Oceans cover nearly three-quarters of our planet, containing a staggering 96.5 percent of its water. And despite our ever-advancing technologies and cartographic tools, we’ve still only mapped about a tenth of the earth’s oceans. There’s so much we have yet to see or understand, but our reliance on things like fossil fuels and single-use plastics continues to have an indelible impact on the health of marine wildlife and habitats.

Arch Enemy Arts’ forthcoming exhibition, Common Waters, brings these concerns to the fore. From the ethereal weirdness of jellyfish to the delicate branches of corals, the works not only touch on the incredible biodiversity below the surface but also remind us of the ocean’s power and how human actions can have dire consequences. And while the show takes a playful approach with an emphasis on beauty and even quirkiness, there is an undeniable aura of anxiety and even sadness—an undercurrent that carries an urgent message.

Many works in Common Waters are fantastical, such as Gerlanda di Francia’s coral-haired siren or Juliet Schreckinger’s octopus being conveyed over the waves by (hopefully) helpful birds. You’ll also find miniature paintings inside a vintage compact by Shannon Taylor, a sculpted paper relief of a graceful sea turtle by Marisa Aragón Ware, and a matryoshka-like fish coming up for air by Veks Van Villik, plus many more.

The exhibition is presented in collaboration with PangeaSeed, a nonprofit that bridges art and science to educate the public about—and advocate for—conserving our oceans. Bringing together works by 60 artists from around the world, the show focuses predominantly on square-format pieces, all of which draw our attention to some aspect of marine life. A portion of sales proceeds will be donated to PangeaSeed to help with their mission to get people excited about protecting the planet.

Common Waters runs from June 5 to July 5 in Philadelphia. See more on Arch Enemy Arts’ Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Four Dozen Artists Celebrate Marine Wildlife and Lore in ‘Common Waters’ appeared first on Colossal.

The spring’s hottest show is not on any streaming service. It’s the internet’s many live bird cams. Viewers can watch new life emerge, dramatic flights, plenty of eating, and more, all from the comfort of home. The Cornell Lab Bird Cams from Cornell University features birds from around the world, from delicate hummingbirds in South America to the wise-looking barred owls nesting in a backyard in Indiana. 

“Our viewers tell us that watching the cams is a life changing experience: an unprecedented learning experience that they liken to virtual field trips or field biology in their living room,” the organization writes. “We’re excited to continue sharing and learning with the community as we watch the world of birds together.”

Below are a few of this season’s highlights, in no particular order.

A flying squirrel breakfast

On the morning of April 30, a mother barred owl brought a flying squirrel to her chicks, Artemis and Apollo, for breakfast. In the video, the squirrel’s patagium is visible. This special membrane connects the front and hind legs, allowing it to glide long distances between trees and separating it from other squirrel species.

Sweet nectar

For some birds, it’s all about the plants. This rufous-tailed hummingbird stops by the Panama Fruit Feeder Cam for a sip of nectar. This hummingbird species is commonly found in Central America and is known for its reddish tail and bright pink bill. Most hummingbirds are migratory, but there are easy ways to attract hummingbirds to your yard.

Hail the (sleepy) royal albatross chick

To greet the new day, a 20-day-old royal albatross chick opens wide and flaps its tiny wing nubs. This 24-hour live stream shows a northern royal albatross nest during the breeding season at Pukekura/Taiaroa Head on the southeast tip of New Zealand’s South Island. The world’s oldest known bird happens to be a Laysan albatross who nests about 4,393 north of New Zealand on the Midway Atoll.

Cuteness overload

In this compilation, this year’s owlets from the Wild Birds Unlimited Barred Owl Cam sleep, investigate the camera, and bob their heads. Technically called “motion parallax,” owls bob their heads to compensate for the fact that their eyes are fixed in their eye sockets. It helps them create a better view of their surroundings. Owlets use head bobbing to learn how to coordinate their sight with their hearing. 

Bananas are not just for monkeys

A keel-billed toucan was spotted eating a banana in the tropical trees of Panama. Toucans eat bananas by tossing pieces of the fruit into the air and swallowing them whole. Keel-billed toucans mostly eat bananas and are vital seed dispersers for fruiting trees in their habitat. The Panama Hummingbird Feeder Cam is about 35 miles north of Panama City  in a vibrant tropical rainforest on top of Semaphore Hill within Soberanía National Park.

