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Narwhals play and forage using their amazing tusks

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Wednesday, March 12, 2025

This video shows narwhals in the Canadian High Arctic. It is a compilation of several drone footage clips. Some of the clips show Arctic char (shown in yellow circles for clarity) as the narwhals pursue them. The clips also show glaucous gulls stealing some of the fish from the whales. Video via O’Corry-Crowe, FAU / Watt, DFO. Narwhals use their tusks for various purposes, including foraging, exploration and play. Drone footage has revealed that narwhals use their tusks with agility to target prey like Arctic char and engage in social behaviors. Drones provide researchers with valuable insights into narwhal behavior, offering a non-invasive way to study them. New drone footage of narwhals reveal more about their lives Narwhals, whales with a long tusk, seem like otherworldly creatures. We don’t know much about these elusive whales because they live in remote parts of the Arctic, making them hard to observe. As a result, there’s been much debate about how they use their tusks. On February 28, 2025, a team of researchers said they’ve used drones to observe them from above, revealing new details about narwhal behavior. For instance, they learned narwhals use their tusks to go after prey like Arctic char and engage in play-like behavior. The researchers published their study in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Marine Science on February 28, 2025. Narwhals are the only whales with tusks Narwhals (Monodon monoceros) are known as unicorns of the sea. They live in the icy Arctic waters of Canada, Greenland and Russia. These whales are primarily fish-eaters, but they also consume cuttlefish, shrimp and squid. They’re one of the deepest divers among whales, able to reach depths of 7,780 feet (2,370 meters). The narwhal tusk is really an elongated spiral-shaped tooth that projects out of the left side of the whale’s upper jaw. It’s mostly males that have tusks that can grow up to 10 feet long. However, the researchers note in their paper that some females also grow tusks. That tusk length is pretty impressive considering the length of a narwhal body’s tops out at around 18 feet. Tusks grow continuously throughout a narwhal’s life. They are hollow and can weigh as much as 16 pounds (about 7 kilograms). And tusks have a lot of nerves running through them. So it also acts as an environmental sensor, detecting water temperature and salinity. The research team captured drone video of these 3 narwhals in the Canadian Arctic. Image via O’Corry-Crowe, FAU / Watt, DFO. What the scientists saw in the drone footage Scientists have long wondered how narwhals use their tusks. Greg O’Corry-Crowe is part of the research team that used drones to observe narwhals in Canada’s High Arctic during the summer of 2022. O’Corry-Crowe said: Narwhals are known for their ‘tusking’ behavior, where two or more of them simultaneously raise their tusks almost vertically out of the water, crossing them in what may be a ritualistic behavior to assess a potential opponent’s qualities or to display those qualities to potential mates. But now we know that narwhal tusks have other uses, some quite unexpected, including foraging, exploration and play. According to the researchers, drone footage revealed that narwhals wielded their tusks with great agility, accuracy and speed. They often used their tusks to investigate and target their prey, such as Arctic char. The researchers saw some using their tusks to stun or kill fish. Scientists also observed that opportunistic glaucous gulls (Larus hyperboreus) sometimes stole fish near the ocean surface that the narwhals were chasing. O’Corry-Crowe remarked: Our observations provide clear evidence of narwhals chasing fish and using their tusks to interact directly with the fish and to influence the fish’s behavior. Some of the interactions we saw appeared competitive in nature with one whale blocking or trying to block another whale’s access to the same target fish, while others may have been more subtle, possibly communicative and even affiliative. None appeared overtly aggressive. The researchers also observed narwhals use their tusks to engage in play-like behavior, such as exploring objects like fish. Plus, some of the observed behaviors suggest social learning (learning from other narwhals), and maybe even distinct personality traits in individuals. Using drones to study narwhals Co-author Cortney Watt of Fisheries and Oceans Canada commented: I have been studying narwhals for over a decade and have always marveled at their tusks. To observe them using their tusks for foraging and play is remarkable. This unique study where we set up a remote field camp and spent time filming them with drones is yielding many interesting insights and is providing a bird’s eye view of their behavior that we have never seen before. The whales appeared to be learning from each other. This trait could help them adapt to changes in the Arctic environment due to climate change. O’Corry-Crow added: To understand how narwhals are being affected by and adapting to the changing Arctic, field studies using innovative, non-invasive tools like drones are essential to observe them in their natural environment without disturbing them. Drones provide a unique, real-time view of their behavior, helping scientists gather crucial data on how narwhals are responding to shifts in ice patterns, prey availability and other environmental changes. Such studies are key to understanding the impact of global warming on these elusive animals. Bottom line: Scientists observing narwhals with drones in the Arctic found these whales use their tusks to go after fish and engage in play-like behavior. Source: Use of tusks by narwhals, Monodon monoceros, in foraging, exploratory, and play behavior Via Florida Atlantic University Read more: Meet the narwhal, ‘unicorn of the sea’The post Narwhals play and forage using their amazing tusks first appeared on EarthSky.

