We've all seen the cartoon — the dim, hunched caveman, the evolutionary runner-up.
It's one of the most persistent myths in all of science, and it's completely wrong. The real Neanderthal was something closer to a superhuman.
In this episode we get into the astonishing biology of our closest extinct relative: bones sometimes twice as dense as ours, a build strong enough to wrestle prey to the ground, lungs up to 40% larger, a brain bigger than a modern human's, and eyes built for the dark. These were people engineered for an Ice Age world that would have destroyed us — and they carried that world on their backs for hundreds of thousands of years. Oh, and if you're of European or Asian descent, a piece of them is still inside you right now.
Let me show you just how extraordinary the Neanderthals really were.
Ancient microbes may have helped preserve a pterosaur fossil and its chemical clues for more than 100 million years.
An international study led by Curtin University has shed new light on how a prehistoric flying reptile fossil remained exceptionally well preserved for 113 million years, offering scientists a rare view into a long-vanished world.
The fossilized wing phalanx of a pterosaur from northeastern Brazil was preserved in three dimensions and even retained chemical traces that may point to what the animal ate. Kliti Grice and her colleagues link that unusual survival to specialized bacteria and the conditions of an ancient marine environment.
Lead author Kliti Grice, a John Curtin Distinguished Professor and founding Director of the Western Australian Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Centre at Curtin, said the findings reveal a new way to understand how some fossils form.
Molecules reveal ancient diet
“This fossil is a true time capsule — not only is it beautifully preserved, but for the first time we’ve detected traces of steroids in a pterosaur, providing further evidence that these creatures likely fed on fish or squid,” Professor Grice said.
“It also marks the first time molecules have been recovered from a pterosaur fossil, revealing new clues about its diet and highlighting the growing potential of molecular paleontology to unlock secrets from deep time.
Microscope view of a pterosaur fossil section showing carbon coating and mineral layers.
Credit: Grice et al., iScience (2026)
“Steroid preservation in fossils is exceptionally rare, but what’s even more fascinating is that our findings challenge long-held ideas about fossil preservation itself. Rather than being destroyed by oxygen, some fossils are preserved because of it, through oxidative processes carried out by ancient microbiomes.
“After this pterosaur died and sank to the seabed, a perfect storm of chemistry, biology, and the environment worked to seal its story in stone. Microbes, including sulfur-oxidizing bacteria, began breaking down the soft tissue and fats and triggered mineralization around the body – a process that, over time, helped preserve its structure in incredible detail for more than 100 million years.”
Microbes shaped fossil survival
Pterosaurs were flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs and were the first vertebrates known to achieve powered flight. Some species had wingspans reaching up to 12 meters. Like birds today, they had hollow bones, a feature that can improve the chances of exceptional preservation under the right environmental conditions.
Professor Grice said the work points to a new pathway for unusual fossil preservation, while also offering fresh insight into ancient life and the environmental conditions that can protect fragile remains for immense spans of time.
It adds to the growing evidence that tiny microbes played a major role in fossil survival, a process now being identified at other fossil sites. Professor Grice said this may represent a new global Lagerstätten mechanism, meaning the special conditions that make exceptional preservation possible.
The docking domain (puzzle pieces) acts as a molecular connector between two separate enzyme systems. One system belongs to the core drug-building machinery, while the other system builds the variable cap that determines which cancers the drug targets. This precise fit between the two enables bacteria to reliably produce multiple anti-cancer drug variants.
Credit: Dr. Munro Passmore / University of Warwick
Scientists have finally uncovered how bacteria naturally create multiple versions of powerful anti-cancer drugs, solving a mystery that has frustrated researchers for decades.
Researchers from the University of Warwick and Monash University have solved a long-standing mystery about how bacteria naturally produce multiple versions of powerful cancer-fighting compounds. Their discovery could help scientists develop new treatments for cancers that are difficult to treat by revealing how nature creates a wide variety of drug molecules from the same biological machinery.
For years, researchers have wanted to harness bacterial enzymes to produce new drug variants through a process known as combinatorial biosynthesis. However, progress has been limited because scientists did not understand how the enzymes worked together to assemble different compounds.
Now, in a study published in Nature Communications, the research team has uncovered how bacterial enzymes communicate and cooperate to build an entire family of related anti-cancer molecules. One member of this family is Romidepsin (Istodax), an FDA-approved treatment for certain blood cancers. By decoding this natural “mix and match” system and recreating its principles in the laboratory, the researchers say they have established a new strategy for designing future cancer therapies.
“For decades, we’ve known that bacteria can naturally produce multiple versions of powerful anti-cancer drugs, yet we had no idea how they achieved this,” said first author Dr. Munro Passmore, Research Fellow, Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick. “This work finally cracks that code. We’ve identified how the different enzymes communicate and cooperate to produce these drug variants, something that has eluded researchers because the system is so elegantly economical. It’s the breakthrough we needed to actually engineer these drugs ourselves.”
Tiny Molecular Connectors Unlock Nature’s Drug Factory
The researchers discovered that small protein regions known as ‘docking domains’ serve as molecular connectors between the main drug-producing machinery and the enzymes responsible for adding different chemical components.
These docking domains share a common connection point that allows them to interact with several different enzyme partners. That flexibility enables bacteria to generate a variety of closely related drug molecules while maintaining the precision needed for the compounds to remain effective.
