Scientists studying white nose syndrome in bats estimate the fungal ailment has killed at least 5.7 million bats in 16 states and Canada, providing alarming new numbers about the scope of its decimation.

White nose is caused by a fungus that prompts bats to wake from their winter hibernation and die after they fly into the cold air in a doomed search for insects. First detected in a cave west of Albany in 2006, white nose has spread to 16 states from the Northeast to the South and as far west as Kentucky. It also has been detected in four Canadian provinces.

Boa constrictors can sense the heartbeat of their quarry as they suffocate it, thus giving themselves the signal to know when the prey is dead, scientists say.

In a study published on Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters, snake experts at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania pondered how the boa can tell when its target is lifeless and can then be swallowed.

The United States pledged to join an EU-led effort to develop a space "code of conduct" that would set rules for orbiting spacecraft and for mitigating the growing problem of orbiting debris.

A pair of unmanned NASA spacecraft that are orbiting the Moonwere renamed Ebb and Flow on Tuesday by a middle school class in Montana, the U.S. space agency announced.

The original names for the twin probes Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) -- A and B -- were not very inspired, admitted principal investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

More than 50 dead New Zealand fur seals have been found washed up on a beach in South Australia in unexplained circumstances, according to environmental officials.

The discovery was made on Sunday in the remote Lincoln National Park with three of the seals taken to the University of Adelaide where post-mortem examinations were carried out Tuesday.

Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous systems of sea fish, with serious consequences for their survival, according to new research.

Carbon dioxide concentrations predicted to occur in the ocean by the end of this century will interfere with fishes' ability to hear, smell, turn and evade predators, the research found.

Two strong earthquakes 40 minutes apart rocked the remote South Orkney Islands in Antarctica on Sunday, experts from the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The epicenter of the first, a magnitude 6.6 temblor, was at a depth of 10 kilometers (six miles), some 539 kilometers (334 miles) west of Coronation Island, the USGS said. No destructive tsunami was created, according to a US-based warning center.

Two Chinese pandas got a red-carpet welcome Sunday when they arrived in Paris for a new life in a country zoo after Beijing put aside its differences with France and extended the hand of bear diplomacy.

The giant black and white bears -- dubbed Very Important Pandas by the French media -- arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport from Sichuan province in the "Panda Express", a Boeing 777 specially decorated with a panda motif.

South Africa announced Sunday it was beefing up the number of rangers in the world-renowned Kruger national park after an alarming jump in the number of rhinos slain by poachers for their horns.

"This ongoing poaching of our rhino population is a source of great concern for the government... It requires of us all as a collective to take drastic measures to help combat it," said Environment Minister Edna Molewa.

Huan Huan and Yuan Zi spent their last day at the panda breeding center in southwestern China ahead of a ten year trip to France, with a farewell ceremony held in their honor.

The two pandas at the center in the city of Chengdu will be flown to the French zoo they will call home for the next decade under an agreement reached between Paris and Beijing after years of top-level negotiations.