Published Monday, April 15, 2024 | 11:27 p.m.
Updated Tuesday, April 16, 2024 | 12:05 a.m.
That coffee you slurped this morning? It’s 600,000 years old. Using genes from coffee plants around the world, researchers built a family tree for the world’s most popular type of coffee, known to scientists as Coffea arabica and to coffee lovers simply as “arabica.” The researchers, hoping to learn more about the plants to better protect them from pests and climate change, found that the species emerged around 600,000 years ago through natural crossbreeding of two other coffee species. University at Buffalo biologist Victor Albert, who co-led the study, the crossbreeding happened without any intervention from man. These wild coffee plants originated in Ethiopia but are thought to have been first roasted and brewed primarily in Yemen starting in the 1400s.
The one thing 9-year-old Cal Clifford wanted more than anything since he was a toddler was a pet octopus. The boy’s family in rural Edmond, Oklahoma, humored him with toy versions of an eight-legged mollusk, but as Cal got older it became clear that only the real thing would do. The child’s father, 36-year-old dentist Cameron Clifford, researched the possibility with a local aquarium store and before long Terrance the California two-spot octopus, also known as a bimac, was living in a watery enclosure at the family home southwest of Oklahoma City. A popular TikTok saga was launched with the father narrating the tale of Terrance the cephalopod, using a faux British accent generated by the social media app. Eventually, hundreds of thousands of people were following.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — An endangered Bornean orangutan baby has been welcomed into the world at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay in Florida. The female newborn was delivered by cesarean section on Saturday, weighing just over three pounds. Park officials say the mother, Luna, is recuperating from surgery and will be reunited with the baby once she is stabilized. These orangutans are found only on the island of Borneo and are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Busch Gardens Tampa Bay is part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan, which focuses on managing threatened populations and educates visitors about the animals.
