Shark Nannies: The Ultimate Baby-Sitters

Just off Kri Island in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, meter-long dotted sharks glide underwater – a sight conservationists say was vanishingly rare until recently. 

The Indo-Pacific leopard shark – also known as the zebra shark – has historically inhabited reefs along Indo-West Pacific Ocean, the Red Sea, East Africa, Japan, and Australia. But years of habitat destruction and overfishing have reduced the population by 50-79% over the past three generations (around 57 to 72 years), and they are classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). While their historic decline was driven by the shark fin trade, overfishing pressures persist through accidental bycatch and trade in its exotic leather. 

In Raja Ampat, less than a decade ago they had all but disappeared. The IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group estimated that left alone, the archipelago’s population could take between 100 and 200 years to recover naturally. 

Now, a global group called ReShark say they are attempting to “restore balance to the ocean” with what they describe as the world’s first shark rewilding program. The initiative, known as the Stegostoma tigrinum Augmentation and Recovery (StAR) project, after the shark’s scientific name, sees leopard sharks bred in aquariums around the world, before the offspring are released into protected waters in Indonesia and Thailand. 

“Back in 2019, in Raja Ampat, we estimated that there were about 20 individual adult sharks remaining”, says Mark Erdmann (left), executive director of ReShark. 

“Most conservation activities for sharks usually revolve around either setting up marine protected areas or doing fisheries management. In our case, our niche is we’re doing active recovery”. 

The idea first emerged during a visit Erdmann made to Singapore’s SEA Aquarium in 2015. The staff showed him tanks crowded with baby leopard sharks they had successfully bred in captivity. 

“They said, ‘we actually have a problem, we’re producing too many pups, and we don’t know what to do with them’”, Erdmann recalls. 

That encounter sparked an eight-year effort involving governments, aquariums, nonprofits, academics, local communities and conservation scientists who worked together to release captive pups into Indonesian waters. 

Like many sharks, the Indo-Pacific leopard sharks are harmless to humans. But unlike most sharks, they reproduce by laying eggs. In fact, they’re the largest of the egg-laying sharks, a trait that makes them well suited for this rewilding effort. 

“About 43% of sharks are egg layers”, says David Ebert (right), program director at the Pacific Shark Research Center, San Jose State University, who is not connected with ReShark. “With live bearing, you have a whole different set of issues to deal with. So, this is probably a good species to potentially start with”. 

His global efforts to spot elusive sharks have seen Ebert become known online as the “Lost Shark Guy”. In his opinion, the leopard shark has another advantage, “the cute factor”, which can help the public get on board with conservation initiatives. 

ReShark, supported by Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative, have partnered with nearly 60 aquariums worldwide. Of those, about a dozen across the United States, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore are actively breeding sharks for the program, according to Erdmann. 

Viable eggs from global aquariums are transported to ReShark’s two nurseries in Raja Ampat and Phuket, Thailand. There, specially trained aquarium managers – nicknamed “shark nannies” – monitor the eggs, care for the pups and prepare them for life in the wild. Once the sharks grow to a meter long and can forage food for themselves, they are tagged and released into protected waters. 

The nickname may sound playful, but the work is highly technical. Shark nannies undergo months of training in animal husbandry, often supported by large public aquariums. An internship program hires residents rather than international volunteers, to involve local communities. 

“It’s super important that the people in Raja Ampat and the people in Phuket are supportive of this program, and that we don’t fall back to the way it was 10 or 15 years ago when these sharks were being caught and killed”, says Erdmann. 

Some shark experts remain cautious about the program’s long-term effectiveness. 

Ebert, who has spent more than four decades studying sharks and rays around the world, describes the program as innovative but still largely experimental. 

“It’s kind of a neat science project,” he says. “But how’s it going to impact the (shark) population? That’s the big question”. 

Among his concerns is whether the released sharks will survive long enough to reproduce in the wild. Since leopard sharks are believed to take between five to 12 years to reach maturity, the earliest ReShark will find out if its first released pups are breeding is 2028.

Road Runner's Final Lap

Let's clear the air: cartoons aren't real! Most of the time, anyway! 

And, sometimes, the coyote catches the road runner. In the classic “Looney Tunes” cartoons featuring the Road Runner and Wile E Coyote, which first appeared in 1949, the coyote is foiled again and again in his efforts to catch the puckish bird in the deserts of the American Southwest. 

But a photographer in the Chatsworth Nature Preserve in Los Angeles on Saturday captured a real-life image of something you would never see in that cartoon: a coyote who successfully nabbed a road runner, instead of falling from a cliff, getting hit by a train or having an anvil land on him. 

The snapper, Alexander deBarros (right), took the photo while out with a survey team from the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society for a monthly check of the ecosystem at the preserve, a 1,325-acre space in northwestern Los Angeles. (The photograph was reported by the Los Angeles TV news station KTLA). 

There is no indication that this coyote effected the capture through the use of an Acme jet-propelled pogo-stick, Acme rocket-powered roller skates or Acme dehydrated boulders (“Just add water!”). 

