Kyoto, Japan -- The intrinsic information-seeking impulse we call curiosity is independent of extrinsic rewards, such as food or mating opportunities. Curiosity is purely the pursuit of understanding the unknown, driving both humans and animals to explore their environments. Still, certain stimuli tend to spark curiosity more than others.

Recent research supports a Goldilocks principle, in which curiosity is biased toward moderately complex or uncertain stimuli while avoiding overly simple or convoluted situations. This tendency characterizes human curiosity, but few studies have explored this impulse in nonhuman animals. A team of researchers at Kyoto University's Institute for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior, EHUB, wondered if a new sort of method might be useful in addressing curiosity in monkeys.

Video games are gaining more acceptance as tools that may help train cognitive abilities, and thus improve quality of life for humans. The researchers thought that if they could develop a video game that sparked the curiosity and engagement of animals in laboratories and zoos -- or even pets such as cats and dogs -- this could potentially help improve living environments and contribute to animal welfare.

Researchers have deployed a portable, non-invasive monitoring system on the seafloor of a remote Greenlandic fjord to observe Arctic biodiversity without disturbing the ecosystem.

Acid-filled pitchers complete with fangs. Labyrinthine chambers decorated with bristles. Leaves that snap shut in less than a second. Employing strategies like these, carnivorous plants have a reputation as fearsome predators, but they may do more to help their insect neighbors than previously thought. 

Using mass spectroscopy to analyze the nitrogen isotope levels of wasps and pitcher plant leaves, researchers found that the nectar of carnivorous pitcher plants comprises an important part of the insects’ diet. This research provides evidence that this interaction isn’t as simple as a predator eating their prey, and that these pitcher plants likely play a larger role in their local ecosystems than was first thought. 

A Hiroshima-University-led research team has discovered a key gene responsible for the initiation of gemma development, acting as a "master switch" to start asexual reproduction (cloning) in the model plant Marchantia polymorpha (common liverwort). 

A team of professional and amateur Japanese astronomers found evidence for a thin atmosphere around a small body in the outer Solar System, a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) known as (612533) 2002 XV₉₃. The object is so small that it should not have a sustainable atmosphere, raising questions about when and how the atmosphere formed. Future observations to better characterize the atmosphere will help solve these mysteries.

Manganese dioxide can convert amino acids into hydrogen cyanide (HCN) without requiring methane, solving a long-standing puzzle about the origin of this key prebiotic molecule on early Earth, as reported by researchers from Science Tokyo. Although HCN is central to origin-of-life theories, recent evidence suggests early Earth's atmosphere didn’t contain sufficient methane needed for classic HCN-producing reactions. The newly found chemical pathway shows that HCN could instead have been continuously supplied from abundant amino acids.

In 2026, the Arctic winter sea-ice extent (annual maximum extent ,note 1) reached the lowest value since satellite observations began in 1979 (Figure 1a), following the previous record low in March 2025.

As part of the Arctic Challenge for Sustainability III (ArCS III, note 2), the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) maintain a long-term dataset spanning more than 40 years. This dataset is primarily based on observations from microwave radiometers, including the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) onboard the Global Change Observation Mission – Water “SHIZUKU” (GCOM-W). The institutions contribute to monitoring polar environmental changes by visualizing temporal and spatial changes in sea ice extent in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and making the data available on the Arctic Data archive System (ADS, note 3) website.

Diazoacetic acid esters are important intermediates in drug and agrochemical synthesis, but their preparation typically requires hazardous diazomethane. Researchers from the Tokyo University of Science developed a safer method using a Michael addition-mediated azide-to-diazo conversion. By pretreating 2-azidoacrylic acid esters with a bulky phosphine followed by nucleophile addition, they produced β-heteroatom-substituted diazo esters without toxic precursors. This simpler approach offers a practical and flexible route to access diverse organonitrogen compounds.