Me for NYT: it turns out your DNA is more 'everywhere' than previously imagined. Tech developed by wildlife ecologists makes it possible to pull human ancestry and health information from air, bodies of water nytimes.com/2023/05/15/sci…

This is the cutest, spikiest, tiniest crab in the world! (Don't quote us on that—it's called hyperbole.)

It was found during an operation in the Gulf of Mexico, which collected samples of mesophotic and deep-sea coral species for lab rearing and propagation.
Credit: @sanctuaries

A lost guide of souls has returned to Hawaiian skies! Me for @sciam, edited by the wonderful
@AndreaTWeather
scientificamerican.com/article/hawaii…

Let me tell you going to sleep in Europe right now as an American is like….anti-Christmas Eve

We need to return to the days of bird-themed propaganda.

This is actually why we plant mangroves tress 🌳 🏡 🌊

[yelling into desk phone] I've got Giacomo Bologna on the banana shortage

There’s a Mandarin version of “we all make mistakes” that translates to “even a toad sometimes gets stuck in mud.” A Japanese version is “even a monkey falls off a tree.” But my favourite way of saying nobody’s perfect is the Taiwanese “even wizards make mistakes when drumming”

A walking catfish from a tannin stained pool of water on the jungle floor in Borneo.

久米島で出逢ったアカグツ科の稚魚(体長1.7cm)ですが、おそらくフウリュウウオの仲間かと推察しています

ONCE AGAIN: we should be training cormorants for aquatic invasive species removal. Look at the efficiency. The expertise. The elegance. Humans simply cannot compete.

Still obsessed with the cicada we saw emerging last night.

The fairy-colored wings of the freshly hatched exoskeleton were so beautiful 🥹

i love how we keep deciphering cuneiform and they keep being shopping receipts

Big news! A team of former @NatGeo editors and contributors (@Rachael_Bale @OlliePayneHere @rebersole) has started a new investigative wildlife journalism nonprofit called WIRE. Incredible that they are continuing this important work: wireonline.org

one time the British Museum glued a snail to an index card and then realized four years later that it had been alive the whole time

My latest for @nytimes: Asian bees slap the ever-loving CRAP out of ants trying to break into their hive, just send 'em sailing

nytimes.com/2024/07/17/sci…

That means Japanese bees have had to get...creative. Their playbook of defensive tactics is wild: a hypnotic 'shimmering wave' to warn off predatory hornets; defensive balls to roast intruders alive with their body heat; and, of course, their once-in-a-lifetime use of a stinger.

Add to that a new form of bee-jitsu: wing-slapping. Researchers in Japan—Yoshiko Sakamoto, Kiyohito Morii, and @Seko51745962—found that Japanese bees use their paper-thin wings like a tennis racket to smack ants faster than our eyes can even perceive youtube.com/watch?v=8N2IUR…