Also, there were no reports of the road runner saying, “Beep, beep”.

While the image proved that coyotes do sometimes come out on top against road runners, it’s not a common occurrence. 

“It is considered very rare for a coyote to catch a road runner”, said Scott El Henke, a professor at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University, Kingsville. Road runners can run about 20 miles an hour and are agile, he asserted. 

“Physically they can outrun a coyote”, he added, and they “can fly up into tree branches to escape attacks”. 

DeBarros said in an interview that he initially thought the prey might be a ground squirrel. 

“When we confirmed that it was, in fact, a road runner in that coyote’s mouth, we freaked out a little bit”, he intoned. He claimed in 17 years of birding, it was the first time he had seen the cartoon antagonists together. 

When DeBarros spotted the coyote, it already had the road runner in its mouth. He did not see any chase or kill. 

Dr. Henke said this particular road runner might have been caught because it was distracted hunting its own prey, or perhaps it had been hit by a vehicle and was scavenged by the coyote. 

Scavenged? Maybe Wile E didn’t catch the road runner after all. 

Another coyote expert, Stanley D Gehrt, a professor of wildlife ecology at Ohio State University, agreed that the scavenger theory could be true. 

“But I have learned to never underestimate coyotes”, he said. “They can do anything, even catch a road runner”. 

[FYI, the species found in the American Southwest and depicted in the cartoons is the Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus)]. 

In an odd coincidence, DeBarros’s father, Brian Mainolfi, is an animator who worked with Chuck Jones, a creator of the coyote-road runner cartoons, on the 1994 cartoon “Chariots of Fur”. 

Jones, who died in 2002, once said he got the idea for the coyote character from a travel book by a classic novelist. 

“I first got interested in the coyote as an animal while perusing Mark Twain’s ‘Roughing It’ at the age of 7”, he said in a 1989 interview with The New York Times. “I thought of it as a sort of dissolute collie. And actually, that’s just about what a coyote is! No one saw it more clearly than Mark Twain”. 

The cartoon has been back on the radar since the American release on August 28th of the movie “Coyote vs. Acme”, in which the coyote sues the Acme Corporation for its defective products. (It is fictional). 

The feature is dong exceptionally well. It earned a spectacular 95% 'Certified Fresh' score on Rotten Tomatoes and an A CinemaScore from audiences.

But did you know that it has an intriguing back story? 

After years of headlines mourning its potential deletion, the theatrical run of "Coyote vs. Acme" has turned the film into one of Hollywood's ultimate underdog success stories.

Independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment acquired the worldwide rights for roughly $50 million, stepping in to rescue the live-action/animated hybrid after Warner Bros. Discovery initially chose to shelve it for a $30 million tax write-off in late 2023. 

Smart Shelling

Some bottlenose dolphins have learned to use tools to help them catch fish, a clever technique that may be passed on from mother to calf. 

Scientists in Australia observed the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) chasing fish into empty seashells and carrying it to the surface before tipping the prey into their mouth. A young dolphin calf was also seen copying its mother by picking up a large shell in the same way. 

The behavior, known as shelling, is documented in a paper "Observations of Shelling Behavior and Potential Evidence of Vertical Social Learning by Bottlenose Dolphins in the Great Sandy Marine Park, Queensland Australia" published on August 08, 2026 in the journal Marine Mammal Science. The findings mark the first time evidence of tool use by dolphins was documented in video and suggest it may be more common behavior than previously thought. 

Scientists once believed that relying on tools separated humans from animals but research has shown that that’s not quite true. Chimpanzees use rocks to crack nuts and twigs to fish for termites, elephants use tree branches to swat flies, and crows even build their own tools by bending twigs into a hook shape to catch prey. 

It’s no surprise then that dolphins, being highly intelligent creatures, are no different. Tour guides near Queensland’s Great Sandy Marine Park in Australia have previously reported seeing dolphins engaging in shelling as far back as 2019, but it has so far gone undocumented. 

While studying dolphins on Australia’s east coast, the researchers behind the said study spotted two adult females using seashells as a fishing tool in July and October 2025. 

On July 06, 2025, an adult female dolphin named Stevie Nicks was seen lifting a shell out of the water. The researchers, however, did not see a fish slip out of the shell and could therefore not determine whether the dolphin’s attempt was a successful hunt.  

Later on October 01, 2025, another female, named Maserati, was spotted carrying a baler shell to the surface before a fish escaped out of it. The dolphin dropped the shell and chased after the fish, the researchers are not sure whether it ended up catching it or not. 

Remarkably, Maserati’s young calf, Bentley, was seen mimicking its mother’s behavior just moments after, surfacing with the same shell above the water. The footage shows a possible lizardfish poking out of the shell. Still, the researchers can’t confirm whether the dolphin got a meal out of it. 

Before the recent paper, shelling had previously only been reported in Shark Bay, Western Australia. Documenting the same behavior in Queensland, the researchers were able to show dolphins on opposite sides of Australia learning to use tools in the exact same way. 