The study also sheds light on how these drug-producing systems evolved over time. According to the researchers, the newly identified compound most likely originated from a related drug-producing pathway through a series of gene duplications and genetic recombination events.
Prof. Greg Challis, Monash Warwick Alliance Professor of Sustainable Chemistry, University of Warwick and Monash University, concludes: “This research gives us a blueprint to do what nature does, but better and faster. By reverse-engineering nature’s evolutionary logic, we can now design synthetic pathways that generate new anti-cancer drug candidates with properties optimized for clinical use, such as superior potency, improved selectivity, fewer side effects. Our immediate goal is to build an expanded library of candidates for various cancers where new treatments are urgently needed. This discovery is moving us from understanding how the systems work to building new ones.”
How the Discovery Could Improve Cancer Drug Development
The research focuses on a group of medicines called HDAC inhibitors, which work by blocking histone deacetylases, enzymes that regulate which genes inside a cell are switched on or off. Romidepsin (Istodax), one of the best-known drugs in this class, is already approved to treat T-cell lymphomas.
Another closely related compound, FR-901375, has puzzled scientists for decades because researchers could never determine exactly how bacteria produced it. This study finally identifies that missing biosynthetic pathway.
Like other HDAC inhibitors in this family, FR-901375 belongs to a class of complex ring-shaped molecules called depsipeptides. Bacteria manufacture these compounds using massive protein complexes known as PKS-NRPS hybrids, which combine polyketide synthase (PKS) and nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) activities to assemble the drug from smaller molecular building blocks.
The newly identified docking domains act like connectors along this biological assembly line, allowing one section of the machinery to pass its partially built product to the next. This molecular handoff explains how bacteria naturally create multiple related drugs through combinatorial biosynthesis.
How Researchers Solved the Mystery
To uncover this mechanism, the team combined structural biology, biochemistry, genetics, and computational analysis.
Their research included:
Bioinformatic searches of public databases to identify the FR-901375 biosynthetic gene cluster in Pseudomonas chlororaphis subsp. piscium, followed by mass spectrometry analysis to confirm the metabolites produced.
Laboratory experiments using purified protein domains that demonstrated productive enzyme interactions, verified through intact protein mass spectrometry.
AlphaFold computational modeling to predict protein complex structures, with those predictions confirmed experimentally using carbene footprinting mass spectrometry to map where the proteins interact.
Site-directed mutagenesis to verify the importance of key binding residues predicted by the models. Gene deletion experiments in bacterial strains showing that the docking domains are essential for the drug-producing process inside living cells.
Comparative studies of biosynthetic gene clusters from multiple HDAC inhibitor-producing bacteria, revealing conserved evolutionary features shared across these systems.
The researchers believe the findings provide a powerful framework for engineering new generations of anti-cancer drugs by borrowing and improving upon nature’s own methods for building complex medicines.
Closely spaced volcanic plumes, surrounded by clouds, stream from a growing underwater volcanic platform in this natural-color image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on May 11, 2026, three days after the eruption began. The right image emphasizes the infrared signature of the eruption.
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison
A submarine eruption north of Papua New Guinea may be building new land while satellites track its evolution from above.
Oceanographers often point out that the surfaces of the Moon and Mars are mapped more precisely than much of the deep seafloor on Earth. That gap is especially clear in the Bismarck Sea, a deep basin north of Papua New Guinea. Its seafloor is geologically complex, with faults, volcanic structures, rifts, scarps, active subduction zones, and spreading zones lying at depths that are difficult to map in fine detail with sonar.
On May 8, 2026, satellites picked up signs of an unexpected underwater volcanic eruption in the Central Bismarck Sea. For volcanologists, the event highlighted a major problem: there were no detailed maps of the region, and the deep water setting of the eruption remains poorly understood.
The eruption is believed to be taking place along Titan Ridge, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) southeast of a submarine eruption recorded in 1972. Still, scientists do not yet agree on exactly which volcanic feature is active, how deep the vent was before the eruption, or when it last erupted.
“The good news is that there are huge opportunities to explore and learn using both government and commercial satellite platforms already in orbit,” said Jim Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Closely spaced volcanic plumes, surrounded by clouds, stream from a growing underwater volcanic platform in this natural-color image captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 on May 11, 2026, three days after the eruption began. The right image emphasizes the infrared signature of the eruption.
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison
Satellites reveal the eruption
The clearest early evidence began with a small cluster of earthquakes detected by seismometers on May 8. Soon afterward, satellite observations showed unmistakable signs of a submarine eruption. Starting May 9, NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites recorded optical images of white, steam-rich volcanic plumes rising into the atmosphere. NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem) satellite also detected discolored, disturbed water around the eruption site with its ocean color sensor.
Additional satellites saw ash plumes rising several kilometers into the air. More detailed imagery from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 2 and NASA/USGS Landsat 9 (top), collected on May 10 and 11, respectively, showed activity close to the ocean surface. The image at the top right shows the same area in false color (bands 7-6-5), with the inset revealing the eruption’s infrared signal. On May 12, the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on Suomi NPP detected heat anomalies spread across roughly seven square kilometers.
