Rare Animal Discoveries so Far This Year

A wildlife filmmaker and biology doctoral student have taken what could be the first picture of a newborn great white shark. The images and findings are described in a study published January 29 in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes. Most famous for terrorizing beachgoers in the greatly …

A rare cotton candy lobster was the catch of the day recently off the coast of New Castle, New Hampshire. This candy-colored crustaceans was caught by a local lobsterman and donated to the Seacoast Science Center, a marine science education organization in Rye, New Hampshire’s Odiorne Point State …

Rediscovering a lost species is exciting, and important for boosting conservation efforts. However, it is not for the faint of heart. An international team of scientists traversed 75 miles of steep mountain terrain to capture the first recorded photos of a bird once considered lost. The …

For the first time in half a century, an ocelot has been spotted in the Atascosa Highlands region of southern Arizona. The endangered wild cat was caught on cameras installed by The Phoenix Zoo’s Atascosa Complex Wildlife Study in June. A multi-agency review of the 50 cameras in Arizona’s Coronado …

It’s beginning to look a lot like a hot whale summer in the plankton-rich waters off the coast of New England. During a recent research near Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported 161 sightings of seven whale species. …

Our oceans are vast and discovering new and lost species are among some of the most exciting discoveries in the big blue. An international team of scientists may have found more than 100 new species, during a mission to explore seamounts off the coast of Chile. These creatures who look like they …

The reproduction of giant sea spiders in Antarctica has been a puzzle for over a century. Studying their habits requires deep dives under thick Antarctic ice in frigid ocean temperatures. Now, a group of scientists may have finally solved the 140-year-old mystery of why the giant sea spiders lay …

The Pacific is the largest and deepest ocean basin on the planet. Scientists barely know just how many different organisms call these deep waters home. Many of these areas are remote and difficult to explore, but that hasn’t stopped efforts to find out what’s really lurking under the sea. In …

They’re scaly, covered in armor, and hiding a secret identity. Nine-banded armadillos (Dasypus novemcinctus), the idiosyncratic mammal that spans from southern Illinois to northern Argentina, are not actually one species after all. Instead, the group of these unusual animals is made up of four …

The color blue is a very common favorite color for humans, but it is not seen in plants and animals very often. According to scientists from the University of Adelaide in Australia, this is partially because a true blue color or pigment doesn’t really exist in nature. Organisms that appear blue …