Tonight’s edition focuses on easy reading science stories. There’s only one dire climate chaos wildfire report and it’s leavened with plenty of gee whiz (but solid) science findings promoted with baited headlines, such as the the one above. For example, the two stories relating two specialized animal species: Leaf-eared mice high in the Andes, living their best lives “in places where humans cannot” and fly larvae in the “oxygen-deprived depths of Lake Malawi, where they hide more than 650 feet below the surface to avoid predators” show remarkable adaptations that expand our understanding of how animals can live in earth’s extremities.
First up is an exemplar of serendipity—Enjoy!
A camping trip often begins with a map, some hiking routes, and a few promising places to pitch a tent. For amateur astronomer Joël Lapointe, however, planning a 2024 trip through northeastern Canada led to something far stranger — the discovery of a cosmic collision that occurred roughly 390 million years ago.
According to CBC News, while examining the Côte-Nord region of Quebec on Google Maps, Lapointe noticed an enormous circular indentation surrounding Lake Marsal. Spanning approximately 15.5 miles, the ring stood out against the surrounding landscape. To Lapointe, it looked suspiciously like a meteorite impact crater.
His hunch eventually reached planetary geologists, who made the difficult journey to investigate the site themselves. Their findings, which they will present at the annual congress of the Meteoritical Society, provided strong evidence that Lapointe had spotted a previously unidentified ancient impact crater hiding in plain sight.
Scientists Discover The Fourth Transmissible Cancer Known To Science – Forbes
In 2012 an angler pulled a brown bullhead out of Lake Memphremagog with what looked like tar smeared across its skin. He brought it to Peter Emerson, a fish biologist with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, who had surveyed the lake since 2009. Emerson had never seen anything like it.
Within three years the black growths were on a quarter to 40 percent of the lake’s bullhead. This week researchers at the University of Vermont reported in Nature that the melanoma is contagious, spreading from one fish to another as living cancer cells.
It is the fourth type of transmissible cancer known to science, the first in a fish and the first in fresh water.
🧠 AI is reshaping the people who use itA peer-reviewed paper warns AI in healthcare and the military changes the humans using it: their empathy, responsibility and critical thinking. The tool changes the user.🔗 doi.org/10.1007/s43681-026-01197-x#SlowAI #AIethics #Deskilling 🧪
— Prof Sam Illingworth (@samillingworth.com) 2026-07-25T19:04:03.635Z
A Wild Parasite Makes Ants Live 10x Longer And Tricks Others Into Worshipping Them – Science Alert
Imagine a parasite that makes you live up to 10 times longer than you naturally would – while also inspiring others to treat you like royalty.
It sure seems like a pretty good deal, but of course there’s a catch.
The parasite just wants to keep you lazy so you’ll be easy pickings for a giant predator – the bowels of which are the parasite’s preferred breeding ground.
It might sound like an intriguing setup for an indie horror movie, but that’s the reality for Temnothorax nylanderi ants. Now, thanks to a new study in the journal BMC Genomics, we know more about the biology of this bizarre story.
When ant larvae of this species are fed woodpecker droppings, they can become infected with the tapeworm Anomotaenia brevis – and so begins an insidious cycle.
I’d like to make it clear for all the people following me what the sheer gravity of the news is. Without this facility we can’t ensure constant communication with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit. If this facility is off-line, the Artemis program cannot send a crew to the Moon.
— UIS Observatory (@uisobservatory.bsky.social) 2026-07-24T19:22:05.672Z
Andean leaf-eared mouse adapts to an unrivalled high life – Reuters
High up on volcano summits, the Andean leaf-eared mouse is showing how life can thrive in places where humans cannot. This plucky rodent, according to researchers, has evolved an unusual mix of metabolic and genetic adaptations that help it survive across the broadest elevation range known for any mammal. […]
“On the summits of approximately 22,000 feet (6,700 meters) peaks where we have trapped these mice, there is less than half the oxygen that is available at sea level, and temperatures are almost always below freezing,” said University of Nebraska evolutionary biologist Jay Storz, leader of the research published in the journal Science, opens new tab. […]
“The discovery that the mice have evolved the ability to metabolize dietary toxins was unexpected,” Storz said. “In the high-elevation environment … they can’t even get a decent meal – the only available food-plants are loaded with toxic secondary compounds. Things are tough all over.”
