Something is killing California's songbirds

Songbirds are dying across parts of California and the Pacific Northwest, and officials think crowds at bird feeders are to blame, according to recent news reports. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and wildlife rehabilitation centers have been inundated with calls since December 2020 from California residents reporting...

Mar 25, 2021

Cause of mysterious bald eagle deaths found after 25 years

A mysterious neurodegenerative disease has been killing bald eagles and other animals at lakes across the United States. And after 25 years of sleuthing, researchers have finally figured out its cause. The disease, known as vacuolar myelinopathy (VM), was first discovered in 1994 when a large number of bald eagle...

Mar 29, 2021

Why do hummingbirds 'hum'?

Colorful hummingbirds get their name from the hum generated by their fast-moving wings as they hover; these tiny aerodynamic marvels have the fastest wingbeat of all birds, clocking in at around 70 strokes per second (more than 4,000 per minute). But how exactly do their wings produce a humming noise?...

Apr 21, 2021

Pelican rescued from Deepwater Horizon disaster flies hundreds of miles home

A brown pelican rescued from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill 11 years ago has finally returned home. After being found completely covered in oil on June 14, 2010, the bird was taken from Louisiana to Georgia to avoid the ongoing spill, where it was later rehabilitated and released. Now, over...

Apr 26, 2021

Cuckoo bird has crossed the Sahara 10 times in 5 years

A cuckoo bird named PJ just broke an impressive record: He traveled more than 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) in the past five years while migrating to and from the U.K. Common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus) spend their winters in Africa and migrate to the U.K. in the spring to breed, typically...

May 4, 2021

This Muppet-faced frogmouth is the 'most Instagrammable bird' on Earth

The sky is full of exceptional birds. Cardinals bedecked with half-male, half-female plumage; godwits that can soar 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) across oceans nonstop; parrots that can best Harvard undergrads in a classic con game (no student loans required). Then, there are birds whose only claim to fame is their...

May 14, 2021

Condors won't stop visiting (and trashing) this California woman's house. Here's why.

Over the weekend ~15 California condors descended on my moms house and absolutely trashed her deck. They still haven’t left. It sucks but also this is unheard of, there’s only 160 of these birds flying free in the state and a flock of them decided to start a war with...

Jun 14, 2021

Crows understand the 'concept of zero' (despite their bird brains)

Crows may be bird-brains, but the feathered creatures can understand the highly abstract concept of zero, new research suggests. The concept of zero, as used in a number system, fully developed in human society around the fifth century A.D., or potentially a few centuries earlier, Live Science previously reported. For...

Jun 17, 2021

World's first bionic vulture created

A wild vulture recently had surgery in Vienna to implant a bionic leg. While still a nestling, Mia suffered a major injury to her right leg. Her parents had used sheep wool to hold the nest together, and some of the fibers became tangled around the young vulture's ankle. With...

Jun 29, 2021

This french-fry-stealing seagull is the star of a new Google ad

An astonishing photograph captures the instant a seagull in the United Kingdom gaped its beak to snap up a french fry. The sight of a gull trying to nab human food is all too familiar to beachgoers, but hungry gulls usually move too quickly for people to catch them in...

Jul 8, 2021

Mass bird die-off in eastern US baffles scientists

Hundreds of young starlings, blue jays, grackles and other birds in the eastern U.S. are dying from a mysterious illness. It has the makings of an avian epidemic, but to fight it, scientists first have to find the cause. So far, scientists have ruled out some of the most common...

Jul 22, 2021

'Trash parrots' in Australia have figured out how to open garbage cans (Video)

Wild sulphur-crested cockatoos Down Under have learned how to open residential garbage-can lids and loot the leftovers, a new study finds. And apparently, the birds are learning this trick from one another. One bird in a far-flung neighborhood even invented another lid-opening technique, which quickly spread to cockatoos in nearby...

Aug 4, 2021

Sneaky birds caught on video while yanking hair from live animals

Parents will do almost anything for their young. Bird parents are no exception, and many go to great lengths to build the perfect nest for their chicks. Many birds take this duty to a new level by plucking hair off of living animals in order to fill their nests, an...

Aug 22, 2021

These flesh-eating centipedes hunt and eat baby birds alive. Here's why.

Giant, carnivorous centipedes on a South Pacific island can kill and eat up to 3,700 seabird chicks every year, a new study has revealed. Phillip Island centipedes (Cormocephalus coynei) are ferocious beasties, growing up to nearly 1 foot (30 centimeters) long, clad in armored plates along their segments and equipped...

Aug 23, 2021

Tortoise hunts baby bird in slow-motion, crushes its skull in shocking video

In shocking new video footage, a giant tortoise creeps toward a baby bird perched on a log, slowly and steadily cornering the chick before chomping down on its tiny skull. The footage ends after the lifeless bird tumbles to the ground, but the researcher who captured the video reported that...