This suggests that the same technique was developed by different dolphins independently of one another. Since shelling went undocumented for so many years, the researchers believe it is much more common among dolphins in Australia, as well as other parts of the world. 

Ultimately, these findings underscore how much we still have to learn about the hidden lives of marine mammals. By capturing shelling on video for the first time, researchers have opened a new window into the complex minds of dolphins, proving that their capacity for innovation and cultural transmission mirrors our own more than we ever realized.

Math Behind the Music

Language has long been considered a uniquely human trait, with features that mark it out as distinct from the communication of all other species. 

However, an international research team has uncovered a previously undetected structure in the songs of Bengalese finches (Lonchura striata domestica) that matches the exact statistical patterns found in human speech. 

The findings suggest that some of language's most fundamental building blocks may not be uniquely human after all, but rather a universal feature of learned communication.

Published in Vol. 12, Issue 32 of the journal Science Advances on August 07, 2026, the study "Language-like statistical structure arises in learned signaling: evidence from birdsong" shows that these birds – famous for their complex, learned songs – organize their singing using a mathematical formula known as a Zipfian distribution. By analyzing song data collected from Bengalese finches in Japan, the researchers observed that the songs contained statistically coherent sequences of notes, the avian equivalent of "words." Within these sequences, a few words are used very frequently while others are used rarely. Furthermore, frequently used chunks of syllables tend to be shorter, while less frequently used chunks tend to be longer – a specific pattern known as Zipf's law. 

To understand how this structure develops, the team used methods inspired by how human babies discover words in speech. They collected data across various stages of the birds' development and found that the patterns were already present during their earliest attempts at singing. This suggests that the structures emerge naturally as part of the learning process. 

Young songbirds listen to the sounds around them to unconsciously learn the statistical patterns and organize their songs. This mirrors how human infants figure out where one word ends and the next begins by recognizing which sounds frequently occur together. This statistical process is thought to make language easier to learn, helping infants identify recurring "chunks" of speech within a continuous stream of daily sound.

"We have become used to the idea that language is unique in the natural world", said study co-leader Simon Kirby (left) of the University of Edinburgh. "But by using insights from how babies learn language we've been able to take a closer look at birdsong, and have discovered a surprising commonality between these species separated by more than 300 million years of evolution. Both humans and songbirds pass on their communication through culture, and this is what creates the patterns that language and birdsong share".

This cultural transmission – meaning they learn their communication systems from each other – is a critical piece of the evolutionary puzzle. The team's findings build on their own recent discovery, alongside Ellen Garland from the University of St. Andrews, that humpback whales also rely on a similar systematic structure. 

Together, these discoveries suggest that evolution may repeatedly arrive at the exact same statistical solution whenever complex communication must be learned and passed down across generations. While this does not mean human language isn't special in other ways, it brings science closer to understanding what our speech shares with the rest of nature.

"People often think language is what makes humans unique", noted Inbal Arnon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "Our findings suggest that some of the fundamental properties that make language what it is can emerge wherever communication is learned and passed from one generation to the next – and that this happens across evolutionarily distant species: humans, Bengalese Finches, and humpback whales".

For long-time researchers of avian behavior, the discovery opens up entirely new perspectives on familiar subjects. 

"I have studied Bengalese finch song for many years and thought I knew it rather well", added Kazuo Okanoya (right) of Teikyo University, Japan. 

"It was therefore a pleasant surprise to discover, through this international collaboration, that it shares yet another property with whale song and human language".

The Painted Rump

Out on the fringes of Botswana's Okavango Delta, several hundred cattle once wandered around with enormous eyes painted on their backsides, and not one of them got eaten by a lion. 

That is a literal accounting, not a gag. Across four field seasons between 2015 and 2018, a team near the village of Shorobe in the northern part of the country painted 683 cattle with big two-tone eyespots on the rump, gave 543 more a simple cross, and left 835 alone. 

Lions and leopards killed 15 of the unmarked animals and four of the cross-marked ones. Eyespot cattle killed: none. 

Cameron Radford, Neil Jordan and their colleagues published the tally in Communications Biology – "Artificial eyespots on cattle reduce predation by large carnivores" (2020), and it remains one of the stranger results in livestock protection. 

Jordan got the idea, watching a hunt collapse. He was in Botswana, a lion was stalking an impala, and the impala looked up at the wrong moment for the lion. 

“Lions are ambush hunters, so they creep up on their prey”, he told UNSW’s newsroom. Once the cat clocked that it had been seen, it quit. Behavioural ecologists call this pursuit deterrence, and it turns up everywhere. 

Brown hares stand up and face approaching foxes. Guppies that swim over and inspect a predator get attacked less often than the ones that stay put. Butterflies carry fake eyes on their wings for the same reason. 

No living mammal has evolved eyespots, which is presumably why nobody had thought to bolt them onto a cow. Fourteen herds took part, from six animals to 110, all belonging to farmers who had recently lost stock. Cattle there are penned overnight where possible, then graze unattended across the bush all day, and that is where most of the trouble happens. 

