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Whether you want to build your own website or you’re hoping to boost your attractiveness to potential employers, learning to code can certainly be handy. But where to start? There’s clearly no shortage of options for getting your feet wet in the world of programming languages, but finding a good entry point can prove to be daunting. After all, how do you even decide which language makes the most sense for you?

This article will attempt to walk you through the first decisions you’ll need to make when you’re contemplating learning to code, and then it will recommend some of the best online resources to turn to when you’re ready to develop your skills.

Decide Which Programming Language You Want to Learn

Type “which coding language to learn” into Google, and you’ll be met with over 200 million results. Clearly, this is a popular question, and you’ll find plenty of authorities with different opinions on the subject.

It could be illuminating and worthwhile for you to spend some time reading what various sites have to say on this topic, but if you want to streamline things a bit, first ask yourself this question:

What do I want to build?

Just like words in the English language are the means to the end of communicating thoughts and ideas, programming languages are useful because they help you accomplish certain things. So when you’re deciding what coding language to learn, it’s incredibly important to think about what you want to build. 

Want to build a website? Knowing HTML, CSS and Javascript will be important for you. More interested in building a smartphone app? You’ll need to decide which platform you want to start with (Android or iOS), and then pick one of the corresponding languages such as Java and Objective-C. 

Clearly, the above examples are not exhaustive; they just provide a taste of the questions you’ll want to ask yourself when you’re considering which language you should start with. The flow chart above could prove to be another helpful resource when you’re trying to narrow your coding pursuit down to a language. And never underestimate the usefulness of Google; it will take some patience, but if you know what you want to build, researching what coding language it takes to build it can be well worth the time and patience.

Carl Cheo, who’s behind that nifty flowchart seen above, also provides a handy breakdown of learning resources to consider based on the language you’re looking to learn.

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Codeacademy

What We Like

• Once you’ve created a Codeacademy account and begin taking a course, the service keeps track of your progress, so it’s easy to stop and start without needing to spend hours tracking down where you left off. 
• Another plus is that this service is targeted toward total beginners; it recommends complete newbies start with HTML and CSS, though it offers more advanced language courses as well.
• You can browse by course type (web development, tools, APIs, data analytics, and more), and thanks to the site’s huge popularity — it boasts more than 20 million users — its forums are a great resource for asking and answering your own questions on anything from problems within a specific course to how to build what your heart desires.
• Another pro: Codeacademy is free.

What We Don’t Like

• Some courses (or particular questions or problems within a course) aren’t written perfectly clearly, which can lead to confusion on behalf of the user.
• The robust Codeacademy forums can usually come to the rescue in these instances, though it can be discouraging to run upon a snag when most of the content is presented so seamlessly.

Best for: Free, dare I say fun coding lessons for some of the more basic languages. If you want to build a website, you can even take a course focused on the fundamentals of HTML and CSS, which you’ll put to use as you practice building a site.

Languages offered: HTML & CSS, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP, SQL, Sass

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Code Avengers

What We Like

• Courses through Code Avengers are fun and engaging — in this respect, it’s comparable and even competitive with Codeacademy.

What We Don’t Like

• The biggest one is that there’s a cost; while you can get a free trial, subscriptions — which give you full access to each course, rather than a limit of up to just five lessons in a course — cost $29 per month or $120 for six months.
• Another disadvantage, at least compared to Codeacademy, is that there aren’t any forums specific to individual courses, so it’s harder to track down solutions if you’re struggling with a certain problem within your course. 

• Compared to some other sites, you also have relatively few language options to study.

Best for: Those who want fun and games along the way to learning how to build real things through coding languages, since you’ll complete mini-games after each lesson. Like Codeacademy, it’s targeted toward beginners, and perhaps even more than Codeacademy, it’s about learning basic concepts rather than all the nuts and bolts of a programming language. It’s also an ideal choice for those who speak languages other than English, since courses are also offered in Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and Russian, among other languages.

Languages offered: HMTL & CSS, JavaScript, Python

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Khan Academy

What We Like

• Everything is free, making Khan Academy one of the great resources for learning to code online without having to hand over credit card information. 
• Lessons are reasonably sized (not hours-long) and engaging.
• The way new skills are presented and taught is also well-organized; you can jump to animation basics within the JavaScript materials, for instance.