“There must be a lot of hot material near the surface to generate so many thermal anomalies,” said Simon Carn, a volcanologist at Michigan Tech. “This suggests a fairly shallow eruption vent—much shallower than what’s implied by the existing bathymetry, which shows water depths of several hundred meters or more.”
A new island may form
Optical satellite images show vigorous activity in shallow water, including large areas of discolored water and many steam and ash vents spread across the surface. Medium and high resolution sensors from government programs and commercial satellite companies have also captured broad pumice rafts (floating volcanic rocks) forming long streaks in surface currents in recent days.
Floating pumice and green, discolored water extend southwest from the eruption site as a white volcanic plume drifts west overhead in this image acquired by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite on May 15, 2026.
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
“We’re now eagerly waiting to see if a new island is about to be born—something that we’ve only rarely been able to observe with satellites as it happens,” Garvin said. If new land appears, volcanologists will monitor how it changes. It might grow into a tuff cone with a vent crater that lasts for some time, or it could quickly collapse and wear away. The eruption could also become far more explosive if seawater reaches the shallow magma chamber that has pushed up within the growing underwater feature.
Explosive risk appears limited
So far, this eruption has been much less explosive than recent submarine eruptions such as Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai in 2022 and Fukutoku Okanobain in 2021. Carn said the event is unlikely to become highly explosive because it appears to be linked to a volcanic ridge near the meeting point of a transform fault and a back arc spreading center. “Spreading centers are associated with less explosive activity, while the most explosive eruptions are usually along subduction zones and involve large stratovolcanoes.”
It is not yet clear how long the eruption will continue. The 1972 eruption in the same general region lasted only four days, while another submarine eruption about 100 kilometers away in the St. Andrew Strait in 1957 continued for nearly four years.
A rare natural laboratory
Garvin and scientists at other institutions are watching the eruption closely. He plans to study radar data from the NASA ISRO NISAR satellite and the Canadian Space Agency’s RADARSAT Constellation Mission to map any new land that appears and track how its shape changes. If a lasting island forms, Garvin also sees a chance for researchers, or “island-nauts,” to visit and study how a young island responds to plant and animal colonization, rainfall, chemical weathering, and other forms of erosion, similar to work carried out after the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha‘apai eruption.
“This new eruption could present an even better opportunity for ‘island-naut’ exploration as we prepare to return to the Moon with women and men via Artemis IV,” he said.
The weight of growing cities and falling groundwater levels can make the impacts of climate change worse.
Credit: Shutterstock
Sea-level rise is not just about the oceans. New research shows that sinking land is dramatically increasing flood risk in many coastal cities.
As climate change pushes oceans higher, many of the world’s biggest coastal cities are confronting a second, less visible threat beneath their streets. In places where millions of people live, the ground itself is sinking, increasing flood risk and causing local sea levels to rise faster than global averages.
Now, researchers from the German Geodetic Research Institute at the Technical University of Munich (DGFI-TUM) and Tulane University have quantified just how much this hidden process is amplifying the problem.
Writing in Nature Communications, they report that densely populated coastal regions experience an average relative sea-level rise of about 6 millimeters per year—nearly twice the rate of climate-driven sea-level rise alone and roughly three times the coastline-weighted global average. Their findings suggest that human-driven land subsidence has become a major contributor to coastal flood risk, but one that can often be slowed through local policies.
Key drivers of land subsidence: groundwater extraction, resource use, ice loss, and tectonics
The exact causes of subsidence are not always easy to identify in every location, according to the researchers. Still, several major factors stand out, including heavy groundwater extraction, oil and gas production, the compaction of young sediments in deltas, and the load from buildings and infrastructure in fast-growing cities. Longer-term geological processes, including tectonic movement and post-glacial adjustment, can also contribute.
“If we want to understand sea-level rise along coastlines and respond effectively, we must not only observe the ocean but also the land itself. Especially in densely populated coastal regions, human activities cause the land to subside more strongly – often due to excessive extraction of water and resources that previously stabilized the subsurface. The sheer weight of cities, along with long-term geological processes, can further intensify this subsidence. In doing so, we significantly amplify the effects of climate-driven sea-level rise,” says Dr. Julius Oelsmann, lead author of the study and researcher at DGFI-TUM.
Subsidence of Up to 42 Millimeters per Year
The countries with the highest relative sea level rise include Thailand, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt, China, and Indonesia. In those places, the population-weighted coastal averages were about 7 to 10 millimeters per year. The United States, the Netherlands, and Italy also showed elevated rates, at about 4 to 5 millimeters per year.
Major subsidence hot spots include Jakarta at 13.7 millimeters per year, Tianjin at 13.5 millimeters per year, Bangkok at 8.5 millimeters per year, Lagos at 6.7 millimeters per year, and Alexandria at 4 millimeters per year. Subsidence can differ sharply within the same city. In Jakarta, some areas are sinking by as much as 42 millimeters per year, while other parts are rising.
In some regions, the opposite is happening. Geological uplift is causing the relative sea level to fall along parts of the coast, including in Sweden and Finland. There, the land is still rising after the last Ice Age because of post-glacial rebound, and it is rising faster than sea levels are increasing.
Groundwater Management as a Countermeasure
“In many large coastal cities, groundwater extraction is a major driver of land subsidence. This means that local political and water-management decisions can make a significant difference. Improved groundwater management, stricter regulation of withdrawals, or targeted recharge of aquifers can at least slow subsidence rates and, in some cases, largely halt them,” says Florian Seitz, Professor of Geodetic Geodynamics and Director of the German Geodetic Research Institute at TUM (DGFI-TUM).
