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They already have the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver, lay eggs like reptiles and have venom like snakes.Yet the humble platypus, a small creature which quietly swims in the rivers of eastern Australia, has found yet another way to amaze scientists. It is the only mammal that has hollow structures of the pigment melanin, a trait normally found in birds, biologists said in a new study on Wednesday.When the first taxidermied specimen of a platypus was brought back from Australia in 1799, European naturalists began looking for the seams — they assumed it was a hoax.The animal has been surprising scientists ever since.The platypus is one of only five mammal species that lay eggs, which are called monotremes.

The other four are all types of echidna — spiny creatures that waddle through the Australian bush.It is also one of the few poisonous mammals — males have a spur on their hind legs that releases venom at their enemies.Now another oddity has been added to the unusual platypus characteristics, according to the study published in the Biology Letters journal of the UK’s Royal Society.In animals with spines, called vertebrates, the pigment called melanin protects against UV radiation, helps regulate body temperature and is responsible for the colour of skin, fur or feathers.Melanin is contained in tiny, specialised structures inside cells called melanosomes, the shape of which is linked to their colour.For example, eumelanin — which produces black, grey and dark brown hues — is usually found in elongated melanosomes. Pheomelanin, which produces reds, reddish-browns and some shades of orange and yellow, is found in spherical melanosomes.And in mammals, these melanosomes are always solid.However in birds, sometimes the structures are hollow or flat, with only a thin layer of melanin.

This helps birds have the dazzling and varied colours seen across the world.Birds also have melanosomes that are organised into smaller “nanostructures” which create iridescent colours that interact with light, such as the feathers of a peacock.- ‘Surprising and exciting’ -Jessica Leigh Dobson, a biologist at Ghent University in Belgium and the study’s lead author, told AFP the team was compiling a database of mammal melanosomes when they made an “extremely surprising and exciting” discovery.Platypus melanosomes were mostly spherical — which should give it reddish-orange fur.

But the animal is merely dark brown.Then the scientists discovered that some of its melanosomes are hollow — like those of birds.They checked their database for other mammals, including marsupials, rodents and primates.”To the best of our knowledge, this is the only example of hollow melanosomes in mammals,” Dobson said.The melanosomes were “scattered randomly throughout the hair cortex” and do not create iridescence, she said. “Further work is definitely needed to find out why they have them,” Dobson added.Why these animals evolved these unusual features in the first place is also unclear.The ancestors of the platypus and echidna are thought to have been aquatic burrowing animals, so their hollow melanosomes could have helped them adapt to life in the water, giving them warmer insulation.But this theory raises more questions.If this was the case, why is this trait “not more widespread among aquatic mammals?” the study asked.

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang on Tuesday said the AI technology powerhouse is restarting production of its high-performance chips for clients in China.”We have received purchase orders from many customers, and we’re in the process of restarting our manufacturing,” Huang told journalists at Nvidia’s annual developers conference in San Jose, California.”Our supply chain is getting fired up.”The situation has changed from two weeks ago, according to Huang.A US commerce official in late February said a high-end Nvidia chip that can train and run artificial intelligence systems has not yet been sold to Chinese companies despite softened export restrictions.The H200 chip had until recently been barred from sale in China by Washington over national security concerns.President Donald Trump said in December he had reached an agreement with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to ease the restrictions, a move some lawmakers have warned could help China’s military.When asked by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee how many H200 chips had been sold to Chinese end-users, Commerce Department export enforcement official David Peters said: “My understanding is that so far none have been sold.”The H200 deal — under which the US government gets a 25 percent cut of sales — was confirmed by the Commerce Department in January.But conditions imposed on their sale have reportedly made it difficult for shipments to be approved.”I think President Trump would like us to compete worldwide and not concede those markets unnecessarily,” Huang said.Beijing is ramping up domestic chip development and production in a bid to rival the industry-leading designs of California-based Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company.Nvidia’s top-of-the-range chips, the Blackwell and forthcoming Rubin series, remain banned for sale in China and were not included in the H200 agreement.When asked about Nvidia’s dependence on Taiwan-based chip producer TSMC and the potential for China to “act on” that country, Huang said “my only hope is that we can all work together, stay at peace and look at the big picture.”Huang said a goal of the US commerce secretary to have 40 percent of US chips made domestically will be “very challenging” to achieve given how fast demand is growing.

