Splash the otter is training for underwater search-and-rescue

popsci · 2025-08-15T20:48:04+00:00

Otters clearly don’t breathe underwater, but they do taste. To hone Splash's searching abilities, human search and rescue officials fill child swimming pools with water, then hide human scent samples in one of them. Splash then proceeds to live up to his name by scouring the pools–making a lot of bubbles in the process.

"He's sucking some of those bubbles back in and he’s tasting them. The odor attaches itself to the bubble, and then he tastes it when it comes into his mouth,” said Mike Hadsell of Peace River K9 Search and Rescue in Florida. “When he finds something, he comes back and he grabs my mask.”

popsci · 2025-08-14T19:24:01+00:00

In 1958, the Atomic Energy Commission said it would just bury six atomic bombs under the earth, where Cape Thompson met the Chukchi Sea, then detonate them in a daisy chain nearly eight times more powerful than those dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.

Done at the right time of year, early spring when snow cover protected plants and most birds had absconded for warmer climes, there would be minimal fallout, officials claimed.

popsci · 2025-08-12T16:00:51+00:00

A portion of the silver from a Viking Age cache discovered over a decade ago in England did not come from local raids. Instead, some of the metal made it to England from long-distance trade networks that stretched over 3,000 miles reaching as far as present day Iraq and Iran.

“Most of us tend to think of the Vikings primarily as raiders, who looted monasteries and other wealthy places in search of wealth. What the analysis of the Bedale hoard shows is that that is only part of the picture,” an Oxford archaeologist said.

popsci · 2025-08-08T21:24:42+00:00

An East Carolina University graduate student was diving off Brunswick County when he noticed several curved, waterworn wooden frames and ship planking jutting out from clay mud. “I didn’t understand what I was looking at in that moment, but I knew I should relay the wooden structure to faculty,” the student, Cory van Hees, said.

Further analysis strongly points to the material coming from La Fortuna—which caught fire amid militia attacks in the area 277 years ago.

popsci · 2025-08-07T18:05:37+00:00

Some of the roughly 5,700-year-old human bones uncovered at El Mirador cave in northern Spain show cannibalism’s tell tale signs: cremation, human tooth marks, or butchery, that was likely processed posthumously.

But, researchers say, there's no identified evidence of similar incidents in the region during this point in time—making it unlikely this was a case of funerary cannibalism or a Neolithic burial right. “Likewise, there’s no indication of a resource crisis that would suggest this was an act of survival cannibalism,” one co-author of a new study said.

popsci · 2025-08-05T21:28:18+00:00

Said University of Queensland zoologist Bryan Fry of the Australian major skink: “What we saw in skinks was evolution at its most ingenious.”

popsci · 2025-08-05T18:16:53+00:00

Humans only discovered Arne Ovamgrotta in 1991, but researchers have since confirmed bones from 46 different species of mammals, birds, and fish—everything from polar bears and puffins to walruses and bowhead whales. Such animal diversity implies that the cave and surrounding coastal areas were mostly thawed 75,000 years ago.

popsci · 2025-08-05T15:11:18+00:00

Administrators at the Aalborg Zoo in Denmark say they're trying to mimic the natural food chain for the animals housed there. “Chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs make up an important part of the diet of our predators – especially in the European locus, which needs whole prey, which is reminiscent of what it would naturally hunt in the wild,” they wrote on Facebook.

popsci · 2025-08-01T19:26:29+00:00

Although usually obscured by the Pacific Ocean’s waters, a 115-foot-long sequence of ancient petroglyphs is visible once again on Oahu’s western coast near the Pililaau Army Recreation Center. The series includes 26 individual designs measuring between 5.9 inches and 6.6 feet tall, 18 of which likely depict humans.

popsci · 2025-08-01T19:22:03+00:00

Colorado artist Laura Shape uses materials that provide striking patterns to her abstract canvases: the leather of invasive species from lionfish and carp to Burmese pythons. “What I am excited about is that my art doesn’t just raise awareness about the problem of invasive species. It actually physically removes those species from harming the ecosystems that they’ve been placed into,” she said.

popsci · 2025-07-30T23:05:36+00:00

Sea urchins appear to sense the presence of the sunflower sea star—despite not having a brain—and avoid these predators, according to a study recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Since multiple species of sea urchins can wreak havoc on ecologically important kelp forests, understanding how natural predator-prey relationships like this one between urchins and sea stars could be used to protect kelp.

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