Biodiversity

Just like how the hairs on your arm can feel a soft breeze blowing or a spider crawling on you, whiskers on a tiger’s face and chin give it messages about what is going on around him or her. But whiskers are not just ordinary hairs. They are thicker and go deeper into the tiger’s skin. In fact,...

Terrible by name … Phyllobates terribilis. Lwp Kommunikáció/Flickr, CC BY-SA Simon Cotton, University of Birmingham When asked to name a poison, people may well think of cyanide, arsenic or strychnine. But these are not the most toxic substances known. More poisonous than these, but still no...

Diners in France recently got more than they bargained for when poppy seed baguettes were found to contain a dose of opium that could take postprandial napping to a new extreme. Other than narcotics, there are a host of surprises lurking in everyday foodstuffs that you might not be aware of. Here ar...

Fruit ripening is all about plants getting animals to eat the seeds that are inside their fruits. When the animals have finished eating, they move around and drop the seeds in a different place when they do a poo. This helps the plants get their seeds to somewhere new where they can grow into a new...

Evolution allows animals to adapt to their environments by favouring those who have an advantage that helps them survive. If they survive long enough to have babies they pass that advantage onto their children through their genes. That process is what we call adaptation. Animals have adapted to liv...

Humans love optimism. It’s a no-brainer – optimism makes us feel good and wanting more. This attraction has deep neurological roots that affect both our brain functions and how we process new information. For this reason, optimism is powerful. Optimistic individuals or groups frequently perform...

This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here. We need nature. It gives us inspiration, health, resources, life. But we ar...

Just 20 countries are home to 94% of the world’s remaining wilderness, excluding the high seas and Antarctica, according to our new global wilderness map, published today in Nature. A century ago, wilderness extended over most of the planet. Today, only 23% of land – excluding Antarctica – an...

The biggest killers of wildlife globally are unsustainable hunting and harvesting, and the conversion of huge swathes of natural habitat into farms, housing estates, roads and other industrial activities. There is little doubt that these threats are driving the current mass extinction crisis. Yet o...

The humble honeybee can use symbols to perform basic maths including addition and subtraction, shows new research published today in the journal Science Advances. Bee have miniature brains - but they can learn basic arithmetic. Despite having a brain containing less than one million neurons, th...