Tokyo and the Houston metropolitan region in Texas show that subsidence can be reduced. In Tokyo, subsidence once exceeded 10 centimeters per year and reached about 24 centimeters per year in the hardest hit areas. Government action and alternative water supplies greatly reduced those rates.
In the Harris-Galveston region of Texas, heavy groundwater pumping was also the main cause of sinking land. To address the problem, the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District was created in 1975 to regulate groundwater withdrawals, encourage alternative water sources, and support water conservation.
Microscope image showing Demodex folliculorum on human skin.
(University of Reading)
If you are reading this, you are probably not alone.
Most people on Earth are habitats for mites that spend the majority of their brief lives burrowed, head-first, in our hair follicles, primarily on the face.
In fact, humans are the only habitat for Demodex folliculorum. They are born on us, they feed on us, they mate on us, and they die on us.
Their entire life cycle revolves around munching your dead skin cells before kicking the teeny tiny bucket.
So reliant is D. folliculorum on humans for its survival, research suggests, that the microscopic mites are in the process of evolving from an ectoparasite into an obligate symbiont – possibly one that shares a mutually beneficial relationship with its hosts (that's us).
In other words, these mites may be gradually 'merging' with our bodies, becoming so specialized to their human habitat that they can no longer survive independently, according to a 2022 paper published in Molecular Biology and Evolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yetqP236E2o
In the study, scientists sequenced the genomes of these ubiquitous little beasts, and the results show that their human-centered existence could be wreaking changes not seen in other mite species.
"We found these mites have a different arrangement of body part genes to other similar species due to them adapting to a sheltered life inside pores," explained invertebrate biologist Alejandra Perotti of the University of Reading in the UK.
"These changes to their DNA have resulted in some unusual body features and behaviors."
D. folliculorum is actually a fascinating little creature. Human skin detritus is its sole food source, and it spends the majority of its three-week lifespan in pursuit thereof.
The individuals emerge only at night, in the cover of darkness, to crawl painstakingly slowly across the skin to find a mate, and hopefully copulate before returning to the safe darkness of a follicle.
D. folliculorum seen in a potassium hydroxide preparation of human skin.
(K.V Santosh/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)
Their tiny bodies are just a third of a millimeter in length, with a cluster of tiny legs and a mouth at one end of a long, sausage-shaped body – just right for scooching down human hair follicles to get at the tasty noms therein.
The work on the mite's genome, co-led by geneticist Gilbert Smith of Bangor University in the UK and biologist Alejandro Manzano-Marin of the University of Vienna, revealed some of the fascinating genetic characteristics that drive this lifestyle.
Because their lives are so cruisy – they have few natural threats, little competition, and limited exposure to other mites – their genome has been reduced down to just the bare essentials.
Each leg is powered by just three single-cell muscles, and their bodies have the absolute minimum number of protein-coding genes, only what is needed for survival. It's the smallest number ever seen in its wider group of related species.
This pared-down genome is the reason for some of D. folliculorum's other strange peccadilloes, too.
For instance, the reason it only comes out at night. Among the genes lost are those involved in UV protection and those that wake animals up at daylight.
They are also unable to produce melatonin, a hormone found in most living organisms and with various functions. In humans, melatonin is important for regulating the sleep cycle, whereas in small invertebrates it promotes mobility and reproduction.
This hasn't seemed to have hindered D. folliculorum, however; instead, the researchers suggest it may use melatonin secreted by human skin at dusk.
The position of D. folliculorum's penis. This is not convenient.
(University of Reading)
Unlike other mites, the reproductive organs of D. folliculorum have moved towards the front of their bodies, with male mites' penises pointing forwards and upwards from their backs.
This means he has to arrange himself underneath the female as they perch precariously on a hair for mating, which they do all night, AC/DC-style (presumably).
Although mating is pretty important, the potential gene pool is very small; there is very little opportunity to expand genetic diversity. The researchers suggest this could put the mites on track for an evolutionary dead end.
Interestingly, the team also found that the nymph stage of development, between the larva and adult, is when mites have the greatest number of cells in their bodies.
When they advance to the adult stage, they lose cells – which the researchers interpret as the first evolutionary step in the march of an arthropod species toward a symbiotic lifestyle.
One might wonder what possible benefits humans can gain from these peculiar animals; something else the researchers found might partially hint at the answer.
The arrow points to the mite's anus, and now you're probably on some kind of watch list.
(University of Reading)
For years, scientists have thought that D. folliculorum doesn't have an anus, instead accumulating waste in its body to explode out when the mite dies, and thus causing skin conditions.
The team found that this is simply not the case. The mites do indeed have tiny little buttholes; your face probably isn't full of mite poop expelled posthumously.
"Mites have been blamed for a lot of things," said zoologist Henk Braig of the University of Bangor and the National University of San Juan in Argentina.
"The long association with humans might suggest that they also could have simple but important beneficial roles, for example, in keeping the pores in our face unplugged."
We've all heard of menopause: a supposedly terminal moment for the female reproductive system, in which the ovaries stop releasing eggs and presumably call it a day.
