Halfway between the east coast of Africa and Madagascar lies the remote island of Anjouan – a volcanic landmass born in ancient eruptions some four million years ago. Because of Anjouan’s fiery origins, the entire island should be uniformly composed of volcanic basalt: a dark-coloured, lava-derived rock. Should be. But isn’t. For over a century,

Hidden in the evergreen forests of Guinea and Liberia, scientists have discovered a new species of snake that can deliver a venomous stab all without even opening its mouth. It’s an unusual skill that belongs solely to stiletto snakes, which have long fangs they can stick in and out of the corners of their mouths,

If you’ve been on social media this week, you might have noticed Californians going crazy over the sudden appearance of millions of butterflies, flying north en masse through the state. It’s pretty much the exact joyful display of nature that the world needs right now. But it’s also a beautiful and rare sight in a world where insects

Her name is Yuka: an ancient woolly mammoth that last lived some 28,000 years ago, before becoming mummified in the frozen permafrost wastelands of northern Siberia. But now that icy tomb is no longer the end of Yuka’s story. The mammoth’s well-preserved remains were discovered in 2010, and scientists in Japan have now reawakened traces

Viruses are the IKEA furniture of the living world. In the right kind of cell, a handful of instructions and a few molecular tools can churn out multitudes of infectious Billy bookcases. No DIY builder wants to travel all over town to gather materials – theoretically, germs shouldn’t be any different. Yet a new discovery

Nearly 12,600 years ago, during the Late Pleistocene era, a group of humans hunted and killed a giant ground sloth in Argentina, then left the animal’s bones behind, along with their butchering knife. The giant sloth’s bones remained there, at a site called Campo Laborde in the Pampas region, until 2000, when a local farmer

Scientists in the Galápagos have observed something amazing: the evolution of a completely new species, in the wild, in real-time. And it took just two generations. Back in 2017, genomic sequencing and the analysis of physical characteristics officially confirmed the new species of Darwin’s finch, endemic to a small island called Daphne Major in the

As superpowers go, being able to regrow your own head has to be way up there with the best of them, and researchers just discovered four new species of worm that can pull off this amazing regenerative trick. Not only that, but the new study reveals that this ability evolved fairly recently and independently of

An elusive type of orca, rarely heard of and even more rarely seen, may have just been spotted in the wild. In the icy waters off Cape Horn on the southern tip of Chile, scientists have filmed an entire pod of the legendary “Type D” orca. Over the years, evidence of Type D has been

Language, music, and art often vary between adjacent groups of people, and help us identify not only ourselves but also others. And in recent years rich debates have emerged and spawned research into culture in non-human animals. Scientists first observed chimpanzees using tools more than half a century ago. As this complex behaviour appeared to

Teeth-rattling roars. Earth-shaking stomps. Teeth as long as your forearm. Claws as big as your hand. The mighty Cretaceous king of the ‘tyrant lizards’, Tyrannosaurus rex – and isn’t it just the most adorable thing you have ever seen? Okay, this obviously isn’t a real video of a baby T. rex. It’s a reconstruction by

Just when we thought octopuses couldn’t be any weirder, it turns out that they and their cephalopod brethren evolve differently from nearly every other organism on the planet. In a surprising twist, in April 2017 scientists discovered that octopuses, along with some squid and cuttlefish species, routinely edit their RNA (ribonucleic acid) sequences to adapt

We should be grateful we have anuses. Some creatures don’t have one, so they have to poop out of their mouths. But as it turns out, there’s also an animal whose poop-chute appears only when it needs to defecate. If you hate having to describe a typical day in your job, spare a thought for

Half a billion years ago, the ocean floor was thought to be completely void of life, an ancient dead zone without the necessary oxygen for survival. Thanks to a lucky new discovery, scientists are now second-guessing that assumption. Hiding in a slab of northern Canada’s ancient sea floor, geologists have uncovered a ‘superhighway’ of prehistoric worm

A large, mysterious fish discovered only recently has been found on a beach in Santa Barbara, California. The find has weirded out biologists, because as far as we know, this huge sunfish is supposed to live in the Southern Hemisphere. The discovery of the hoodwinker sunfish (Mola tecta) was announced in 2017 to much fanfare.

