11 weird, groundbreaking, and cute animal stories from 2024

Whether a large and fuzzy social media sensation or deep-sea slug slunking around the ocean's Midnight Zone, there are still so many exciting animals on Earth just waiting for their close-up. In that spirit, here are the 11 of the most exciting animal stories that Popular Science covered this year. A wildlife filmmaker and biology doctoral student took what could be the first picture of a newborn great white shark. Filmmaker Carlos Gauna and University of California, Riverside biology doctoral student Phillip Sternes were looking for sharks near Santa Barbara on California's central coast. Most great whites are gray on top with white bellies, but Gauana's drone camera showed a roughly 5-foot-long shark pup that had more white on its body than normal.