Painting happened at dawn as the animals filed through the crush, with acrylic paint and foam stencils glued to a plasterer’s float. Marks stayed sharp for roughly 24 days, so the crew returned monthly and redid them, 49 sessions all up. Annual spending on paint and supplies came to about a fifth of the price of one cow. 

A sceptic would object that the painted cattle simply got lucky, or stayed closer to home. So the researchers fitted GPS loggers to animals from all three groups. No meaningful difference in nights spent outside the enclosure, none in how far they roamed. 

Here is where the tidy story wobbles. Cattle wearing a plain painted cross also survived better than their unmarked herdmates, which is not what a pure eye-recognition effect predicts. 

Jordan flagged it as a genuine surprise in UNSW Sydney’s summary of the findings, noting that “novel cross-marks were better than no marks at all, which was unexpected”. 

Two explanations survive. Lions may be reading the eyes as a face turned towards them, or they may simply be wary of any bold, unfamiliar pattern on something they were planning to eat. The paper treats both as live options and rules out two rivals: that the marks divert attacks to other parts of the body, or that they mimic another predator. 

Anyone inclined to feel superior to the lions should know it works on humans too. Researchers at Newcastle University mounted signs featuring a pair of staring eyes above bicycle racks that had been suffering repeat thefts, and reported in PLOS ONE, "Cycle Thieves, We Are Watching You’: Impact of a Simple Signage Intervention against Bicycle Theft", Nettle D, Nott K, Bateson M (2012), that thefts at those racks fell by 62 percent. Thefts elsewhere on campus went up by 65 percent. 

The eyes did not abolish the behaviour. They relocated it. Which is precisely the uncomfortable question hanging over the cattle. Only about a third of each herd carried eyespots. Lions always had unpainted alternatives standing right there, and Jordan conceded in 2020 that he did not know whether the trick would hold once those easier targets were gone. 

Painting every animal in a herd has not been tested. Nor has the wet season, when the crew stayed out of the field and predators turn to livestock as wild prey disperses. 

Nineteen predation events are a thin base for a strong claim, in one landscape, with one set of predators. Eighteen of those kills were lions. A spotted hyaena took one animal from each group, which fits the theory rather than dents it, because hyaenas chase prey down instead of ambushing it and lose nothing by being seen early. 

One paper is one paper. The farmers themselves were not immediately convinced. 

“At first they thought it was a joke”, Radford told Atlas Obscura, before adding that they became glad to see the crew arrive. He also mentioned something more telling: informal copies had already started for leopards in India, jaguars in South America and predators in Nepal, back in 2020. No replication on the same scale has landed since. 

Cheap ideas travel faster than the evidence for them, and a bucket of acrylic paint travels faster than most. 

For the Botswana livestock, the lesson was clear: you don’t need to outrun the lion, and you don’t even need to outsmart it – you just have to stand there, look ridiculous, and let your unpainted herdmates do the dying for you! 😜

Mind the Gap: Why British Flies Can't Stick the Zebra Landing

I came across more research on the subject of zebra stripes. [Refer to my blog post "No Fly Zone: Why Zebras Wear PJs" published Wednesday]. 

A February 20, 2019 PLOS ONE study "Benefits of zebra stripes: Behaviour of tabanid flies around zebras and horses" by Tim Caro, Yvette Argueta, Emmanuelle Sophie Briolat, et al found that zebra stripes disrupt the landing and biting behavior of tabanid flies (Family name: Tabanidae), serving as a natural defense. The research indicates this visual confusion reduces harmful pest bites, providing a significant evolutionary advantage. 

Researchers from the University of Bristol and UC Davis, USA, spent time on a horse farm in Britain where they investigated the behaviours of tabanid horse flies around captive plains zebras and uniformly coloured domestic horses using video analysis techniques.

They discovered that the stripes don’t deter horse flies from a distance, with both zebras and domestic horses experiencing the same rate of circling from the flies. However, video analyses revealed differences in approach speed, with horse flies failing to slow down on approach to zebras, which is essential for a successful landing. 

Professor Tim Caro, Honorary Research Fellow from the University of Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, said: “Horseflies just seem to fly over zebra stripes or bump into them, but this didn’t happen with horses. Consequently, far fewer successful landings were experienced by zebras compared to horses”. 

Dr Martin How, Royal Society University Research Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences, added: “This reduced ability to land on the zebra’s coat may be due to stripes disrupting the visual system of the horse flies during their final moments of approach. Stripes may dazzle flies in some way once they are close enough to see them with their low-resolution eyes”. 

To make sure that the effect was not caused by the difference in smell between zebras and horses, the scientists placed different coloured cloth coats – black, white or zebra-striped – over the horses to observe horse fly behaviour. Just as before, when horses wore coats with striped patterns, they experienced fewer horse fly landings compared to when they wore single-colour coats. 

