Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution examined the feather remains from the Jan. 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 bird strike to determine not only the species, but also that the Canada geese involved were from a migratory, rather than resident, population. This knowledge is essential for wildlife professionals to develop policies and techniques that will reduce the risk of future collisions. The team’s findings were published in the journal “Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment” in June.

The post Scientists Determine Geese Involved in Hudson River Plane Crash Were Migratory appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A Smithsonian Institution biologist, working with the Natural History Unit of the British Broadcasting Corp., has discovered a new species of giant rat on a film-making expedition to a remote rainforest in New Guinea.

The post New species of giant rat discovered in crater of volcano in Papua New Guinea appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies is hosting “Climate Change,” a three-day, free, education online conference Tuesday, Sept. 29 through Thursday, Oct. 1. This […]

The post Smithsonian to host online Climate Change conference Sept. 29-Oct. 1 appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Staff had been on a pregnancy watch focused on the 3 1/2-year-old clouded leopard Jao Chu (JOW-chew) for four days. Jao Chu gave birth to the first cub at 6:04 p.m. and the second cub at 6:20 p.m.

The post Clouded leopard cubs born at National Zoo’s Front Royal campus on Valentine’s Day appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Breitburg and her team want to determine just how much stress they cause. Over the next five years they will conduct a series of lab and field experiments that examine how diel-cycling hypoxia and the associated acidification affects the growth and disease rates in striped bass, the eastern oyster and other ecologically and economically important Chesapeake Bay species. They will also study the animals’ behavioral responses to these changes.

The post Smithsonian ecologists to examine “dead zones” in Chesapeake Bay with $1.4 million NOAA grant appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A new computer simulation by Gurtina Besla of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and her colleagues now shows that the Magellanic Stream resulted from a past close encounter between two dwarf galaxies rather than effects of the Milky Way.

The post Milky Way sidelined in galactic tug of war appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute community ecologist Sunshine Van Bael primarily examines the relationship between leaf cutter ants–the world’s first farmers–and the fungi that they cultivate.

The post New online video series to feature Tropical Research Institute scientists appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

"Physics for the 21st Century," a free, on-line course developed at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics about current research in physics is now available.

The post Free, online course in physics offered by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Office of Public Affairs videographers Johnny Gibbons and Brian Ireley recently headed down to the Punta Culebra Nature Center on the edge of Panama City […]

The post New online video series to feature Tropical Research Institute scientists appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

In a new paper, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Hagai Perets studies the role of binary planetesimals--clumps that orbit each other and jointly mature via three basic processes.

The post New study examines how planetesimals influence the development of a planetary system appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Recent work has added dozens of new measurements to star-forming regions in the Milky Way. These measurements have changed the map of the Milky Way, indicating our galaxy has four spiral arms, not two, as previously thought.

The post Very Large Baseline Array telescope is helping Smithsonian astronomers remap Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

On April 4 the Smithsonian and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will launch VANISHED, an 8-week online/offline environmental disaster mystery game for middle-school children, meant […]

The post Smithsonian and MIT to launch online mystery game for middle-shool children appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has made available to the public a new online collection of images that capture the excitement of planetary exploration and the journey to understand the origin and evolution of the solar system.

The post Stunning high-resolution NASA images available online for public exhibits appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The predictability and scale of seasonal changes in a habitat help determine the distance migratory species move and whether the animals always travel together to the same place or independently to different locations.

The post Changes in vegetation determine how animals migrate, scientists find in new National Zoo study appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Alaska’s pristine coastline is ripe for an influx of invasive marine species such as the European green crab and the rough periwinkle (an Atlantic sea snail) warns a new study by a team of scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

The post Alaska’s cold waters no barrier to invasive marine species, scientists say appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

University of Florida and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute scientists describe a new 20-foot extinct species of crocodile discovered in the same Colombian coal mine with Titanoboa, the world’s largest snake.

The post New 20-foot extinct species of crocodile discovered in Colombian coal mine appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Although cold and gaseous rather than a desert world, the newfound planet Kepler-16b is still the closest astronomers have come to discovering Luke Skywalker's home world of Tatooine.

The post From Star Wars to science fact: Tatooine-like planet discovered appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Ornithologists Carla Dove and Storrs Olson used 700- to 1,100-year-old feathers from a long extinct species of Hawaiian ibis to help determine the bird’s place in the ibis family tree. The feathers are the only known plumage of any of the prehistorically extinct birds that once inhabited the Hawaiian Islands.

The post Fossil feathers from a Hawaiian cave help reveal lineage of extinct, flightless ibis appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A new study of marmosets, small South American monkeys, indicates that obesity may begin very early in life and suggests that marmosets may be a helpful model for obesity in humans.

The post Is obesity predestined at infancy? Marmoset study may help scientists find out. appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A recent decline in Ovenbirds (Seiurus aurocapilla), a ground-nesting migratory songbird, in forests in the northern Midwest United States is being linked by scientists to a seemingly unlikely culprit: earthworms.

The post Earthworms to blame for decline of Ovenbirds in northern Midwest forests, study reveals appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Biologists from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, the Papua New Guinea National Museum, and the U.S. Geological Survey have discovered a new species of gecko, adorned like a bumblebee with black-and-gold bands and rows of skin nodules that enhance its camouflage on the tropical forest floor.

The post New ‘Bumblebee’ gecko discovered in Papua New Guinea appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Two new species of blind snakes found living on small, low-lying atolls in the Caroline Islands, are an unexpected discovery that is quite difficult to explain,

The post Not on a plane, but how did blind snakes ever get to the Pacific’s Caroline Islands? appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Scientists determine there is more to the shape and length of bird bills than just how they “get the worm.”

