Deep in the misty rainforests of North Queensland, where tree canopies stretch like green cathedrals, a monster has been found. A stick insect, 40cm long and as heavy as a golf ball, has been discovered in the high altitude forests of the Atherton Tablelands. Named Acrophylla alta, this is likely the heaviest insect ever recorded in Australia, a find that sounds like something from a prehistoric tale but is very much real today.
Photo credit: IDSSE/CAS
A submersible called Fendouzhe dove six miles into the northwest Pacific’s dark depths, where pressure could crush a tank. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences expected a lifeless void in the Kuril-Kamchatka and Aleutian trenches. Instead they found thriving ecosystems, teeming with creatures that laugh in the face of the impossible.
In Louisville, Kentucky, a starling named The Mouth, rescued as a fledgling, has learned to mimic a sound encoding a digital bird image. Guided by Benn Jordan, a science and music enthusiast, this project combines the starling’s natural mimicry with technology to show how songbirds can carry data.
On Christmas Day 2024, a National Geographic expedition aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor (too) delivered the first-ever live footage of an Antarctic gonate squid. This three-foot-long, blood-red cephalopod was spotted 7,060 feet beneath the Southern Ocean’s surface, gliding through the midnight zone.
Scientists aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor (too) captured the first confirmed video of a live colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) in its deep-sea environment. This marks a historic moment, as 2025 is the 100-year anniversary of the species’ discovery.
Photo credit: Colossal Biosciences
Colossal Biosciences, a startup working on bringing back animals that disappeared long ago, just announced they’ve “de-extincted” the dire wolf, a big, tough wolf that roamed North America over 12,500 years ago. It went extinct when the world changed and its food ran out. You might know dire wolves from Game of Thrones—they’re the cool, giant wolves in the show.
Researchers from the University of Auckland have captured a video of a real-life Sharktopus, or more specifically, an orange-hued octopus riding on the back of a large shortfin mako shark as it swam. How these two unlikely companions crossed paths remains a mystery. The team observed them for about ten minutes before leaving them to their journey, so we don’t know how their story ended—whether it was a brief hitchhiking stint or something more.
Photo credit: David Jara Boguñá
Photographer David Jara Boguñá captured a rarely seen black seadevil anglerfish swimming near the surface off the coast of Tenerife, Spain last week. What makes this so odd is that these creatures are typically found at depths of 650 to 6,500 feet below the ocean’s surface, inhabiting the deep sea region known as the bathypelagic zone or “midnight zone”.