An unexpected guest

Since anything can happen in a rainforest, more than just birds pop up on a birdcam. While a gecko was lounging on the hummingbird feeder cam, a moth tried to join in. After the insect and reptile stare at each other for a bit, the gecko tries to grab the moth, but the moth escapes. 

The post 6 bird cam highlights to celebrate nesting season appeared first on Popular Science.

Fifteen-year-old Evan Budz was on a camping trip when he saw a snapping turtle that would become the impetus for an award-winning invention. As someone who loves hiking, canoeing, and just being outside, the Canadian high school student from Burlington, Ontario, had actively been looking for ways that he could go out and help the planet. 

“My parents brought me up with the sort of principle that every place that I visit, I should leave it a bit better than I found it,” he says. So when Budz noticed the turtle swimming in some nearby waters, he knew that he’d found his next passion project: a bionic robot turtle that could help protect underwater environments. 

How a turtle inspired an award-winning science project

“When I saw the snapping turtle, it was so graceful, fluidic, and generally non-disruptive” to its surroundings, says Budz. “I thought it’d be really interesting to go and try and replicate its natural swimming kinematics [basically the study of how things move]” in a robot.

Along with mimicking the fluid motions of a wild green sea turtle in the water, his autonomous device uses AI to monitor underwater ecosystems for ecological threats, such as invasive species and coral bleaching. 

“Most current underwater technologies can produce things like noise from their propellers or very high-pressure water streams,” which can erode environments, he says. 

However, by mimicking the motions of a sea turtle, Budz’s robot can move through the water innocuously, gathering vital data in a way that doesn’t stress marine life or damage delicate habitats. “I don’t want to harm the various places that I’m hoping to protect.”

How to build a robot turtle

To create his bionic turtle, Budz got to work studying the reptile’s locomotion. He watched videos of sea turtles swimming and talked with experts at his local aquarium, learning how the reptiles use their front flippers to propel themselves forward and their hind limbs for steering. He then used his 3D design and electronics know-how to plan a prototype in SolidWorks, a 3D Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and engineering software. From there, the high school student started creating his robot turtle’s 3D parts. 

The robot has four flippers in total—with the larger front flippers providing its main propulsion and its smaller rear flippers used mainly for stability and changing direction, just like a real turtle. It also has a main acrylic tube “body” for housing its electronic components, which include a Raspberry Pi microcomputer. This runs AI models to detect environmental threats and records and transmits data. In addition, the bionic turtle navigates the water using various sensors. These include a GPS module for position tracking, allowing the robot to follow a predefined grid pattern. 

Budz’s robot also has a front camera for “seeing” its surroundings, along with additional sensors on its exterior to help guide the autonomous reptile, offer depth control, and check for ecological hazards like microplastics and bleached coral. 

Meet the Bionic Underwater Robotic Turtle, aka BURT

While not an official name, Budz has been calling his invention “BURT,” an acronym for “Bionic Underwater Robotic Turtle.” BURT maintains the same body-to-flipper-size proportions as a real-life sea turtle but is smaller overall, which allows it to move easily in different environments. It weighs about 11 pounds, though much of the robot’s weight is just added metal that allows it to sink down. This gives BURT an opportunity to monitor depths well below the water’s surface. 

“To achieve neutral buoyancy in the water,” says Budz, “I needed the turtle to basically be heavier than the force of buoyancy that’s pushing it up.” 

BURT can swim for up to eight hours per charge on a lithium battery, though it also has a solar panel that can keep it going for even longer periods. Right now, Budz has BURT set up to swim at the typical speed of turtles (approximately 0.5 miles per hour). “If I do want it to swim faster, I can just change the flipper oscillation frequency,” meaning the rate of its flipper strokes. 

Most of BURT’s testing has taken place in Budz’s grandparents’ backyard pool, which has a depth of just over eight feet. 

“I basically went out and created a simulated coral reef setup using 3D models,” he says, programming the turtle to understand what coral bleaching and invasive species actually look like. “And the turtle then swims around them to simulate what it would do in a real-world environment.” 