But reproductive biologist Francesca Duncan is not content with this simplified image of ovarian retirement.
She has been trying to understand what ovaries get up to once they stop pumping out eggs. It turns out it's much less like retirement, and more like a career change.
Life expectancies are generally stretching further than ever before, which means there's now far more post-menopausal people wandering around, whose bodies we still don't fully understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cheqkrcHkrI
A new study of mice, published in Molecular Human Reproduction by Duncan at Northwestern University in Illinois and a team of researchers across the US, suggests that the post-menopausal ovary is far from inert.
This new research reflects what Duncan found in another study of post-menopausal women, which is yet to be peer-reviewed. It showed that the proteins produced by ovarian tissue in 28 post-menopausal women differed across age groups.
If ovaries were 'inert' after their reproductive years, that shouldn't be the case.
Mouse studies obviously can't tell us exactly what is going on in the human body, but because we share a similar evolutionary history, they can offer hints.
In the animal study, Duncan and team removed the ovaries of 2-month, 18-month, and 24-month mice for close study. Each of these ages was chosen to represent a different phase of the mouse reproductive cycle.
Stained ovarian sections from different-aged mouse ovaries
(Converse et al., Mol. Hum. Reprod., 2026)
Mouse ovaries typically shut down around two years into the animal's short lifespan. Their menopause is not accompanied by the sharp estrogen drop humans experience, but it bears other similarities.
Tissue from one ovary of each mouse was closely examined under the microscope to better understand the anatomy of the ovarian tissues at each of these phases of life.
With the second ovary, the researchers conducted bulk RNA sequencing, which tells us not only what genes are present within certain tissues, but which genes are actively involved in protein production.
Unsurprisingly, these samples showed that the machinery of reproductive function slowed down with age. Older mice had fewer follicles and changes in the way cell tissue and collagen were arranged.
But that doesn't mean the entire 'factory' was shut down. In fact, ovaries seem to step into a new role.
"Transcriptomic analyses revealed a shift from reproductive functionality to an immune-dominant signature with age," the team reports.
"Correspondingly, post-reproductive ovaries exhibited increased infiltration of T cells, macrophages, and multinucleated giant cells."
Though old and post-reproductive ovaries looked and functioned very differently from those of young mice, they also had distinct transcriptome profiles, much like what Duncan saw in postmenopausal women.
It suggests that ovaries continue to undergo molecular changes, even after their reproductive role has wound down. They appear to take on the role of an immune-like inflammatory organ, the team says.
"These findings challenge the assumption that the post-reproductive ovary is inert, instead indicating that it acquires an immune identity with potential endocrine and paracrine influence on whole-body aging," Duncan and team conclude.
This could have important implications for healthcare in post-reproductive years, and especially for people who have their ovaries removed.
Golden spiny mice appear to defy many of the biological changes normally associated with aging, maintaining their physical abilities, memory, and immune function while living far longer than typical wild mice.
Credit: Shutterstock
A wild mouse with an unusually long life may reveal clues to healthy aging.
Aging is often treated as an unavoidable biological process, but evolution tells a more complicated story. Across the animal kingdom, species age at dramatically different rates, with some rapidly declining after reaching adulthood while others remain healthy and active for years or even decades. Understanding what separates these species has become one of the biggest questions in aging research, offering clues to how the body naturally resists disease and deterioration.
Researchers are now turning to an unlikely candidate: the golden spiny mouse. Native to the rocky deserts of the Middle East, this small wild rodent not only lives far longer than most mice but also appears to preserve its health throughout much of its life, avoiding the physical, cognitive, and immune decline that normally accompanies aging.
In a study published in Science Advances, scientists at Yale School of Medicine began uncovering the biological mechanisms behind this exceptional resilience. Their findings suggest the mouse has evolved natural pathways that keep age-related inflammation under control and maintain key tissues and organs well into old age, discoveries that could eventually inform new treatments to promote healthier aging in people.
“Mice in the wild typically live around nine months,” says senior author Vishwa Deep Dixit, DVM, PhD, Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Pathology at YSM. “But some of these golden spiny mice are living out in the desert for up to five years. And that’s just what we’ve been able to observe; their maximum lifespan is unknown.”
Vishwa Deep Dixit, DVM, PhD, Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Pathology and Professor of Immunobiology.
Credit: Yale School of Medicine
“In order to live that long, they have to forage, they have to avoid predators,” says Dixit, who is also a professor of comparative medicine and of immunobiology at YSM and director of the Yale Center for Research on Aging (Y-Age). “So it’s not like they’re living this long in a way that we would think of as ‘aged.’”
Lead author Hee Hoon Kim, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in Dixit’s lab, says the central question is why certain species, including the golden spiny mouse, can age with so little apparent decline while others cannot.
Reduced physical and cognitive aging
Working with collaborators at Tel Aviv University, Dixit, Kim, and colleagues studied both young and old golden spiny mice and compared them with closely related species.
The analysis revealed several traits that set the golden spiny mouse apart. Three were especially notable and may help explain how the species ages so well.
One ability was already known: golden spiny mice can heal skin injuries without visible scarring. The new work showed that this regenerative capacity does not disappear with age. Older golden spiny mice kept the same ability.
A second striking feature involved the thymus. In humans, this gland sits above the heart and makes a type of white blood cell that is essential for immune function. Across vertebrates, the thymus usually shrinks and deteriorates quickly as animals get older.
