For generations, scientists believed a queen honeybee was made almost entirely by diet: feed an ordinary larva enough royal jelly and a ruler emerges. But new research suggests queens are created through a more elaborate process.

A new study is opening a rare acoustic window into the hidden world of underwater predators. Using machine learning and underwater recordings, researchers developed a system that can detect and classify shell-crushing feeding events by whitespotted eagle rays as they prey on clams, oysters and other shellfish. The technology delivers near-deep learning accuracy with far less computing power, paving the way for real-time, large-scale monitoring of predator behavior and the health of coastal ecosystems.

News on the woolly mammoth from Taimering (Bavaria, Germany): The mammoth, discovered in 2020, was buried in a former Ice Age pond after its death. Pollen findings and radiocarbon dating confirm that the mammoth lived and died during the harsh conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum. Cut marks on several ribs suggest that Palaeolithic humans tampered with the carcass. An interdisciplinary research team initiated by SNSB palaeontologist Gertrud Rößner and FAU geographer Christoph Mayr is now presenting the results of its scientific investigations in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Humans can communicate various instructions to dogs without using actual words – simply by modulating the tone of their voice, a new study from ELTE University’s Department of Ethology shows. By repeating the nonsense syllable ‘bü’ in different intonations, humans successfully signaled ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Here’, and ‘There’ and, remarkably, dogs responded correctly, despite receiving no prior training. The findings reveal ancient acoustic codes, interpretable across species, that predate language itself. The study was published in Cognition, and a video abstract presenting it is also available.

In a case series, an Osaka Metropolitan University-led research group assessed CT findings of pulmonary lymphoma in a dog and two cats.