Scientists observing narwhals with drones in the Arctic found these whales use their tusks to go after fish and engage in play-like behavior. The post Narwhals play and forage using their amazing tusks first appeared on EarthSky.


This video shows narwhals in the Canadian High Arctic. It is a compilation of several drone footage clips. Some of the clips show Arctic char (shown in yellow circles for clarity) as the narwhals pursue them. The clips also show glaucous gulls stealing some of the fish from the whales. Video via O’Corry-Crowe, FAU / Watt, DFO.

  • Narwhals use their tusks for various purposes, including foraging, exploration and play.
  • Drone footage has revealed that narwhals use their tusks with agility to target prey like Arctic char and engage in social behaviors.
  • Drones provide researchers with valuable insights into narwhal behavior, offering a non-invasive way to study them.

    • New drone footage of narwhals reveal more about their lives

    Narwhals, whales with a long tusk, seem like otherworldly creatures. We don’t know much about these elusive whales because they live in remote parts of the Arctic, making them hard to observe. As a result, there’s been much debate about how they use their tusks. On February 28, 2025, a team of researchers said they’ve used drones to observe them from above, revealing new details about narwhal behavior. For instance, they learned narwhals use their tusks to go after prey like Arctic char and engage in play-like behavior.

    The researchers published their study in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Marine Science on February 28, 2025.

    Narwhals are the only whales with tusks

    Narwhals (Monodon monoceros) are known as unicorns of the sea. They live in the icy Arctic waters of Canada, Greenland and Russia. These whales are primarily fish-eaters, but they also consume cuttlefish, shrimp and squid. They’re one of the deepest divers among whales, able to reach depths of 7,780 feet (2,370 meters).

    The narwhal tusk is really an elongated spiral-shaped tooth that projects out of the left side of the whale’s upper jaw. It’s mostly males that have tusks that can grow up to 10 feet long. However, the researchers note in their paper that some females also grow tusks. That tusk length is pretty impressive considering the length of a narwhal body’s tops out at around 18 feet.

    Tusks grow continuously throughout a narwhal’s life. They are hollow and can weigh as much as 16 pounds (about 7 kilograms). And tusks have a lot of nerves running through them. So it also acts as an environmental sensor, detecting water temperature and salinity.

    Three narwhals, mottled black and white, with long tusk emerging from the front of their faces.
    The research team captured drone video of these 3 narwhals in the Canadian Arctic. Image via O’Corry-Crowe, FAU / Watt, DFO.

    What the scientists saw in the drone footage

    Scientists have long wondered how narwhals use their tusks. Greg O’Corry-Crowe is part of the research team that used drones to observe narwhals in Canada’s High Arctic during the summer of 2022. O’Corry-Crowe said:

    Narwhals are known for their ‘tusking’ behavior, where two or more of them simultaneously raise their tusks almost vertically out of the water, crossing them in what may be a ritualistic behavior to assess a potential opponent’s qualities or to display those qualities to potential mates. But now we know that narwhal tusks have other uses, some quite unexpected, including foraging, exploration and play.

