Kinsley Boyette, assistant director of the Aquarium and Shark Lab by Team ECCO, poses alongside the round stingray Charlotte, who is pregnant, even though she had lived at the aquarium for years without a male companion of her species. (===Aquarium and Shark Lab by Team ECCO via AP),
Animals had quite a year in 2024.
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Except for “murder hornets.” The 2-inch or larger northern giant hornets that freaked us all out when we were doom-scrolling during the pandemic have been eradicated, the Agriculture Department said in late 2024
Never mind that scientists said the moniker was unfortunate, and that the hornets never posed a murderous threat — or any other risk — to humans. Honey bees, with their important pollinator roles, were another matter. So goodbye and good riddance, murder hornets. Do let the door squish you on the way out.
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One bug we’ll be seeing more of in 2025 — cue up a strings orchestra and bring it to a deafening crescendo — is the amazing periodical cicada. Thirteen states will experience the wonder (or aggravation) of these bugs this spring when millions of Brood XIV cicadas tunnel to freedom after 17 years underground, united in a singular purpose, to have as much sex as possible before they die, thereby ensuring the survival of the species.
Two broods emerged in 2024, overlapping in Illinois, where they enchanted some curious young children who got to play citizen scientists. There were so many cicadas — billions of them in the rare dual emergence — frantically fulfilling their assignments that these young field scouts found the super rare blue-eyed cicada on more than one occasion.
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(Photo courtesy of Rick Prange)
Cicadas understand their assignment and nothing will stop them, not even a fungus with the same chemical properties as “magic” mushrooms. The effect was “zombie cicadas” that had sex even after their genitals fell off.
And they may spread the insect version of STDs.
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“Cicada-cations” were a thing in 2024. Seeing and hearing the bugs was a bucket list item for people who traveled from places like the Pacific Northwest, which don’t have periodical cicadas.
“It’s awesome, right?” someone on Reddit wondered. “Like as a bug lover, that’s something I should see? Or is just really obnoxious to deal with?”
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The truth is, it can be.
One bit of science that freaked us out more than the sheer number of bugs was researchers’ finding that cicadas deliberately squirt pee at people. And that their powerful jets of pee travel farther than the urine streams of any other animal species its size. The more you know, though.
(Shutterstock)
Giant Joro spiders the size of a human palm, first spotted in Georgia in 2014, continued their flight north in 2024. Yes, these venomous “fly,” in a manner of speaking, spinning strands of silk that allow them to travel wind currents and “parachute” from one place to another.
Despite their startling appearance, researchers say that Joro spiders are docile and shy, and do not pose a threat to people or pets.
Marine life confused, educated and entertained us in 2024 but also gave us the heebie-jeebies.
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One of the biggest marine mysteries (lead photo) involved the surprise pregnancy of a stingray named Charlotte who hadn’t been swimming with any male rays. Initially, marine biologists thought a shark impregnated the ray, which can happen, but the shark is off the hook.
It was no doubt comforting to Florida residents who have been interrupted in the night by noises causing tremors in their homes to find out it was just loud fish sex, a normal winter occurrence, and not one of the floated conspiracy theories.
It was also creepy in November when a dead “doomsday fish” washed ashore in Southern California for the third time in less than a year.
A month earlier, beachgoers in Dana Point, California, were greeted by the nightmarish sight of sea creature that appeared to have crawled out of some distant primordial pool. No, officials said, it was a particularly ugly type of Moray eel.
2024 was illuminating when researchers found that charismatic sea otters — looking at you, surfboard high jacking otter 841 — are ridding estuaries and other coastal waters of invasive species out of estuaries and other coastal waters of one of the primary threats to the marine environment, the super-invasive green crab.
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Once near extinction because of the fur trade in the 18th and 19th centuries, about 120 of these apex predators are living in a slough near the San Francisco Bay have effectively rid it of crabs, while places where otters don’t hang out are battling the problem.
Sea otters, one researcher said, are the “assistant manager of the slough in helping us keep invaders in check.”
(AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
When 2024 dawned, a pod of killer whales seemed in no hurry to leave Southern California waters. Whale watchers were repeatedly treated to breathtaking — and sometimes bloody — displays put on by the ocean’s top predator.
It’s not unusual to see orcas, but something was different about this pod. For one thing, such a long visit by whales from the southern waters of Mexico was unprecedented, marine biologist Alisa Schulman told Patch. “They’re extremely rarely seen. It’s absolutely fascinating.”
Warm-blooded animals had their share of freaky moments, too.
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Some ground squirrels in California have become carnivorous and eat lower-order cousins on the taxonomic hierarchy. It’s all good, though. In a groundbreaking study, researchers showed how the state’s native ground squirrels adapt to environmental changes such as a surge in the local vole population. They’re lunch.
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(Sonja Wild, UC Davis)
In other science news, a cloned black-footed ferret at the Smithsonian National Zoo gave birth in what is hailed as a conservation milestone for the endangered species.
Chance encounters with animals took a strange twist a couple of times last year.
An owl flew down the chimney in a Virginia home last month and perched atop a family’s Christmas tree in what could become a storyline if there’s ever a remake of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”
(Photo courtesy of WLA)
The barred owl wasn’t the only creature that ended up where it didn’t want to be. One of the prizes inside a claw machine arcade game at a mini golf course in Pennsylvania, and it turned out to be a groundhog that was frantically trying to get out. And no, it wasn’t Pennsylvania’s famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil.
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This was like something out of a children’s fable: It was “cuteness overload” when three bears stopped by a Monrovia, California, home and took a dip in the pool.
(Rick Martinez/@RickyMartinez87 via Instagram)
You can’t make this up: A cat in Michigan set the house on fire while its family slept when it accidentally hit two buttons in the right sequence to start the oven’s super-hot self-clean function, igniting a pan with bacon grease that had been put in the oven to keep it away from the cat.
Certain stories affirmed the bond between pets and their families. For example, Athena, a dog in Florida, was missing for nine days before she showed up and rang the doorbell. She came home on Christmas Eve.
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