Ecology

By Anna Flávia Rochas and Roberto Samora SAO PAULO, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Southeastern Brazil is getting some rainfall a year after a record drought started, but not enough to eliminate worries about an energy crisis, water shortages or another season of damaged export crops, meteorologists said.

As they were tracking a Nigerian poaching vessel through the South Indian Ocean on Boxing Day last year, Australian conservationists aboard the SSS Bob Barker saw something pretty incredible – a pod of 13 Type D orcas.

Lizards don’t get much bigger than the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), which can reach three meters in length and may weigh as much as 70 kilograms.

There comes a depth at which even fish struggle to survive the titanic pressure. But that depth is only found at the few places on Earth that lie below 27,600 feet of water, where the weight of the water warps piscine proteins and crushes cells.

(Correcting to 115th count instead of 114th count in 2nd paragraph) By Barbara Goldberg NEW YORK, Jan 7 (Reuters) - The elusive snowy owl, rarely seen outside the Arctic, is turning up more frequently in the skies of North America than it does in the pages of a Harry Potter book, data from the National Audubon Society suggested on Wednesday.

By Shyamantha Asokan LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - On a cold and rainy Friday afternoon, Steven Dring is tending his baby carrots in a somewhat unusual setting.

(Reuters) - Hundreds of firefighters were battling on Tuesday to contain Australia's worst wildfires in 30 years which have already swept across more than 12,000 hectares outside the southern city of Adelaide and destroyed at least 26 homes.

The flutter of a single butterfly’s wings may or may not be capable of causing tsunamis, but the loss of millions of butterflies is definitely being felt here in North America.

To learn the secret behind aging gracefully, you may want to check out the bowhead whale, the majestic denizen of the Arctic waters that boasts a lifespan topping 200 years.

Populations of big carnivores such as brown bears, Eurasian lynx, grey wolves and wolverines are stable or increasing in a substantial part of Europe. Cynthia Graber reports

 

Researchers announced the discovery of 98 beetle species previously unknown to science. David Biello reports

 

Additives to road salt designed to make it more environmentally friendly might still have tradeoffs