Here are the best things I’ve read all week. The pieces are not necessarily news and could be decades old, and they’re probably longform writing but not always. Maybe there is one link, maybe there are forty. But they all were thought-provoking enough that they hopped around in my brain long past the read. Enjoy. [...]

If the eastern cougar (Puma concolor couguar) went extinct in the 1930s, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reported back in March, why do so many people in New England keep reporting cougar sightings? As FWS lead scientist Mark McCollough told me in March, the 110 confirmed cases on cougars (sometimes called mountain [...]

Every year hundreds if not thousands of new species are described for the first time by science. And every year, the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) takes a look at the previous year’s new species and picks the "Top 10 New Species". This year’s list—containing species first found in 2009—contains some doozies: a bug-eating [...]

Like many biologists, the German biologist Oliver Zompro spends thousands of hours looking at specimens of dead animals. He found his first new species when he was twenty. By the age of thirty he had named dozens of wild new forms. While other people around him did crossword puzzles and drank lattes, he explored the [...]

The U.S. has spent several billion dollars looking for life on other planets. Shouldn’t we spend at least that much finding and identifying life on Earth? That is the argument behind a taxonomy analysis by a trio of scientists in Science, published on January 25. They argue just $500 million to $1 billion a year [...]

Wormholes aren’t just for time travel or teleportation anymore. Some very real and ancient wormholes are now helping to trace the distribution of insect species and artwork. A biologist found himself in the unlikely world of centuries-old European woodblock print art. There, he discovered that many of the small imperfections in the prints could be [...]

Four-legged stowaways hitched a ride aboard the wooden 10th- and 11th-century Viking ships that braved the northern seas. The probably numerous passengers aboard hailed from Mus musculus domesticus, the small, fleet-of-foot rodent otherwise known simply as the house mouse. Opportunistic hangers-on have accompanied human migrations throughout history. From the louse to the mouse, scientists have [...]

By any other name, the Anopheles gambiae mosquito would still bear—with its tiny buzzing wing beats—the deadly threat of malaria, which can be passed to humans in a single blood-sucking bite. But what if this species were to split in twain? Two new studies, published online October 21 in Science, have found evidence that A. [...]

In the rugged, remote reaches of Papua New Guinea live a multitude of strange species that scientists are just starting to catalogue. A recent initiative, the results of which were announced October 5, reports some 26 potentially new animal species, nine previously undescribed plants and some 200 likely new bug species. In two months of [...]

That octopuses can survive in the extreme, sunless environments around deep hydrothermal vents is surprising enough. But comparing octopuses that make their homes there has led to some even more interesting discoveries about animal development. The rarely seen Muusoctopus hydrothermalis live some 2,495 to 2,620 meters below the surface, along the East Pacific Rise. There, [...]

Shallow-water octopuses can be difficult enough to find. They camouflage against corals, hide in holes and generally make themselves scarce. But researchers can at least attempt to observe and collect them by snorkeling, diving or skimming nets and bottom trawls. The rest of the vast, dark ocean, however, presents a much larger sampling challenge. So [...]

Of the hundreds of known octopus species, most are anti-social, practice safe sex (to avoid getting eaten by a mate) and lay just one clutch of eggs before dying. The poorly understood larger Pacific striped octopus, however, seems to break from these conventions: They are somewhat social, they mate face-to-face, and the females produce multiple [...]