Seafdec FishWorld

Agripreneur The Philippines’ premier award-winning agriculture show! Winner of the Catholic Mass Media Awards 2024 & Gandingan Awards 2025, we showcase success stories in Filipino innovation, resilience, and growing agribusiness opportunities - from farm to market.

The way s***m whales communicate may be closer to human language than initially thought.

According to new findings from Project CETI, led by National Geographic Explorer and marine biologist David Gruber, their clicks aren’t random—they follow patterns that resemble human vowels.

Learn how this discovery brings us closer to understanding the language of s***m whales: https://on.natgeo.com/r5lRQc.

The various biological forms are called taxa (singular, taxon). The largest taxonomic divisions distinguish between plants and animals, or between those organisms with poorly developed nuclei in their cells (such as bacteria and blue-green algae) and those with very clearly demarcated and elaborately architectured nuclei (such as protozoa or people). All organisms on the planet Earth, however, whether they have well-defined nuclei or not, have chromosomes, which contain the genetic material passed on from generation to generation. In all organisms the hereditary molecules are nucleic acids. With a few unimportant exceptions, the hereditary nucleic acid is always the molecule called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Much finer divisions among various sorts of plants and animals, down to species, subspecies and races, can also be described as separate taxa.

-Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence (1977)

How many steps should you be getting each day?

The well-known 10,000-step goal may have begun as a catchy marketing gimmick, rather than a science-backed guideline. In fact, research shows many significant health benefits begin well before reaching that number.

Discover the real step-count goal and how it can help improve your health: https://on.natgeo.com/dqArXt

Donate Monthly Join the UNICEF Champions Community

You could call Leonardo da Vinci a lot of things: genius, polymath, or master. His birthday was yesterday, in 1452. He was—in time, geography, and intellect—the quintessential Renaissance man. He was also subject to the whims of science funding that fueled the bursts of discovery and innovation that defined his era.⁠
⁠
The multi-talented painter, anatomist, sculptor, engineer, botanist, and geologist was supported by a string of wealthy patrons who held positions of privilege and influence throughout Renaissance Europe. These benefactors, including Duke of Milan Ludovico Sforza, King Francis I of France, and the powerful Medici family of Florence, clearly recognized da Vinci’s brilliance. But their funding did not come without strings attached. When their patronage was designed to fuel da Vinci’s artistic endeavors, the deliverables were clear—mainly the paintings and sketches that have placed him in the pantheon of the Renaissance masters.⁠
⁠
When funds were earmarked for da Vinci’s more scientific pursuits, concrete outcomes were still expected, though sometimes the funding came with an understanding that the genius would also need the freedom to pursue less-applied goals. Sforza, for example, employed da Vinci as his court engineer, tasking him with military and hydraulic projects, but afforded him considerable leeway to explore the mechanics of flight, esoteric mathematics, and the complexities of human anatomy.⁠
⁠
Da Vinci’s science also had the benefit of access to the Renaissance medical complex. Specifically, he performed his human co**se dissection thanks to access granted by the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence and later by the Hospital Maggiore in Milan and Rome’s Hospital of the Holy Spirit, the oldest hospital in Europe. These explorations yielded some of da Vinci’s most famous contributions to anatomical science as he fastidiously drew the 30 or so human co**ses that he was able to dissect.⁠
⁠
But just as scientists of today have to nimbly navigate a shifting landscape of funders—federal, philanthropic, commercial, and so on—so too did da Vinci. ⁠
⁠
Read all about the birthday boy: https://nautil.us/the-birth-of-genius-1279907

The butterfly in this photograph is about to lay eggs on the only plant her caterpillars can eat, and Michigan just guaranteed 12,000 acres of it.
Karner blue butterflies (Plebejus melissa samuelis) are endangered because they're picky. Adults nectar on various flowers, but their larvae require wild lupine (Lupinus perennis) exclusively. No lupine means no caterpillars means no next generation. The oak savanna in this photo—those scattered trees with prairie understory—represents the specific ecosystem where lupine thrives in sandy soils.
Michigan's new protection isn't just about the butterfly. It's about the lupine. Twelve thousand acres of oak savanna now carry legal protection specifically because this plant grows there. The Karner blue gets habitat by proxy, which is how conservation often works—protect the food web, protect the consumer.
I watched a female Karner blue once at Albany Pine Bush in New York. She was smaller than my thumbnail, blue-gray wings with orange spots on the margins. She crawled down the lupine stem and deposited eggs one by one on the underside of leaves. The specificity stunned me. This butterfly has existed for millennia eating exactly one plant in exactly this type of savanna.
The lupine blooms in May when the oak canopy hasn't fully closed yet. The filtered sunlight hits the forest floor and triggers flowering. The caterpillars hatch in June and hide in the leaf litter during the day, emerging at night to feed. The oak savanna looks "messy" to people who don't know the choreography.
Michigan decided that messy is worth 12,000 acres of legal protection. The Karner blue gets to keep laying eggs.