What We Don’t Like

• Relatively few languages offered, and you won’t enjoy the same thriving forum community as available with Codeacademy.
• That may or may not make a difference depending on your learning style and preferences — it’s just something to keep in mind.

Best for: Newbies who know what they want to build and want an engaging, straightforward way to learn skills. Additionally, Khan Academy will make the most sense for those who want to focus on graphics and gaming-type applications. There’s also a focus on programming, drawings, and animations.

Languages offered: JavaScript, SQL

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Code School

What We Like

• A great selection of courses, and a very helpful beginners guide that can inform your decision of which language to begin with.

• In line with its reputation for providing professional-quality courses, Code School offers professionally curated content lists, along with podcasts and video shows.
• You can dip your toes into the world of coding for iOS devices — something that isn’t possible to do with most of the other resources mentioned in this list.

What We Don’t Like

• You might feel a bit lost if you come to Code School with zero prior programming knowledge. Plus, to get unlimited access to all the site’s 71 courses and 254 screencasts, you’ll need to pay ($29 a month or $19 a month with a yearly plan) — and if you want to use this site to its full potential, you’ll need to shell out.

Best for: Those who want to learn languages beyond the standard JavaScript and HTML/CSS, especially mobile languages for iOS apps such as Objective-C. It’s not as beginner-oriented as the other resources on this list, so you might want to start with another site first and then make your way here after you have a few skills under your belt. Code School has more of a professional bent than many of the other resources mentioned in this article — if you’re looking to become a programmer by trade, this could be a good place to spend some serious time (though be prepared to spend some money as well if you want access to all the material).

Languages offered: HTML & CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, PHP, Python, Objective-C, Swift

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Coursera

What We Like

• Courses are available from world-renowned institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, Stanford and the University of Michigan, so you know you’re in good hands. Plus, most courses are free, though you can pay for some, including options that present you a certificate of completion at the end.

What We Don’t Like

• You won’t find all the coding lessons in one easy-to-digest place, meaning it could help to come to this site knowing exactly what you’re looking for. The courses generally aren’t as engaging or interactive as those available through Codeacademy, Code Avengers or Khan Academy, either.

Best for: Self-motivated learners who have the dedication and the patience to do a bit of digging to find the course that makes the most sense for them, since unlike sites like Codeacademy, Coursera hosts educational material for a huge variety of subjects beyond programming. 

Languages offered: HTML & CSS, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Objective-C, Swift

You’ll find additional languages based on your search terms, since Coursera is a repository for educational material on a wide variety of subjects

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Treehouse

What We Like

• Includes mobile programming languages for iOS, so if you want to build an iPhone app, this site could help you learn how to do it.
• You get access to community forums, which can further your learning and passion for coding in addition to helping you when you’re stuck.

What We Don’t Like

• Once you’ve used up the free trial, Treehouse requires you to select one of two paid plans. The cheaper one costs $25 per month and gives you access to more than 1,000 video courses and interactive tools, while for $49 a month the “Pro Plan” gets you access to a members-only forum, bonus content, the ability to download videos for offline learning and more. Some of those features could definitely be useful, but you’ll need to be pretty serious about learning to code for it to be worth paying that much on a monthly basis.

Best for: Those who are planning to stick with programming and utilize the skills they learn professionally or for some side projects, since most material requires a paid subscription. That’s not to say you need to come to Treehouse with a ton of prior knowledge; having an idea of what you want to build is often enough since many of the courses are built around objectives, such as building a website.

Languages offered: HTML & CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, PHP, Swift, Objective-C, C#

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Decide which language

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Hmmmm … Now we can process the Epstein files at last!

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A poster of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader, in Tehran this month. He was killed in an airstrike at the start of the war. Credit…Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

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Human evolutionary science has long been caught up in a debate: Did our last common ancestor with apes walk on its knuckles, like chimpanzees do, or was it more flat-handed? The answer to that question may lie in the anatomy of modern apes and extinct human species’ wrists.

The human-ape family tree doesn’t follow a straight path; it’s gnarled and branching. Scientists estimate it sprouted sometime between eight million and six million years ago, when an unknown ancestral species split into two lineages: nonhuman apes, such as chimpanzees and bonobos, and hominins, upright-walking primates such as Neanderthals, Denisovans, and anatomically modern humans.