The research also directly observed zebra and horse behaviour in response to biting flies. Zebras exhibited preventative behaviour, such as running away and tail swishing at a far higher rate than horses. Consequently, any horse flies that did successfully land on zebras spent less time there compared to those landing on horses, with few staying long enough to probe for a blood meal. 

In Africa, horse flies carry dangerous debilitating diseases such as trypanosomiasis and African horse sickness, which cause wasting and often death. Therefore, it is unsurprising that zebras utilise both behavioural defences and morphological striping to avoid horseflies. 

The scientists did acknowledge that the latest experiment was carried out in Somerset rather than around the biting flies of Africa, and other limitations included that the path of the flies could only be seen in two dimensions from video recordings and that the horse coats were made of different materials. 

However, this research provides new evidence for the theory that zebras evolved dichromatic striped coats to evade biting flies and has considerable implications for the horse industry.

Salmonella Warning Issued for Jalapeños

On the heels of a nationwide surge in cyclosporiasis, US health officials are investigating a multistate outbreak of salmonella linked to jalapeños (medium-sized chili peppers of the species Capsicum annuum), which has sickened 345 people so far. 

Their illnesses began on dates ranging from June 19 to July 20, 2026 and reported in 27 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 36 people have been hospitalized with the food-borne illness. 

In an August 05 food safety alert, the CDC identified the source of the outbreak: fresh jalapeño peppers distributed by Coast Citrus Distributors to wholesalers and restaurants nationwide. 

After Coast Citrus Distributors initiated a recall of their jalapeño peppers, Taylor Farms followed suit, recalling their prepared foods made with the recalled jalapeños, including salsa and guacamole, per the Food and Drug Administration. The affected products were distributed to Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Target, among other retailers. Some tainted jalapeños were served at Chipotle and Qdoba and have since been removed from stores. 

Salmonella is a type of bacteria found in the intestines of humans and animals that can cause food poisoning known as salmonellosis. People become infected by ingesting contaminating food or water. 

Infection with salmonella causes severe and sometimes bloody diarrhea, vomiting, fever and stomach cramps, per the CDC. In rare cases, salmonella can enter the bloodstream and cause life-threatening complications. 

Most people recover on their own, but some groups are at higher risk of severe illness. These include adults over 65, young children and people with weak immune systems. 

Salmonella is a leading cause of food poisoning in the US, and infections are more common in the summer because the bacteria thrive in warm conditions, per the CDC. 

However, the recent outbreak has stoked fears about the safety of US produce, especially after a summer of dodging the “diarrhea parasite” cyclospora linked to iceberg lettuce.

Following consecutive league wins against Dundee and Kilmarnock, an in-form Celtic launched their Scottish League Cup defense with a dominant 4-0 victory against Dundee United yesterday. 

The opening goal came when Auston Trusty headed the ball directly into the net from a corner kick in the 22nd minute. 

Two minutes afterward, Camilo Durán Marquez doubled the lead with a clinical strike, marking his debut goal for the club. 

Sebastian Tounekti scored Celtic's third goal in the 54th minute by collecting a through-pass from Benjamin Nygren and slotting a low finish into the bottom corner of the net. 

Nine minutes later, Mika Baur produced a lovely wee flick to Tounekti, who quickly fed the ball into Nygren; the Swede then arrowed a sweet shot high into the net from 18 yards.

Zoo-housed Lions Show Wild-style Behaviours When Fed Whole Carcasses

An Australian study "Effects of implementing a whole-carcass feeding routine on the behaviour of zoo-housed African lions (Panthera leo)" published August 2026 has found that feeding zoo-housed lions whole-animal carcasses on a feast-and-fast schedule encourages behaviours more closely aligned with those seen in the wild. 

The research from Adelaide University and Monarto Safari Park in South Australia released in ⁠Applied Animal Behaviour Science examined how African lions responded when animal care staff introduced whole-animal carcasses every nine days, building on an existing feast-and-fast feeding routine for a group of adult males. 

Using around-the-clock video monitoring over three months, researchers found the lions spent significantly longer feeding, rested more after meals and displayed activity patterns that mirrored the natural cycles of wild lions. 

Lead author Lesia Hryhorenko from Adelaide University's School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences said the study offers new insights into how feeding schedules influence the behavior of carnivores in human care. 

"Wild lions don't eat at the same time every day. They experience natural periods of feasting and fasting depending on hunting success", Hryhorenko said. "We wanted to understand how African lions in human care respond when feeding routines more closely resemble those natural patterns". 

The researchers monitored three adult male lions at Monarto Safari Park before and after the introduction of whole-carcass feeding. During the experimental phase, zookeepers fed the three adult male lions approximately 200 kilograms (441 pounds) of carcasses, which remained available for up to three days, followed by a period of rest and digestion. 

Eight infrared cameras recorded the lions' behavior continuously, creating one of the most detailed 24-hour data sets yet collected on African lions in human care under a carcass-feeding regime. 

The study found that feeding activity increased dramatically on carcass days, with lions spending almost three times longer feeding than they normally would. 

