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Top US health experts said on Friday that Zika virus could be specifically skilled in establishing itself in body parts that are shielded from immune system, which makes it tougher to battle off and could probably lengthen the timeframe in which it can be transmit.

Researchers said that Zika virus can be found in semen for over two months after a person has contracted infection, adding to the proof of the presence of the virus in fetal brain tissue, placenta and amniotic fluid.

The efforts of the researchers are a part of an international race of understanding the risks linked to Zika. The virus is a rapidly spreading mosquito-borne virus that is thought to be associated with thousands of birth defects’ cases in Brazil.

Photographer Will Burrard-Lucas had a change to be close to some of the most elusive animals in the world during the course of three months last year at Namibia's Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area.

In a blog post, Burrard-Lucas wrote that some of the animals had only earlier been clicked by research cameras before. In the post, he wrote about the project, he completed on assignment for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Burrard-Lucas told The Dodo, “My personal motivation for working on this project was that is was for a really worthwhile cause. To photograph animals who have probably never been photographed before and for these images to be used by WWF to help with their conservation efforts”.

Arjen Y. Hoekstra, a professor of water management at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, said that nearly four billion people or two-thirds of the population, worldwide experiences severe water shortage at least in a month annually. The new study estimates have presented water scarcity as a bigger problem than thought earlier.

A paper that appeared on Friday in the journal Science Advances carried Dr. Hoekstra and his colleague Mesfin M. Mekonnen’s designed computer model for the creation of a more accurate picture of water scarcity worldwide.

Severe water shortage can result in crop failure and low crop yields, which may cause food price hikes and famine and widespread starvation.

A serious fight between a spider and a brown snake has shown that size hardly matters. A Daddy Long Leg spider defeated a huge venomous brown snake, by killing the snake in New South Wales, Australia.

It seems like that the long-legged spider ambushed the snake at the site where they had a head-on fight. According to a news release, Australian farmer Patrick Lees saw the dead reptile hanging from a web at his outback home in Weethalle, nearly 400 kilometers west of Sydney. The story was reported by Mashable.

First of all Lees checked if the snake was dead, as it is known for its quick bite and deadly venom. He noted that the snake was already dead, so Lees captured an image and let the skinny spider enjoy its snack.

More than 50 million year ago, polar region Arctic was home to a giant, flightless bird, a team of researchers revealed in a new study. Researchers announced the discovery after identifying two ancient birds: Gastornis and Presbyornis. Both of them belong to extinct genus.

The new study proves that prehistoric Arctic was probably more similar to the southeastern United States than Alaska.

The team comprised researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The discovery of both the birds is exciting, but Gastornis is the bigger find, as per the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Time has come to wave goodbye to history-making robotic lander Philae as last efforts to establish contact with the lander are unfortunately close to zero, announced the German Aerospace Center (DLR) on Friday.

The DLR, which is in charge of this mission, said that the Philae lander now faces eternal hibernation, while the bigger Rosetta mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) is still orbiting the 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko comet.