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The COVID-19 pandemic significantly reduced human activity within protected areas during periods of government lockdowns, providing a natural experiment to study animal response to reduced human activity. At Loisaba Conservancy, Kenya, safari lodge operations were closed for more than a year during the COVID-19 pandemic. We recorded visitation of African leopards (Panthera pardus pardus) on a trail camera placed within a safari camp from March 1, 2018 – July 31, 2023, to assess the behavioral response of leopards to the cessation and resumption of human activity. Leopards were detected more frequently at the lodge during the COVID-19 quietus than either before or after, expanded their seasonal use to include more frequent visitation in the wet season, and spent more of their activity budget engaged in territorial marking. Our results suggest that African leopards have a relaxed avoidance of human activity in protected areas and will opportunistically occupy modified landscapes made available when humans are absent.

Patients with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) frequently suffer from poor balance and proprioception and are at an increased risk for falls. Here we present a means of assessing a variety of balance and postural conditions in a fast and non-invasive manner. The equipment required is commercially available and requires limited personnel. Patients can be repeatedly tested to determine balance and postural differences as a result of disease progression and aging, or a reversal following balance/exercise interventions.

When attacked, hagfishes produce a soft, fibrous defensive slime within a fraction of a second by ejecting mucus and threads into seawater. The rapid setup and remarkable expansion of the slime make it a highly effective and unique form of defense. How this biomaterial evolved is unknown, although circumstantial evidence points to the epidermis as the origin of the thread- and mucus-producing cells in the slime glands. Here, we describe large intracellular threads within a putatively homologous cell type from hagfish epidermis. These epidermal threads averaged ~2 mm in length and ~0.5 μm in diameter. The entire hagfish body is covered by a dense layer of epidermal thread cells, with each square millimeter of skin storing a total of ~96 cm threads. Experimentally induced damage to a hagfish’s skin caused the release of threads, which together with mucus, formed an adhesive epidermal slime that is more fibrous and less dilute than the defensive slime. Transcriptome analysis further suggests that epidermal threads are ancestral to the slime threads, with duplication and diversification of thread genes occurring in parallel with the evolution of slime glands. Our results support an epidermal origin of hagfish slime, which may have been driven by selection for stronger and more voluminous slime.