Researchers baffled after making unexpected discovery inside state's sewers: 'The abundance ... down there was surprising'
Forget urban legends about sewer alligators — in Florida, they're very real. A new study revealed that these underground tunnels are packed with gators, raccoons, and dozens of other animals using the pipes to move around cities, reported The Independent.
Researchers from the University of Florida set up camera traps in Alachua County's stormwater sewer systems. Their study, published in Urban Naturalist, found at least 35 different species, including reptiles, birds, amphibians, and mammals. Raccoons and bats native to the southeastern U.S. made up a lot of the sightings, but the cameras also caught sight of opossums, armadillos, squirrels, egrets, toads, and even a few stray cats.
"The abundance of animals down there was surprising," study co-author Alan Ivory from the University of Florida told the New York Times.
Seven types of reptiles also showed up on camera, with American alligators being the most common. Most of the reptiles were found in sewer spots that held water for more than half the study period.
The study's researchers explained that sewers act as pathways for urban animals — some use them as shortcuts between ponds, while others rely on them to avoid busy roads.
Researchers warned that their numbers might not even tell the full story, since the cameras only captured animals warmer than their surroundings, potentially missing some reptiles and amphibians.
Wildlife turning to sewers for safe passage serves as a reminder of how urbanization is disrupting natural habitats. As forests and wetlands make way for highways and strip malls, animals are left with limited options for finding food, water, and safe routes. This forces them into human-made structures that can trap or harm them. In fact, researchers found that several small animals appeared to be swept into sewers after storms carry large amounts of water into the system.
Climate change is only making things worse. Rising sea levels, stronger storms, and habitat loss are pushing more wildlife into urban areas. That means encounters between humans and displaced animals — some of which aren't exactly friendly — could get more common and more dangerous.
Ultimately, avoiding conflicts with animals comes down to respecting them by setting boundaries so they can do the same.
Do you worry about air pollution in and around your home?
Yes — always
Yes — often
Yes — sometimes
No — never
Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.
"If the people living with carnivores can be supported and given what they need to coexist, then human-carnivore coexistence is possible," Jen Miller, international program specialist for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, told BBC. "Coexistence is happening successfully all over the world, even in the face of climate change."
Researchers suggest simple fixes like exclusion devices and ramps in sewers to help animals get out safely. Bigger picture, we need urban planning that actually considers wildlife, like green corridors and dedicated crossings. Protecting wetlands and natural habitats is also key to keeping animals from turning to storm drains in the first place.
Fighting climate change is part of the solution, too. Cutting pollution, preserving green spaces, and supporting policies that protect wildlife can help curb these encounters. Making cities safer for animals doesn't just help them — it also makes urban areas cleaner, healthier, and a little less wild.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
New paper sheds light on experience of Black prisoners in infamous Stateville prison malaria experiments
Much has been said and written over the years about controversial malaria research conducted on inmates at Illinois' Stateville Penitentiary starting in the 1940s. But at least one part of that story has been largely ignored until now: the role of Black prisoners in that research, which helped lead to the modern practice of using genetic testing to understand how individual patients will react to certain medications, according to the authors of a newly published paper out of the University of Utah. 'We want to highlight the stories of Black prisoners that participated in this prison research in the 1950s onward and give them their due,' said Hannah Allen, a medical ethicist and assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and first author of the paper, which was published as an opinion piece Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 'They haven't been properly acknowledged in the past, and their participation in these studies was really foundational in launching the field of pharmacogenetics and, later on, precision medicine,' said Allen, who recently completed her doctorate at the University of Utah. Starting in the 1940s, researchers infected inmates at the Joliet-area prison with malaria to test the effectiveness of drugs to treat the illness as part of a U.S. military-funded effort to protect American troops overseas, according to the paper. A University of Chicago doctor was the principal investigator. The inmates consented to being part of the studies and were paid for their participation. At first, the research was greeted with enthusiasm. In 1945, Life magazine ran a spread about it, featuring a photo of a Stateville inmate with cups containing malaria-carrying mosquitoes pressed against his bare chest. The first line of the story reads, 'In three U.S. penitentiaries men who have been imprisoned as enemies of society are now helping science fight another enemy of society.' But as the years passed, attitudes began to shift. Questions arose about whether inmates could truly, freely consent to participate in medical experiments or whether they felt coerced into them because of their often dire circumstances. At the Nuremberg trials, defense attorneys for Nazi doctors introduced text and images from the Life article about Stateville prison, though an Illinois physician argued at the trials that the prisoners in Stateville consented to being part of medical research whereas Nazi prisoners did not, according to the JAMA paper. In the mid-1970s, news broke about a study at Tuskegee, in which Black men with syphilis went untreated for years — news that raised awareness of ethical problems in medical research. News outlets also began publishing more stories about prison research, according