“Aging of the thymus actually precedes aging of all the other organs,” says Dixit. “But even in very old golden spiny mice, the thymus is structurally and functionally intact. And perhaps this gives the mice a much stronger immune system into old age.”
Dixit, Kim, and colleagues also found that older golden spiny mice did not show the expected loss of learning and memory that is commonly seen in aging animals.
“These are all of the major pathways that decline with age,” says Dixit. “Understanding how they’re maintained through age in this species could be of extreme importance.”
Keeping inflammation in check
As the body ages, chronic low-grade inflammation tends to increase, a process known as “inflammaging.” Much of that inflammation develops in fat tissue. To look for clues, Dixit, Kim, and colleagues examined gene activity in golden spiny mouse fat tissue and identified a protein called clusterin.
Clusterin helps clear misfolded proteins from the body, which can reduce their harmful effects. The protein has been associated with lower neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s disease and longer lifespan in many mammals, including humans (people 100 years or older tend to have higher concentrations of clusterin, for instance). In older golden spiny mice, immune cells in fat tissue showed high activity in the gene that produces clusterin.
To test whether clusterin itself could produce some of these effects, Dixit, Kim, and colleagues gave the protein to standard lab mice. The treated mice showed some of the same healthy aging traits observed in golden spiny mice. They had less decline in movement and healthier organs than mice that did not receive clusterin. They also showed signs of reduced inflammaging. Similar benefits were seen when human white blood cells were exposed to clusterin.
“We think that clusterin is one of the key operators of how golden spiny mice resist age-related decline,” says Kim. “This is a small start to a big narrative.”
Evolutionary advantages
Wild animals usually do not die simply because they are old. Predators, food shortages, and infections often kill them first. For that reason, healthy aging is not usually a trait that natural selection can strongly favor, since many animals do not live long enough for those traits to improve survival across generations.
Golden spiny mice, however, have several adaptations that may help them survive long enough for healthy aging traits to matter. Unlike many mice, they are active during the day. This helps them avoid competing with other mouse species for food and reduces contact with predators that hunt at night when other mice are active.
They also tolerate toxins and can survive long periods without food by lowering their energy use. This allows them to conserve energy while still remaining active enough to search for food. Their offspring also begin life at a more advanced developmental stage than other mice, and several females help care for pups, improving their chances of survival.
“So they have many ways of avoiding death,” says Dixit. “And we think that natural selection is then able to endow those healthy aging traits, which are then passed on from generation to generation.”
Dixit, Kim, and colleagues say the evidence points to metabolic pathways in golden spiny mice that help control resistance to aging. Similar pathways may also exist in other mice and in humans, but may have become inactive for reasons that are not yet clear. Proteins such as clusterin may be able to turn some of those pathways back on.
Dixit says these pathways could eventually point toward ways to improve aging and longevity in people. “We think that these are going to be stepping stones for new drugs in the future.”
A reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous paleoenvironment of Alaska.
Credit: James Havens
Tiny fossil teeth from Alaska are changing how scientists view mammal life and migration in the ancient Arctic.
Today’s Arctic is one of the harshest and least biodiverse places on Earth, but during the age of dinosaurs it was home to a surprisingly rich community of mammals. A new fossil discovery suggests this ancient polar ecosystem was not an isolated evolutionary outpost but an important crossroads where species adapted, diversified, and even migrated between continents.
In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder and collaborating institutions describe three previously unknown species of rodent-like mammals that lived in what is now northern Alaska more than 70 million years ago.
Their analysis indicates that the ancestors of some of these mammals traveled from what is now Mongolia in East Asia, challenging the long-held assumption that the polar regions played only a minor role in mammal evolution.
“While the polar regions don’t host the same level of biodiversity as the tropics, they were still very active places for life to flourish, extending far back into deep time,” says Sarah Shelley, the paper’s first author at the University of Lincoln in the U.K. She conducted the study as a postdoctoral researcher at CU Boulder with senior author Jaelyn Eberle, a professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.
Teeth reveal Arctic mammals
Shelley, Eberle, and colleagues named the three species Camurodon borealis, which roughly translates to “Northern curved-tooth,” Qayaqgruk peregrinus, or “the little wandering hero,” and Kaniqsiqcosmodon polaris, meaning “polar frost ornamented tooth.”
The animals were identified from fossil teeth found in the Prince Creek Formation, a site inside the Arctic Circle near the top of the world. The fossils are about 73 million years old. At that time, the region still had months of winter darkness, freezing conditions, and likely seasonal food shortages. Even so, these small mammals managed to survive there.
The Colville River image shows field camp on a gravel bar in the middle of the river, while the small orange boat is pulled up along the far bank at an active fossil locality.
Credit: Shelley et al
“These three new mammal species add to a growing body of evidence that this ancient arctic region was home to unique, polar-adapted species,” said Patrick Druckenmiller, a coauthor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Diets show survival strategies
All three species belonged to an extinct group of mammals known as multituberculates. These animals were roughly mouse-sized to rat-sized and were the longest-lived mammal group known from Earth’s history. They survived for more than 100 million years, from the Jurassic Period through the end of the Eocene Epoch about 35 million years ago. They also lived through the asteroid impact that wiped out all nonavian dinosaurs. By comparison, modern humans (Homo sapiens) have existed for only about 300,000 years.
