When we look at the way an object moves, humans are able to use this context to infer weight – whether it is light or heavy. Now, New Caledonian crows have demonstrated the same skill – accurately gauging the weight of an object based on how it moves in a breeze. They could be the

As we try to monitor and manage the delicate balance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we’re beginning to realise that we have a lot to learn about the contributing factors involved. Case in point: we just found out that leaf-cutter ants create tiny little ‘factories’ in the jungle, with air vents that push out

What makes a species monogamous? New research has uncovered evidence of a universal genetic code that underlies monogamy in vertebrates. For hundreds of millions of years, animals have been ‘doing it’. But not all of these wild hook-ups represented the same thing – even to animals that look incredibly similar. Some species, like the furry little prairie

In the depths of the Pacific Ocean, where the water runs cold dark and cold, temperatures are continuing to fall – and it’s all because of a period of significant cooling that began in the 16th century. Although global ocean surface temperatures are on the rise, it seems the message hasn’t gotten through to the

The Cordillera del Cóndor between Ecuador and Peru is positively lush with life, but due to the mountain range’s inaccessibility and decades of border disputes, it’s only been in recent years that scientists have been able to get there to check it all out. They have been making absolutely amazing discoveries – the most recent

It’s a common question that experts say they get all the time: can big cats purr like household cats? If only there was a simple response. Even though scientists have been debating the answer for well over a century, today the situation is far from clear. From what we know so far, the answer centres

Nathaniel ‘Coyote’ Peterson knows his stings. From scorpions to bullet ants, the YouTube celebrity endures intense pain in the name of education, if not a few million clicks. But recently he discovered a new contender for the most agonising of insect weapons, and it’s not one he’d expected. Peterson’s channel Brave Wilderness currently has close

Scientists have fixed a natural flaw in photosynthesis, and as a result have boosted plant productivity by an incredible 40 percent compared to wild relatives. Photosynthesis is the chemical reaction that lets plants turn sunlight and carbon dioxide into food, and this new hack could result in enough calories to help feed another 200 million people

On Dec. 22 at 9:03 pm local time, a 64-hectare (158-acre) chunk of Anak Krakatau volcano, in Indonesia, slid into the ocean following an eruption. This landslide created a tsunami that struck coastal regions in Java and Sumatra, killing at least 426 people and injuring 7,202. Satellite data and helicopter footage taken on Dec. 23

Anyone who’s seen a gecko will likely know they can climb walls. But these common lizards can also run across water nearly as fast as they can move on solid ground. Yet while we know how geckos scale smooth vertical surfaces using countless tiny hairs on their feet called setae, how they manage to avoid

Australia is home to one of the world’s rarest meteorological phenomena, which most people have never heard of. Known as morning glory clouds, these long bands of cigar-shaped formations can stretch up to 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) in length. And they can only be seen reliably in one place in the world – Australia’s Gulf

Fireworks are a brilliant way to celebrate special occasions such as New Year’s Eve and Guy Fawkes Night, as well as big sporting events and independence days – right? Not if you happen to be an animal. All animals, domesticated and wild, are hardwired by evolution to find loud noises frightening. It is an automatic

The world’s caves are easily forgotten. Missing from most maps and hidden from the surface, these underground kingdoms are often cloaked by darkness and shrouded in mystery. They’re natural labyrinths that only the most adventurous dare to navigate. Crafted over many thousands of years into a maze of lava, limestone or ice, finding a way

Evolution is a fascinating field but can be rife with misunderstanding. One misconception is that evolution has some innate sense of direction or purpose. In reality, evolution is a mindless, plan-free phenomenon, driven into endless possibilities by random mutations, the most successful of which win out. People also often think that every aspect of every

Marsel van Oosten slipped and stumbled over logs, struggling to lug his camera gear through the verdant mountain forests of China. Undeterred, he pressed on, finally capturing a stunning photo of a pair of golden snub-nosed monkeys, an eye-catching shot that would win him £10,000. Breathtaking photos of the natural world can bring attention to

After months of fruitless searching, one of the most endangered birds on the planet has finally been spotted once more. It’s not particularly flashy, nor large. Stresemann’s Bristlefront is a medium-sized, long-tailed bird with distinctive bristles on its forehead – but scientists think there are only a handful of these creatures left in the world.