to the JAMA article. The Chicago Tribune published an article in 1973, in which an inmate participating in the Stateville malaria research said: 'I've been coerced into the project — for the money. Being here has nothing to do with 'doing good for mankind' … I didn't want to keep taking money from my family.' The experiments at Stateville came to a halt in the 1970s. A number of protections and regulations are now in place when it comes to research involving prisoners. Since the 1970s, the Stateville research has often been discussed and analyzed but little attention has been paid to its Black participants, said James Tabery, a medical ethicist and philosophy professor at the University of Utah who led the new research, which was funded by the federal National Institutes of Health. For a time, Black prisoners were excluded from the studies because of a myth that Black people were immune to malaria, Tabery said. Later on, once scientists had pinpointed the drug primaquine as an effective medication for malaria, they turned their attention to the question of why 5% to 10% of Black men experienced a violent reaction to the drug, according to the paper. Ultimately, the scientists were successful, finding that the adverse reaction was related to a specific genetic deficiency. 'There are people all over Chicago today that are getting tested, that clinicians are recommending they get a genetic test before they get prescribed a drug because they want to make sure that their patient isn't going to have an adverse reaction to the drug,' Tabery said. 'It's really sort of powerful and interesting that you can trace that approach to doing good clinical medicine right back to this particular moment and place and population.' But Tabery and Allen also found that the Black prisoners were not treated the same as the white prisoners who participated in research at Stateville. For one, they weren't paid as much as the white prisoners, the rationale being that the white prisoners were infected with malaria, whereas the Black prisoners were given the drug but not infected with the disease — though some of the Black prisoners got very ill after taking the medication, according to the paper. Also, researchers didn't protect the Black participants' privacy as well as they did for other participants. They published certain identifying information about the Black participants, such as initials, ages, heights and weights, whereas participants in the previous research were represented with case numbers, according to the paper. Researchers also recruited the Black prisoners' family members for the study, which they didn't do with earlier participants, according to the paper. 'You see them just doing things with the Black prisoners that they're not doing with the white prisoners,' Tabery said. Also, though scientists made an important discovery through the research on Black prisoners, the episode also highlights the difficulty that can occur in translating discoveries into real life help for patients. Though the World Health Organization now recommends genetic testing to protect people who are sensitive to antimalarials, many of the people who would benefit most from such testing still don't receive it because of financial barriers, supply chain issues and a lack of training, according to the paper. 'What we found is when you sort of shift to what was happening to the Black prisoners, these other lessons you hadn't thought of as being derivable from Stateville suddenly do become apparent,' Tabery said.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
OSU falls victim to budget cuts, putting a damper on scientific research
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The awarding of an OSU microfluidics research fund of $45 million has been called off by the Trump administration, leaving researchers fumbling for options. Microfluidics, the scientific study of the behavior of liquid on a microscopic level, is a recently established field and is hoped to aid in the medical realm as well as the manufacturing of semiconductors, a partially conductive component of many day-to-day electronic devices. The grant's cancellation has been a source of upset for researchers, but OSU is already looking ahead to future opportunities. Anti-ICE protests escalate outside Southwest Portland facility 'While we are disappointed in the notification of the EDA award cancellation for CorMic [Corvallis Microfluidics Tech Hub], we fully intend to participate in the EDA's next Notice of Funding Opportunity and remain well positioned to further national security interests as a global leader in microfluidics for semiconductor manufacturing, ' Tom Weller, Gaulke Professor and Head said. 'Oregon State University will continue to work alongside HP and other partners to further the commercialization of new microfluidics-connected technologies for semiconductor manufacturing, biotechnology, and advanced materials manufacturing.' This is not an isolated incident, with Trump having attempted to cut billions in allocated federal funding to scientific research since the beginning of his current term. White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, 'The Trump administration is spending its first few months reviewing the previous administration's projects, identifying waste, and realigning our research spending to match the American people's priorities and continue our innovative dominance.' Universities are getting hit with the full force of these budget cuts, with biomedical research being classified as 'waste.' Just in February, the National Institutes of Health proposed cutting billions of dollars to OHSU research looking at cancer and heart disease, among other afflictions. These cuts were immediately met with lawsuits from, but not limited to, the Association of American Universities and 22 state attorneys general. These lawsuits are still in progress. The Association of American Universities' lawsuit called the NIH cuts 'flagrantly unlawful' and expressed concern that 'our country will lose its status as the destination for solving the world's biggest health problems.' Scientists of the NIH itself have begun to speak out, publicly disagreeing with the institute's actions, claiming that the cuts 'undermine the NIH mission.' Cuts to scientific research are becoming a recurring source of contention as Trump's second term continues. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Chicago Tribune
