Animals
Surprise! These animals can help fight climate change
Some animals help fight climate change by boosting the amount of carbon dioxide that plants, algae and bacteria absorb from the atmosphere.
MS-LS2-5
Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.
More Stories in MS-LS2-5
- Oceans
Shading corals during midday heat can limit bleaching
Shading coral reefs during the sunniest part of the day may help corals survive marine heat waves.
- Tech
Meet robots on a mission to help birds
A new generation of bird-like robots is helping people better understand and protect the wild animals that inspired them.
- Environment
Making yards more diverse can reap big environmental benefits
Replacing grass with native plants uses less water and fewer chemicals while providing additional benefits to people and wildlife.
- Environment
Microplastic pollution aids viruses and prolongs their infectivity
The tiny plastic bits give these germs safe havens. That protection seems to increase as the plastic ages and breaks into ever smaller pieces.
- Animals
Study finds big drop in animal populations since 1970
But the same thing is not happening throughout the kingdom. For instance, more than half of vertebrate populations are stable or increasing.
- Animals
Cougars pushed out by wildfires took more risks around roads
After an intense burn in 2018 in California, big cats in the region crossed roads more often. That put them at higher risk of becoming roadkill.
- Animals
Some spikes in malaria cases may be tied to amphibian die-offs
Amphibian deaths from a fungal disease may have led to more mosquitoes — and an increase in malaria cases in Costa Rica and Panama.
- Animals
Gophers might be farmers, a controversial study suggests
Pocket gophers air out and fertilize the soil in a way that amounts to simple farming, two researchers claim. But not everyone agrees.
- Animals
Palm-size marsupials may face extinction from wild ‘house’ cats
After surviving Australian bushfires, the Kangaroo Island dunnart is losing ground as it's targeted by hungry predators.
