Bat study shows motherhood comes with a cost, but not for all Is it better to have children early or later in life, and does parenthood accelerate aging? Researchers at University College Dublin and the University of Bristol have tackled these questions by studying an exceptional population of long-lived Greater horseshoe bats.
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-motherhood.html

Waste management in spider mites reveals evolutionary insights into arthropod social behavior Researchers at University of Tsukuba have discovered the adaptive significance of the remarkable waste-management behavior in the social spider mite Stigmaeopsis longus, a tiny herbivorous arthropod that lives in cooperative groups. These mites protect their eggs from the adverse effects of fecal accumulation by defecating in designated areas near the nest entrance.
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-....spider-mites-reveals

Jaw versatility enabled the ecological success of amniotes, paleontologists find New research conducted by paleontologists from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN) and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin reveals a burst in jaw variety in the earliest amniotes—which includes the ancestors of all reptiles, birds and mammals. The international team led by former MfN doctoral student Dr. Jasper Ponstein analyzed more than 200 fossilized jaws from periods when tetrapods first adapted to life on land.
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-....jaw-versatility-enab

xkcd doesn’t cover all the possibilities This came out with poor timing. You see, yesterday afternoon was spent trying to use a company’s website. I was sent a bunch of stuff from a company, complaining about my mother’s failure to respond to their entreaties — she died in 2024. I’m still dealing with random bureaucratic nonsense, because apparently they didn’t get […]
https://freethoughtblogs.com/p....haryngula/2025/12/02