The Large Hadron Collider has discovered a new particle, the 80th identified so far by the world’s most powerful particle smasher, Europe’s CERN physics laboratory announced Tuesday.The new particle has been named “Xi-cc-plus”.  Scientists hope the particle — which is similar to a proton but four times heavier — will reveal more about the strange behaviour of quantum mechanics.All the matter around us — including the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus of atoms — are made of baryons. These common particles are composed of three quarks, which are fundamental building blocks of matter.Quarks come in six “flavours”: up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom.

Each has varying mass, electric charge and quantum properties.In theory, there could be many different types of baryons that mix these flavours — however most are extremely difficult to observe. To chase them down, the Large Hadron Collider sends particles whizzing around an underground ring at phenomenal speeds until they smash into each other.This gives scientists a brief chance to measure how the more stable elements decay, then deduce the properties of the original particle.The newly discovered “Xi-cc-plus” contains two “charm” quarks and one “down” quark.Normal protons have two “up” quarks and one “down” quark.

Because the new particle has two heavier “charm” quarks instead of “up” ones, it has a much greater mass.Vincenzo Vagnoni, spokesman for the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment, said it was “only the second time a baryon with two heavy quarks has been observed”.It is also “the first new particle identified after the upgrades to the LHCb detector that were completed in 2023,” he said in a statement.”The result will help theorists test models of quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong force that binds quarks into not only conventional baryons and mesons but also more exotic hadrons such as tetraquarks and pentaquarks.”In 2017, the LHCb experiment announced that it had discovered a similar particle, made of two “charmed” quarks and one “up” quark. The new particle has an expected lifetime six times shorter than this earlier one, making it far more tricky to spot, CERN said.The Large Hadron Collider is a 27-kilometre (17 mile) long proton-smashing ring running about 100 metres below France and Switzerland.

Mostly famously, it proved the existence of the Higgs boson — known as the “God particle” — in 2012.The latest discovery comes as CERN plans to build an even bigger particle smasher, the Future Circular Collider, to continue probing the mysteries of the universe.

From sea turtles to birds and the gentle dugong, the Persian Gulf’s diverse but fragile marine life is threatened by the bombs and oil of the war in the Middle East.The ecosystem was already under pressure from climate change and maritime traffic before the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran at the end of February, leading to Tehran’s region-wide retaliation.More than 300 incidents involving environmental risks — including attacks on oil tankers — have been recorded in the region since the conflict broke out, according to a March 10 report by the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a UK non-governmental organisation.The geography of the Gulf makes its ecosystem particularly vulnerable.A semi-enclosed and shallow sea about 50 metres (165 feet) deep on average, it is connected to the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Hormuz.