Nearly 27,000 years ago, a giant ground sloth travelled across a barren, arid landscape in what is now Belize, munching on grassy vegetation and searching for water. A nearby sinkhole may have promised relief, but the creature probably fell in and never came out. In 2014, divers discovered the remains of that giant sloth buried

Scientists have come across a new species of bacteria they’re calling ‘golden death’ – microorganisms that can devour their parasitic roundworm hosts in hours by eating them from the inside out. Rather a gory way to go if you’re a parasitic worm, but these Chryseobacterium nematophagum bacteria could prove very useful in helping control the

If there’s one place in the world you would expect to find an Alien-esque monster of the deep, it’s Australia. Earlier this month, a group of anglers were fishing in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory when they snagged something unexpected. Stopping the boat, the anglers pulled up a 15-centimetre-long (5.9 inches) worm-like fish,

As an unexplored legend of the deep, the Great Blue Hole in Belize is said to hold deep-sea monsters and Maya mysteries. The first expedition to the bottom has turned up neither of those wonders, but what scientists and explorers have discovered is fascinating - even though it is not, as several outlets have claimed, an

What do you think spiders eat? Insects? Yeah, that’s true. But their diets can actually be a lot more varied than that – and biologists have observed a spider smorgasbord that will blow your mind. In the Amazon rainforest, a team of researchers recorded spiders and other arthropods such as centipedes feasting on tadpoles, lizards,

This February, mother nature is keeping us occupied with a puzzling new riddle, and the solution has even got the scientists stumped: how exactly did a humpback whale end up dead on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil? It’s a curiosity that has drawn worldwide attention. The 8-metre-long carcass (26 feet) was found

Have you ever wondered how fish manage to survive temperatures below freezing in Antarctic waters? (You are now.) It’s a pretty neat question – and now, thanks to genome analysis, we actually have an answer. For one fish, that is. And boy is it an odd one. It’s called the Antarctic blackfin icefish (Chaenocephalus aceratus),

We already know that cats can be as neurotic as their owners are, but just how deep are the personality ties between felines and the humans who serve look after them? Pretty deep, according to new research from scientists in the UK, who found that personality traits of cat owners correlated with related behaviours exhibited

Humanity has always had an uneasy relationship with wolves. They loom large in our ancient mythologies as fearsome beasts; over the millennia, that fear has led to devastation of wolf populations across Europe, including 19th century Germany. In the 1960s, numbers of wolves (Canis lupus) in Europe hit an all-time low, veering perilously close to

Imagine a highly sophisticated body armor that is a tough as it is flexible, a shield that consists largely of water, but remains strong enough to prevent mechanical penetration. Now imagine that this armor is not only strong, but also soft and stretchy, so much so that the wearer is able to move their body

We know that many of the traits we see in animals are there because they evolved by somehow being useful to the species. But evolution is messy, and the supposed benefits of weird features aren’t always obvious. Take zebra stripes, for example. The stark black and white garb of the three zebra species roaming Africa

Looking at a picture of Wallace’s giant bee, you wouldn’t pick this insect as elusive. Four times as big as a honeybee, and a stark black colour, it looks like the security guard or bouncer of the bee world. But researchers have just released the first photos and video of a live Wallace’s giant bee

Damage-resistant genes. Healing powers. Very low risk of cancer. No, scientists aren’t describing Wolverine or Superman – those are the powers of the great white shark. The star of Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster, whose scientific name is Carcharodon carcharias, has a reputation as a meat-eating monster of the sea. But in fact, great white sharks may

When Charles Darwin famously visited the Galapagos Islands back in 1835, he discovered a volcanic archipelago that was home to 15 different species of giant tortoise. Today, after killing off more than 100,000 of these strange creatures, we are down to about 10 species, many of which are critically endangered. One was missing for over

From above, the Namib Desert in Africa appears afflicted by disease, pocked with patches of bare earth that are either touched by the gods, the dead, or the wildlife, depending on who you ask. Science had all but closed the book on these mysterious ‘fairy circles‘, placing the blame squarely on the soil. To remove

From December to April in Yosemite National Park, chilly water from melting mountain snow streams toward the eastern edge of El Capitan and forms what’s known as Horsetail Falls. The cascade is predictably picturesque within the greater grandeur of one of the country’s most stunning national parks. But it becomes truly phenomenal for just a

Is there any dinosaur more iconic than Tyrannosaurus Rex? Its mighty jaws and fierce mien ignite the imaginations of four-year-olds everywhere. It’s the dinosaur poster child – yet this fearsome beast’s beginnings were, new evidence suggests, quite humble. How humble? Well, a little smaller than a kangaroo, as we now know from a newly discovered

Most of us know that at some point in our evolutionary history around 600 million years ago, single-celled organisms evolved into more complex multicellular life. But knowing that happened and actually seeing it happen in real-time in front of you is an entirely different matter altogether. And that’s exactly what researchers from the George Institute

[ad_1] At the end of last year, scientists discovered a small octopus city – dubbed Octlantis – a find that suggests members of the gloomy octopus species (Octopus tetricus) are perhaps not the isolated and solitary creatures we thought they were.   Octlantis features dens made out of piles of sand and shells, and is home