Scientists have long asked why multituberculates endured for so long, and the newly studied teeth offered an important clue.
The three species had noticeably different tooth shapes, suggesting that they likely ate different foods. C. borealis had teeth suited to herbivores, while Q. peregrinus was an omnivore that probably ate insects as well as some plants. K. polaris also appeared to be an omnivore, though it may have relied mostly on plants.
The shape of the tooth suggests that Camurodon borealis was likely a herbivore.
Credit: Shelley et al.
In a place where food could be scarce, the ability to specialize in different diets may have allowed several multituberculate species to live side by side. Shelley said that same flexibility may also have helped them survive the asteroid impact.
“There’s a lot of diversity in the multituberculate group. They lived for an incredibly long time, and I think they can reveal a lot about the resilience of mammals, not just to the mass extinction, but also to climatic stresses that many organisms are facing today,” she said.
Ancient migration reshapes history
The discovery also adds new detail to the history of the ancient Arctic.
The team found that Q. peregrinus, named for Qayaq, a legendary hero in Alaskan Inuit culture, is closely related to a species from what is now Mongolia. That connection suggests the ancestors of Q. peregrinus moved from Asia into North America. Shelley estimated that this migration happened about 92 million years ago, making it one of the earliest known examples of mammals moving between the two continents.
“This means there was a land corridor between Asia and North America for these little mammals to come through,” Eberle said. “And this land bridge was already pretty active as far back as 90 million years ago.”
The finding strengthens evidence that species have been moving across continents and reshaping ecosystems for hundreds of millions of years.
“It really challenges how we think about native species,” Shelley said. “Deep time reminds us that a place is not just a point on a map, but a long, layered history of landscapes and inhabitants.”
Banded mongooses (Mungos mungo) can cooperate with common warthogs (Phacochoerus africanus) by cleaning them, removing ticks and other parasites, while the warthogs provide access to food and safety from predators through their vigilance and presence. Example footage from Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda.
Credit: Leela Channer
Scientists are discovering that animals use surprisingly sophisticated communication to form partnerships and cooperate across species boundaries.
Animals from different species often cooperate in ways that seem surprisingly sophisticated. A new review published in Animal Behaviour shows that communication plays a crucial role in making these partnerships possible. According to the researchers, movements, visual displays, calls, and other signals help animals coordinate their behavior and maintain mutually beneficial relationships across species boundaries.
Examples of this kind of cooperation can be found throughout nature. Some birds guide humans to bees’ nests in exchange for access to beeswax, while cleaner fish remove parasites from larger reef fish and receive food in return. Drawing on examples involving birds, fish, insects, and mammals, the review explores how animals share information to organize their activities and sustain cooperative interactions. How Different Species Coordinate Their Actions
For cooperation to succeed, animals must often synchronize their behavior to achieve a common goal, even when they experience the world through very different senses.
One example involves the greater honeyguide bird (Indicator indicator), which uses specialized calls to lead humans to bees’ nests and responds to calls made by humans. Another example comes from warthogs, which adopt distinctive body postures to request cleaning services from birds and mammals that remove parasites.
“From the examples we know, individuals coordinate their actions to access shared resources, like food, or to exchange resources for services, such as protection from predators,” said Dr. Katie Dunkley, lead author and researcher at the University of Oxford. “We were particularly interested in how sharing information allows such close coordination between species.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL8sXWiTQDw
Human honey-hunters (Homo sapiens) can cooperate with greater honeyguides (Indicator indicator) by following their calls and flight to locate hidden bees’ nests, then harvesting the honey while leaving behind wax and larvae that the birds feed on. Example footage from Niassa Special Reserve, northern Mozambique.
Credit: Dominic Cram
Communication Helps Manage Risks and Rewards
Communication is not only important for finding cooperative partners. It also helps animals begin interactions, coordinate their behavior, and reduce the risk of being exploited.
Interactions between different species can be risky, making reliable signals especially valuable. Some cleaner fish (e.g., Labroides dimidiatus) and shrimp (e.g., Urocaridella sp.) use bright colors and distinctive movements to signal their role when approaching predatory fish, allowing them to clean parasites without being attacked. Meanwhile, lycaenid butterfly larvae produce chemical and vibrational signals that encourage ants to protect them rather than treat them as prey.
The review also notes that many animals rely on multiple senses when communicating. As a result, focusing only on obvious visual displays may cause researchers to overlook other important forms of information exchange between species. Flexible Signals Across Different Environments
Not all forms of interspecies communication are equally fixed.
Some signals remain consistent across situations. Fish seeking cleaning services, for example, often use recognizable head or tail stand postures. Other signals can vary depending on local conditions. Fishermen working with dolphins may interpret specific dolphin behaviors as cues indicating the best moment to cast their nets.
“In some forms of interspecies cooperation, cues and signals vary depending on the ecological context, the species involved, and whether the signal is inherited or learned,” said senior author Dr. van der Wal, a researcher affiliated with UCT’s FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology. “This highlights just how flexible and adaptable interspecies communication can be.”
How Cross-Species Communication Evolves
The researchers also examined how communication systems between species may develop over time.
Some signals may begin as simple cues, which are features or behaviors that affect how another animal responds despite not originally evolving for communication. Over generations, these cues can become more specialized and develop into clear signals.
