Animals

Unlike us, many animals can see ultraviolet light. If you're using a video screen to study their visual perception, therefore, that screen really ought to work in the UV spectrum – and a new one does just that.

A little over two years after Israel-based start-up Aleph Farms unveiled the world’s first lab-grown steak, the company has now revealed a much more complex, thick-cut rib-eye steak cultivated using a novel 3D bioprinting technology.

A tiny new species of chameleon has been discovered, and it may be the smallest reptile in the world. Known as Brookesia nana, or the nano-chameleon, the petite species can perch on a fingertip and may have the smallest adult males of any vertebrate.

Wombats are the only animal in the world known to produce cubic poo. It's, quite literally, akin to squeezing a square peg through a round hole, and now researchers have for the first time replicated the intestinal process that achieves this feat.

Satellites have offered scientists a powerful new tool when it comes to tracking endangered wildlife, with the movements of animals able to be monitored with precision. A new technology promises to expand the possibilities in this area even further.

Paleontologists have found and described what may be the last dinosaur body part we didn’t know anything about – the butthole. Better yet, it seems like it might have evolved to look and yes, even smell, nice to suitors.

Scientists working in the West African country of Guinea have discovered a new orange-furred species of bat. The rare discovery came while conducting field surveys in the isolated Nimba Mountain range.

Scientists have observed snakes using an entirely unknown way of getting around. Brown tree snakes in Guam have been spotted climbing objects by wrapping themselves into a never-before-seen “lasso” shape.

Exactly how some animals, such as birds, can detect magnetic fields remains a mystery. Now researchers in Japan may have found a crucial piece of the puzzle, making the first direct observations of live, unaltered cells responding to magnetic fields.

Curing cancer is a noble goal, but sometimes scientists just want to give octopuses ecstasy. From medical marvels to wild speculations about time travel, aliens and the end of the universe, New Atlas revisits some of 2020’s strangest science stories.

A gold miner in Canada has discovered what may be the most complete wolf pup mummy ever found. Locked in the permafrost for 57,000 years, the pup is so well preserved that scientists can learn a lot about her diet, genetics, life and death.

Paleontologists have discovered a new species of dinosaur that’s a real show-off. Ubirajara jubatus is a small creature found with strange spikes sticking out of its shoulders, which scientists speculate were used as ornaments, like a peacock’s tail.