A species of amoeba discovered in California鈥檚 Lassen Volcanic National Park can survive and thrive in temperatures that had been considered impossibly high for complex life.

Nicknamed the fire amoeba by the researchers who collected it, Incendiamoeba cascadensis can survive in waters heated up to 70掳C (158掳F). However, it only retains the ability to eat and reproduce up to temperatures of 63掳C (145.4掳F), and it loses the ability to move around above 64掳C (147.2掳F).

Previously, according to at Syracuse University, New York, 60掳C (140掳F) was considered the 鈥�4-minute mile鈥� barrier for eukaryotes, the branch of the tree of life that contains all complex life forms including animals and plants, and that is defined by the presence of cells in which DNA is protected within a nucleus.

The discovery shows that eukaryotes can grow at temperatures higher than once thought possible, Oliverio says, and now that the fire amoeba has been found, more similarly tolerant extremophile species will likely be uncovered elsewhere.

鈥淭he 4-minute mile was long thought to be impossible,鈥� says Oliverio. 鈥淏ut once accomplished, it only took weeks to be broken again.鈥�

Simpler organisms can survive at even more extreme temperatures. Methanopyrus kandleri, a single-celled archaeon that lacks a nucleus, can .

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Oliverio and her colleagues collected I. cascadensis from a small geothermal stream within California鈥檚 Lassen Volcanic National Park, flowing through a 鈥渂eautiful meadow鈥� less than half a metre wide for most of its length. Temperatures in the stream range from 49掳C (120.2掳F) to 65掳C (149掳F), with a pH range of 6 to 7.

At full stretch, I. cascadensis is, on average, about 40 micrometres long and 10 碌m wide, says Oliverio.

鈥淭his is over 10 times the size of the average bacterial cell, and closer to the width of a human white blood cell,鈥� she says. In such a hot environment, the fire amoeba is the top-order predator, feeding on thermophile bacteria, which are far more common.

鈥淚t is somewhat analogous to going into a forest where you will likely see lots of plants but very few bears, even though they are common and live in these environments, too,鈥� says Oliverio.

at Monash University, Australia, says the discovery means he will have to rewrite his lectures on extremophiles.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a very exciting finding that extends the temperature record for the growth of eukaryotic life by at least 3掳C 鈥� a significant leap,鈥� he says.

The team cultured the amoeba back in the lab, where they tested the upper and lower limits of its survival by studying it at 17 different temperatures, ranging from 30掳C (86掳F) to 64掳C.

Earth extremophile can grow in聽near-Mars-like conditions

A salt-loving microorganism found in places like the Dead Sea can not just survive but actively grow in conditions close to those that may be found just under the Martian surface

They found there was no growth below 40掳C (104掳F) or above 63掳C, with the optimal range between 55掳C (131掳F) and 57掳C (134.6掳F). Above 64掳C, the amoeba rolls up into a cyst to protect itself from the heat. After exposure to temperatures above 70掳C (158掳C), these cysts are 鈥渋nactivated鈥�.

Intriguingly, when the team searched worldwide e-DNA databases for a signature similar to I. cascadensis, they discovered some RNA matches from a geothermal mat in the Taup艒 Volcanic Zone in New Zealand, and three matches from Yellowstone National Park in the US.

Some of these may be distinct, closely related species to the fire amoeba that haven鈥檛 yet been collected or cultured. The search should continue for even more extreme life forms, says Oliverio.

鈥淎s far as we know, there is no reason why 63掳C is the hard limit.鈥�

A new cat species has been scientifically described 鈥� the diminutive, spotted tilcayo from Bolivia.

Several species of small cat in the Leopardus genus live in South America, including the ocelot, margay, kodkod, Geoffroy鈥檚 cat and the tiger cat or oncilla. The similar appearance of these nocturnal and hard-to-spot cats has made separating them into distinct species difficult.

This is particularly true of tiger cats, which are about the size of a house cat, and are found in Costa Rica in Central America, and across a vast swathe of South America including Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Historically, there have been many local and scientific names for them, but they all got subsumed into a single species, Leopardus tigrinus.

Genetic studies have since divided the species into four, resurrecting three of the species names that scientists once used before they were all lumped together under the name L. tigrinus. This process saw the official recognition of the in 2013, in 2017 and the in 2024.

Now, at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and his colleagues have analysed the complete genomes of 38 individuals from the Leopardus genus, including 26 tiger cats from across their known range.

The genomics revealed a fifth distinct species living in the Bolivian Yungas forests on the east slopes of the Andes mountains. The researchers describe it under a completely new name: Leopardus tilcayo, naming it after the local term used for this cat.

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鈥淲e鈥檝e discovered a new species of cat that had not been scientifically named before,鈥� says Eizirik, adding that this is the first time this has happened for a century.

