A survey study of families with puppies in the U.K. has identified multiple mental health challenges alongside benefits of ownership for adults and kids alike, suggesting that a mental health boost should not be the main motivator behind getting a puppy. Rowena Packer of the Royal Veterinary College, U.K., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on September 17, 2025.

1 in 8 Italian cetacean strandings show evidence of fishery interactions, with bottlenose and striped dolphins most commonly affected, according to analysis across four decades of data and more than 5,000 strandings

Accumulating evidence suggests that many animals ingest alcohol as part of their normal diet. UC Berkeley biologists assayed the ethanol content of fruit eaten in the wild by chimpanzees, our closest living relative, and calculated that chimps likely consume 14 grams of ethanol daily. Adjusting for body size, that's about two standard cocktails. Alcohol from fermentation may be part of a healthy primate diet. Was it also part of the diet of human ancestors?

Salk Institute and the University of California San Diego have identified a unique sugar called HSAT (antithrombin-binding heparan sulfate) as a potential therapeutic target for slowing tumor progression and metastasis in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the most common pancreatic cancer. They also found that HSAT was detectable in cancer patients’ plasma, suggesting it may be a useful biomarker to help catch and track pancreatic cancer.

How did digits evolve? While it is clear that they derive from genetic programs already present in fish, their precise origin remained a matter of debate. An international team led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) with EPFL, the Collège de France, and the universities of Harvard and Chicago has come up with an unexpected answer: digits may have evolved from the reuse of an ancient region of the genome, initially active in the formation of the fish cloaca rather than their fins. Published in Nature, this discovery reveals a major evolutionary strategy that consists of recycling what already exists rather than building something new.

Dr. Carl F. Nathan, the R.A. Rees Pritchett Professor of Microbiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded the David and Beatrix Hamburg Award for Advances in Biomedical Research and Clinical Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine.