Aerial drone footage of bowhead whales in Canada’s Arctic has revealed that the large mammals moult and use rocks to rub off dead skin.

The footage provides one answer to the mystery of why whales return to Cumberland Sound, Nunavut, every summer, and helps explain some unusual behaviour that has been noted historically by Inuit and commercial whalers living and working in the area.

Old forests that contain large trees and a diversity of tree sizes and species may offer refuge to some types of birds facing threats in a warming climate, scientists have found.

Amphibians—the big-eyed, swimming-crawling-jumping-climbing group of water and land animals that includes frogs, toads, salamanders and worm-like caecilians—are the world’s most endangered vertebrates. 

One-third of the planet’s amphibian species are threatened with extinction. Now, these vulnerable creatures are facing a new foe: the Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) fungus, which is the source of an emerging amphibian disease that caused the die-off of wild European salamander populations.

A team of researchers from Environment Canada and Climate Change Canada and McMaster University have found that fish living downstream from a wastewater treatment plant showed changes to their normal behaviour—ones that made them vulnerable to predators—when exposed to elevated levels of antidepressant drugs in the water.

The findings, published as a series of three papers in the journal Scientific Reports, point to the ongoing problem of prescription medications, personal care products and other drugs that end up in the watershed and the impact they have on the natural environment.

As temperatures drop, most creatures retreat to hunker down or hibernate.

What are crows saying when their loud cawing fills a dark winter’s evening? Despite the inescapable ruckus, nobody knows for sure. Birds congregate daily before and after sleep, and they make some noise, but what might be happening in those brains is a mystery.

Curious about these raucous exchanges, researchers at the University of Washington Bothell are listening in. They are placing equipment on the roof of their building — a meeting place for some of the thousands of crows that sleep in nearby campus trees — and using a sort of computerized eavesdropping to study the relationship between calls and the birds’ behavior.

Hundreds of marine turtles die every year after becoming entangled in rubbish in the oceans and on beaches,  including plastic ‘six pack’ holders and discarded fishing gear.  

Agriculture and domestic activities consume much of the Colorado River water that once flowed to the Colorado Delta and Northern Gulf of California. The nature and extent of impact of this fresh-water loss on the ecology and fisheries of the Colorado Delta and Gulf of California is controversial. A recent publication in the journal PeerJ reveals a previously unseen risk to the unique local biodiversity of the tidal portion of the Delta. 

Populations of cheetahs in southern Africa have declined as farming and other human activities push deeper into the free-roaming cats’ range, a new study co-led by Duke University doctoral student Varsha Vijay finds.

The Thomas Fire burning north of Los Angeles in Ventura County, California is now the state’s fifth-largest wildfire on record. Less than 15 percent contained and moving west quickly, the fire is being fueled by dry conditions and strong winds. It is one of five wildfirescurrently burning in southern California.