BURT is also set up to follow a predetermined search pattern, “so there’s no need for any sort of tether like you might find on a traditional underwater drone.” The bionic turtle scans its surrounding waters through its front-mounted camera, with all of the recorded data then feeding back into its Raspberry Pi microcomputer. According to the Budz’s testing, BURT has been able to detect replicated coral bleaching with 96 percent accuracy.

BURT, the robot turtle, keeps getting smarter

Budz’s next step is to bring BURT into different environments to see how deep the robot can actually go. To deal with especially murky waters, he has installed lights on the front of the robot and added an ultrasonic transducer, which utilizes high-frequency sound waves to detect potential obstacles. 

This year he’s even developed a new holographic imaging device, which he’s using to record the structural characteristics and shapes of tiny particles in waterways. He then uses a custom-trained neural network, which processes data in a way that’s similar to a human brain, to classify if each particle is a microplastic. 

Although Budz built his robot as a labor of love, it’s since won some major awards, including first prize at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists, held in Latvia in 2025, and the Canada-Wide Science Fair, an annual science fair in which finalists qualify from approximately 25,000 competitors. 

Budz’s goal is to have a fleet of these sea turtles that can be set out to detect ecological threats. “I’ve already looked at coral bleaching, invasive species, and microplastics,” he says, “but there are so many different places where this can be used.”

In The Workshop, Popular Science highlights the ingenious, delightful, and often surprising projects people build in their spare time. If you or someone you know is working on a hobbyist project that fits the bill, we’d love to hear about it—fill out this form to tell us more.

The post Teen builds ‘Bionic Underwater Robotic Turtle’ to detect ecological threats appeared first on Popular Science.

Routine checkups for humans are usually straightforward. The doctor tells you what to do, and unless you’re a squirming baby or terrified of needles, you pretty much follow instructions. 

But what happens when the patient is a giant yellow-orange eel with sharp teeth? Things get a bit slippery. At the New England Aquarium, experts need to follow a complicated process in order to get Thomas, a green moray eel (Gymnothorax funebris), ready for his yearly checkup. 

The first step consists of retrieving Thomas from the aquarium’s giant ocean tank. Divers get him into a plastic barrel.Thomas and the barrel are then submerged into a different water tank with powdered anesthetic water, Melissa Joblon, New England Aquarium’s director of animal health, tells Popular Science. 

“We have to be really cautious to make sure that he’s fully anesthetized before we handle him because they can be dangerous,” she adds, “and they’re very slippery and can kind of slither away if we’re not really careful.”

Once Thomas is essentially knocked out, the team lifts him from his sedation bin and onto a rack. They then flush water—with more of the anesthesia agent—which allows him to continue breathing. 

The medical exam is preventative care, meaning the team is on the lookout for any health issues to catch them before they become serious. The session includes a physical exam, bloodwork, a full ultrasound, and an electrocardiogram. The team is essentially investigating the eel’s outsides and insides. 

“We do full routine annual exams on the majority of the animals that live at the aquarium, similar to bringing your cat or dog to a vet once a year,” Joblon explains. 

Thomas is probably 18 to 21 years old, but he was a juvenile when the New England Aquarium took him in. A pet owner donated him after wisely deciding that they couldn’t care for the eel anymore—Thomas was becoming too big. Green moray eels are, after all, among the largest morays—they can be eight feet long.

Here’s to making sure Thomas eels good. 

The post Thomas the moray eel goes to the doctor appeared first on Popular Science.

On April 21, a baby horse was born at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo in New York City. But it wasn’t just any foal that came into the world—this newest resident of the Big Apple is a Przewalski’s horse (Equus ferus przewalskii), an endangered species that has been pulled back from the brink of extinction. 

Przewalski’s horses look more like a mule than your average horse. For starters, their mane sticks up straight into the air and they don’t have a forelock (horse bangs, basically). Przewalski’s horses are also short, light brown, and—excuse the necessary slang—exceptionally chonky. They also have a really thick neck. 

They are also referred to as the Mongolian wild horse, and they are the only truly wild horse species left, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Though the species used to exist across Asia and Europe, their numbers plummeted so much that at one point they were deemed Extinct in the Wild. 

