Wolves with adequate social distancing from humans tend to avoid nasty viruses, scientists have found. In a study of more than 2,000 gray wolves from near Mexico to northern Canada, researchers found that the farther wolves were from people, the fewer viruses and parasites they encountered. In the study, scientists used blood samples taken over […]
Biologist Stacia Backensto has fooled a raven. When trying to recapture birds on Alaska’s North Slope during her graduate student days at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, she wore a moustache and beard. She also strapped pillows to her waist. “By the time I got around to the beard and the duct-taping of the […]
Wow, do Alaskans love bats! Last week’s column on little brown bats inspired three times the comments I usually get. People rang in with bat sightings from Nikiski to North Pole; a few offered up their secret spots to scientists who might want to study bats. Jesika Reimer, a bat expert and consultant who lives […]
Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and other recent human relatives may have begun hunting large mammal species down to size — by way of extinction — at least 90,000 years earlier than previously thought, says a new study published in the journal Science. Elephant-dwarfing wooly mammoths, elephant-sized ground sloths and various saber-toothed cats highlighted the array of […]