For life to persist, it must tolerate its environment. The depth of an arctic winter is formidable, and is most notably overcome by hibernation. But some reptiles and amphibians survive by allowing their…
Who’s in charge here? Fish adapt to their new roles.
Shinnosuke Nakayama
In our society, not many people are lucky enough to have an ideal boss who they would want to follow faithfully for the rest of their lives. Many might even find their boss selfish and arrogant or complain…
Baboons can be shy, just like you.
Arno Meintjes Wildlife
Our individual, varied personalities are among the traits often cited as those that distinguish us from the rest of the animal kingdom. However, as we, like the rest of life on Earth, are products of natural…
One of nature’s most fascinating phenomena is the collective behaviour of animals. A shoal of fish, a swarm of locusts, and a colony of ants can all act as superorganisms, where the group as a whole makes…
Down Fido: not all dogs make gentle family pets.
Dominic Lipinski/PA
A new round of public consultation has begun on proposals to increase the sentencing for the owners of dogs who carry out fatal attack from seven years to life. Such moves are prompted in part by the huge…
Jumping spider silk draglines join bird wings and lizard tails as stabilising features in the animal kingdom.
VonShawn
Jumping spiders are unique in the spider world as they don’t build webs - they’re active visual predators who rarely use silk. In fact, the main use we thought jumping spiders had for silk was a safety…
Without a queen, the rest of a bee colony will keep calm and carry on.
Goshzilla - Dann
In a honey bee colony, the queen bee rules while her daughter workers do nothing but work. So what happens when the queen dies? Are there worker riots, with the colony dissolving into a chaotic mess? Surprisingly…
They aren’t just pretty birdies - superb fairy-wrens teach each other to identify and fend off parasitic species such as cuckoos.
William Feeney
Can superb fairy-wrens learn to respond to brood-parasitic cuckoos by simply watching other fairy-wrens react to a cuckoo? That’s the question posed in a new Biology Letters study by myself and Naomi Langmore…
There are many qualities that have been suggested that separate human beings from other living species. These include tool making, an ability to dream and especially the development of highly sophisticated…
It’s just a fly on a ball, from up close.
Benjamin de Bivort
After many years of research, we still do not completely understand the brains of even the simplest organisms. The human brain with its 80 billion neurons is largely a mystery. But with better tools we…
This rapacious little critter could actually help humans one day.
Larah McElroy
When disaster strikes, search and rescue robots could save lives by finding and retrieving people buried under rubble. But designing robots that can descend rapidly through unstable and uneven rubble has…
Rapid colour change may occur due to various “triggers” – but what are they?
Today is a good day
When most people think of colour change, they think of octopuses or chameleons - but the ability to rapidly change colour is surprisingly widespread. Many species of crustaceans, insects, cephalopods (squid…
Ronan the sea lion was able to keep a musical beat, even when hearing a song for the first time.
American Psychological Association
US scientists have trained a seal to bob its head in time to music, in a study that the researchers say presents the first ever evidence that non-human mammals can keep a beat. It was previously thought…
Dingo: when they come to rely on humans for food and water, not killing them can be naive.
Flickr/woulfe
The sad reality of human-dingo relations is that blood will be shed, as Brad Purcell recently reminded us in these pages with his article about non-violent co-existence, The Australian Dingo: to be respected…
An important ‘apex predator’ that should neither be hunted as an enemy nor treated as a pet. With respect and wisdom, we can coexist.
AAP/Tony Phillips
It’s the dry season in the Northern Territory, and for many people that means camping under a clear winter’s sky in the Top End. Yet rediscovering nature can be a fraught exercise in wilderness areas like…
Among birds, crows and ravens (or corvids) are the most intelligent. They have the largest brains for body size; they’re more like primates than birds. In fact, some people call them “flying monkeys…