鈥淭here are more cat species. Who can鈥檛 love that?鈥� says at the University of Missouri. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e hard to find and see, so it鈥檚 not surprising that some of the early taxonomy needs to be modified now we have more data.鈥�

L. tilcayo has a combined head and body length of between about 42 and 50 centimetres and weighs between 1.5 and 2 kilograms. The genomes revealed that it diverged from the lineage containing L. tigrinus and L. pardinoides nearly 1.4 million years ago.

Origin story of domestic cats rewritten by genetic analysis

Domestic cats originated in North Africa and spread to Europe in the past 2000 years, according to DNA evidence, while in China a different species of cat lived alongside people much earlier

Telling the new species apart visually is not easy. 鈥淭he five tiger cat species are all cryptic species. They鈥檙e morphologically very similar,鈥� says team member at University of Antwerp in Belgium.

The researchers also found that in the Peruvian Yungas forests, on the west side of the Andes, there is a distinct group of cats in the L. tigrinus lineage that they describe as a novel subspecies, L. tigrinus antisuyo.

There are so many barriers in South America that can geographically isolate animal populations from each other, including mountains and rivers, that more cat species may be waiting to be found, says Lyons. 鈥淚t鈥檇 be rather cool if we could find another species out there.鈥�

L. tigrinus is by the IUCN Red List, but the new species and subspecies will have to be evaluated and protected as distinct units, says Eizirik, especially as the forests they live in are shrinking as agriculture expands.

From a viper with a bloodthirsty hitchhiker to a bullfrog narrowly missing its lunch, these photographs, all of which are in the running for this year鈥檚 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, offer a glimpse into the drama unfolding across the animal kingdom.

Biting Back,听an intimidating shot captured by Andrea and Maceo Grammatico,听was highly commended in the contest鈥檚 Animal聽Portraits category.聽The twins say it聽wasn鈥檛聽until聽reviewing their聽photographs聽that they聽spotted聽a mosquito聽drinking from the head of the聽fer-de-lance聽鈥撀爐he most dangerous snake in Central America.

There was a聽near miss in聽Jens Cullmann鈥檚聽Split-Second Escape,聽highly commended in the聽Behaviour:聽Amphibians and聽Reptiles聽category and shown in the main image.聽The moment was聽almost as聽fleeting as the frog鈥檚 prey 鈥� an African babul blue butterfly 鈥� and all the more remarkable given that Cullmann had聽spotted聽tadpoles a month earlier, returning to find them transformed into聽young bullfrogs. African bullfrogs spend much of the year聽underground聽in an聽inactive state聽known as聽aestivation,听emerging聽only for a short period after the rainy season to breed,听hunt and gorge.聽

Hiding not hunting is the speciality of the lichen dragon katydid captured by聽Gil Wizen,听below. Named Hidden Dragon, Wizen鈥檚 shot, highly commended in the Behaviour: Invertebrates category, captures the almost perfectly camouflaged, 15-millimetre-long, spiky insect 鈥� a rare species found only in the Ecuadorian Andes mountains.

Moving away from rural聽environments,听笔辞辞濒迟颈尘别听笔补蝉迟颈尘别听by Loren Elliott,听below, was聽highly commended in the Urban Wildlife category. Elliott captures聽the聽unusual聽sight聽of a聽black bear聽taking time to chill in a swimming pool in southern California. While the bear聽may look聽somewhat聽out聽of place,听these run-ins are becoming聽surprisingly common as聽housing developments continue聽to聽encroach聽on bear territory.聽聽

Finally,听a black vulture grasps the carcass of a yacare caiman in Andrew Parkinson鈥檚聽Wings of Darkness,听below, captured in Brazil鈥檚 Pantanal wetlands聽and聽also聽highly commended in the Animal Portraits category.聽Despite a seemingly firm grip, the scavenger鈥檚 meal聽wasn鈥檛聽to be,听with a jaguar waiting just out of shot for the perfect opportunity to claim the聽caiman.

The competition鈥檚 overall winner will be announced on 13 October. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year聽contest is organised by London鈥檚 Natural History聽Museum,听which will run an of the images from 16 October to 11 July 2027.

This unusual photograph, shot under ultraviolet light with a 13-second exposure, shows some of the damage caused on land by fishing out at sea.

Gaurav Patil鈥檚 image of a fishing net that has been carried by ocean currents and become tangled in a mangrove tree on the shore of Nandgaon village, south of Mumbai, India, has won the overall prize in the 2026 . The competition is organised by US non-profit organisation Mangrove Action Project to raise awareness of the precarious position of the world鈥檚 mangrove forests.

Mangroves less than 1 per cent of all tropical forests, but provide crucial habitat for wildlife and store up to 10 times more carbon than the same area of inland forest. Despite better recent news after decades of decline, more than half of mangrove ecosystems are to be at .