“The Bronx Zoo has played a pivotal role in the conservation of Przewalski’s horse,” the Bronx Zoo wrote in a statement announcing the birth. “Through breeding programs aimed at maintaining a genetically diverse population of the species and through reintroduction efforts, zoo-bred Przewalski’s horses were successfully returned to their native grasslands in China in 1989 and in Mongolia beginning in 1992.”

Przewalski’s horses now live in Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan, as well as in zoos. Rather shockingly, the entire extant population (which researchers estimate is less than 2,000 individuals) descends from only 12 horses. 

In Mongolia, the Wildlife Conservation Society supports Protected Areas with wild horses. As for the Bronx Zoo, the foal is part of a herd. Visitors can see it from the Wild Asia Monorail, where the adorable baby is sure to develop a colt (young male horse) following. 

The post Rare Przewalski’s horse born in New York appeared first on Popular Science.

Something strange is happening in the brackish waters of New York’s Hudson River. It sounds like a sort of low thundering, and while anything is possible in a lively body of water so closely associated with the Big Apple, it’s not the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles training with their rat sensei Splinter. Instead, scientists say that the mysterious sound is made by the reproductive antics of an endangered fish called Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus).

Writing in a recent Endangered Species Research paper, the team is the first to verify the Atlantic sturgeon’s thundering. The noise is probably caused by males thrashing—and their swim bladders’ resonance—as they fertilize eggs, according to researchers. 

“It’s almost that you feel it more than you hear it,” Maija Niemistö, a researcher from the New York State Water Resources Institute and co-author of the study, said in a press release. “You can hear these chirps and squirts and bubbles underwater, but this is a different experience entirely. These are ancient fish, and the thunder – it’s almost like you’re brought back in time, because they’ve been making this sound, communicating with each other, for millions of years. It’s awe-inspiring.”

They are also classified as Endangered. In the spring, these giants leave the ocean to swim up the Hudson River to spawn. For sturgeon, this reproductive behavior involves males and females releasing their necessary parts into the water. In other words, the egg doesn’t fertilize inside of the female fish. 

The team eavesdropped on the crucial life cycle process with passive acoustic monitoring. They recorded sound within the waters of the Hudson River with underwater microphones for long periods of time. Though this noninvasive strategy is a common approach in marine and terrestrial research, it hasn’t been used as much in rivers and lakes with more freshwater. 

Now, the team’s discovery of sturgeon thundering provides the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) with an additional way to help monitor and better understand  Atlantic sturgeon behavior. As we frequently report, the more researchers know about a species, the more equipped they are to protect it. 

And the Atlantic surgeon certainly needs it. In the 19th and 20th century, overfishing greatly decreased their populations. Unfortunately, almost 30 years of protection hasn’t helped the species make a comeback. Part of the problem is that female Atlantic sturgeons can wait up to two decades before their first spawn.

“That’s why they’re so susceptible to overfishing,” added Amanda Higgs, also co-author of the study and a fisheries biologist with NYSDEC Hudson River Fisheries Unit. 

Eggs could represent 20 percent of a female’s substantial weight and fisheries were interested in their caviar. “A female was a lucrative catch,” Higgs added, “and so they got wiped out relatively quickly because they don’t have the ability to reproduce and replace themselves quickly.” 

While experts estimate that 6,000 Atlantic sturgeon spawned in its waters before the late 1800s, today less than 700 spawn here. Nonetheless, the Hudson River is home to the species’ largest population. 

Moving forward, the team can listen for previously unknown spawning grounds, enabling the state to deal out protections for these endangered river giants. 

The post Sturgeon sex creates thundering noise in New York appeared first on Popular Science.

The babies are growing up. Since hatching in early April, Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets have sprouted new feathers, developed keen vision, and now, they’re practicing some vital grownup skills. Sandy and Luna can be seen engaged in lively wing-flapping sessions. While it might look a little awkward, the movement helps the chicks develop their pectoral muscles, an essential step in learning to fly.

“It [also] helps them learn the ‘wingspan’ of their own bodies so they don’t hit the nest walls or their siblings,” Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBVV), the non-profit group that maintains the eagles’ livestream, explains. But don’t expect them to fly away anytime soon. The chicks are only about six weeks old and fledging won’t happen until 10-14 weeks of age. Last year, Sunny and Gizmo each fledged around 13 weeks.