A remarkable discovery has been made in East Africa’s Lake Malawi, one of the deepest bodies of water on the African continent … However, a much smaller discovery made by a team of researchers with the Department of Zoology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) at Vancouver, Canada, is nonetheless challenging our past thinking on what kinds of life forms can be found lurking in the depths of some of Africa’s storied lakes.
In a remarkable discovery, a variety of lake fly larvae have been found descending into the very oxygen-deprived depths of Lake Malawi, where they hide more than 650 feet below the surface to avoid predators.
After spending their days in this deep-water “dead zone,” the larvae reemerge at night and feed—or at least some of them do, if they are lucky enough to escape the fish searching for a dinner of their own, while these tiny insects are commuting back to the surface. […]
These remarkable little creatures have somehow evolved a respiratory system that contains two pairs of small air sacs, which function like ballast tanks, allowing the larvae to control their buoyancy.
Orcas in the Gulf of California have been observed ramming sharp-tail sunfish at speed, causing them to explode! Marine biologists suggest this behavior may help with prey processing… though it may also be a unique form of play! 🧪www.frontiersin.org/journals/eth…
— Brandon Moore, PhD (@rando.insalubrio.us) 2026-07-24T23:04:39.544Z
Scientists searching for a devastating crop-killing pest discovered an ‘alien’ nightmare instead… – BBC Wildlife Discover
The weevil beetle Lixus subtilis is a persistent problem for farmers. It’s known for tearing through crops – particularly sugar beets – across large parts of the world, including Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Anatolia and China.
So, when researchers set out to map its natural predators in the sugar beet fields of Yining City and Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County in China’s Xinjiang region, they were hoping to find something that could inform pest control efforts. […]
First, they confirmed a known predator: Eurytoma curculionum, a wasp already documented by science that parasitises weevil larvae – though this was its first confirmed recording in China. Then things got stranger. Digging into the same fields, the researchers turned up a wasp species that had never been documented anywhere – and it doesn’t attack the weevil at all. Instead, it parasitises E. curculionum. […]
This new species (Chlorocytus papahemii), a small, iridescent-coloured wasp belonging to the Pteromalidae family, takes being a parasite to another level. It’s a hyperparasitoid – a parasite of a parasite. So, the pest is preyed on by a parasitoid wasp, which is in turn preyed on by this newly-discovered species, placing it at a fourth trophic level of the food chain.
Coffee may help shield the liver from fat, scarring, and cancer – Science Daily
One of the largest investigations yet into coffee and liver health has found that people who drink more coffee tend to have lower risks of cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death related to liver disease.
The Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University study, published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, also uncovered biological patterns that could help explain why coffee consumption has repeatedly been associated with healthier livers.
The results showed that coffee drinkers generally experienced better liver outcomes than people who did not drink coffee. Participants who consumed five or more cups per day had a 32% lower risk of cirrhosis, a 47% lower risk of liver cancer, and a 42% lower risk of dying from liver disease compared with non-coffee drinkers.
Replacing gas stove can help asthmatics as much as some drugs, US experts find – The Guardian
A US study has found a 70% drop in hospital admissions and days off from work or school when people with poorly controlled asthma had their gas stove and hob replaced with electric.
Ohio’s publicly owned MetroHealth began the study in December 2024 but funding was terminated early by the incoming Trump administration. It had been designed to investigate if replacing gas cooking improved asthma for 1,200 people living near Cleveland, Ohio.
Prof Ash Sehgal of Case Western Reserve University, the project’s leader, said: “We had completed the project at fewer than 100 households. As a result, over 1,100 households were unable to benefit. We also had to lay off about 20 project staff.”
The team finished the stove replacements that were under way and closed the project, but to the researchers’ surprise, the benefits could be clearly detected even in the scaled-down study of 72 homes.
“Secrets of birdsongs’ ‘spectacular diversity’ revealed”Fascinating. Simpler song predominates in tropical environments, where birds live in more dense vegetation and biodiverse soundscapes. Complex song is heard more often in temperate zones, where shorter-range communication is the norm.🧪
Final contenders revealed for 2026 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition – CNN Science (go to link to see all 12 photos)
Four miles from the Eiffel Tower, a photographer captured the full moon’s path over a pink Paris skyline. In China, another photographer snapped a night sky of falling stars.
These are just two of the submissions short-listed in the 18th annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. Organized by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, the competition drew nearly 4,000 submissions from 769 photographers in 66 countries. Entries include photographs of auroras, galaxies and landscapes of Earth’s moon.
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