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of lost, abandoned and discarded fishing gear litter the oceans, carried around the globe by currents and eventually getting caught up or breaking down into microplastics. This gear can severely damage mangrove ecosystems, entangling marine life and choking mangrove trees.

鈥淭his photographer has put life into a subject that normally looks dull but is deeply important for conservation. Ghost nets are a real problem,鈥� said judge Dhritiman Mukherjee in an announcement about the prize.

This has to be the strangest August ever, with climate-changed weather making itself felt all over the place. It is also strange because new books are in short supply. That said, the shelves are by no means bare. We have books to recommend to you on everything from octopus ethics and designing the universe to endometriosis and talking to computers. So, whatever you end up doing to refresh and recharge, we鈥檝e got the book for you.

by Daniel Lieberman聽

Meaty palaeo? Going veggie or vegan? Eating Mediterranean? Fasting, intermittently or otherwise? Low or high carbs? Enough 鈥� before we all lose the plot! Enter Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary anthropologist at Harvard University who, says his publisher, 鈥渢ackles this confusion head on with his trademark blend of lively storytelling and myth-busting science鈥�.

As you would expect, Lieberman draws on evolutionary biology, anthropology and physiology to figure out how we are going so wrong. He travels all the way back, moving from what humans evolved to eat through to how fire, farming and industrialisation transformed our diets, and right up to today as we learn how to combine all that history with rigorous medical science. It will be fascinating to see what former New 精东传媒 staffer Chris Simms makes of it in our review, to be published shortly.

by Jonathan Loh

To know where we are headed, it can help to have a reasonable grasp of where we have been. So, will some big-picture thinking from an independent scholar help? Jonathan Loh鈥檚 publishers call his book Life Story a 鈥減anoramic history of life, revealing the forces that have shaped our world 鈥� and could shape it again鈥�. We move through the rise of Homo sapiens, from foragers to farmers, from the Bronze Age to the industrial revolution, through 鈥渉idden patterns linking genetics and language, organisms and states, ecosystems and economies, mass extinctions and civilisational collapse鈥�.

Humans may dominate the planet, but, as machine intelligence gathers pace, is that supremacy only a phase? Loh is a biologist who has worked as a consultant to organisations such the United Nations Environment Programme and WWF on the conservation of biological and cultural diversity, so he should be well placed to build a deep chronicle of the past and lay out his big idea: culture as a form of life. What would that mean in terms of an AI future? We shall see鈥β犅�

by Xiaochang Li

The idea of talking to machines has been an enduring human fantasy. Divination Engines is a bit of a wild card: author Xiaochang Li, an assistant professor in the department of communication at Stanford University in California, shows her readers how that dream 鈥渂oth fueled the demand for data and set the stage for today鈥檚 generative AI鈥�. Sneak peaks reveal a book that is no easy read (brace for technical details), but one in which Li manages to explain the origins of what we call natural language processing, as well as the 20^th-century debates between computer scientists, linguists and communication engineers that shaped today鈥檚 technology.

She sets out to show how computer speech recognition advanced technology by de-emphasising linguistic meaning in favour of statistical prediction 鈥� that is, how researchers gradually abandoned systems that tried to聽understand聽human language in favour of workarounds that just predicted聽patterns in speech and text data. The rest is, as they say, history鈥� and that鈥檚 before we even mention search engines, spam filters, content managers and the like. All this comes at the cost of needing more and more new data 鈥� forever! This will be a tough read for many of us, but one that鈥檚 worth the effort. Oh, and Kate Crawford, author of Atlas of AI, calls the book 鈥渁 landmark in the critical history of artificial intelligence鈥�.

by Catherine Heymans

No small ambition in this next book, either. Astrophysicist Catherine Heymans鈥檚 latest is, according to its subtitle, no less than a look at the 鈥渟cience of real and virtual worlds鈥�. At its heart is that wonderful, death-defying question: could we be living in a computer simulation, and how would we even know? It all sounds fascinating, as Heymans, the astronomer royal for Scotland, takes us 鈥渙n a humorous and mind-bending journey through the science of reality itself鈥�.

From subatomic particles and the cosmic mysteries of dark matter to the secrets of the human senses, we are promised an exploration of 鈥渨hether humanity could ever create a virtual universe as rich and diverse as our own 鈥� and what that means for our sense of self, free will and consciousness鈥�. Not much going on here, then.

by Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi

This is one for all of us who love silvery-grey snow leopards, those fabulous and elusive beasts, which live in the rugged mountains of central Asia, camouflaged against the rocks and cliffs. For the past 20 years, scientist, conservationist and mountaineer Kulbhushansingh (Kullu) Suryawanshi has studied them in the wild, exploring every aspect of their lives from habitat to prey to population 鈥� sometimes living for months in the world鈥檚 toughest, most remote environments. Suryawanshi, we are promised, has 鈥減ioneered new research that shines fresh light on these charismatic and vulnerable animals, showing how their fate is entangled with the local people and how their survival is central to preserving an austere, delicate ecosystem鈥�.