11 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
New paper sheds light on experience of Black prisoners in infamous Stateville prison malaria experiments
Much has been said and written over the years about controversial malaria research conducted on inmates at Illinois' Stateville Penitentiary starting in the 1940s. But at least one part of that story has been largely ignored until now: the role of Black prisoners in that research, which helped lead to the modern practice of using genetic testing to understand how individual patients will react to certain medications, according to the authors of a newly published paper out of the University of Utah. 'We want to highlight the stories of Black prisoners that participated in this prison research in the 1950s onward and give them their due,' said Hannah Allen, a medical ethicist and assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and first author of the paper, which was published as an opinion piece Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 'They haven't been properly acknowledged in the past, and their participation in these studies was really foundational in launching the field of pharmacogenetics and, later on, precision medicine,' said Allen, who recently completed her doctorate at the University of Utah. Starting in the 1940s, researchers infected inmates at the Joliet-area prison with malaria to test the effectiveness of drugs to treat the illness as part of a U.S. military-funded effort to protect American troops overseas, according to the paper. A University of Chicago doctor was the principal investigator. The inmates consented to being part of the studies and were paid for their participation. At first, the research was greeted with enthusiasm. In 1945, Life magazine ran a spread about it, featuring a photo of a Stateville inmate with cups containing malaria-carrying mosquitoes pressed against his bare chest. The first line of the story reads, 'In three U.S. penitentiaries men who have been imprisoned as enemies of society are now helping science fight another enemy of society.' But as the years passed, attitudes began to shift. Questions arose about whether inmates could truly, freely consent to participate in medical experiments or whether they felt coerced into them because of their often dire circumstances. At the Nuremberg trials, defense attorneys for Nazi doctors introduced text and images from the Life article about Stateville prison, though an Illinois physician argued at the trials that the prisoners in Stateville consented to being part of medical research whereas Nazi prisoners did not, according to the JAMA paper. In the mid-1970s, news broke about a study at Tuskegee, in which Black men with syphilis went untreated for years — news that raised awareness of ethical problems in medical research. News outlets also began publishing more stories about prison research, according to the JAMA article. The Chicago Tribune published an article in 1973, in which an inmate participating in the Stateville malaria research said: 'I've been coerced into the project — for the money. Being here has nothing to do with 'doing good for mankind' … I didn't want to keep taking money from my family.' The experiments at Stateville came to a halt in the 1970s. A number of protections and regulations are now in place when it comes to research involving prisoners. Since the 1970s, the Stateville research has often been discussed and analyzed but little attention has been paid to its Black participants, said James Tabery, a medical ethicist and philosophy professor at the University of Utah who led the new research, which was funded by the federal National Institutes of Health. For a time, Black prisoners were excluded from the studies because of a myth that Black people were immune to malaria, Tabery said. Later on, once scientists had pinpointed the drug primaquine as an effective medication for malaria, they turned their attention to the question of why 5% to 10% of Black men experienced a violent reaction to the drug, according to the paper. Ultimately, the scientists were successful, finding that the adverse reaction was related to a specific genetic deficiency. 'There are people all over Chicago today that are getting tested, that clinicians are recommending they get a genetic test before they get prescribed a drug because they want to make sure that their patient isn't going to have an adverse reaction to the drug,' Tabery said. 'It's really sort of powerful and interesting that you can trace that approach to doing good clinical medicine right back to this particular moment and place and population.' But Tabery and Allen also found that the Black prisoners were not treated the same as the white prisoners who participated in research at Stateville. For one, they weren't paid as much as the white prisoners, the rationale being that the white prisoners were infected with malaria, whereas the Black prisoners were given the drug but not infected with the disease — though some of the Black prisoners got very ill after taking the medication, according to the paper. Also, researchers didn't protect the Black participants' privacy as well as they did for other participants. They published certain identifying information about the Black participants, such as initials, ages, heights and weights, whereas participants in the previous research were represented with case numbers, according to the paper. Researchers also recruited the Black prisoners' family members for the study, which they didn't do with earlier participants, according to the paper. 'You see them just doing things with the Black prisoners that they're not doing with the white prisoners,' Tabery said. Also, though scientists made an important discovery through the research on Black prisoners, the episode also highlights the difficulty that can occur in translating discoveries into real life help for patients. Though the World Health Organization now recommends genetic testing to protect people who are sensitive to antimalarials, many of the people who would benefit most from such testing still don't receive it because of financial barriers, supply chain issues and a lack of training, according to the paper. 'What we found is when you sort of shift to what was happening to the Black prisoners, these other lessons you hadn't thought of as being derivable from Stateville suddenly do become apparent,' Tabery said.