Feeding bouts were also more frequent and lasted longer as the animals tore, manipulated and consumed the carcasses, exhibiting a wider range of natural feeding behaviors. After feeding, the lions spent much more time lying down and resting. As the fasting period progressed, movement gradually increased again, creating a behavioral rhythm that closely resembled the feast-and-fast cycles observed in wild lion populations. 

"Providing whole carcasses changes much more than the nutritional content of the diet", Hryhorenko said. "It gives lions the opportunity to engage in behaviors such as tearing, pulling and manipulating food over extended periods, which are important components of their natural feeding ecology". 

Researchers also examined pacing, a repetitive behavior often associated with anticipation in carnivores in human care. While pacing increased slightly over the course of the study, it did not steadily rise during fasting periods. Instead, peaks occurred around routine keeper arrival and habitat-shifting times, suggesting the behavior was linked more closely to predictable feeding routines than hunger. 

The researchers observed no increase in aggression or social instability around carcass-feeding events. 

Co-author Alexandra Whittaker, an associate professor, said the study highlights the value of long-term, continuous monitoring when assessing animal behavior and management practices. 

"Many zoo studies focus only on what happens immediately after food is provided", Whittaker said. "Our results show that feeding schedules can influence behavior for days afterward, making it essential to look at behavioral patterns across the entire feeding cycle rather than a single feeding event". 

The researchers say future studies combining behavioral observations with physiological measures could help further evaluate how different feeding regimes affect animal welfare and well-being.

The New Normal: East Asia’s Brutal Heatwave

A brutal heatwave across East Asia has devastated agriculture, leaving one farmer Lee Sang-hyuk with an entirely spoiled potato crop in Yanggu county, 80 miles (130km) north-east of Seoul, South Korea. 

The extreme ground heat effectively cooked the produce in the soil, turning a healthy-looking field into mush within a single week. 

Speaking to local broadcaster SBS, Lee expressed heartbreak over the widespread damage. His ruined livelihood reflects the broader impact of record-breaking summer temperatures currently impacting South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong. As per a news report from The Guardian published August 13, 2026. 

In fact, two Sundays ago, the south-eastern city of Yangsan recorded a temperature of 42.5C, the highest registered in South Korea since modern weather observations began in 1904. 

The scorching heat has since been blamed for at least 31 deaths nationwide, according to the country’s disease control agency, while more than 900,000 livestock and 1.4 million farmed fish have died. 

Authorities issued a heat warning, urging people to “immediately stop all outdoor activities”. 

South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, told his cabinet the extreme weather was “unlike anything we have experienced before”. 

“We need to make efforts for a fundamental overhaul of the national crisis system”, he said, “since this extreme weather is becoming the new normal”. 

In neighbouring Japan, temperatures reached 40C or higher at multiple locations and the country recorded its first ever “kokushobi”, or “cruelly hot day”, a new category introduced this year by the country’s weather agency for temperatures above 40C. In Tokyo, three lions died of suspected heatstroke at a city zoo. 

Scientists say the extremes are part of a wider pattern. Researchers working through Japan’s Weather Attribution Centre found that the country’s intense July heat would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming. 

Without the warming caused by human activity, they calculated, a heatwave of this scale would occur on average once ever 10,000 years. The heat struck even as an El Niño event was under way, a natural climate pattern that has in the past been associated with a lower likelihood of extreme summer heat in Japan. 

In Hong Kong, its observatory posted an official temperature of 36.9C, the highest recorded there since records began in 1884, as the outer bands of Typhoon Dolphin swept hot air over the city. 

In China’s western Xinjiang region, a weather station recorded a 50C reading in July and heatwaves gripped the country’s north-east, while North Korea reported a run of tropical nights in Pyongyang, with temperatures failing to fall below 25C. 

The World Meteorological Organization said in their latest State of the Climate in Asia report that the pace of Asia’s warming between 1991 and 2025 is roughly twice that of the preceding three decades. 

June-Yi Lee (right), a climate scientist at Pusan National University and a coordinating lead author of the UN’s most recent climate assessment, warned that heatwaves were expected to become more frequent and intense as the climate heated up, while compound extremes, such as consecutive heatwaves and heavy rainfall, were becoming more common. 

“There is an urgent need for rapid, large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to limit further global warming together with well-planned adaptation measures to address the climate change that is already occurring”, she said.

Butterflies On The Move

Around the world, ongoing environmental changes are prompting many butterfly species to relocate and search for new homes, a process referred to as species range shifts or species redistribution. 

As temperatures, rainfall and habitats change, butterflies can relocate over long distances, or even move vertically up and down mountain ranges. 

A new global study found one in ten known butterfly species has already shifted in range. So, where are they going – and why? 

Data from a collection of more than 6,180 reports (565 studies and 68 expert assessments) of butterfly range shift and which covered 1,758 species across 105 countries, showed 80% of the documented butterfly species had expanded their ranges latitudinally, meaning east to west, or longitudinally, meaning north to south. It found that 27% had reduced their range and 22% had shifted up or down slopes on hills or mountains. 