In the absence of any fossil of this last common ancestor, it’s difficult for scientists to know what this creature may have looked like or how it behaved. While the search for such a fossil continues, some researchers have turned to other, less direct means of studying our ancient lineage, including fossils of extinct human “cousins” in the family tree, as well as the biology of modern humans and apes.

In a new study published on Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, researchers utilized both methods—they analyzed scans of wristbones from nonhuman primates such as gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees, as well as more than 50 hominin wristbone fossils. They found evidence that humans and our closest primate relatives—African apes—share wrist traits that may be related to walking on knuckles, although more research is needed to say definitively what a more ancient human species used those traits for, the authors say.

“There appear to be traits which evolved in the common ancestor of humans and African apes that, based on existing biomechanical research, could have been advantageous for knuckle walking,” says Laura Hunter, who conducted the research while a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. Some of the features include a “reorganization” of bones on the thumb side of the wrist in both knuckle-walking apes and humans, Hunter says.

The study is “excellent,” says Tracy Kivell, director of the department of human origins at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who was not involved with the new research. While previous studies working to answer this question have focused on specific wristbones, this is “most comprehensive analysis of the wrist that we’ve seen yet,” Kivell says.

Hunter and her colleagues theorize that these shared traits may have “stuck around” in the human lineage through our evolutionary history not for knuckle walking but because they happened to also be advantageous for “object manipulation or sophisticated tool behaviors,” she says—a process biologists call “exaptation.”

There are some important caveats to the work. For one, the study is focused on just the wrist—it doesn’t reveal much about other parts of the body that may have been involved in knuckle walking or movement broadly, Kivell says.

The other wrinkle is that scientists can’t know for sure whether similarities between the human and ape wrists prove our common ancestor walked on its knuckles, if they were used in another wrist function, such as climbing, or if they are just a relic of our species’ relative proximity on the primate family tree. “I think we won’t ever know this answer until we find fossils from that time period,” Kivell says.

“I think it is important to emphasize that the title is a question, not a statement,” Hunter says, referring to the study, whose title asks, “Did Modern Human Carpal Morphology Evolve from Knuckle Walking Traits?” “There’s still a lot of work that definitely can be done to really figure out what exactly was happening with our ancestors,” she adds.

That’s part of the difficulty in studying fossils, Hunter notes—because the species are extinct, we may never know how our ancestors behaved.

“If only we could go back in time and see what they were doing,” she says.

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Find the bottleneck that could become your next multimillion-dollar idea.

Your next multimillion-dollar AI idea probably won’t come from asking ChatGPT to “pick a niche.” It will come from identifying a painful bottleneck — something people already pay experts, teams, or software to handle — and then using AI to remove the cost, delay, or complexity around it.

Before AI, eliminating those bottlenecks required capital, technical skill, or a full team. Now, a solo founder can test ideas with the kind of leverage that once required a $400M startup, an $80M solo exit, or a $40M chatbot — without hiring consultants or having decades of experience.

The prompts and examples I walk through in the video show how to turn ideas into revenue faster, without waiting on staff, funding, or technical expertise:

• Find tasks people already pay experts for and turn them into AI-powered product opportunities
• Sort customer conversations into what AI can handle versus what still requires human judgment
• Map business workflows that AI agents can run with light oversight
• Turn your best-performing content into a reusable AI style system
• Reverse-engineer successful AI case studies into prompts you can apply directly
• Identify the bottlenecks that keep people locked out of an industry, then use AI to remove them
• Build an automation roadmap without hiring a team or raising funding

The Base44 section is especially worth paying attention to. Maor Shlomo built the company alone — no employees, no funding — and grew it to $189,000 in monthly profit before selling it to Wix for roughly $80 million in six months. That story is often misunderstood.

It isn’t about solo founding for its own sake. It’s about how quickly the old requirements are disappearing: team before product, funding before launch, developers before testing, infrastructure before revenue.

In Rule 5 of my book The Wolf Is at the Door,” I call this “Accelerate Adaptability”: the ability to shorten the time between recognizing a shift and changing how you build, sell, support, and create. The key insight from writing the book is simple: the biggest advantage in the AI era doesn’t go to the smartest people — it goes to those willing to act before they feel ready.