    According to the researchers, drone footage revealed that narwhals wielded their tusks with great agility, accuracy and speed. They often used their tusks to investigate and target their prey, such as Arctic char. The researchers saw some using their tusks to stun or kill fish. Scientists also observed that opportunistic glaucous gulls (Larus hyperboreus) sometimes stole fish near the ocean surface that the narwhals were chasing.

    O’Corry-Crowe remarked:

    Our observations provide clear evidence of narwhals chasing fish and using their tusks to interact directly with the fish and to influence the fish’s behavior. Some of the interactions we saw appeared competitive in nature with one whale blocking or trying to block another whale’s access to the same target fish, while others may have been more subtle, possibly communicative and even affiliative. None appeared overtly aggressive.

    The researchers also observed narwhals use their tusks to engage in play-like behavior, such as exploring objects like fish. Plus, some of the observed behaviors suggest social learning (learning from other narwhals), and maybe even distinct personality traits in individuals.

    Using drones to study narwhals

    Co-author Cortney Watt of Fisheries and Oceans Canada commented:

    I have been studying narwhals for over a decade and have always marveled at their tusks. To observe them using their tusks for foraging and play is remarkable. This unique study where we set up a remote field camp and spent time filming them with drones is yielding many interesting insights and is providing a bird’s eye view of their behavior that we have never seen before.

    The whales appeared to be learning from each other. This trait could help them adapt to changes in the Arctic environment due to climate change. O’Corry-Crow added:

    To understand how narwhals are being affected by and adapting to the changing Arctic, field studies using innovative, non-invasive tools like drones are essential to observe them in their natural environment without disturbing them. Drones provide a unique, real-time view of their behavior, helping scientists gather crucial data on how narwhals are responding to shifts in ice patterns, prey availability and other environmental changes. Such studies are key to understanding the impact of global warming on these elusive animals.

    Bottom line: Scientists observing narwhals with drones in the Arctic found these whales use their tusks to go after fish and engage in play-like behavior.

    Source: Use of tusks by narwhals, Monodon monoceros, in foraging, exploratory, and play behavior

    Via Florida Atlantic University

    Read more: Meet the narwhal, ‘unicorn of the sea’

    The post Narwhals play and forage using their amazing tusks first appeared on EarthSky.

    Read the full story here.
    Photos courtesy of

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    Wildlands Conservancy co-founder David Myers, who saved vast stretches of land from development, dies

    Myers helped save vast stretches of land from development, including 400,000 acres in San Bernardino County — the largest purchase of land for preservation in the state.