Its slow water renewal — every two to five years — limits the dispersion of oil or other pollutants. The region hosts the world’s second-largest population of dugongs — herbivorous marine mammals known as “sea cows” that are listed as vulnerable — with an estimated 5,000 to 7,500 individuals. About a dozen species of marine mammals are also found there, including humpback whales and whale sharks.In total, more than 2,000 marine species have been recorded in the warm Gulf waters, including over 500 fish species and five types of sea turtles, among them the critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle.There are also about 100 species of corals which, together with mangroves and seagrass beds, form essential breeding and nursery grounds for fish and crustaceans.- ‘Time bomb’ -Greenpeace warned last week that dozens of tankers carrying around 21 billion litres (5.5 billion gallons) of oil were trapped in the Persian Gulf.”This is an ecological ticking time bomb,” said Nina Noelle, of Greenpeace Germany, who has been mapping oil tankers in the region.Since March 1, nine incidents involving oil tankers, including attacks,have been reported to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre (UKMTO), eight of which were later confirmed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Three additional attacks were claimed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, though these have not been confirmed by international bodies.On land, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Monday that Israeli strikes on Tehran fuel depots constituted “ecocide”, contaminating soil and groundwater and causing long-term risks to people’s health.- Past experiences -“The wars in the 1980s and 1990s demonstrate how exposed the ecosystems of the Persian Gulf are to conflict pollution, whether this is from damage to on- or offshore oil facilities or through spills from attacks on shipping,” CEOBS director Doug Weir told AFP.The Gulf War in 1991 triggered one of the largest marine oil spills linked to armed conflict, when retreating Iraqi forces deliberately opened oil valves in Kuwait and destroyed oil infrastructure. It took decades to recover: up to 11 million barrels of oil (1.75 billion litres) were released, contaminating 640 kilometres of Saudi coastline and killing more than 30,000 seabirds, according to several studies.The studies, however, “largely showed minimal impacts on coral reefs”, said John Burt, biology professor at the Mubadala Arabian Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences at New York University Abu Dhabi.”This is largely because oil floats, so the dispersal of oil remains on the surface and doesn’t really interact with corals except in the most shallow areas,” Burt said.”However, the same cannot be said for intertidal systems” such as salt marshes and mudflats that line the coast and are exposed at low tide, he added.”Here, oil spills can have significant and medium-term impacts, if the spills become coastal,” Burt said.Seabirds are especially at risk because oil destroyed the waterproofing of their feathers, leading to hypothermia and drowning.- Bomb noise -Bombs are also a threat to the area’s birds.Their migration could be disrupted by the noise of explosions and by plumes of toxic smoke, as the Arabian Peninsula sits at the crossroads of major migratory routes linking Europe, Central Asia, Africa and South Asia.”Sea mines and other explosive devices can cause acoustic disturbance impacting sea mammals and other animals, and blast damage to natural undersea structures such as reefs,” Weir said.In 2003 and 2020, two studies published in Nature and in a journal of the Royal Society found links between the use of mid-frequency military sonar and whale strandings.

All the essential ingredients to make the DNA and RNA underpinning life on Earth have been discovered in samples collected from the asteroid Ryugu, scientists said Monday.The discovery comes after these building blocks of life were detected on another asteroid called Bennu, suggesting they are abundant throughout the Solar System.One longstanding theory is that life first began on Earth when asteroids carrying fundamental elements crashed into our planet long ago.The asteroids that hurtle through our Solar System give scientists a rare chance to study this possibility.In 2014, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 blasted off on a 300-million-kilometre (185-million-mile) mission to land on Ryugu, a 900-metre-wide (2,950-feet-wide) asteroid. It successfully managed to collect two samples of rocks weighing 5.4 grams (under a fifth of an ounce) each and bring them back to Earth in 2020.Research in 2023 showed that these samples contained uracil, which is one of the four bases that make up RNA.While DNA, the famed double helix, functions as a genetic blueprint, single-strand RNA is an all-important messenger, converting the instructions contained in DNA for implementation.On Monday, a new study by a Japanese team of researchers in Nature Astronomy demonstrated that the samples contained all the “nucleobases” for both DNA and RNA.These included uracil as well as adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine.This “does not mean that life existed on Ryugu”, the study’s lead author, Toshiki Koga, told AFP.”Instead, their presence indicates that primitive asteroids could produce and preserve molecules that are important for the chemistry related to the origin of life,” added the biochemist from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.The discovery also “demonstrates their widespread presence throughout the Solar System and reinforces the hypothesis that carbonaceous asteroids contributed to the prebiotic chemical inventory of early Earth,” according to the study.Cesar Menor Salvan, an astrobiologist at Spain’s University of Alcala not involved in the research, emphasised that “these results do not suggest that the origin of life took place in space”.However, “with this and the results from Bennu, we have a very clear idea of which organic materials can form under prebiotic conditions anywhere in the universe,” he added.- ‘Unique’ ammonia finding -Last year, the same building blocks were found in fragments brought back to Earth by NASA from the asteroid Bennu.Scientists have also detected their presence in the meteorites Orgueil and Murchison, which were part of asteroids that fell to Earth.For the new research, the Japanese team compared the amount of each nucleobase detected in these different space rocks, finding the quantities varied depending on their history.They also identified a correlation between the ratios of the building blocks and the concentration of another important chemical for life: ammonia.”Because no known formation mechanism predicts such a relationship, this finding may point to a previously unrecognised pathway for nucleobase formation in early Solar System materials,” Toshiki Koga said.Morgan Cable, a scientist at the Victoria University of Wellington in Australia not involved in the research, called this particular finding “unique”.”This discovery has important implications for how biologically important molecules may have originally formed and promoted the genesis of life on Earth,” she said.

Cheap and deadly, Iranian-designed Shahed drones have inflicted major damage in the Middle East war, and have anti-jamming and other capabilities that make them difficult to stop.- Offline navigation -Designed to explode on impact, Shahed drones connect to GPS to register their location shortly before or after takeoff, then typically turn off their receivers, said Thomas Withington, a researcher at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).The drones then travel long distances towards their target using gyroscopes that measure their speed, direction and position — known as an “inertial navigation system”.”GPS is going to get jammed by whatever is protecting the target,” Withington told AFP.”If you look at a map of GPS jamming at the moment in the Middle East, you see that there’s a lot of jamming…

By not using the GPS, you avoid that.”The drones can then return to GPS just before impact for a more precise strike, or remain offline.”It’s not always necessarily very accurate, but it’s as accurate as it needs to be,” said Withington.- Anti-jamming mechanisms -Russia has been making Shahed-style drones to use in its war in Ukraine.The US-based Institute for Science and International Security found in 2023 that those drones used “state-of-art antenna interference suppression” to remove enemy jamming signals while preserving the desired GPS signal.Anti-jamming mechanisms were found in the wreckage of an Iranian-made drone that struck Cyprus in the opening days of the Middle East war, a European industry source told AFP.”They have put (the Shahed) together using off-the-shelf parts, but it has… many of the capabilities that US military GPS equipment has,” Todd Humphreys, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, told AFP.Defending against them now requires sophisticated electronic warfare equipment.”The Shaheds have been upgraded,” said Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat.- Stealth materials -The Shahed is built from “lightweight radar-absorbing materials”, such as plastic and fibreglass, a 2023 RUSI paper said.Their small size and low altitude allow them to slip through aerial defence systems.- Other positioning systems? -Some experts think Iran is using multiple positioning systems, making it easier for its drones to dodge jamming.Serhii Beskrestnov, a technology adviser to the Ukrainian defence ministry, said Iran is using the BeiDou system, a Chinese rival to the US-developed GPS.And the Russia-made version of Shaheds uses both BeiDou and the Russian equivalent, GLONASS, he said.Others suspect Iran may be using LORAN, a radio navigation system developed during World War II.LORAN, which does not require satellites, largely fell out of use when GPS emerged.But Iran said in 2016 it was reviving the technology, which requires a network of large ground-based transmitters, though experts have not confirmed it is active today.- Counter-strategies -Militaries have mainly defended against Shaheds by shooting them down with cannon fire, missiles and interceptor drones, with the United States and Israel also developing lasers.But jamming can work, as Ukraine has shown, as can “spoofing”, which involves hacking into the drone’s navigation system to change its destination.Ukraine used electronic warfare to neutralise 4,652 attack drones from mid-May to mid-July 2025 — not far off the number it shot down in the same period, 6,041, according to AFP analysis of Ukrainian military data.Its experts insist that electronic and conventional defences are often used in tandem against the drones.

