Tag - nature

 
 

NATURE

Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 21, 2016
Smart mouth: Chinese fish fossil sheds light on jaw evolution
A bottom-dwelling, mud-grubbing, armored fish that swam in tropical seas 423 million years ago is fundamentally changing the understanding of the evolution of an indisputably indispensable anatomical feature: the jaw.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 21, 2016
Hundreds of rare snow leopards killed illegally every year, study says
Hundreds of snow leopards are killed illegally every year in remote mountains from China to Tajikistan, further endangering the big cats, which number only a few thousand in the wild, a report said on Friday.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 23, 2016
Moonlight sonata: fish's nocturnal 'singing' secrets revealed
In one of the marvels of nature, males of a fish species called the plainfin midshipman that dwells in Pacific coastal waters from Alaska to Baja California court females during breeding season using a nocturnal "love song" with an otherworldly sound.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 22, 2016
Bumble bee is proposed for U.S. endangered species status
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday proposed listing the rusty patched bumble bee, a prized but vanishing pollinator once widely found in the upper Midwest and Northeastern United States, for federal protection as an endangered species.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 15, 2016
Endangered Hawaiian crow shows a knack for tool use
An endangered crow species from Hawaii that already is extinct in the wild displays remarkable proficiency in using small sticks and other objects to wrangle a meal, joining a small but elite group of animals that use tools.
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 8, 2016
Expanded U.S. habitat ordered for rare lynx
A federal judge ordered U.S. wildlife managers on Wednesday to enlarge habitat protections in Idaho, Montana and Colorado for the Canada lynx, a rare wild cat that roams the Rockies and mountain forests of several other states.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 1, 2016
Global warming exposes fossils in Greenland from time Earth was like Mars
The earliest fossil evidence of life on Earth has been found in rocks 3.7 billion years old in Greenland, raising chances of life on Mars aeons ago when both planets were similarly desolate, scientists said on Wednesday.
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 28, 2016
Minnesota sets broadest U.S. limits on chemicals blamed for bee declines
Minnesota's governor on Friday ordered the broadest restrictions yet in a U.S. state on the use of agricultural pesticides that have been blamed for hurting bees, fueling concerns that farmers there will not be able to protect crops from insects.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 7, 2016
Exquisite dolphin fossils provide insight into evolution of ultrasonic hearing, echolocation
Fossils unearthed in a South Carolina drainage ditch are providing insight into the development of ultrasonic hearing in prehistoric whales, a trait closely linked to their uncanny ability to hunt and navigate using sound waves and echoes.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 15, 2016
Lucky bug eluded eternal entombment in 50-million-year-old amber
A chunk of amber found along the Baltic Sea in Russia provides evidence roughly 50 million years old of an extremely fortunate bug.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 30, 2016
Amazon biodiversity at risk despite Brazil's forest protection law, study finds
Selective logging, road building and fires are threatening biodiversity in Brazil's Amazon despite a requirement that rural landowners maintain at least 80 percent of their forest cover in the world's largest rain forest, researchers said on Wednesday.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 4, 2016
Illegal poaching, logging and mining worth up to $258 billion: report
Illegal logging, mining, poaching and other environmentally destructive trade earned criminal gangs up to $258 billion last year, the United Nations said in a report published on Saturday.
COMMENTARY / World / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 3, 2016
Don't exterminate the zebra mussels or ruffes
'Invasive' species aren't necessarily a bad thing.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 3, 2016
Study reveals harm to fish from tiny bit of plastic pollution
Scientists have demonstrated for the first time the devastating physiological and behavioral effects on fish exposed to the tiny bits of plastic pollution clogging the world's oceans.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 14, 2016
Naturalist C.W. Nicol wins Green Culture Prize for forestry efforts
Nagano naturalist C.W. Nicol has been named co-winner of the Green Culture Prize for his outstanding work on woodlands restoration.
COMMENTARY / World
May 7, 2016
Kenya was right to burn its ivory stockpile
There are good reasons for a country — even one as poor as Kenya — to surrender its ivory wealth to fire.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 21, 2016
Scientists give the tree of life a brand-new look
Humans are the only animal that has the power to choose which limbs of the tree of life survive.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2016
For orcas, menopause is just the beginning
Killer whales and humans are among the only animals known to experience menopause, and scientists are learning how this phenomenon benefits orcas.

Longform

Dul Saroth (left) and Soeum Samrach, deminers with the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority, practice using the Advanced Landmine Imaging System in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province in August.
The Japanese tech that could one day make Southeast Asia landmine-free