Is winter miserable for wildlife?

Ever wonder if the animals you see outside your window in winter are doing OK? Don't worry – they're doing better out there than you would.

Insects get old before they die

Short-lived insects, like crickets, “get old," - that is, lose some of their physical abilities – before they die, new research shows.

Did life on land arrive far earlier than thought?

New clues from fossils from the oldest soils on Earth suggest that multicellular, land-dwelling organisms might have emerged much earlier than we thought.

Whales share songs from other oceans

Singing humpback whales from different ocean basins seem to be picking up musical ideas from afar, and incorporating these new phrases and themes into their songs.

Oceans warming even faster than thought

A new analysis has found that Earth's oceans are heating up 40% faster than a United Nations panel estimated 5 years ago.

The shrinking Aral Sea

The Aral Sea was once the world's 4th-largest lake. But in the 1960s, the Soviet Union diverted 2 major rivers to irrigate farmland, and the Aral Sea has been slowly disappearing ever since.

Black carbon from Gulf War shows up in Tibet glacier

A study traces black carbon from 1991 Kuwait oil fires to ice in northern Tibet. Researchers say this soot could affect glacier melt at the Tibetan plateau, considered the "Water Tower of Asia."

Watch hummingbirds feed – and fight – in slo-mo

Turns out some hummingbird bills have evolved for fencing as well as sipping nectar.

More East Antarctica glaciers are waking up

Researchers have said that Totten Glacier, a behemoth with enough ice to raise sea levels by 11 feet (3.4 meters), appears to be melting. Now, they say 4 glaciers west of Totten, and a handful farther east, are also losing ice.

EarthSky’s top 5 stories of 2018

From the months-long eruption of Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano to a strange object discovered on the surface of Mars - and more - here's a quick roundup of the stories our readers enjoyed most in 2018.