Viewers might also notice the pair stomping around their nest. Again, the eaglets aren’t exactly graceful, but this behavior is important. Bald eagles are raptors, or birds of prey, so learning how to hunt is essential to long-term survival. “This is an instinctual behavior to ‘pin’ prey down,” FOBBV explains. “Because they are top-heavy at this age, stomping helps them find their center of gravity as their legs grow longer and stronger.” Although, yes, they do occasionally stomp on each other’s toes.

You can tune into the 24/7 livestream of Jackie, Shadow, Sandy, and Luna on YouTube.

Jackie and Shadow’s 2026 babies: Everything you need to know

It’s been another roller coaster nesting season for Jackie and Shadow, a pair of internet-famous bald eagle parents living in San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California. After two of their eggs were destroyed by ravens in January, Jackie and Shadow laid two new eggs that have successfully hatched.

Chick 1 hatched on April 4 at 9:33 p.m. PDT, while Chick 2 followed on April 5 at 8:30 a.m. Their large nest in Big Bear Valley east of Los Angeles is livestreamed 24 hours a day by nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV) and has captivated millions. 

On May 1, FOBBV announced the chicks’ names: Sandy and Luna.

How long will the chicks stay in the nest? 

Chicks usually stay in the nest until 10 to 14 weeks of age.

What challenges do the eaglets face?

Before leaving the nest, the chicks face threats from other birds of prey, including hawks, ravens, other eagles, and owls. Inclement weather can also present challenges for the chicks. In 2025, a March snowstorm resulted in the death of one of Jackie and Shadow’s three chicks.

During fledging, only 70 percent of eaglets survive. One of the greatest threats is from cars that can injure or kill the birds while they scavenge for food on roadkill. 

Who are Jackie and Shadow? 

The pair first got together in 2018 and successfully raised chicks in 2019 and 2022. However, their eggs failed to hatch in 2023 and 2024. Only 50 percent of eagle eggs successfully hatch, so this pair has already beaten the odds.

What happened to Jackie and Shadow’s 2025 eaglets?

In 2025, Jackie laid three eggs that all hatched in early March. On March 13, a strong snowstorm dumped up to two feet of snow and battered the nest with strong winds. Only two of the chicks were visible on the live cam when the storm passed by the next morning. FOBBV later confirmed the passing of one of the chicks. The two surviving chicks were later named Sunny and Gizmo after 54,000 names were submitted by fans.

What happens after chicks fledge? 

Young eagles usually fledge–or leave the nest and fly–when they can flatten their wings and have feathers capable of flight. This typically occurs when the birds hit 10 to 14 weeks of age. Males also tend to take their first flight a little sooner than females. 

According to FOBBV, fledglings from Southern California have been spotted as far south as Baja California, as far north as British Columbia, and as far east as Yellowstone National Park.

About 70 percent of bald eagles survive the fledgling stage. FOBBV does not tag their eagles, so it’s not possible to follow the chicks’ journeys after they flee the nest.

Can I help Jackie and Shadow?

Yes. Environmental groups are currently fundraising $10 million to protect Jackie and Shadow’s foraging area from development. Learn more at SaveMoonCamp.org.

The post Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets practice stomping and flapping appeared first on Popular Science.

Most sharks have five gill slits on either side. But Hexanchus griseus, a giant and mysterious shark species, has an even six gill slits. These fish, appropriately called the sixgill shark, live in both tropical and temperate waters around the world and can reach up to 14-feet-long. They’ve existed since before the dinosaurs, and yet marine biologists still don’t know very much about them. 

One of the problems—for researchers, anyway—is that sixgills usually live in deep oceanic waters, at depths of up to 9,800 feet. It also doesn’t help that they usually favor extremely low-light environments. Among other reasons, these aspects make sixgills difficult to study.

However, these ancient giants have been spotted in Washington State’s Puget Sound year-round, and in water as shallow as 20 feet. Scientists at Seattle Aquarium believe that female sixgills are giving birth in these waters, and new research by the aquarium demonstrates that they have birthing site fidelity. According to the aquarium, they appear to come back to the Salish Sea to give birth numerous times. 