The post New study determines bill size in birds varies according to climate appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A new study finds that since 1985, half of Australia's Great Barrier Reef coral has died.

The post Smithsonian marine biologist Nancy Knowlton discusses Great Barrier Reef coral dieoff on PBS NewsHour appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A rare Longman’s beaked whale found stranded on the Hawaiian island of Maui in 2010 has scientists in Hawaii on the alert for a deadly disease known as morbillivirus which can lead to high mortality rates in dolphins and other marine mammals.

The post Rare whale beached in Hawaii infected with deadly marine-mammal virus appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The goal of the project—the Smithsonian’s Tennenbaum Marine Observatories—is to monitor the ocean’s coastal ecosystems over a long period of time.

The post Smithsonian launches Global Marine Biodiversity Project with $10 million donation appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A century from now researchers will gather data from a forest in Maryland to see how, during the previous 100 years, varying levels of species […]

The post Smithsonian scientists launch 100-year project to examine the future of forests appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

When it comes to brain size, Homo sapiens generally get the most credit. But to find the baby mammals with the proportionally largest brains on […]

The post Weddell seals have big-brained pups appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Emmett Duffy, currently the Gluckman Professor of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, has been appointed director of the Smithsonian’s […]

The post Emmett Duffy named director of Smithsonian’s Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Astronomers are constantly on the hunt for ever-colder star-like bodies, and two years ago a new class of objects was discovered by researchers using NASA’s […]

The post Coldest brown dwarfs blur lines between stars and planets appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Mortlock Islands flying fox, a large, breadfruit-eating bat native to a few remote and tiny Pacific islands, has long been regarded as one of […]

The post Scientists shine light on world’s least-studied bat: Mortlock Islands flying fox appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

An 880-pound asteroid moving at 38,000 miles per hour hit the moon last September with a blast equivalent to 15 tons of TNT. While errant […]

The post Give us the telescopes and we’ll find the asteroid mines! appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Mention coral reefs and images like snorkeling, tropical fish and sunny island getaways pop to mind. Vacation packages are not being offered, however, for many […]

The post Cold, dark and lonely: Deep-water corals thrive where the sun never shines appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Sometimes you need to look in unusual places to tell species apart. Some mammal species are easily distinguished by differences in their fur or skeletons, […]

The post Penis spines help scientists identify bat species appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Turtles have long been the subject of one the most contentious questions in evolutionary biology: where do they fit among vertebrates in the evolutionary tree […]

The post Turtle lineage solved in new study appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The majestic feathers of the greater bird of paradise (Paradisaea apoda) have inspired people for thousands of years. Like many birds on the isolated island […]

The post Feathers of seduction – the connection between birds and people of New Guinea appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The clouded leopard, a native of Southeast Asia, is among the most charismatic, secretive and least understood cat species in the world. In 2002, the […]

The post Clouded leopards, from crisis to success: Q&A with Janine Brown appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Inka Empire is one of the greatest civilizations in the Western Hemisphere, spanning from the 13th century until the Spanish invasion in 1532. To […]

The post 5 Reasons the Inka Road is one of the Greatest Achievements in Engineering appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Since researchers began surveys in the 1980s, coral reefs in the Caribbean have undergone widespread change following bleaching and disease epidemics that have reduced the […]

The post Study reveals Agriculture and Fishing Cause Coral Reef Decline appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Osteoarthritis in dogs is a serious and painful malady that effects many breeds. Recently Janine Brown, a biologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in […]

The post X-ray fluorescence shines new light on arthritis in dogs appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

For the past 50 years, the number of wood thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) that breed in the United States has decreased more than 60 percent. However, […]

The post Smithsonian Scientists Solve Puzzle of Dramatic Wood Thrush Decline appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The planet’s last stronghold of wild cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) is losing genetic diversity at an alarming rate according to a new study from the Smithsonian […]

The post Smithsonian Study reveals Decline of Genetic Diversity in Wild Cheetahs appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

(Study is one of dozens to be presented by bird scientists this week at the 2016 North American Ornithological Conference in Washington, D.C.) To catch tuna […]

The post Fishing gear entanglements of marine birds is focus of Smithsonian ecologist’s study appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

An extraordinary arrangement of bristles, wrinkles and wart-like bumps cover the cold skin of Sphaerephesia amphorata, a new deep-sea worm described and named by researchers […]

The post Bizarre new marine worms covered in bristles, wrinkles & bumps appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Food is scarce in the deep, dark regions of the ocean where barbeled dragonfishes and their relatives dwell. Known as the Stomiidae, some of these […]

The post Odd anatomy: flexible joint between skull and spine allow dragonfish to open wide appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The world’s most indestructible species, the tardigrade, an eight-legged micro-animal, also known as the water bear, will survive until the Sun dies, according to a […]

The post Study determines microscopic water bears will be Earth’s last survivors appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Covered in sharp spines, when harassed the porcupine fish inflates like a balloon. Think of a small soccer ball bristling all over with nails. Most predators […]

The post Indestructible jaws from ancient, extinct porcupine fish reveal new species appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

With a non-stop babble of hums, grunts and shrill squeals as they argue over fish and defend their territories, the Amazon’s giant otters are one […]

The post With voices joined in chorus, giant otter families create a distinct sound signature appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Some of Hong Kong’s most disturbed and pristine marine environments were the recent focus of an intense 10-day MarineGEO survey of living organisms by a […]

The post MarineGEO survey conducted in Hong Kong appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.