Have you ever arrived in a hotel room after a long flight and despite being exhausted, failed to fall asleep? This is called the first-night effect and we may have understood why it occurs.
If you have taken a walk and would like to return home you need to have an idea of where you are in relation to your destination. To do this, you need to know which way you are facing and also in which…
Sometimes it may seem like your dog doesn’t want to listen. But in our study, however, we’ve found that he may understand more than he lets on. Human speech is complex, communicating not only words but…
The Mediterranean Sea holds some of the most heavily fished waters in the world, and a recent paper has revealed the extent to which the sea – which has 19 nations on its shores – has been exploited. Academics…
Darwin’s finches, a group of 14 species found only in the Galapagos Islands, are perhaps most well known as one of the inspirations for Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. A classic…
The number of endangered bird species is rising and even with our best intentions, there isn’t enough money to save them all – so how do we decide which species we should let go? A new approach has been…
How does a young animal find its way to an unfamiliar location hundreds or thousands of kilometres from where it was born? A reasonable idea might be to find an older, experienced migrant and follow. This…
Reports of the third successive year of rising eel catches in France suggests the eel’s drastic decline in numbers has finally bottomed out. However it’s important to note that today’s catches are a tiny…
There is no denying that humans think sex is important, but it also matters for microbes. Sex allows genes from two parents to be mixed, leading to new combinations of genes in the offspring. In the past…
You get hauled out of bed in the morning not just because of an alarm clock. We are genetically encoded with a 24-hour (circadian) body clock that allows us to live in harmony with our environment. But…