Christine Mlot

Over the past few decades, Italy’s growing population of wolves has begun to edge closer to urban areas, attracted in part by tasty prey such as rats and mice. But a recent study suggests city life carries a potentially deadly risk for the predators: eating rodents tainted with poison.

One of North America's most famous ancient predators—and a favorite of Game of Thrones fans—emerged as mysteriously as it disappeared. Dire wolves, which died out with mammoths and saber-toothed cats at the end of the last ice age, were long thought to be close cousins of gray wolves.

Viruses can acquire their names for their microscopic looks or for the damage they do, or sometimes both, as in the name of the novel coronavirus: SARS-CoV-2 bears a crown (a corona) of spiky protein and inflicts a severe acute respiratory syndrome. An old convention tagged viruses for the place they were first detected. In 1960, a four-year-old died with a mysterious encephalitis at what is now Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center.