Gibraltar’s famous macaques have started eating soil, a behaviour linked to their access to tourist snacks, according to a new study. Scientists say it may help the animals digest high-calorie foods, and is an example of primate culture adapting to “anthropogenic landscapes”.

Researchers have discovered the Huaxi Green Pitviper (Trimeresurus lii) in the misty mountains of Sichuan, China, a new species named in honour of the philosopher Laozi to celebrate the harmony between nature and humanity. This discovery within the Giant Panda National Park demonstrates the importance of continued biodiversity surveys in the region’s high-altitude rain zones.

A new study published in Biology Letters provides the most definitive evidence yet of trilobite respiration, confirming that the feather-like structures attached to trilobites limbs functioned as sophisticated gills.

An international team of researchers, led by Peggi Angel, Ph.D., at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center, mapped the biology of healthy breast tissue and uncovered early molecular changes in collagen, the tissue’s structural framework, linked to cancer risk. Their findings show that breast tissue is not uniform; rather, it is made up of dynamic microenvironments shaped by factors like body weight and breast density.

This work suggests that cancer develops gradually – offering new opportunities for earlier detection, more personalized screening and improved prevention strategies.

Researchers have provided new insights into the evolutionary origin of sideways walking in crabs. Their study, published today as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, presents the largest comparative dataset on crab locomotion to help understand the origins of the animals’ iconic walk, tracing it back to a common ancestor around 200 million years ago. eLife’s editors say the work is valuable, with largely convincing evidence, and will be of interest to others studying animal locomotion.

Researchers at Tulane University School of Medicine have discovered that if animal cells gain an extra set of chromosomes, a condition known as polyploidy, they activate a stress signaling pathway that causes them to become more mobile and capable of engulfing neighboring cells with normal chromosome numbers. The study, to be published April 21 in the Journal of Cell Biology (JCB), could provide new ways to target polyploid cancer cells, which are thought to promote tumor aggressiveness and therapy resistance.