Animals

By Mindy Weisberger, CNN Booty-shaking worker bees guide their fellow workers to pollen by a form of communication known as “waggle dancing” — performing steps that map out where food is located and how far it is from the hive. And now scientists have discovered that bees hone these moves when they’re young, by touching

By Ashley Strickland, CNN A giant carnivorous dinosaur likely rested or crouched down in Yorkshire 166 million years ago, deeply pressing its feet into the ground. The colossal creature left behind a record-breaking footprint recently discovered along the United Kingdom’s “Dinosaur Coast.” The Jurassic footprint, measuring nearly a meter (3.3 feet) long, is the largest

By Hafsa Khalil, CNN The ability to solve problems with multiple tools is a rare talent in the animal kingdom, but according to new research, cockatoos are the first birds on the block to carry and use a tool kit to suit their needs. Using 10 Goffin’s cockatoos, researchers from Austria and the UK made

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN It’s no surprise that parenthood can be demanding and sacrifices are often made for the sake of offspring. But for female killer whales, the role can be particularly challenging. New research suggests that female orcas might be forgoing having any more offspring because of their sons — even when they’re fully

By Katie Hunt, CNN Some 125,000 years ago, enormous elephants that weighed as much as eight cars each roamed in what’s now northern Europe. Scientifically known as Palaeoloxodon antiquus, the towering animals were the largest land mammals of the Pleistocene, standing more than 13 feet (4 meters) high. Despite this imposing size, the now-extinct straight-tusked

By Ashley Strickland, CNN When the Vikings crossed the North Sea to reach Britain in the ninth century AD, they brought their dogs and horses with them, according to new research. Archaeologists uncovered what they believe to be the first scientific evidence of this practice in Vikings while analyzing remains from a Viking cremation cemetery

By Issy Ronald and Amarachi Orie, CNN From pointing to animated arm movements and nodding, people regularly employ gestures to accompany and create language. Now, it’s been suggested that humans can also understand sign language used by apes, meaning humans may retain an understanding of ape communication from their ancestors. Great apes deploy more than

By Katie Hunt, CNN To pry open the mysteries of our planet’s past, scientists typically study rocks and fossilized bones. Eggs are an often overlooked but extremely rich source of information, with birds, reptiles, dinosaurs and a few oddball mammals laying them on land for more than 200 million years. Rare fossilized eggshells can illuminate

By Kristen Rogers, CNN The world’s population of North Atlantic right whales has been decimated in recent years by human-caused vessel strikes and rope entanglements, and now another member of this rare species faces the same fate. A 4-year-old female right whale found heavily entangled about 20 miles east of Rodanthe, North Carolina, is “likely

By Zoe Sottile, CNN A study has found that dolphins are unable to communicate as effectively when exposed to human-generated noises, forcing them to change their sounds much like people do when shouting. An international team of researchers from the University of Bristol, the Dolphin Research Center, Syracuse University, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Aarhus

By Ashley Strickland, CNN The tree of life grew in 2022 as California Academy of Sciences researchers and their international collaborators discovered 146 new animal, plant and fungi species. The previously unknown creatures and plants were found around the world, including the mountains of California, Australia’s Queensland state, the rocky peaks of Brazil and the

By Kate Golembiewski, CNN Diplodocids were a family of dinosaurs with long necks and, often, even longer tails — some species’ tails reached 50 feet in length. They were wide-ranging, but especially flourished in what’s now the western US around 152 million years ago. For decades, scientists have debated whether these dinosaurs could whip their

By Katie Hunt and Madeline Holcombe, CNN Scientists have discovered that female snakes have a clitoris — a previously overlooked or dismissed part of their anatomy (and that of many other animals), according to a new study. “It’s quite a taboo area. Female genitalia is not an easy subject to bring up sometimes and I

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN Recently exposed sandbars along the drought-stricken Mississippi River have caught the attention of fossil hunters, leading to two exceptional finds from a rare ice age species. Wiley Prewitt was exploring a newly exposed area on October 26 when he came across a rather large tooth poking out of the sand. The

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN Long ago, gigantic marine turtles swam the Earth’s seas. Until recently, these prehistoric giants, reaching lengths of over 3 meters (10 feet) from head to tail, had been thought to be found only in waters surrounding North America. Now, scientists have discovered a previously unknown species — the largest sea turtle

By Katie Hunt, CNN A previously unknown dinosaur with a remarkably flat head lived around 70 million years ago on an island home to dwarfed prehistoric creatures. Discovered in what’s now western Romania, the Transylvanosaurus platycephalus (flatheaded reptile from Transylvania) was 2 meters (6 feet) long — a relatively small size for a dinosaur, according

By Hafsa Khalil, CNN Taking drugs if you’re feeling under the weather is old news for humans, but new research shows that the world’s heaviest bird capable of flight could be the latest animal to use plants as a form of medication. Researchers from Madrid in Spain studied data on 619 droppings belonging to great