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War Came to Ukraine and Its Dogs Are Not the Same

The human cost of the war in Ukraine has been well documented. But Russia’s invasion is also affecting the country’s pets.

In a study published in December, in the journal Evolutionary Applications, a group of researchers found that exposure to the conflict in Ukraine had, over a short period, transformed domesticated dogs into ones that would be found in wild environments.

Scientists gathered a variety of data from 763 dogs across nine regions of Ukraine. The team worked with animal shelters, while veterinarians and volunteers gathered data from stray dogs. Ihor Dykyy, a zoologist at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, gathered data near the city of Lyman in the Donetsk region, and later close to Kharkiv near the border with Russia for two years starting in 2022 as a volunteer with the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Most of the team’s findings suggested that dogs on the front line had become more like wild dog species, such as wolves or dingoes.

Examples of the transformation abounded in the data: The front-line dogs rarely had snouts that were either short like a French bulldog’s or elongated like a dachshund’s. Many also had reduced body mass. Even their ears took on a different shape, with pointed ears more frequent than floppy ears.

But the scientists did not want their findings interpreted as war-fueled accelerated evolution. What’s actually happening is the conditions of war favor animals with certain characteristics like less body mass, which makes it easier to hide.

While the study was restricted to dogs, it raises questions about the broader implications of environmental damage caused by war.

“Evidence that dogs are being strongly negatively affected by the horrors of war should serve as an alarm for other species,” said Euan Ritchie, a wildlife ecologist at Deakin University in Australia who was not involved in the research. Or as Malgorzata Pilot, leader of the project and a biologist at the University of Gdansk in Poland, put it: “Wars are not only humanitarian crises. They are also environmental disasters.” — ANTHONY HAM

This Giant Phantom Jelly Won’t Eat You. Maybe.

In late December, researchers in a control room fell silent when the remote vehicle they were operating in the Atlantic Ocean off Argentina spotted a jellyfish at 800 feet. It was no ordinary sighting: It was a giant phantom jelly a deep-sea species rarely seen in the world’s seas.

“Its ethereal and delicate presence in such an extreme environment was deeply surprising,” said María Emilia Bravo, a marine biologist at the University of Buenos Aires, who led the dive from a research ship operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute. The creature’s long arms made it difficult for the underwater vehicle’s operators on the ship to maneuver safely. “We were curious about getting to know it better and documenting it well.”

First collected in 1899, giant phantom jellies were not recognized as a species until 60 years later. Even then, specimens were typically found dead in trawling nets and rarely documented alive. Remote-operated vehicles made sightings of these creatures possible.

“Up until recently, nobody was able to actually see it in its natural habitat and in its full glory,” said Steve Haddock, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who was not involved with the dive.

These elusive creatures are among the largest jellyfish: Their bells can grow to more than 3 feet in diameter, and their arms can reach up to 30 feet in length. They hunt differently than other stinging jellyfish, relying on their long, curtainlike arms to catch plankton and small fish. But they also maintain a symbiotic relationship with some fish species, which are often seen swimming or hovering around a jelly’s bell or arms.

The midnight zone, the dark layer of the ocean that extends down to about 13,000 feet, is food-scarce and offers little refuge, so many smaller denizens find shelter among larger animals. Phantom jellies provide protection from predators, while the fish feed on the jelly’s parasites.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the fish often seen with phantom jellies are pelagic brotula. The one observed by the team in Argentina, however, belonged to a different group, a genus of medusafish called Centrolophus.

This finding is particularly important for the Argentine deep sea, Bravo said. Although there are historical records of associations between jellyfish and fish, this interaction had never before been documented in the deep waters around Patagonia. — ALEXA ROBLES-GIL

Rare Albatross Coasts Above California Waters Far From 91Ö±²¥

As Tammy Russell, a marine ornithologist, stood on the deck of a research vessel Jan. 23, something crossed her field of vision that did not belong there.

“I yelled, ‘waved albatross,’ and got out my phone to take a video, which turned out horribly because I was tripping over everything in utter shock at what I had just seen,” said Russell, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California in San Diego and a contract scientist at the Farallon Institute in Petaluma, California, which works to study and preserve marine ecosystems.

To Russell, who spent years observing the species, the yellow bill and dark eyes of the bird, above, were unmistakable. It had traveled about 3,300 miles from its typical range of the Galápagos Islands and other parts of South America.

“Nobody’s ever seen a waved albatross off anywhere north of Costa Rica previously,” said Marshall Iliff, project leader of eBird at the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, a database that allows bird watchers to document their sightings.

The American Bird Conservancy lists the waved albatross, also known as the Galápagos albatross, as “critically endangered.” Fewer than 70,000 remain, and their numbers are declining.

The bird, which is the largest in the Galápagos, is named for the faint, wavelike pattern that ripples across its brown body. What the bird is not known for is appearing off the California coast.

There had been one other sighting, in October 2025, off Northern California. Russell and others believe it was the same bird.

Albatrosses are built for roaming, searching large stretches of ocean for food using the wind to travel those distances. Shifts in sea-surface temperature or large climate patterns can redraw the lines they follow, said Jason Weckstein, an associate curator of ornithology and associate professor at Drexel University.

“That’s kind of the cool thing about seabirds,” he said. “They can show up in weird places.”

After several passes, the albatross that Russell was watching caught a stronger band of wind and lifted higher, its wings hardly moving as it drifted southwest, back toward open water.

It did not return. — MARK WALKER

This article originally appeared in .

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