Many species showed a combination of these range changes. The public narrative is often simplistic: as the world warms, species are shifting towards cooler temperatures at higher latitudes, or moving upwards in mountains. This is happening, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. 

In fact, butterflies need more than to find new homes at the right temperature. Caterpillars often depend on specific host plants; adults need nectar, shelter and safe places to breed; and populations also require connected habitats so individuals can move easily through the landscape, meet, reproduce and breed. 

Some species show how fast changes can happen. The tawny coster (Acraea terpsicore) native to the Indian subcontinent, primarily centered in India and Sri Lanka, has expanded through Southeast Asia and into Australia. In Brazil, Godartiana byses has expanded from Rio de Janeiro and Bahia into São Paulo, a shift linked to climate warming. 

Other species show the opposite pattern. The small blue (Cupido minimus) has lost 40% of its habitat in the United Kingdom over the past 150 years. In Germany, the cranberry fritillary (Boloria aquilonaris) has lost much of its original habitat because of bog drainage. In Romania, an increase in farming has been linked to a severe range contraction of the danube clouded yellow (Colias myrmidone). 

Even range shifts along mountain slopes are not always straightforward. In Mexico, the painted lady (Vanessa cardui) shifted upslope at a rate of about 83 metres per year between 1988 and 2011. Over the same period, the queen butterfly (Danaus gilippus) shifted downslope at a rate of about 32m per year. 

Together, these examples show butterfly species range shifts are not simply a story of animals moving towards the poles. 

In the comprehensive study, climate change and extreme weather events were the most common reasons why butterflies shifted their range. 

But climate change is not the only factor. Agriculture, forestry, urban development and habitat destruction are also reshaping where butterflies can live and reproduce. These disturbances destroy host plants and breeding sites, and fragment large habitats into patches too small to sustain a healthy population. 

It is important to note that butterflies are part of the living fabric around us. Adult butterflies contribute to pollination. Caterpillars feed birds, spiders and other insects. When butterflies disappear, it can signal the plants, grasslands or woodlands once visited by butterflies are also changing. 

This matters for conservation. Many protected areas are based on maps of where species lived in the past. But if butterflies and other species are moving, those maps quickly become outdated. 

The message is simple. Conservation cannot only protect habitats where species once lived – it must include the places where they will relocate, and the wildlife corridors they will use to get there. If not, we may keep protecting yesterday’s nature while tomorrow’s nature has nowhere left to go.

No Fly Zone: Why Zebras Wear PJs

For most of the history of evolutionary biology, nobody has really known why zebras have stripes. 

This is not for lack of trying. The specific pattern is one of the most obviously puzzling features of any mammal on Earth – vivid, symmetrical, apparently costly to maintain, and completely useless for the sort of things stripes usually do in nature. 

Camouflage, the most intuitive explanation, doesn't work. As are the other explanations. Thermoregulation. Social recognition. Confusing predators during the chase. One by one, most of these suppositions have quietly collapsed. 

But one long-standing scientific hypothesis moved closer to confirmation, thanks to a unique experiment in Japan, conducted at the Aichi Agricultural Research Center in Nagakute City, Aichi Prefecture in the Chubu region of central Japan. Published on October 03, 2019, in PLOS ONE, the study "Cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid biting fly attack" by Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Yasushi Matsubara, et al demonstrates that painting black-and-white stripes on cattle significantly reduces biting fly attacks. 

Six Japanese Black cows* (Kuroge Washu) – a breed that is naturally uniformly dark – were assigned to three treatments using a Latin-square rotation: painted with black-and-white zebra stripes, painted with black-only stripes (to control for any effect of the paint itself), or left unpainted. 

[*Fun fact: These bovines make up over 90% of all ⁠Wagyu produced in Japan].

The cows spent time in each treatment on natural pasture where biting flies were abundant. Researchers photographed the animals at regular intervals and counted the number of flies visible on their bodies in each image. The results were direct. Cows in the zebra-stripe condition attracted approximately half as many biting flies as the same animals when unpainted or when painted with black-only stripes. 

The cows also showed substantially fewer fly-repelling behaviours – the head throws, ear beats, leg stamps, skin twitches, and tail flicks that cattle use to shake off biting insects. They were, measurably, being bothered less. 

The specific paint pattern did the work. The stripes were doing something. The current best explanation for the effect involves the specific visual mechanics of how biting flies land. 

Flies do not simply fly straight at a target. In the final approach, they rely on optical flow – the way visual patterns move across their compound eyes as they close in – to judge distance, speed, and the precise moment to slow down for landing. 

Uniform surfaces produce smooth optical flow. Striped surfaces produce something the fly’s visual system cannot interpret cleanly. The alternating light and dark bands create false movement signals, disrupting the fly’s ability to gauge how close it actually is to the surface. The result is that flies approach striped surfaces at the wrong speed, often overshooting or bumping off without properly landing. 