The surge of drone use in conflicts worldwide, seen most vividly in the Ukraine and Middle East wars, will accelerate the race to develop high-power laser systems that could down the devices far more cheaply than traditional defensive weapons.It is a critical issue for governments threatened by low-cost, easily obtainable drones that can wreak outsize destruction, and are usually shot down only by the most advanced — and expensive — missile technologies.Currently, so-called directed energy weapons (DEWs) mounted to ships or armored vehicles can fire a concentrated electromagnetic beam at targets up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.”Those systems have made a lot of progress in the last 10 to 15 years,” said Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado. Russia is using several versions against drones from Ukraine, which is testing its own system, while Israel has deployed the Iron Beam technology from Rafael against drones fired by Lebanon’s Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. However, the Israeli Army confirmed to The Jerusalem Post last week that Iron Beam was not being deployed in its current war with Iran, saying it was not ready for regular use.China presented its LY-1 system last September, Britain and France are developing their own versions, and the United States has started equipping warships in particular, with Helios from Lockheed-Martin or the LWSD from Northrop Grumman.”We have shown this technology has broad applicability including military operations and for homeland defense,” Northrop told AFP in a statement.- Pennies per shot? -US President Donald Trump said recently that “the laser technology that we have now is incredible,” and would soon replace the Patriot interceptor missile for taking out drones.That would be music to the ears of military planners who are using the pricey Patriot and similar systems, where a single missile can cost millions of dollars, to down drones worth just several thousand dollars.A top official in Britain’s DragonFire program has estimated its per-fire cost at around 10 pounds ($13).”The cost of firing one laser or microwave is really the cost of electricity,” an expert in DEW systems design told AFP on condition of anonymity.After the initial investment is made, “it’s going to be pennies per shot,” the designer said.At that price, not even Iran’s notorious Shahed drones, estimated to cost as low as $20,000 each, or drone interceptors developed by Ukraine, whose costs start at around $700, can compete.Other advantages include no launching device, the ability to modulate the beam’s intensity, and unlimited “ammunition.”Billions of dollars have been invested in the technology, and in 2018 the US Navy ordered two DEW prototypes for around $75 million each.- Limitations -But the challenges for making lasers more widespread in the fight against drones are daunting. “One is just the pointing, the ability to point — you really need to maintain the laser spot on the same area to create an effect,” said Boyd of the University of Colorado.”If it’s sort of moving all over a drone or something, it’s not going to do anything.”Laser systems are also less effective in cloudy weather, and can also be a risk for other aircraft in the area.In February, the FAA aviation authority shut down airspace near El Paso, Texas after the US military mistakenly shot down a government drone with a laser near the Mexican border.According to The New York Times, the FAA had not approved the use of the laser.

Iran’s latest internet blackout has lasted more than 14 days, connectivity monitor Netblocks said Friday.The nature of the blackout shows “this is a government-imposed measure” and not the result of damage from US and Israeli airstrikes, Netblocks research chief Isik Mater told AFP.”It is a deliberate shutdown imposed by the authorities to suppress the flow of information and prevent further dissent,” said Raha Bahreini, Iran researcher at Amnesty International.Here are some of the ways information is still flowing in and out of Iran.- Shortwave radio -Amsterdam-based nonprofit Radio Zamaneh began shortwave broadcasts during the January protests, sending a nightly Farsi news programme from 11:00 pm Tehran time.”It’s really difficult for the regime to jam shortwave because it’s a long-distance broadcast,” executive director Rieneke van Santen told AFP.”People can just listen on a super cheap, small, simple radio…

