Try putting an ice-cube in your mouth. The insides of your mouth and tongue instantly turn numb. Hold it in still and you will feel pain. Now try sucking on peppermint. The mint itself is at room temperature…
Natural selection has shaped many different animal groups, from V-like formations of bird flocks to circular mills of schooling fish. These shapes are the result of millions of years of evolution. Animals…
I am always repeating the mantra that we should “work hard and play hard”. But is having fun professionally productive? As someone who studies animal behaviour I sometimes look to my experimental subjects…
Great tits are opportunistic copycats. Entire populations can be found performing the same arbitrary behaviour simply because birds copy one another, following a fashion. And it’s this behaviour, reported…
Slow, lazy, stupid? It’s time to update your impression of the crocodilians. These animals are up to amazing things that we’re only beginning to observe and recognize.
From Roman classics to British tabloids, humans have long celebrated the curious and remarkable ability of birds to imitate the sounds of humans and other animals. A recent surge of research is revealing…
Most of us have experienced the overwhelming urge to yawn in response to another person yawning – but we’re not the only species to do this. Research published in PeerJ today shows bonobos – our closest…
Many of us know from personal experience that raising children can be stressful, but a new study reveals that stress can be enough to affect the quality of parenting – in mongooses, at least. A recent…
Editor’s note: the research paper on which this article is based has been retracted by the journal. Stegodyphus dumicola is a social spider. This curious little creature lives in shared nests with more…
The recent public exhibition of portraits painted by George W Bush, retired President of the United States, has managed to throw a lot of people into a tizzy. Critiques of his work ranged from relatively…
Visual illusions, such as the rabbit-duck (shown above) and café wall (shown below) are fascinating because they remind us of the discrepancy between perception and reality. But our knowledge of such illusions…
Fossils can tell us lots about animals – their size, age or sex, which is mostly physical characteristics. Evidence about how they may have behaved is rare. But the 240m-year-old fossil dung that I found…