Over the course of an afternoon in a fly-heavy pasture, this small optical mismatch adds up to a substantial reduction in successful landings. None of this requires the fly to be repelled by the stripes in any active sense. It just requires the stripes to make landing physically harder. 

The insect-deterrent theory has taken decades to reach its current standing, because it has spent most of that time competing with three other serious explanations that biologists once found more plausible.

Why Other Theories Failed

• Camouflage against savanna vegetation fails because zebras stand out clearly to lions and hyenas at hunting distances instead of blending in.
• Thermoregulation: Tests on striped metal barrels showed no cooling effect from the pattern. 
• Social recognition does not offer a plausible evolutionary reason for zebra stripes because other closely related, highly social African equids (like wild donkeys and horses) recognize each other perfectly well without any stripes at all. 
• Predator confusion: Moving stripes offer only a minor distraction to large predators during a chase.

Nature solved pest control millions of years ago, not with chemicals, but with a simple optical illusion. It turns out that fashion-forward thinking is the ultimate shield against the animal kingdom's tiniest nuisances.

Tom Waits "The Fly"

Parade's Rylan Fischer on July 31, 2026 introduced a superb new spoken-word piece "The Fly" by Tom Waits. It serves as the B-side to his stellar collaboration with Massive Attack, "Boots on the Ground". 

And this is what he wrote on Tom Waits. "...He is one of the most singular American artists of all time. He is a potent and sardonic songwriter who utilizes sounds and styles from the most unlikely places to create songs and stories that sound nothing like anything you'll ever hear. With instrumentation as down-and-out as the people he depicts in his music, Waits captures all corners of the idiosyncratic, deranged, depressed, and authentic that makes up America", as noted by Parade. 

And so, "The Fly" is already available digitally on July 31 and the physical eco-conscious vinyl scheduled for September 04.

A satirical, comically wry ode to the common housefly (Musca domestica), written out of a "begrudging admiration for the brief, unsung life of the insect", that's what it it!

 

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. 

I’ve become a big fan of the new song. I'm fascinated by how he trains his singular focus on something as uncommonly common as the common housefly. And I find him to be such a fascinating voice to listen to, and his writing has a way of commanding my attention. 

The fact that Waits relies entirely on the gravel and rhythmic cadence of his own voice to build the tension, turning simple, stark spoken words into a percussive, theatrical performance, proves he doesn't need a band to create a brooding atmosphere.

Overall, the song is packed with all of Waits’ dark wit and gritty honesty. For sure, the choice to forego any instrumentation works brilliantly as well, putting me right in the room with Waits and making me feel like I’m staring right at the eponymous fly. 

I very much appreciate this particular track because I myself have given speeches on the cockroach and the frog! 

As with the housefly ditty, the speeches have stood out!

The Defense Against Korea's Heat Waves

As record heat waves continue to bake concrete jungles across the globe, city planners looking for thermal relief may find their best defense planted right outside their front doors. 

According to new research from Korea’s National Institute of Forest Science, urban forests serve as powerful, natural air conditioners, slashing daytime temperatures by nearly 2 degrees Celsius compared to heavily built-up city centers. 

The findings, released July 27, 2026 by the forest research agency, draw on continuous temperature and humidity tracking across various urban environments in Seoul. The data reveals that city forests provide a consistent cooling effect, lowering temperatures by up to 1.8 degrees Celsius at the peak of midday heat. 

However, not all green spaces cool equally. Researchers discovered that broadleaf and mixed forests – composed of both deciduous and coniferous trees – offered the most dramatic heat reduction, cooling surrounding areas by 1.5 to 1.8 degrees Celsius. Coniferous stands were slightly less effective, lowering temperatures by about 1.2 degrees Celsius. 

Scientists attribute this microclimate mitigation to two key ecological processes: dense canopy shading and evapotranspiration. During summer months, thick, leafy canopies form a protective shield against direct solar radiation. At the same time, trees release water vapor into the atmosphere through their leaves, drawing latent heat from the surrounding air and creating a localized chilling effect. 

The cooling benefits do not vanish when the sun sets. The study found that urban forests maintain temperatures 1.3 to 1.6 degrees Celsius lower than dense urban centers overnight, offering crucial relief from tropical nights – periods where nighttime temperatures fail to drop below comfortable levels. 

Unlike asphalt and concrete, which store heat during the day and radiate it outward after dark, forest ecosystems release far less stored thermal energy, helping regulate citywide microclimates around the clock. 

"Urban forests are critical green infrastructure protecting residents from intense summer heat waves, with multilayered broadleaf and mixed forests demonstrating exceptional cooling performance", said Choi Su-min, a researcher at the institute's Urban Forest Research Center. "Moving forward, urban planners must actively incorporate these specific vegetation structures when designing city parks and green zones".  

As climate change accelerates the frequency and intensity of summer heat, the Urban Forest Research Center said the study underscores a growing consensus among urban planners: investing in diverse, multilayered forest canopies is no longer merely an aesthetic amenity, but an essential public health strategy to keep modern cities livable.