Other signals may start as behaviors used for entirely different purposes, such as resolving conflicts or caring for offspring, before later being adapted to support cooperation between species.
“Studying how information flows between species gives us a powerful window into how communication systems originate, change and sometimes coevolve,” said Dr. Dunkley.
A Large Collaborative Research Effort
The review emerged from an interdisciplinary workshop on interspecies cooperation held in Cambridge in July 2023. Researchers from a wide range of fields gathered to discuss different examples of cooperation across species.
In total, the paper includes 58 authors from disciplines including anthropology, biology, and linguistics. It also draws on expertise from scientists studying animal cooperation, mixed-species interactions, and systems in which humans actively train non-human animals.
New Questions for Future Research
The authors say their review highlights the ecological importance of cooperation between species and opens new opportunities for studying how communication evolves across species boundaries.
They also emphasize the need for broader research covering more groups of animals, along with additional experiments to better understand how signals emerge, persist, and influence cooperative behavior.
“We still have much to learn about how these systems function and evolve,” said Dr. van der Wal. “We look forward to future research revealing both these interactions and other forms of interspecies cooperation yet to be discovered.”
A technique commonly used to prevent cancer might not be as effective as we thought – and a new study might have found the reason why.
It turns out that the trillions of microbes that call your gut home could be to blame.
The research suggests that the gut microbiome could remain disrupted for a decade or more after the common procedure, in ways that keep cancer risk elevated.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the world, but thankfully, risk factors for this cancer can be caught early with regular screening.
Colonoscopies can reveal benign growths called adenomas in the colon. Since these can become cancerous later on, they're typically removed as a precaution.
However, a patient's risk of developing CRC often seems to remain elevated even after adenoma removal.
Exactly why this is the case has remained unclear, but a new study, led by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, may have linked it to the gut microbiome.
"Our study was the first to address whether gut microbial and metabolic alterations are still detectable many years after adenoma removal," says Mingyang Song, epidemiologist at Harvard and corresponding author of the study, which has been published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.
"The answer is yes – suggesting that removing an adenoma doesn't return the gut to a low-risk state, and that the gut microbiome may therefore be a significant biological contributor to sustained CRC risk."
Culture of microbes shed from the human gut, seen under a scanning electron microscope.
Your gut microbiome plays a key role in your health, in more ways than you might think. Some are obvious: these microscopic residents aid digestion, affect how you absorb nutrients from your food, and impact your weight.
But their influence extends far beyond your gastrointestinal system. The composition and concentration of different microbes in your gut have been linked to sleep, various neurological disorders, and even how effective exercise may be for you.
One of those diseases linked to your gut microbiome is cancer, and especially bowel cancer. Previous studies have investigated which gut microbes could be involved, by examining how the microbiome changed as adenomas advanced from benign to cancerous.
But what happens to the gut microbiome if you remove those adenomas at an early stage? That was the central question behind the new study.
The answer was striking.
The researchers examined the stool metagenomes of 354 women who had had adenomas removed roughly 12 years earlier, and compared them with those of 354 patients who had never had adenomas, matching both groups for age and several other factors.
The genomic profiles of the gut microbiome were then compared with 14 independent case-control studies of CRC.
And sure enough, the team identified significant changes in 31 different microbes between the two groups. And the microbiomes of patients who'd had adenomas removed partially resembled those associated with CRC cases.
The graphical abstract for the study.
(Nogal et al., Cell Host Microbe, 2026)
The samples were collected, on average, over a decade after the patients' adenomas were removed. That suggests that the microbial differences associated with CRC cannot simply be 'cut out' along with benign polyps.
It could also offer an explanation for why patients who had adenomas removed still had a higher chance of developing CRC than those without.
We may be treating a symptom, rather than the root cause.
If that's the case, the carcinogenic conditions (which may also have contributed to the adenoma) persist even after the polyp is removed.
"The fact that CRC-associated gut microbial and metabolic features are still detectable a decade later suggests the gut microbiome may be part of sustained CRC risk," says Ana Nogal, epidemiologist at Harvard and first author of the study.
"Diet and lifestyle were closely tied to these microbes, raising the possibility that these habits could influence the gut environment in people at higher risk."
Both diet and exercise are known to affect the gut microbiome, and that in turn could be influencing colorectal cancer risk.
As with many of these kinds of studies, the new work can only suggest an association – whether the microbiome is a direct cause of cancer requires more work to determine.
But it's an intriguing look into a possible mechanism behind a long-standing biological mystery.
For centuries, crows have amazed scientists with their intelligence, problem-solving abilities, and surprisingly complex vocalizations.
Now, a viral claim suggests that researchers used *Grok AI* to decode crow language—and that what the birds "said" about humans was deeply unsettling. But how much of this story is based on real science?
In this video, we explore the latest research into animal communication, how artificial intelligence is being used to analyze bird calls, and what scientists have actually learned about crow behavior. We'll examine whether AI can truly "translate" animal languages or if it is simply identifying patterns in sounds and behavior.
From recognizing human faces to using tools and passing knowledge across generations, crows possess remarkable cognitive abilities that continue to surprise researchers. While AI is helping scientists better understand animal communication, there is no verified evidence that it can translate crow language into human sentences or reveal hidden messages about humanity.