They adapt their operating model while everyone else is still debating tools. In business, slow adaptation sounds like: “I need a developer before I can test this,” “I need a team before I can support customers,” or “I need more time before I can scale what already works.” You don’t.

You need clarity on which constraint is actually blocking you, where AI can remove friction, and where human judgment still matters. Every tool, prompt, and system referenced is demonstrated in the video, including the automation roadmap prompt that shows which workflows an AI agent can handle end-to-end with under 20% human oversight.

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The memo was immediately met with confusion and chaos as immigration lawyers scrambled to understand which exceptions would be granted. Many also expected the policy change to be met with legal challenges.

The agency did not detail which groups would be eligible for an exception, only suggesting that refugees would not be subject. Mr. Kahler said in a statement that people who “provide an economic benefit or otherwise are in the national interest will likely be able to continue on their current path.”

It was unclear, though, which foreign workers would be exempt and if exceptions would extend to skilled foreign workers on H-1B visas, for instance.

The policy is a major escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to curb legal immigration and reflects how the president’s crackdown has broadened beyond immigrants living in the country unlawfully. Federal officials have in recent months sought to strip some naturalized citizens of their status and review thousands of green card holders to root out immigrants they believe should be deported.

The change is likely to lead to more families being separated as spouses or relatives wait for decisions on their applications, immigration lawyers and former homeland security officials said. It could also lead to longer processing times as consulates around the world manage an influx of new cases.

“Our consular processing system through which they would have to apply is already overburdened,” said Sarah Pierce, a former policy analyst at Citizenship and Immigration Services who is now the director of social policy at the center-left think tank Third Way. “So that means we could have families separated for months or years.”

About 1.4 million green cards were granted in 2024, with more than 820,000 approved for people inside the country through a process called “adjustment of status,” according to Department of Homeland Security data. Over the past two decades, more than 500,000 people have received green cards via adjustment of status each year, except for in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.

There are various pathways for foreigners to obtain a green card. People with temporary visas can apply to adjust their status if they have spouses who are U.S. citizens, for instance. Certain foreign workers and parents of citizens who are at least 21 years old are also eligible for green cards.

More than 70 percent of people who received a green card through marriage did so through adjustment of status, totaling about 250,000 people in 2024.

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There are various pathways for foreigners to obtain green cards, which grant them the ability to live and work in the United States as permanent residents. Credit…Libby March for The New York Times

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An outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda has global public health officials scrambling to contain the relevant virus, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned will likely spread further and cause more deaths beyond the more than 130 estimated fatalities so far. This type of Ebola-causing virus, a species called Bundibugyo virus, has no approved vaccine, is thought to be fatal in about 25 to 50 percent of cases and has sickened hundreds, including at least one American.

The WHO has declared the situation “a public health emergency of international concern,” citing the high number of initial suspected cases and “significant uncertainties” about the extent of the spread. But as serious as this outbreak is, public health experts stress that the risk of a pandemic-level threat is low, with minimal danger to the U.S.

“Not every pathogen has the ability to cause a pandemic,” says Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “People think it’s either zero or pandemic…. There are many types of public health emergencies that fall short of a pandemic that are still important.”

The situation in the DRC is especially acute: the first cases clustered in a remote region riven with political conflict and violence that displaced more than 100,000 people in 2025. That has made it “very unsafe” for health care workers to offer aid, says Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Disease Society of America and former director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The only American confirmed to have the virus, a missionary physician named Peter Stafford, was reportedly working in the DRC when, doctors believe, he came into contact with someone with Ebola. He has been evacuated for treatment in Germany, which has “previous experience caring for Ebola patients,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Currently, there are no known Ebola cases inside the U.S., and the risk of the outbreak spreading to the country is “low at this time,” according to the CDC. The nation’s government has also instituted a travel ban on visitors from three African countries to try to further limit the potential for the virus to enter the U.S.

There are other reasons why risk to the U.S. is likely to remain low, health experts say, including the biology of the virus itself. People typically become infected with orthoebolaviruses, the group of viruses that cause Ebola, through contact with bodily fluids—such as blood, feces, and saliva—and that’s not an especially efficient mode of transmission, Adalja says, unlike, say, that of the COVID-causing virus, which can spread through the air.