Back on 24 January 2017, Fiona the hippo was born 6 weeks early at the Cincinnati Zoo. Nowadays she’s a big, strong juvenile hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), but it took a lot of love and caring to get her there – she’s the smallest hippo born in captivity to ever survive. Her birth weight was only

The sky was clear and the Moon had risen high, but Captain W.J. Watson of the British ship Charles Bal noticed that the Java Sea had “suddenly assumed a milky-white appearance. Watson commented that the sky that night – 22 August 1883 – took on a pinkish hue, “as when the Aurora is showing faintly.”

At least 222 deaths have been reported in Indonesia on Sunday after a tsunami struck the Sunda Strait without warning, the latest disaster to befall a Pacific nation repeatedly stricken this year. As of late Sunday, Indonesian government officials reported more than 843 injured and 28 still missing. The cause remains unclear, but 1-meter high

For centuries, Peruvian locals have talked about a river in the Amazon that burns so hot it can kill. According to legend, Spanish conquistadors foolishly ventured into the rainforest in search of gold, and the few men that returned told stories of poisoned water, man-eating snakes, and a river that boiled from below. For Peruvian

Well, 2018 is almost at an end, and just when you think things can’t get any stranger, we now have the first footage of a lizard breathing underwater. No, not a salamander or newt, an actual land-dwelling lizard, Anolis oxylophus. These incredible creatures are a type of small lizard called river anoles, and while scientists knew

Off the coast of southern Tasmania, Australia, in the submerged mountains of a protected marine park, scientists have turned up more than 100 unnamed species from the deep sea. Each of these creatures or corals is as fascinating and bizarre-looking as the next. There are lobsters with awkwardly long arms, worms with iridescent rings of

The holidays can be a lonely time for many of us. But if you’re in need of some Christmas cheer, don’t worry, nature is here for you. In the dark depths of the ocean 2,600 metres (8,500 feet) below the surface, there lives an ethereally beautiful creature known as a smallspine spookfish (Harriotta haeckeli). And

As macabre as it seems, it’s not exactly a secret that in some species of shark the unborn dine on their siblings while still developing in the womb. But it turns out we don’t know the half of it. A new kind of ultrasound device has provided biologists with a detailed view of this common

A gelatinous, single-celled life form has just solved an increasingly complex problem that many researchers use to test algorithms. Even more impressive is the fact that, as the problem got harder, the slime mould amoeba actually solved the problem in a totally different – and arguably more efficient – way than most algorithms. The result suggests

A white Christmas is not usually part of the Australian experience, but this holiday season, the weather outside has been frightful indeed. On what would’ve usually been a hot and sweaty December afternoon, Sydneysiders were instead entertained with a deluge of hard, icy rocks, cascading from the heavens in a variety of remarkable shapes and

When President Trump announced his plan to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement last year, he said he was benching the United States in the global fight against climate change because he wanted the rest of the world to stop “laughing at us.” “We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore,

The stomachs of other animals in the same suborder probably wouldn’t occur to most people as a place to find a new species, but that’s exactly where one has turned up. In the guts of a Central American coral snake (Micrurus nigrocinctus), herpetologists have found the remains of a snake unknown to science. That’s not

The late Cretaceous, which ended 66 million years ago, was a rough-and-tumble time. Dinosaurs like Ankylosaurus left reminders of brutishness in their fossilized armor. Spikes sprouted from their shoulders. Row after row of bony plates covered their backs. With low and well-protected bulks, tipping the scales at a ton or more, they were built like

Google Street View is a technological wonder that makes visiting almost anywhere on the planet (and off the planet) a virtual cinch. But it’s got some issues. Case in point: you might have seen a spooky story doing the rounds about a mysterious UFO floating above a Florida swamp “in broad daylight… just outside the

Coastal erosion is a slow force, but a powerful one, over millennia carving new shapes into the edges of land. And it can also reveal secrets hidden for millions of years – such as a new discovery on the coast of England. It’s a huge cache of 85 dinosaur footprints from the Lower Cretaceous, made

Historically, tornadoes have been thought to originate in the clouds, reaching turbulent fingers down to Earth. But now a team of climatologists has demonstrated that this ‘top-down’ model of tornadogenesis might actually be wrong. Yep. Tornadoes, their research has found, form from the ground up. Tornadoes can form surprisingly quickly, in just a couple minutes.