    David Myers, whose reverence for California’s natural beauty led him to co-found the Wildlands Conservancy and save hundreds of thousands of acres from development, including a patchwork of 400,000 acres in San Bernardino County — the largest purchase of land for preservation in the state — died on Monday at the age of 73. The former executive director and most recent president of the Wildlands Conservancy, Myers died of natural causes at his home on the Oak Glen Preserve in the San Bernardino County mountains — on the land that he fought so hard to preserve, said Frazier Haney, the Wildlands Conservancy’s current executive director. In recent years, Myers had battled several health issues, including Parkinson’s disease, Haney said. The Oak Glen, Calif.-based nonprofit, which he co-founded in 1995 with retired financier David Gelbaum, built a reputation as one of the most effective conservancies in the country with a unique vision that combines land stewardship with outdoors education for young people.Myers also spearheaded the fight to create the 154,000-acre Sand to Snow National Monument, which extends from the Sonoran Desert floor up to over 10,000 feet in the San Bernardino National Forest, about 90 minutes east of Los Angeles.“David Myers was an inspirational and tireless crusader for wild places,” said Peter Galvin, founder of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Anyone concerned with the health of majestic landscapes from Southern California’s Mojave Desert to Northern California’s Eel River, stands in his debt.”“David also worked harder than anyone I know in the conservation movement,” he said, “to introduce low-income kids and their families to natural realms beyond their neighborhoods.”A native Californian, Myers led his first conservation battle when he was a student of philosophy and literature at Cal State Fullerton in the 1970s. He was galvanized by a proposal to bulldoze the sycamores blanketing Pipes Canyon, west of Yucca Valley, for an international airport.“I just couldn’t believe it when I started seeing bulldozers tipping over oak trees,” Myers recalled in a 2000 interview with the Riverside Press-Enterprise. “And my thoughts at the time were, ‘What would people think about destroying their churches?’ Because they were destroying mine.”Myers responded by helping organize a group called Hills for Everyone, which in 1977 won state approval to place 2,200 acres into the California State Parks system. Chino Hills State Park is now a 12,000-acre preserve that stretches from the Santa Ana Mountains to the Whittier Hills.Myers, who grew up in Chino Hills, developed a love of nature as a boy during summer camping trips to Mammoth Lakes in the eastern Sierra. He also was influenced by the writings of John Muir, the legendary conservationist who founded the Sierra Club.What had inspired him to follow in Muir’s path was the sudden realization that California’s natural beauty could be so easily destroyed.“One winter he was looking down on a wetland in Chino Hills and about 10,000 Canada geese. The next year,” said Dan York, a close friend and associate director of the Wildlands Conservancy, “it was a parking lot for a mall. He realized then that it could all be gone in a generation.”After college, Myers built furniture for a living but, according to York, “always had a remarkably sharp eye for real estate and land.”In 1994, he decided to sell 640 acres of desert land he owned near Yucca Valley and apply most of the proceeds to conservation projects. He placed a newspaper ad seeking “a conservation-minded donor” who would buy the land but not develop it. Gelbaum, a mathematician who had made a fortune managing hedge funds, became his financial angel.Together they began strategically buying up land to link the San Bernardino, San Jacinto and Big Horn Mountains with Joshua Tree National Park. Those purchases totaled 70 square miles.The conservancy’s next big purchase was a 97,000-acre ranch in the foothills of the San Emigdio Mountains, northwest of Gorman, which once had been slated for a massive luxury home development. Renamed Wind Wolves, it is now the largest privately owned nature preserve on the West Coast, where endangered kit foxes and leopard lizards thrive along with elk, blacktail deer, great horned owls and bobcats. It also is home to marine fossils and Chumash paintings considered among the most impressive examples of Native American rock art.Myers’ vision for the area included reintroducing animals that had once been native inhabitants, including tule elk and bighorn sheep, and obliterating man-made intrusions, such as a rock quarry, petroleum waste pits, fences and roads. He said the process would enable visitors the increasingly rare experience of looking “face-to-face at something that is truly wild.” He called it “rewilding” the land.The conservancy’s crowning achievement was acquiring almost 1,000 square miles — about 580,000 acres — of desert land stretching from Barstow to Needles that had been owned by Catellus Development Corp., the real estate division of the Santa Fe Pacific railroad. Myers led the complex negotiations, finalizing the largest section of the deal in 2000 at a cost of $30 million in conservancy funds and $15 million from federal sources. The acquisition kept the land out of the hands of a developer with plans to carve its spectacular rock ranges, lava flows, sand dunes, valleys and cactus gardens into 40-acre ranches. Myers and his team donated all the purchased land to the public, greatly expanding Joshua Tree National Park, the Mojave National Preserve and the Bureau of Land Management’s wildlands, which reconnected a massive corridor for wildlife. “David was a man of courage, ambition and a boyish enthusiasm that was infectious,” Haney said. “He left us with a lot of big dreams and the tools needed to make them come true.”Myers came up with the conservancy’s motto, “Behold the Beauty,” which Haney said captured the spirit of his longtime friend and mentor.“David’s vision of conservation was one not simply based on science, but also based on the way that natural beauty can improve human lives ...[and is] a symbol of environmental health,” Haney said. He called him audacious, in the best way.“I’ll never know another person like David,” he said. “I’ll miss that kind of reality-bending power that he had.”The conservancy currently owns about 208,000 acres across California, Oregon and Utah — the vast majority in California — where the preserve system sees more than 1.4 million people each year. The group also provides free outdoor education on its lands, reaching more than 25,000 low-income students and families a year. The programs at Wind Wolves, Los Rios Rancho in Oak Glen and Grace Valley Ranch in the San Bernardino National Forest have provided many of the children their first experience with the state’s natural wonders. At Los Rios, the students hike on a nature trail designed by Myers with boulders etched with quotes from Emerson, Thoreau and Muir. He linked conservation with the nurturing of new generations of thinkers and naturalists and regarded outdoors education as a crucial strategy.“We are showing these kids things that make their eyes grow wide, that make them say, ‘Oh, wow!’” Myers told The Times in 2003. “Isn’t that what the environment is all about?”Myers is survived by his wife, two brothers, two sisters and many beloved nieces and nephews. Times staff writers Grace Toohey and Louis Sahagun contributed to this report. Woo is a former Times staff writer.