It’s one of those typical emergency fall-back solutions.”- Phone calls -Many with ties to Iran are still receiving landline phone calls from inside — “quite surprising” given the blackout, said Mahsa Alimardani of global rights organisation Witness.Fearing the authorities listening in, people often avoid speaking directly about political topics, she added.”It’s not possible to communicate about sensitive issues through these brief phone calls,” Amnesty’s Bahreini said.The required prepaid international calling cards are expensive and often fail to provide their face value in minutes.”You buy a phone card for 60 minutes, but in eight minutes, it’s out,” van Santen said.”It’s really just phone calls from family members saying, after the bombing, we’re still alive.”- VPN or other internet services -Virtual private networks (VPNs) — widely-used services that encrypt internet traffic — cannot create an internet connection where none is available.But even at around one percent of typical levels, Iran’s connectivity is “still a large figure in absolute terms”, Netblocks’ Mater said.Iranians suspected of using VPNs since the war began have received warning text messages claiming to be from the authorities.Before the war, millions turned to Toronto-based company Psiphon, which creates specialist tools more capable than typical “off-the-shelf” VPNs.Offering techniques including disguising users’ data as different types of internet traffic, Psiphon “is able to evade detection more successfully”, data and insights director Keith McManamen told AFP.With up to six million unique daily users in Iran before the latest internet shutdown, connections are now fewer than 100,000.Only the most tech-savvy users can reach Psiphon’s network for now.Nevertheless, “the situation is extremely dynamic.

We’re seeing changes not just day to day, but hour by hour”, McManamen said.A similar service, US-based Lantern, is also widely used.- ‘Driving people crazy’ -A lawyer in her thirties from Tehran told AFP she had “absolutely no access to information”.”From every 10 people I know, only one has access to the internet and that’s being generous.

This is driving people crazy,” she said.”Can people in Europe or the US imagine not having internet for even one day? It’s been 15 days for us.”The woman said accessing the internet required her to “take a risk to my life” and visit a friend with “multiple VPNs and they may work one day and not the next.

The only people who can connect have Starlink”.VPNs cost from around $35 up to $140, she said.”I haven’t been able to talk with my family abroad more than twice during these days.”- Satellite broadcasts -Created by US-based nonprofit NetFreedom Pioneers, Toosheh is a “filecasting” technology using home satellite TV equipment to broadcast encrypted data to people in Iran.Users record from the Toosheh satellite TV channel onto a USB stick plugged into their set-top box, which they can then decrypt using a special app installed on their phone or computer.From that initial download, the data can be copied and shared across multiple households.The group estimated around three million active users in Iran across 2025, with “thousands to hundreds of thousands… since the (internet) shutdown in January,” the group’s director of projects Emilia James told AFP.Since people tune in to a broadcast signal, there is no way for the government to track them, she added.- Starlink -Elon Musk-owned satellite internet service Starlink was used during this year’s protests to broadcast information amid government attempts to jam its signals.At around $2,000 on Iran’s black market, the terminals are expensive and very rare in poorer regions that have suffered the most government repression, Alimardani said.Amnesty has received reports of “raids on houses… arrests of people who had Starlink devices”, Bahreini said.Charges for those caught communicating with the outside world range from prison sentences to the death penalty, she added.Starlink did not respond to AFP’s request for comment on usage in Iran.

NASA said Thursday that the long-delayed launch of Artemis 2, the first crewed flyby mission to the Moon in more than 50 years, could come as soon as April 1.”We are on track for a launch as early as April 1, and we are working toward that date,” Lori Glaze, a senior NASA official, told a press conference, after technical difficulties delayed a launch originally expected in February.”It’s a test flight, and it is not without risk, but our team and our hardware are ready,” she said. “Just keep in mind we still have work” to do.The US space agency announced in February a sudden revamp of the Artemis program, including the addition of a test mission before an eventual lunar landing.The first launch window would be Wednesday, April 1, at 6:24 pm (2224 GMT), with several others available in the following days.”We would anticipate on the order of about four opportunities within that six-day period,” Glaze said.The Artemis 2 mission is meant to be the first flyby of the Moon in more than half a century.The rocket will be crewed by three American astronauts — mission commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch — and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.After launch, NASA diagrams indicate Artemis 2 will circumnavigate Earth before leaving orbit to travel to the Moon, without landing, for a lunar flyby before returning to Earth and splashing down in the ocean.”Exactly how close the Artemis II crew will fly to the Moon will depend on when they launch,” ranging from 4,000 to 6,000 miles (6,437 to 9,656 km) above the lunar surface, because the Moon will “be in a different spot for each of the possible launch dates.”The first Artemis flew much closer to the Moon — 80 miles above the surface — but NASA said Artemis 2 will still go “tens of thousands of miles closer than any human has been in more than 50 years.” “At this distance the Moon will appear to the crew to be about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length.”The mission is to be followed by Artemis 3 with the goal of “rendezvous in low-Earth orbit” of at least one lunar lander.The next phase, Artemis 4, aims for a lunar landing in early 2028, after President Donald Trump announced during his first term that he wanted Americans to once again set foot on the Moon.

