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Darwin wondered: what if species change over time in response to their environment? Shutterstock In science, we look at the evidence and try to find the theory that best explains it. And that’s what happened when it came to figuring out evolution. We can see life evolving all around us. Plan...

Tropical tuna are one of the few wild animals we still hunt in large numbers, but finding them in the vast Pacific ocean can be tremendously difficult. However, fishers have long known that tuna are attracted to, and will aggregate around, floating objects such as logs. In the past, people used ba...

Species extinctions have defined the global biodiversity crisis, but extinction begins with loss in abundance of individuals that can result in compositional and functional changes of ecosystems. Using multiple and independent monitoring networks, we report population losses across much of the North...

Depending on whom you ask, the IPCC’s latest report is either startling, depressing, or dire—or more likely a combination of all three. When the sun sets on the human race, and the cause of death isn’t an asteroid scorching the Earth, whoever or whatever comes after our kind might uncover the...

Australia’s water rats, or Rakali, are one of Australia’s beautiful but lesser-known native rodents. And these intelligent, semi-aquatic rats have revealed another talent: they are one of the only Australian mammals to safely eat toxic cane toads. Our research, published today in Australian M...

It is true we could build a pipe or canal to move water around. In fact, a 1930s plan called the Bradfield Scheme suggested using dams, pumps and pipes to move flood waters from Australia’s north to drier inland areas. Some politicians still support this plan but some environmental experts have...

In 1955, an enormous photographic exhibition, The Family of Man, challenged the world as to what it meant to be human. The curator, Edward Steichen, assembled 503 photographs by 273 photographers from 68 countries, while his brother-in-law, the poet Carl Sandburg, provided the lyrical subtext to th...

The Earth warms and cools on a range of different time scales, driven by different effects. But the two controlling factors are always the amount of sunlight (solar radiation) reaching the Earth’s surface, and the amount of greenhouse gases in the air. A brighter sun means more solar radiation ab...

Animal thought does not have the structure of human language. Shutterstock Jacob Beck, York University, Canada Sarah, “the world’s smartest chimp,” died in July 2019, just before her 60th birthday. For the majority of her life she served as a research subject, providing scientists with a w...

The universe is home to a dizzying number of stars and planets. But the vast bulk of the universe is thought to be invisible dark matter. Illustris Collaboration, CC BY-NC Michael J. I. Brown, Monash University Dark matter, by its very nature, is unseen. We cannot observe it with telescopes, and...