08/09/2026
Wow!
When a seagull meets its anemone.
Recently, a volunteer with Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge spotted a sea anemone in the process of digesting a seagull leg that had washed into the tidepool.
Despite looking like lush marine flowers, green sea anemones are actually hungry carnivores and ambush predators armed with tiny stinging cells called nematocysts.
Anemones are opportunistic feeders, catching whatever drifts within reach, which can be crabs, small fish, mussels, and other unexpected snacks delivered by the waves. Once captured, the tentacles guide the food into the central mouth, where digestion begins slowly but efficiently.
USFWS volunteer photo: Ed Nordquist, via Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuges
07/30/2026
When researchers pulled a clam from the icy seabed off the coast of Iceland, it didn’t look extraordinary.
It was simply an ocean quahog a species already known for living remarkably long lives in the cold waters of the North Atlantic.
Nothing about its appearance suggested it was about to rewrite the record books.
The surprise came later.
Scientists estimate the age of ocean quahogs by counting the tiny annual growth bands preserved in their shells, much like counting the rings of a tree. Each line represents another year of life.
When they finished counting, the result was astonishing.
The clam had been alive since 1499.
It was eventually nicknamed “Ming,” after the Chinese dynasty that ruled when the tiny mollusk first settled onto the seafloor.
Estimated to be 507 years old, Ming became the oldest individual animal ever discovered.
While explorers crossed oceans, civilizations changed, and empires rose and fell, the clam remained in the same stretch of seabed, quietly adding one new growth ring after another.
Its story, however, has a bittersweet ending.
Researchers only confirmed Ming’s extraordinary age after opening its shell to count the internal rings—a process that unintentionally ended the clam’s life.
The discovery wasn’t without purpose.
It encouraged scientists to develop more accurate, non-destructive techniques for aging these remarkable animals, making it possible that the next record-breaking clam can be studied without bringing its centuries-long journey to an end.
07/30/2026
Astronomers captured a rare image of the flare from a black hole "devouring" a star on the outskirts of a faraway galaxy, NASA said.
The event involved an "orphan" black hole lighting up as it shredded a nearby star apart, a phenomenon known as a tidal disruption event (TDE), according to a paper published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
These types of black holes are described as "orphan" or "wandering" black holes because they are located on the outskirts of a galaxy rather than in the center. https://abcnews.visitlink.me/miB_o4