The partnership between ravens and wolves goes back to Norse mythology — Odin’s birds scouted ahead and led prey to the god’s canines, a relationship that provided food for all.The myth has some roots in reality: when wolves have a successful hunt, ravens are often observed first on the scene — and new research published Thursday in the journal Science put the legend to the test.The study’s findings suggest the birds are doing more than just tracking the hunters: they’re using navigation and spatial memory techniques to scavenge with sophistication.While “ravens are already well-known for their intelligence,” lead author Matthias-Claudio Loretto told AFP, seeing these cognitive abilities “play out at a much larger scale in the wild” produced startling results. Ravens weren’t just following wolves — they were clocking kill patterns, creating mental maps to support future food quests.The international research team attached tiny GPS trackers to 69 ravens — an impressive number considering the painstaking work in trapping the particularly observant birds.”Even small changes in their environment can make them suspicious,” said Loretto, who is at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, and began the research at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.The team had movement data from 20 collared wolves in the famed Yellowstone National Park, a vast protected area in the western United States where wolves were reintroduced in the mid-1990s after 70 years of absence.The park was uniquely suited to the study.”This work would not have been possible anywhere other than Yellowstone,” said co-author and wildlife scientist John Marzluff of the University of Washington.Because the environment is open rather than densely wooded, both the birds and wolves are relatively easy to observe at long distances, he told AFP.- ‘Sophisticated’ animal cognition -Over two-and-a-half years of monitoring, researchers were puzzled to find just one instance of a raven following a wolf for more than an hour — even as the birds were still able to quickly arrive at a kill.Deeper analysis showed ravens were in fact revisiting spots where wolves commonly took down prey — animals like deer, elk or bison — suggesting the birds were creating and memorizing a “resource landscape.”Some birds would fly nearly 100 miles (up to 155 kilometers) in a single day, seeking out places they seemed to expect might feature wolf kills.It was “a much larger area than I ever imagined,” said Marzluff.Short-range cues still matter: ravens might be following signals like wolf howls to find fresh kills at shorter distances.But broadly speaking, the researchers said ravens were counting on their memory to lead the search.Wolf kills aren’t distributed at random, Loretto said, occurring more often on flatter terrain or in open valleys where chases are more likely.Ravens might remember past feeds or notice indirect signs like bones as they establish their mental maps.”Animal cognition in the wild may sometimes be more sophisticated than we tend to assume,” Loretto said.- Raw deal -The wolf-raven relationship is sometimes described in popular culture as harmonious, but Marzluff said it’s ultimately pretty lopsided.Wolves have been observed swatting the birds away, even appearing to designate a pack member to stand guard. The birds noisily fight over their stolen feast, a potential tip-off to other scavengers. And a single raven can carry off half a pound (220 grams) of meat.

When the birds arrive in the dozens, that can make even a downed bison disappear quickly, Marzluff said.”Ravens get a lot more out of this deal than wolves do,” he added.The scientist said he hopes future research could focus on how young birds develop their knowledge.”Ravens have fascinated people forever,” Marzluff said, noting the birds have been considered everything from “creators and tricksters” to “opportunistic pests.”But “never did we anticipate or expect them, I think, to be able to hold in their brains, which aren’t much bigger than your thumb, information over thousands of square miles,” he said.”We’ve underestimated them.”