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    The Secret to Understanding Animal Consciousness May Be Joy

    Animal emotions—including joy—may be key markers of conscious beings

    Rats laugh, bees roll balls for fun, turtles dance when they anticipate feeding, and dogs wiggle their tails when they’re excited. Research into animal emotions and experience has been on the rise since the late 20th century, and scientists are beginning to use these findings to help understand an age-old question: Do nonhuman animals have consciousness?Consciousness is often defined as having subjective experiences. “We are focusing on this particular kind of phenomenal consciousness—that it feels like something to be you,” says Jeff Sebo, a philosopher and director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection and the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, both at New York University. “If you can have subjective feelings, either sensory experiences like perception or affective experiences like pleasure or pain, that is what we call consciousness.”Sebo, along with philosophers Kristin Andrews and Jonathan Birch, initiated the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness. 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By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Scientific American talked with Sebo about what the potential markers of consciousness are, whether we should assume a species is conscious unless proven otherwise and how scientists might study consciousness through markers of animal joy.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]How can looking for markers of joy or pain help us determine if animals are conscious?Consciousness is such a difficult topic to study. It confronts us with the hard problem of explaining why any physical system, including our own brain, should be conscious, as well as the problem of other minds—the problem that the only mind I can directly access is my own. That makes it hard for me to know for sure what, if anything, it feels like to be anyone else, even other humans. 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    Measles Misinformation Sparks Concern, Supreme Court Limits EPA Power, and Scientists Create Woolly Mice

    In this week's news roundup, we dig into measles misinformation, ozone recovery and new findings on using nasal cartilage to treat knee injuries.