“It is not a subtle airborne infection that you can get from people who are presymptomatic, like we see with flu and COVID,” Marrazzo says, adding that some of the worst pandemics have historically been caused by respiratory viruses that can transmit between hosts before symptoms start.

People infected with orthoebolaviruses, on the other hand, are not thought to be infectious until after the onset of symptoms. These can include fever and aches, as well as vomiting, diarrhea, and, as the disease progresses, internal and external bleeding. The incubation period—the time between exposure and symptom onset—for Bundibugyo virus is typically between two and 21 days.

“It would be vanishingly unlikely that this could cause sort of a zombie-type World War Z epidemic,” Marrazzo adds, referring to the 2006 novel about a zombie pandemic and its 2013 film adaptation. “It’s not that kind of virus.”

Past outbreaks show that with rigorous control measures, officials have managed to stop the spread of Ebola, she says. The largest Ebola disease outbreak, which began in 2014, took two years to contain and infected more than 28,000 people, according to the CDC. It was caused by a different and more common species of orthoebolavirus than the current outbreak. Bundibugyo virus, meanwhile, has been linked to just two other outbreaks in Uganda and the DRC since its identification in 2007.

“Ebola does not have pandemic potential, but it clearly is an epidemic disease and has massive regional importance,” Adalja says.

For the average American, the risk of exposure from travelers coming from African countries where Ebola is present is “extremely low” at this time, but not totally inexistent, making it more of a “theoretical risk,” Marrazzo says. “Just be alert, think about where you are, and, if you see someone who’s ill, I would exercise extra caution,” she says.

Still, at this point, it’s much more likely that you will pick up a respiratory infection or a foodborne illness such as norovirus while traveling, she says. Wearing an N95 mask and washing your hands can help prevent those illnesses.

“I’m an infectious disease person, so I’m very cautious. But I would say, ‘Don’t get caught up in some of these theoretical risks that are pretty unlikely.’ And just remember that, every day, people get really sick during travel, and much of that is preventable,” she says.

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A well-oiled food storage system can make your grocery haul last longer and deter you from ordering takeout. And when you know that you can count on those trusty Rubbermaid Brilliance glass food containers to keep your workday lunches fresh, it makes the thought of a desk lunch a bit more exciting. 

Amazon’s 12 best food storage deals are up to 50% off and include favorites from OXO, Hydro Flask, and Stasher. Grab a chef-recommended ceramic garlic keeper, a RoyalHouse bamboo bread box, and a Homberking glass storage container set for just $2.50 apiece.  

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Credit: Food & Wine / Amazon

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House Republicans on Thursday abruptly canceled a vote on a resolution directing President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from Iran or win approval from Congress to continue the war, after it became clear they lacked the votes to defeat the measure.

The retreat was a striking setback that exposed fractures within the G.O.P. over the conflict at a moment when the party has begun pushing back forcefully on Mr. Trump and his agenda.

It also marked the latest embarrassing blow to Speaker Mike Johnson, who has toiled to defeat efforts to challenge or limit the war in line with the president’s wishes, but is contending with growing wariness within his party as the midterm elections approach and the realities of his minuscule majority.

The decision to shelve the war powers resolution came after Republicans had lost control of the floor during an earlier, unrelated vote, with several of their members defecting and several more absent. As the House chamber descended into chaos, leaders wary of risking another public defeat on a far more politically consequential vote abruptly scrapped the Iran war measure.

The move came just days after a similar resolution moved ahead in the Senate, when a handful of G.O.P. defectors broke from the president and opposed the war. That vote indicated an increasing willingness by some members of the president’s party to pressure him to end a conflict that a majority of Americans say is not worth the costs.

Last week, a similar measure failed in the House by the barest of margins — on a tie vote — leaving Republican leaders no room for more defections.

“They probably did it because they didn’t have the votes,” said Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who last week sided with Democrats in favor of a similar resolution and said he had planned to do so again on Thursday. “I don’t think they’re going to have the votes when we get back.”

“The next time they bring it,” he added, “it’s passing.”

It was the fourth time Democrats had sought to challenge Mr. Trump’s ability to wage war without congressional approval since he initiated the current conflict in late February, but with both chambers scheduled for a weeklong recess in observance of Memorial Day, they will have to wait until Congress returns in June.