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by Lani Watson

There is something wonderful about books with a single letter as their main title. Q (and here鈥檚 the subtitle so we know what we鈥檙e talking about: The hidden power of questions in a world that wants answers) is all about the art and science of asking questions, as the only creature on Earth that does so in any formal sense. But we鈥檙e trained to look for answers, not how to ask questions 鈥� so much so, says author Lani Watson, that we live in an answer-rich, question-poor world.

Yet, as the publishers remind us,鈥� from doctors鈥� surgeries to courtrooms to dating, the ability to ask questions determines our experiences. In a world obsessed by answers, asking better questions is powerful.鈥�

That sounds very wise, and we should be in good hands: Watson is a philosopher and honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, UK, as well as a former research fellow at the University of Oxford. Plug into what her publishers call a 鈥渃aptivating narrative from the death of Socrates to the age of AI鈥�, and you will soon learn how to think about the questions you ask and the ones you don鈥檛.

by Richard Schweid

With octopus blooms suddenly appearing in many places, journalist Richard Schweid and publisher University of North Carolina Press could hardly have hit on a more provocative subject. Billed as a 鈥済ripping, on-the-ground investigation into the global race to farm octopus and the ethical firestorm it has ignited鈥�, there is clearly a lot to chew on as we explore the 鈥渆thics and future of growing the world鈥檚 most intelligent invertebrate鈥�.

Among the issues is the fact that, in 2021, the London School of Economics recognised invertebrates such as cephalopods (octopus, cuttlefish, squid) and decapods (crayfish, crabs, lobsters) as capable of experiencing pain, distress and happiness, finding that high-welfare farming of them would therefore be impossible. But the enormous international demand for octopus meat continues to grow, even as wild octopus populations decline. Fishers in the UK鈥檚 south-west are already experiencing problems as the vast number of octopuses eat their typical high-value catch: adult lobsters, brown edible crabs, scallops and the like. What to do instead? Eat the octopuses? Apparently, recipes are proliferating鈥� a dilemma indeed.

by Evelyn Scott

This is no less than an expos茅 of medical misogyny, says the publisher of what looks like a forthright book about endometriosis, A Bloody Scandal: How medicine fails women in pain. There should be a huge market for it, given the sheer number who experience it (it is often said that 1 in 10 women do, but the real figure is probably higher), often in silence and for decades.

Author Evelyn Scott weaves in her own experience of the condition: she was just a teenager when she first had the symptoms of endometriosis. She shares 15 years during which she endured constant, agonising pain 鈥� and hopeless ineptitude when seeking support, ranging from dismissals on the grounds of hysteria to misdiagnoses. She felt completely isolated, until she discovered all the other women experiencing the same condition. Powerful stuff and, many will argue, long overdue.

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鈥淢ost people are completely unaware of what is in the water,鈥� says Julian Cremona, a naturalist and photographer who is out to change that with his new book.

Plankton is an umbrella term for all kinds of different organisms floating in our waters, from plants, known as phytoplankton, to animals, known as zooplankton. They can be as little as 0.02 micrometres, the size of some viruses, or as big as 2 metres, the size of a large jellyfish. What they have in common is that they aren鈥檛 powerful enough to overcome the movement of water, unlike organisms that can resist the current. As Cremona writes, plankton are 鈥渄rifting organisms that are unable to determine their long-term direction and are at the whims of the current鈥�.

Cremona鈥檚 book is a guide to the different types of plankton found along the British coast, such as the larva of a Magelona worm, just 2 millimetres in size, in the main image. To take this photograph, Cremona fitted objective lenses from an old microscope to his camera.

Below is a shot of a tiny zooplankter, Oikopleura. Its body is made up of a trunk on top of a long tail, ranging from a few millimetres to a centimetre long. It has a lifespan of five to six days, over which it grows, reproduces and finally dies.

Some larger plankton are shown below, including a handful of compass jellyfish (Chrysaora hysoscella), which are mostly found in northern Europe. The umbrella of this jellyfish can stretch to 30 centimetres in diameter, and it uses its 24 tentacles to catch its food: small fish, crabs and other jellyfish.

Pictured below is a swarm of moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita), the most common jellyfish to be found in the UK鈥檚 waters.

Some phytoplankton exhibit symbiosis with jellyfish and sea anemones, such as the aptly named snakelocks anemone (Anemonia viridis), pictured below. Single-celled Symbiodinium plankton live within the tissue of its green tentacles, where they perform photosynthesis and provide their host with carbohydrates. In return, the plankton receive inorganic carbon, nitrogen, phosphate 鈥� and a protected refuge in which to live.