A male jaguar has made an unprecedented trek, skirting 2100 kilometres of the southern edge of the Amazon rainforest. The journey – which crossed highways, farms, ranches and other human-modified landscapes – expands our knowledge of what these big cats are capable of.

was about 60 to 100 kilometres, says at University College Dublin in Ireland. Knowing these animals are capable of travelling much longer distances reveals further challenges in protecting them. “Individuals that are travelling so far are more exposed to human-related risks like hunting or killing because of attacks on livestock,” says Morant.

He and his colleagues have been tracking jaguars in Brazil via GPS collars as part of a larger ongoing project that started in 1999. The researchers wanted to better understand how jaguars use their environments along the Araguaia river, a potential wildlife corridor connecting the Cerrado grasslands with the Amazon.

They captured the male, dubbed Gaspar, as part of this work, fitting him with a collar on 11 November 2024. The 8-year-old jaguar then spent some time in his established range, about 700 square kilometres along the Araguaia river, before setting out on a massive southward trek, skirting the border of the Amazon to inland Cerrado.

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The researchers recorded that Gaspar travelled 2122 kilometres, until his collar stopped transmitting locations in late Novemeber 2025, but that is as the crow flies. The actual distance is probably much more, says Morant.

While Gaspar mostly stuck to forested areas, he also crossed through heavily modified human landscapes, such as farms, ranches and roads. Dispersals, albeit shorter ones, are common in individuals aged 1 to 3 years old that are looking to establish a new territory, but it is unclear why an older adult like Gaspar made this move. He might have been searching for better food resources, mating opportunities or a better habitat in general, says Morant.

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“Beyond the extraordinary distance travelled, I find [it] especially intriguing that he apparently did not establish a territory despite more than a year of continuous 
movement through areas that were, at least in part, potentially suitable for jaguars,” says Jose Garcia Herrera at the Spanish National Research Council.

The findings also reveal an additional challenge in protecting such wide-ranging cats. In these human-modified areas, jaguars face threats from poaching, as ranchers often kill them to protect livestock. “Maybe we need to rethink how protected areas are framed and organised,” says Morant.

Gaspar’s fate is now uncertain. He may have been shot or poisoned, or the collar may have just stopped working, says Morant, which could mean Gaspar is still traversing the Brazilian landscape.

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Giant pandas have been seen using twigs or pieces of bamboo to scratch themselves. Other than an old anecdotal report about giant pandas rubbing dirt into their fur, this is the first recorded instance of tool use among these animals, says at the Shaanxi Institute of Zoology in China.

“Because pandas spend a lot of time eating and resting, they give the impression of being lazy, fond of food and cute,” says Yang. “So, when we discovered that pandas can use tools, it changed our previous perspective about them.”

Yang and his colleagues had noticed this behaviour during other work and set out to learn more about it. They recorded 383 instances of tool use over 50 days of observation of 18 captive giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) in a zoo in China, including both males and females.

The pandas mostly used twigs or pieces of bamboo they broke off trees, and almost always to scratch. This meant they could scratch parts of the body that would be hard to reach without the tools.

Since the giant pandas at this zoo live in a naturalistic outdoor setting, Yang says wild pandas may also use tools in this way, although no observations of wild pandas doing this have yet been reported.

Unlike other bears, pandas have a “false thumb” on their paws, a sixth digit much shorter than human thumbs that allows them to grasp objects in a way that other bears can’t. Pandas have relatively large brains – the breaking off of sticks specifically to use as tools suggests a capacity for short-term planning, the researchers say.

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“Pandas might have more complex cognition and behaviours than previously thought,” says Yang, but more work would be needed to learn more about this behaviour, including whether they can be directed to use tools.

Garden dormice may not seem particularly flamboyant. In fact, the small, brownish-white rodents spend much of their life trying not to be seen. But new research shows that under the right light, these animals shine with bright pinks and greenish-blues.

Photoluminescence occurs when a substance absorbs photons of ultraviolet light and re-emits them at longer wavelengths, often as visible colours. It occurs in many marine animals, some insects and millipedes and in the plumage of some birds. It encompasses two processes: fluorescence, when photons are re-emitted almost immediately, and phosphorescence, which can last for several minutes.

After seeing recent studies that found photoluminescence in nocturnal mammals such as and , at Tallinn Zoo in Estonia wondered if garden dormice (Eliomys quercinus) display it too. She made a high-stakes bet with a colleague that this would be the case: “The losing one would bake a cake,” says Nummert.

She and her team gathered a few of the garden dormice kept at Tallinn Zoo while they were sleeping and shone ultraviolet light on the animals.

Most of the mice’s fur glowed a bright purple colour, which looked reddish pink in photographs taken with a yellow filter on the camera lens. The feet and the nose, on the other hand, were bluish green.

To expand their observations, the researchers examined dead dormice stored at the Estonian Museum of Natural History under the UV light. These specimens also displayed photoluminescence, though their colours had faded over the years.

Nummert, who says the cake she won was “delicious”, isn’t sure yet why the dormice are photoluminescent. Some parrots use photoluminescence to signal to potential mates. Springhares have a patchy photoluminescence that may help camouflage them among plants that reflect light in a similar way, depending on what kind of creatures are looking.

It is also possible that the photoluminescence exhibited by dormice and other rodents is just a by-product of something they eat or some other natural process. It isn’t even clear if the dormice can perceive these colours themselves — humans certainly can’t without the help of an intense, artificial source of UV light.

“There is a whole world we cannot see,” says Nummert. “Animals perceive the world differently from us.”