The delay left Republicans in control of Congress flummoxed and lamenting the dysfunction that has taken hold on Capitol Hill as they struggle to govern.

“All I want is just one normal day,” said Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who in her role as the chairwoman of the Rules Committee, is in charge of controlling proceedings on the House floor. “Just give me one normal day.”

More on the Fighting in the Middle East

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• Hard-Line Military Fraternity: Decision-making in Iran is guided by a small group of men associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

• How Iran Gained Leverage: Outmatched militarily, Iran used “triangular coercion” by attacking Gulf states and closing the Strait of Hormuz. It points to a long-term U.S. vulnerability.

• Early War Plan: An Israeli strike designed to free Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president, from house arrest in Tehran was part of an effort to bring about regime change and put him in power. But the audacious plan quickly went awry, according to the U.S. officials who were briefed on it.

• Opportunity for Syria: With multiple Mediterranean ports and borders with Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, the country offers a desperately needed alternative to the blocked Strait of Hormuz.

• Secret Israeli Outposts: Israel spent over a year preparing a covert site in Iraq for its operations against Iran, regional officials said. Iraqi officials later confirmed the existence of a second base.

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Kenny Holston/The New York Times

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Almost two miles beneath the waves of the Indian Ocean, a hydrothermal vent spews sulfur into the inky black waters. On its lip, a small snail is not only basking in the poison but converting it into a shell that is part iron. This gastropod is the scaly-foot snail (Chrysomallon squamiferum), perhaps the world’s most metal animal.

Despite being so hardcore, the species has a precarious future. In 2019 the snail became the first species that lives on hydrothermal vents to be classified as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species—thanks to the threat of deep-sea mining companies that have been interested in harvesting the minerals at the vents that the snails call home.

For a long time, scientists presumed that the intense pressure and toxic compounds that erupt from Earth’s crust through hydrothermal vents would make these structures and the water around them incompatible with life. But in 2001, researchers found the snails living happily among a myriad of other creatures that thrive in these unforgiving environments. The snails’ iron-rich shell is a vital part of their survival strategy—but not as a protective armor, says Chong Chen, a senior scientist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and a leading expert on the scaly-foot snail, who led the effort to map its genome. Rather, the shell is almost like the human liver in that it helps remove toxins from the snails’ body, he explains.

The reason why has to do with how the snail gets its nutrients. This creature doesn’t eat in a conventional sense. Instead, like other species that live on hydrothermal vents, the snail is home to bacteria that feast on hydrogen sulfide, oxygen, and carbon dioxide and convert those chemicals into sugar. In exchange for providing the bacteria a home in its gut, the snail uses that sugar for energy. The bacteria’s digestion produces toxic sulfur as a by-product, however. To protect itself, the snail excretes the sulfur, which mixes with iron in the vent water. The end result is a shell that’s literally, albeit partially, made of metal, along with the tough scales that give the snail its name.

“The ‘iron armor’ is not for defense, as people thought for many years; instead, it is for symbiosis. The snail is totally happy without the iron armor, which is a by-product formed by the hot vent environment,” Chen says.

The snail, which is less than two inches long, has already inspired some technological innovations. The U.S. Army, for instance, has studied the snail’s scales for inspiration in designing new armor, and its chemical composition has sparked new ideas on how to make the pyrite nanoparticles found in solar panels.

Not only is the snail the single animal known to incorporate iron sulfide into its shell, but it also has evolved to only exist on eight sulfur-rich hydrothermal vents in the world. The amount of space on Earth that can be inhabited by the snail is so small that it amounts to roughly half the size of Disney World, says Jon Copley, a marine biologist at the University of Southampton in England.

The very same environment in which the snail evolved its signature feature is also what has made its future uncertain. Underwater hydrothermal vents form at the edges of Earth’s tectonic plates, where seawater is able to trickle down through the crust. That water is heated by magma below and shoots back upward, bringing with it precious minerals such as copper, zinc, and gold, along with the iron and sulfur found in the snail’s shell.

Those minerals have caught the attention of mining companies. Copper is particularly in demand because of its use in artificial intelligence data centers and green energy production. Although no deep-sea mining is yet underway in these areas, at least two of the vents that the snails live on have been considered for possible operations, according to the IUCN.