Once the baby sharks—or pups—come into this world, Puget Sound turns into their nursery for some time, though researchers don’t know for how long. The young sixgills spend the summer and fall in more southern locations of the Salish Sea, and migrate more north in the winter and spring. They usually travel less than two miles a day, and frequently come up to shallow waters at dusk before going down into deeper waters at dawn, probably looking for prey. 

“We think these patterns repeat until they eventually depart for the open ocean. This consistency of movement and behavior reinforces the strength of our opportunity to study sixgill sharks in Puget Sound,” according to a statement from Seattle Aquarium. “Through our research, we hope to answer questions about the life history and ecology of sixgill sharks—including migration, growth rates and prey preferences.” 

The aquarium also aims to study previously unexamined physiological aspects of sixgills, and understand human influence. 

From May to September, Seattle Aquarium researchers and veterinarians will try to study the elusive species at three different locations in Puget Sound, going to each one once a month. There, the team will lift sharks to the surface, and either bring them onto the boat or keep them at the side of the vessel and flip them upside down. This position triggers a trance-like state in several shark species. Either way, the team will make sure that the sharks can breathe through all of those gills.

Once the sharks are secured, the team will examine them. They should be able to collect measurements, obtain tissue samples, take photos, and deploy wearable tags in only five to 10 minutes. The tags that will then supply information about movement, habitat use, and feeding ecology. The scientists will then return the sharks to the open water. 

“Our goal is to answer as many questions as possible,” Dani Escontrela, a researcher at the Seattle Aquarium, said in the statement. “We’re collaborating with agencies like the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, the Big Fish Lab at Oregon State University, Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium and other researchers to fill gaps in expertise, all while keeping animal health and well-being our top priority.”

The post Mysterious giant sharks that outlived the dinosaurs lurking in Puget Sound appeared first on Popular Science.

TOKYO, June 2 — A bear attack left four people injured in two factories and a residential area in northern Japan’s Fukushima today, police and media reports said.

A record 13 people were killed by bears in Japan last year, and there has been a jump in sightings as the animals emerge hungry from hibernation.

“A bear-related human injury incident... occurred in Fukushima City, injuring four people,” the prefectural police said in a statement.

The bear was first spotted in a car parts factory, prompting an emergency call explaining that “employees had been bitten”, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily reported citing police and fire department officials.

As the bear continued its rampage, two other people were injured, one in a residential area and the other on the premises of an electronic equipment manufacturer nearby, the Yomiuri said, adding that the animal was thought to have remained inside the factory.

The report said one of those attacked was heavily injured, while the rest suffered only mild injuries.

In the last fiscal year to March, bear sightings nationwide topped 50,000, more than double the previous record set two years earlier, according to official data.

The animals were seen entering homes, roaming near schools and rampaging through supermarkets and hot spring resorts on an almost daily basis.

Record sightings have been reported again this year as the bears emerge from their winter slumber, according to local media.

In April, bear attacks killed one person and injured five others, according to the environment ministry.

There have also been more than a dozen bear sightings reported on the outskirts of Tokyo this year, with a Russian man in his 30s reportedly mauled as he hiked in the city last month. — AFP

A recently discovered box jellyfish species living in near Singapore looks nearly identical to another jellyfish previously discovered by the same scientist. But regardless of whether or not you can tell Chironex blakangmati and Chironex yamaguchii apart, you’ll want to steer clear of both of them. Box jellyfish didn’t earn their “sea-wasp” nickname for yellow-and-black stripes.

Cheryl Ames, a marine biologist at Japan’s Tohoku University, collected C. blakangmati during an expedition near the coast of Singapore’s Sentosa Island. The team initially assumed the invertebrate was an example of C. yamaguchii, but later genomic testing revealed something else entirely.

“We realized they were completely distinct,” Ames explained in a statement. “I actually went back to dust off an old sample of C. yamaguchii I still had in storage in Okinawa to help with the comparisons.”

Apart from genetics, the key difference setting C. blakangmati apart from its three known Chironex relatives is its perradial lappets. This anatomical feature on the bottom of the box jellyfish’s bell-shaped body strengthens the pulsating musculature that propels it through the water. Other Chironex species include pointy canals at the tips of their perradial lappets, but C. blakangmati notably does not.