Feathers found in Burmese amber dating back 100 million years are so exquisitely preserved that palaeontologists have been able to make a detailed study of their structure – and they’re like nothing seen in living birds today. In fact, they may have served as a type of decoy, falling away in a predator’s grasp, much

The largest diamond ever discovered in North America was unearthed in October, Canadian mining company Dominion Diamond Mines announced in a Thursday news release. Weighing in at 552 carats, the yellow diamond was recovered at the Diavik Diamond Mine, located in Northern Canada about 135 miles south of the Arctic Circle.  Bloomberg News reports that the

The slugs that we find in the garden are not the most inspiring creatures. They kind of just look like dark, slimy blobs. But deep under the sea, their relatives are quite the opposite. And one particular group of sea slugs, called the nudibranchs (pronounced “nood-i-branks”), are especially gaudy looking. These bizarre-looking creatures are covered

Shark populations off the east coast of Australia have been declining over the past 55 years with little sign of recovery, according to research published in the journal Communications Biology. Coastal shark numbers are continuing a 50-year decline, contradicting popular theories of exploding shark populations, according to an analysis of Queensland Shark Control Program data.

An invasive tick that feeds on humans, pets, livestock and wildlife is now making a new home for itself in the United States. The Asian longhorned tick (Haemaphysalis longicornis) is a potentially disease-carrying, blood-sucking species native to East Asia. Last year, however, this exotic pest was somehow found in the US state of New Jersey,

Deep under the ocean, in the dark, dark depths, marine scientists have discovered a new field of hydrothermal vents, hosting an ecosystem unlike any other – with a plethora of species that have never been seen before. It’s been named Jaich Maa, and it’s in the Pescadero Basin at the southern end of the Gulf

It’s something most of us can only ever dream of. You’re swimming in the ocean, minding your own business, when suddenly a family of sleek marine mammals materialises, joining you as you glide through the water. That’s what happened to not one, but two swimmers off the coast of New Zealand in recent weeks, as

Despite several warnings and some major red flags, the Australian government has allowed hundreds of rare and endangered birds to be sent to a zoo in Germany. The only problem is, some are not convinced that the destination is a real, legitimate zoo – at least, not one that the public can actually visit –

Even the tiniest organisms can make it to the big leagues. The number one fastest animal movement in the world now belongs to an ant no bigger than the tip of your finger. Ominously named the Dracula ant (Mystrium camillae), this minuscule species is shy and elusive, a subterranean predator that enjoys sucking the blood

Earth is not the home you think it is. Far below the scant surface spaces we inhabit, the planet is teeming with an incredibly vast and deep ‘dark biosphere‘ of subterranean lifeforms that scientists are only just beginning to comprehend. Hidden throughout this subsurface realm, some of the world’s deepest and oldest organisms thrive in

The name says it all, really. With the exception of some orange hairs in the rear, the black mantled howler monkey (Alouatta palliata) is predominantly covered in – you guessed it – pitch black fur. This is true for all the black howler monkeys in the forests of Central America and the north of South

A relaxed-looking juvenile Hawaiian monk seal lounges near a sandy white beach on some green foliage. Its eyes are half-closed, and it has a serene expression on its face. But the seal’s calm demeanor is surprising. Why? Well, there’s a long, black-and-white eel dangling from its right nostril. “It’s just so shocking,” Claire Simeone, a

She squeaks in ultrasound, “I love you”. He chirrups back “Right back at ya’, sweetheart”. It’s all in the dulcet tones of California mice, but the meaning is clear. Then one of them spends time with another mouse spouse. Later, partners reunited, there’s tension. Somebody barks. A high pitched roar. They’ll make up later, but

Salamanders are, by their very nature, slippery creatures. Perhaps none so slippery as the mysterious ‘leopard eel’ – an amphibian spotted intermittently in the waters of Florida over the last few decades that somehow managed to elude scientific study. Until now, that is. Ecologist Sean Graham of Sul Ross State University in Texas and colleagues

We’re now increasingly aware of the microplastic fragments polluting our oceans, but a new study shows just how quickly these tiny particles can find their way into marine life – it takes a mere six hours for billions of pieces of material to spread inside aquatic animals. The unfortunate critters involved in the research were

You only wish you could be this fabulous millions of years after you die. Precious stones recovered from the opal fields of Australia have turned out not just to be opalised fossils – but the opalised fossils of a dinosaur previously unknown to palaeontology. It’s called Weewarrasaurus pobeni – named for the Wee Warra opal