“There are rising concerns that if mining is permitted, the habitat could be severely reduced or destroyed,” the organization wrote in its Red List entry. The best way to protect the vents—and the snails—is to “just not mine active hydrothermal vents, period,” Chen says.

Instead, mining companies could target inactive vents, he says. “There are, for example, many inactive hydrothermal massive sulfide deposits in the Indian Ocean. These inactive vents no longer host the scaly-foot snail, and therefore mining these sites would not impact the snails,” Chen says. Still, such vents are no panacea, he adds. “We currently know very little about how unique the inactive vents themselves are in terms of biodiversity,” Chen says. “Ongoing research has found at least some animal groups that seem to be unique to inactive vents, so mining there might impact those animals.”

Aside from the snail’s contributions to modern armor and material sciences, Copley says, there are philosophical reasons to preserve the future of a creature that lives in an environment as alien and inaccessible to humans as any ecosystem on our planet. Few people will ever see a scaly-foot gastropod, but that doesn’t change their preciousness.

Chen is more pragmatic. The snail by itself may not affect humans, but its native ecosystem, while remote, is proving to play a larger role than previously suspected in the overall health of the ocean. The vents pump carbon and other nutrients into the water, and those nutrients sustain the beauty humans admire and the food they eat.

“We are now starting to understand that hydrothermal vents play key roles in regulating the supply of such elements to the ocean and therefore contributing significantly to the global biogeochemical cycles that we all rely on,” Chen says. “The world is one connected planet, more than one might realize. We are now living in the consequences of deforestation’s impacts on the climate, which we did not realize when it began. Mining hot spots like hydrothermal vents may lead to a similar impact.”

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Three people have died, and more than a dozen first responders have been hospitalized following a possible hazmat situation in New Mexico.

At around 11:00 a.m., local time, Wednesday, New Mexico State Police rushed to a home in Mountainair for a “suspected overdose,” according to authorities.

Four people inside the home were found “unresponsive,” and three of them have since been confirmed dead, the state police said in a Facebook post.

Eighteen first responders were exposed to an “unidentified substance” and taken to the hospital along with the other person inside the home, authorities said. Several first responders have since been released.

The first responders experienced symptoms including nausea and dizziness, after being exposed to the substance, according to state police. Two of them were in serious condition as of Wednesday afternoon.

At least one person inside the home was revived with Narcan, Torrance County Sheriff David Frazee said in an article published by the Santa Fe New Mexican. Narcan is used to try to save people suspected of overdosing on an opioid.

“Evidently, they must have inhaled some toxins or something from the scene,” Frazee said of the first responders.

Mountainair Mayor Peter Nieto said the first responders had “direct contact with the individual who passed, and they were feeling lightheaded, headaches, nausea, things like that,” per the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Nieto said in a Facebook post that while the exact cause of the incident is currently unknown, “all indications are pointing toward narcotics as a possible factor.”

The first responders and the one person inside the home who was still alive were taken to the University of New Mexico Hospital. They are being “quarantined, evaluated, and monitored,” state police said.

New Mexico State Police arrived at the home to help the Torrance County Sheriff’s Office. It’s unclear how many members of each agency were affected by the unknown substance.

Three of the four EMTs from Mountainair EMS have been released from the hospital, Nieto said in a follow-up Facebook post.

EMS Chief Josh Lewis, who was the first to enter the home, will remain in the hospital overnight for observation, the mayor said.

“We are incredibly thankful that the other responders have been released,” Nieto said. “While they are not yet fully recovered, they are doing much better.”

Some Torrance County EMTs and hospital nurses who came into contact with people who were at the home also experienced symptoms, according to the mayor.

“We are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers and wishing them a full and speedy recovery,” Nieto said.

Albuquerque Fire Rescue Hazmat teams are working to identify the substance. Investigators believe it may be spread through contact rather than being airborne, according to authorities.

Mountainair Public Works confirmed that the substance was not carbon monoxide or related to natural gas.

Authorities said they secured a perimeter around the home and that there is “no threat to the public.”

“We ask the public to avoid the area and keep all affected individuals and first responders in their thoughts,” state police said.

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Three dead, more injured after possible hazmat situation in New Mexico

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