(Natural News) Researchers from Stanford University have come up with the first-ever recording of the heartbeat of a blue whale. Using this, they’ve discovered that the gigantic mammals can slow down their heartbeat to only two per minute. As detailed in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team attached […]

(Natural News) There could be more than 200 million tons of minuscule plastic fragments floating across and beneath the entire Atlantic Ocean, and that’s just for three of the most littered plastics. In a major breakthrough, scientists from the U.K.’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) found 12–21 million tons of polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene suspended in the top 200 meters (m) of the Atlantic. […]

(Natural News) Mass strandings, or “beachings,” of marine mammals are now on the rise, raising concerns that ocean health is deteriorating. According to wildlife expert Claire Sanderson, disease outbreaks like the COVID-19 pandemic are to blame for the rapid increase in mass die-offs of marine mammals. Scientists are perhaps more alert to the catastrophic impacts of infectious disease […]

(Natural News) Consumer waste like plastics pose a huge threat to marine life for various reasons. Apart from their durability and slow biodegradability, plastics also contain and attract toxic contaminants that can accumulate inside aquatic animals if they’re ingested. Over the past few decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm on the increasing amount of plastics found polluting the world’s oceans. […]

(Natural News) A new study has revealed evidence of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia in wild animals after scientists detected unmistakable symptoms in the brains of dolphins, as reported in the Daily Mail. Dolphins and humans have many similarities, such as their ability to form social relationships and to communicate using their own language (among other […]

(Natural News) In a major study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the complexity of Cetacean culture and behavior has been linked to the size of their brains. Like other mammals, whales and dolphins have tightly-knit family groups called pods whereby they follow certain social structures and form complex relationships, similar to human societies. The research […]