Bats carry a lot of very deadly pathogens like Ebola virus, Nipah, Hendra, coronavirus, and also rabies virus. People are finding more and more bat-borne viruses. When such viruses are transmitted to humans, the results are often fatal so there's a lot of interest in trying to prevent spillover in the first place.
Raccoons have very dense brains, and that likely explains their heightened ability to solve problems and to be behaviorally flexible, says Lauren Stanton, a cognitive ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. But new research published in Animal Behaviour suggests raccoons will try to solve problems even when they don't expect a food reward for the work.
In a study published in Science Advances, researchers in China fed Aedes aegypti mosquitoes blood that contained either a vaccine against Nipah virus or the rabies virus. The viruses, contained in the vaccines, replicated inside the insects and reached their salivary glands, allowing them to pass on the vaccine when feeding on bats or when the bats ate the insects.
An unnamed tourist saw it and told Aidan Moore, who works for Alcatraz City Cruises. Moore told SFGATE that he was initially skeptical, but the guest's iPhone footage left little room for doubt. The video shows, not a sea lion or an otter, but an actual Canis latrans, doggedly dogpaddling, then clambering out of the water, noticeably shaky and struggling to settle tired paws on the craggy rocks.
Exposure to a fungicide induced changes to gene expression in rats that persisted for at least 20 generations. It also increased the chance of offspring developing kidney disease, obesity or experiencing complications when giving birth, according to the longest-running study of 'epigenetic' changes in mammals.
On the outskirts of Cartagena far from the brightly coloured facades of the old city and the 500-year-old fortress walls overlooking the Caribbean a crowd of about 300 people erupted into a roar. Given Colombians' passion for football, it could have been the celebration of a goal. But the cheers followed the bloody climax of bout in a cockfighting ring whose white padded walls were now splattered with blood.
Living in New York City requires a constant negotiation between what we owe our neighbors and what our neighbors owe us. In an ideal world, you and your neighbor would have a mutual understanding about why it's good for everyone to keep a clean building, but if she is indeed hoarding then it's hard to imagine she's able to give you what she can't even give herself. This is a pickle.
During a routine exam, veterinarians found Baylisascaris eggs in the dog's system - the first such formal report of raccoon roundworm in a dog in county history, according to a Los Angeles County Department of Public Health news release. In 2024, two South Bay residents were sickened by the parasite, which can infect the brain, spinal cord and eyes and lead to eye disease and swelling of the brain.
It was a race against nightfall. As he hurried across the sandy, bristling landscape of California's Carrizo Plain, ecologist Ian Axsom stopped every 10 yards to place an aluminum live trap on the ground, eventually distributing traps over an area the size of two baseball fields. Against the rolling playas and tawny mountains, the traps glinted with golden remnants of the September dusk.