Kids News - Environment Articles

Most animals only perform tricks when bribed with treats. However, Kim, the world’s first spider to learn a skill, needs no incentives to do what she loves — jumping from different heights and distances — upon the bidding of a team of scientists from the University of Manchester....

Pesky as they may be, ants are truly incredible creatures. In addition to talents like predicting earthquakes and morphing into rafts to save themselves from drowning during floods, the industrious insects go all out to protect their own, often carrying wounded comrades back to the nest to heal. Now, researchers have discovered ants who explode and sacrifice themselves to save their colonies from predators....

After successfully banning plastic bags, officials around the world are turning their attention to something we are all guilty of using for only a few minutes and disposing of without a second thought – plastic straws. According to ecostraw.org, over 500 million straws, enough to fill 127 school buses, are used just in the US, each day! Too small to recycle, they choke sea creatures, clog coral reefs, and eventually disintegrate into tiny microbeads which enter our food chain through fish. This means that every single straw ever produced in the world still exists in some form today. Now, thanks to social media campaigns such as #TheLastStraw and #TheFinal Straw, the urgency to ban plastic straws is finally gained momentum....

One would think that an elephant bird egg, the largest laid by any vertebrate ever — including dinosaurs and ancient reptiles — would be hard to miss for 80 years. Yet, that is precisely what Paige Langle at New York’s Buffalo Museum of Science discovered recently while inputting the institution’s extensive collections, many of which only exist on cards and ledgers, into the museum’s computer system....

Though it is not uncommon for the Kilauea volcano on the southern shore of Hawaii’s Big Island to erupt, the recent explosion is the worst encountered in decades. The sea of lava, which has been flowing unabated since May 3, has encompassed 104 acres (the equivalent of 100 football fields), destroyed 35 structures — including 26 homes — and forced almost 2,000 people to evacuate. Unfortunately, even experts have no idea when the volcanic activity will subside....

In mid-March, following an extended period of heavy rainfall, residents of the Mai Mahiu settlement in Kenya woke up to a big surprise – a massive crack in the Earth that appeared to have opened up almost overnight. Running several miles long and measuring 50 feet deep and 65 feet wide in some places, the terrifying fissure damaged several homes and caused a portion of the busy Mai Mahiu Narok-Nairobi highway to collapse. What caused it? Depends on who you ask....

A parasite that can transform ants into zombies and make them do its bidding may sound like something straight out of a science fiction movie. However, that is precisely what the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, or, zombie ant fungus does to unsuspecting carpenter ants. Now, a new study has discovered that the fungus accomplishes this ghoulish feat without infecting the ant’s brain....

Last week, a runner traversing the trails of California’s Pinnacle National Park, encountered a mesmerizing sight — a halo of rainbow colors emanating from the single cloud in the clear blue skies. While the phenomenon is commonly referred to as a “fire rainbow,” researchers say the name is misleading since the optical illusion is neither a rainbow, nor does it have anything to do with fire!...

While birds may appear to flutter about in the world, magically finding their way to food and other members of the flock, the reality is, species migrate to the same destination, time and again. Over the years, researchers have established that the animals use Earth’s magnetic fields as guides. However, how they sense these fields has been a mystery....