Canals or not, they are remarkable creatures. The vast majority of jellyfish don’t rely on vision and passively float in ocean currents, but members of the Chironex genus do not. Instead, they have evolved complex eye organs that help them locate prey. They then use that same musculature supported by the perradial lappets to actively swim through the water towards its target.

In this sense, C. blakangmati certainly lives up to its scientific name. Sentosa may be Malay for “peace and tranquility,” but the island once called something very different. Historically, it is also known as Pulau Klakang Mati, which translates to the “Island of Death from Behind.”

The post New box jellyfish name warns of ‘death from behind’ appeared first on Popular Science.

The official start of summer is days away, and after a particularly long and cold winter in parts of the United States, many are ready to enjoy the outdoors again without risking frostbite. Warm weather comes with another type of bite, however. One that comes with an unwanted guest attached to your body.

Along with mosquitos and flies, ticks are among our most disliked arachnids. However, their infamy comes with a lot of myths, and with tick season in full swing, it’s important to straighten out a few misconceptions. 

False: Ticks can fly

If you’ve heard that ticks can fly and/or jump, you’ll be relieved to know that they can’t. In fact, their legs are pretty unimpressive appendages, according to Escher Cattle, an entomologist at the Regional Government of Cape Cod.

“They have some pretty good grabbers on their front legs and their other legs are pretty decent as well, but really all a tick has the equipment to do is walk around and grab stuff,” Cattle tells Popular Science. They’re not muscular like those of grasshoppers, for example. As for locomotion more generally, ticks don’t have wings, nor are they aerodynamic. As such, they’re also “not physically geared to be dropping out of trees like some kind of paratrooper.”

While a tick might attach onto an animal that takes it up into a tree and then fall, the chances that the skydiving arachnids will land on you is infinitesimal, Cattle says. In fact, ticks generally exist beneath an elevation of at most three feet. 

The way a tick actually attaches to a host is by climbing to the top of a plant, sticking its arms out, and waiting for something alive to brush by—a behavior called questing. It does so after sensing chemical cues of something warm, moving, and blood-filled. 

False: Opossums help remove ticks by eating them

Speaking of blood-filled things, one tick myth that Cattle is sorry to dispel is one that paints opossums as tick-eating machines. You may have read that opossums are good to have around because they eat lots of ticks. This popular notion is founded on the results of a study in which researchers put ticks on opossums, among other animals, to investigate how these animals reacted to the pest. 

Because the team wasn’t seeing any ticks dropping off the opossums, they assumed the mammals were eating them all. As of now, there is no direct evidence known to researchers of opossums eating any ticks. 

One similar belief is that birds such as turkeys and guinea fowl eat ticks. While that’s true, they also carry them around, so having one in your backyard doesn’t automatically mean you’ll have less ticks.

True: They can carry disease

What isn’t a myth, though, is that ticks can be vectors of disease. These include Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, ehrlichiosis, and most infamously, Lyme disease. 

The good news is that you can decrease your chances of catching the disease from a tick bite if you remove the tick within 24 hours. But sometimes, tick bites go unnoticed, so it’s important to check yourself when you come back indoors during warm weather. 

Ticks are shockingly cold-resistant, but they usually keep to themselves during the colder seasons. They still can come back out as soon as the sun starts shining—including on those randomly very hot February days. 

True: A ‘dorky’ look helps prevent tick bites

If you do find a tick, don’t try to burn or suffocate it off your skin. Use a trusty pair of tweezers, grip it near the mouth parts, and pull it off. If anything gets left behind, your skin will naturally push it out with some time. If you’re not sure how long the tick has been on you, you should contact your doctor. 

As for tick bite prevention, “I know it looks kind of dorky, but tucking your pants into your socks is a really good tip. Making it so that there are barriers between ticks and your skin as much as possible is extremely good as a strategy,” explains Cattle, who also teaches about tick-borne disease prevention for Cape Cod Cooperative Extension. 

You can also apply a synthetic pesticide called permethrin on their clothes and insect repellant on any exposed skin.

Ticks are “very good at what they do,” he concludes, but “I think adopting just a couple habits at a time really makes a difference.”

Update June 9 9:47 a.m. EDT : This story incorrectly identified ticks as insects. They are arachnids.

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