    Measles Misinformation Sparks Concern, Supreme Court Weakens EPA, and Scientists Engineer Woolly MiceIn this week's news roundup, we dig into measles misinformation, ozone recovery and new findings on using nasal cartilage to treat knee injuries.By Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi & Alex Sugiura Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific AmericanRachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week with our usual science news roundup.First, a quick note about measles, which is still spreading in West Texas and has also cropped up in smaller numbers in eight other states. In an op-ed for Fox News published on March 2, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arguably downplayed the importance of vaccines, saying the MMR jab provides protection against measles while also calling vaccination a "personal choice." He also claimed that vitamin A supplementation has been shown to “dramatically reduce measles mortality.”Since the publication of that op-ed, many experts have sounded the alarm on that plug for vitamin A. The research RFK Jr. referenced does exist, but there’s important context missing. The analysis he cited focuses on studies that mostly looked at low-income countries where many people have vitamin A deficiencies. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent data, less than 1 percent of people in the U.S. have vitamin A deficiencies.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, told the Washington Post that vitamin A can play a role in treating children who are hospitalized with measles. But he and other experts conveyed concerns to the Washington Post about RFK Jr.’s framing creating a false equivalency between vaccination, which is an extremely effective way to prevent measles, and vitamin supplementation, which may or may not help children avoid complications from measles. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently put out a statement emphasizing that vitamin A supplementation is no substitute for vaccination and that it should only be conducted under the supervision of a medical professional. Vitamin A overdoses can cause bone fractures, liver damage and other serious issues.Now let’s move on to a somewhat complex environmental ruling from the Supreme Court. The headline here is that in a 5-4 ruling last Tuesday, the justices sided with the city of San Francisco against the Environmental Protection Agency, weakening the agency’s ability to regulate pollution of the nation’s waterways.Basically, San Francisco argued that the EPA was too vague in a permit governing the city’s release of sewage into the Pacific Ocean when extreme rainfall overwhelms a water-treatment facility. The permit tasks San Francisco with ensuring its wastewater discharge doesn’t cause the ocean to dip below “any applicable water quality standard,” but the city said that wasn’t enough information. Instead, San Francisco officials wanted the EPA to lay out exactly how much discharge was okay. During oral arguments, an EPA attorney said the agency only used those broad requirements because San Francisco wouldn’t provide the information needed to set specific dumping rules—a claim the city of course refuted.The majority decision, penned by Justice Samuel Alito, concluded that the EPA exceeded its authority under the Clean Water Act by imposing the water quality requirements, which the ruling calls “end-result” provisions. With these provisions out of the picture, the onus will be on the EPA to figure out what cities—and other entities that dump sewage—need to do to keep their local surface water clean.Back in October the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a resolution urging the city’s Public Utilities Commission to drop or settle its issues with the EPA ahead of oral arguments in the Supreme Court case, they argued that a win could weaken the agency’s ability to curb pollution—which would in turn put a real dent in San Francisco’s reputation as a green city.In other environmental news, a study published last Wednesday in Nature offers some uplifting findings on the ozone layer. As you probably already know, back in the 1980s scientists detected an area over the South Pole where our atmosphere’s ozone layer, which helps protect the planet from the sun’s UV rays, had gotten thinner. This turned out to be due to chlorofluorocarbons and other similar human made chemicals. An international treaty called the Montreal Protocol, which went into effect in 1989, was aimed at phasing out the use of those substances. Data in recent years has shown that the ozone layer is recovering, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA projecting it could return to normal by 2066.For the first time scientists have shown with confidence that the Montreal Protocol is indeed to thank for this incredible comeback. That’s great news; if some of the ozone layer’s recovery were due to uncontrollable factors like weather patterns, then we’d have to worry that we might lose some of our progress if those conditions shifted.In the new study researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology created simulations of the atmosphere under different conditions. Some of their simulations showed a world without an increase in greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting substances, which helped them understand how the ozone layer might fluctuate without our interference. The researchers say we can now be quite sure that the ozone layer is healing because we’ve stopped using the chemicals that hurt it, which is a great reminder that we really can combat climate change and other human-driven environmental issues if we band together.Speaking of humans doing stuff that doesn’t suck for once, another study published last Wednesday offers hope for people dealing with osteoarthritis. And that hope stems from a somewhat surprising source: your septum.Generally ignored unless they’re deviated or pierced, septums are also a great spot for grabbing a bit of cartilage without super-invasive surgery. Nasal cartilage cells also seem particularly good at fighting inflammation. A group of scientists have been working on a method of using cartilage implants grown from itty-bitty septum samples to repair knee injuries for a number of years now. What’s new in the latest study, published in Science Translational Medicine, is that the researchers compared outcomes between people whose cartilage grafts were grown in the lab for the standard couple of days before insertion with people whose grafts spent a couple of weeks maturing instead. The clinical trial was small, involving just around 100 people. But the results do suggest that, when allowed to mature, these septum-grown grafts do a better job of fixing the injury in question—and they can actually lead to improvement in the health of surrounding cartilage, too. The team is about to undertake two large clinical studies on the use of this cartilage technique in treating osteoarthritis in the kneecaps.Last but not least we’ve simply got to talk about woolly mammoth mice. Woolly mammice? Woolly mousemoths? Whatever.Biotech company Colossal Biosciences, primarily known for its mission to bring the woolly mammoth and dodo back from extinction with the help of genetic engineering, announced last Tuesday that the team edited several different genes in mice embryos to make them—well, woolly.It’s important to note, however, that these mice didn’t have woolly mammoth genes inserted into their genomes. Most of the edits involved tweaking mouse genes that prior research has shown dictate hair traits such as color and texture. But Colossal also looked at ancient mammoth DNA to find genes tied to hair pattern and fat metabolism and adjusted the corresponding mice genes. The result was some real Tribble-esque rodents. The company says this is a step toward doing something similar in Asian elephants, which are woolly mammoth’s closest living relatives. But in interviews with the Associated Press several experts pointed out that making an elephant woolier isn’t the same as bringing woolly mammoths back from extinction. Another expert pointed out to the Guardian that this money could perhaps be better spent preventing the extinction of the animals living on Earth right now, which is tough but fair. Those hairy little mice are very cute, though.That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!

