Stranded minke whale stinks so bad it's like 'death in a dumpster'

 Posted on November 23, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  446 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

(opens in new tab)An extremely stinky minke whale that washed ashore in Plymouth, Massachusetts, will now be carted off to a landfill.  One local said the stench was so bad it was "like death in a dumpster," according to news reports.  The dead whale was first spotted July 17, bobbing 1.4 miles (2.3 kilometers) offshore of Manomet Point, according to a Facebook post by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Northeast/Mid-Atlantic office. [Read More]

The Human Race: Will We Keep Breaking Running Records?

 Posted on November 23, 2022  |  7 minutes  |  1393 words  |  Patria Henriques

Just over a month ago, Dennis Kimetto of Kenya ran the fastest marathon ever, finishing the Berlin Marathon with a record-setting time of 2 hours, 2 minutes and 57 seconds. This means that for more than 26 miles (42 kilometers), Kimetto kept up a blisteringly fast average pace of 4 minutes and 41 seconds per mile (2 minutes and 56 seconds per kilometer). This weekend, some 50,000 people will tackle the grueling 26. [Read More]

The Reality of Fingerprinting Not Like TV Crime Labs

 Posted on November 23, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  582 words  |  Patria Henriques

The music swells. The actors portraying crime lab technicians gather around an impressive-looking computer. They input a fingerprint, and instantly they get a picture of the bad guy, with full identifying details. And then they go to a commercial. That's the reality presented by the latest generation of TV crime dramas, which often use heavy doses of technology to keep the plot moving. Predictably, reality is different from TV. "The big difference is that on TV they usually find a single match, which pops up with a picture of the individual," [Read More]

These Newfound Seahorses Are So Tiny That Hundreds of Them Would Fit in Your Hand

 Posted on November 23, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  347 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

A newly discovered seahorse may be tiny, but it's making large waves by just being plain adorable. The Japan pig, or Hippocampus japapigu, is smaller than the width of an average index finger. Local scuba divers had seen the species, but only recently did a group of researchers study the seahorse, documenting their observations on Aug. 2 in the journal ZooKeys. Just 15 to 16 millimeters in length, the Japan pig joins a group of six other known pygmy seahorses, those that are notorious for their tininess. [Read More]

Woman swallows fish bone, it migrates into her neck

 Posted on November 23, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  415 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

When a woman in Malaysia accidentally swallowed a fish bone, it soon became a pain in the neck — the bone poked through her throat and became embedded in her neck muscles, according to a new report of the case. The 54-year-old woman was eating a meal of grilled wolf herring when she experienced "excruciating pain over the throat" along with the sensation that something was stuck there, according to the report, published April 15 in The Journal of Emergency Medicine. [Read More]

'Lucky' Raccoon Survives 9-Story Leap from Building

 Posted on November 22, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  390 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

Did word get out that raccoons scaling buildings is a "thing?" Seems that way. This past June, a raccoon made Earthlings swoon when the masked daredevil scaled 23 stories up a vertical concrete wall in St. Paul, Minnesota, all the way to the safety of the roof. Now, perhaps a copy-coon, has attempted a similar feat, but wasn't so lucky — or, from another perspective, was luckier. The raccoon was spotted climbing up an apartment building in Ocean City, New Jersey (OCNJ), according to Fox 29 news. [Read More]

'Pile of rope' on a Texas beach is a weird, real-life sea creature

 Posted on November 22, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  563 words  |  Patria Henriques

A tangled mass of what looked like discarded yellow rope recently washed up on a beach in Texas. But this peculiar knotty pile wasn't garbage. It was a colorful sea whip — a type of soft, flexible coral.  Rebekah Claussen, a National Park Service (NPS) guide at the Padre Island National Seashore near the Gulf of Mexico, found one of these "rope balls" partly buried in the sand, and the park shared her photo on Facebook on Feb. [Read More]

As Milkweed Disappears, Monarchs are Fading Away (Op-Ed)

 Posted on November 22, 2022  |  4 minutes  |  842 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Peter Lehner is executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). This Op-Ed will appear onthe NRDC blog Switchboard. Lehner contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Last week, at a coffee farm in Costa Rica, I stumbled upon hundreds of butterflies, probably some kind of Heliconius species, all fluttering around a particular spot. At first it was hard to tell if they were coming or going. [Read More]

Full Moon Could Make Hurricane Sandy's Impact Worse

 Posted on November 22, 2022  |  3 minutes  |  463 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Heaven and Earth may be aligning to turn Hurricane Sandy into a real monster, just in time for Halloween. Forecasters expect Sandy to make landfall along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States on Monday or Tuesday (Oct. 29 or 30). It may merge with a separate tempest hitting the region at about that time, creating an immensely powerful "Frankenstorm" whose effects could be magnified by the full moon. When the moon waxes to its full phase Monday afternoon, high tides along the Eastern Seaboard will rise about 20 percent higher than normal, even without the help of Sandy's storm surge, said Joe Rao, a meteorologist for News 12 in Westchester, N. [Read More]

Gargantuan 'Tsar Icicle' collapses on tourists in Russia, killing one

 Posted on November 22, 2022  |  2 minutes  |  272 words  |  Fernande Dalal

One tourist has died and three others were hospitalized with severe injuries after the collapse of an enormous frozen waterfall in eastern Russia on Thursday (Jan. 7), according to news reports. The four tourists were among dozens of visitors to Russia's Vilyuchinsky waterfall — a tourist attraction known in winter as the Tsar Icicle — on Thursday. The 130-foot-tall (40 meters) tower of ice collapsed suddenly, trapping the four beneath a sheet of ice for several hours. [Read More]