    Animals
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    There Are Fewer Than 100 Ocelots in the US - These Scientists Are Trying to Save Them

    By Evan GarciaCORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (Reuters) - In the race to save the endangered ocelot, scientists are trekking the United States, pursuing...

    CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (Reuters) - In the race to save the endangered ocelot, scientists are trekking the United States, pursuing fertility treatments and striving to kickstart a new generation of the wild cat.Ocelots roamed the southwestern U.S. in the 1800s, but have since dwindled to fewer than 100 in two small breeding populations in South Texas. While the feline species is found in Mexico, Central America and South America, the Texas cats with striking spotted coats are believed to be the last wild population in the United States.   "Just look at the cat – why would you not want that animal to survive in nature?" said Bill Swanson, the Cincinnati Zoo's director of animal research, who has traveled the country trying to breed captive ocelots in animal institutions with sperm from wild ocelots from South Texas ranch land."It's not just saving the ocelot, it's saving the habitat and the ecosystem where it lives, which supports so many other animals that provide those services that let people survive on this planet," he said,  The nonprofit East Foundation, based in San Antonio, manages one of those breeding populations on more than 200,000 acres (810 sq km) of South Texas ranch land containing thorn scrub habitat, a dense covering of short, spiky shrubs that the elusive and nocturnal ocelots adore.Ashley Reeves, a research veterinarian at the East Foundation, said humans played a major role in the decline of the ocelot, listed in 1982 as an endangered species in the U.S."Back when the fur trade became very popular, they were hunted down for their beautiful fur," Reeves said. "And then also loss of habitat, human encroachment, large cities being built and roadways, so roadways are one of their No. 1 killers today."Reeves and Swanson have been working on their ocelot project since 2021. The team has tried - unsuccessfully so far - to breed ocelots two ways. The first is via artificial insemination, in which semen collected from a cat is deposited directly into a female cat's reproductive tract. The second is in vitro fertilization, in which oocytes, or eggs, are collected from the female cat's body and fertilized with semen in a petri dish before developing into an embryo in an incubator. The viable embryo is then surgically transferred into a cat or frozen to be transferred later. Of the 13 artificial inseminations and four in vitro fertilization procedures performed in recent years, none have produced a viable pregnancy.Swanson points to decreased quality in wild ocelot sperm due to signs of inbreeding, environmental stresses like dehydration from drought and decreased motility - the ability of sperm to move - from freezing specimens. "An ocelot usually has one kitten. That's the normal litter size," Swanson said. "And in the wild, the mother will raise that kitten for a full year until it's old enough to go out on its own. So ocelots are very slowly reproducing animals naturally."    At the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi, Texas, in December, the team extracted two eggs from a five-year-old ocelot named Milla and patiently waited to see if an embryo would form after combining the eggs with wild sperm in a petri dish. After two days of waiting for a fertilized egg to cleave, or rapidly divide and develop into an embryo, the researchers were disappointed to find neither cell cleaved."It's disappointing," Reeves said. "But at the same time, science doesn't always go the way you expect it to."    Researchers will spend the next few months trapping wild male ocelots to collect their sperm before resuming fertility procedures in the fall.     By the end of the year, a facility in Kingsville, Texas, will be constructed to house ocelots, provide medical and reproductive care as well as a setting for young ocelots to learn how to hunt in the wild.(Reporting by Evan Garcia in Texas; Writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Donna Bryson and Sandra Maler)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

    Animals
    Nature
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