The crow family, corvidae, includes some unmistakable characters. It’s hard to confuse a magpie with anything else. The same goes for a jay. But for every colourful corvid, there are many others whose wardrobes are uniformly funereal. Distinguishing the predominantly black corvids of Britain and Ireland – carrion crow, rook, raven, chough and jackdaw – usually requires looking beyond the […]
Category: Wildlife
The Myth of Scientific Wildlife Management: How Predators Are Mismanaged to Death
The way wolves are being managed in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho isn’t just controversial — it’s a case study in how politics can overwhelm science when it’s inconvenient. Grizzly bears are next. What’s happening to these animals is often framed as “management,” but that word loses its meaning when the underlying decisions are driven less […]
Why do cockchafers have such weird, feathery antennae?
Cockchafers, along with stag beetles, dung beetles, dor beetles and scarabs, have the last three to seven segments of their antennae expanded into flat, plate-like leaves, which sit in a distinctive fan-like arrangement. Antennae are the olfactory sense organs of insects, and this formation greatly increases the surface area available for the chemosensors. Insects usually need to […]
Amid conflict and poaching, tech helps boost mountain gorilla numbers
The population of the world’s last mountain gorillas has rebounded by 73% since 1989, allowing the subspecies to be reclassified from critically endangered — one step away from extinction — to endangered. But they remain imperiled, with about 1,063 left. They live in just one place: the Greater Virunga Landscape that straddles Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic […]
Strange, devil-like sea creatures are about to gather in huge numbers off ‘Europe’s Hawaii’. Here’s what’s going on
Sitting on the edge of a small dive boat, clad in a thick wetsuit and bulky scuba gear, every movement feels awkward and cumbersome. But with a deep breath, I roll backwards into the Atlantic Ocean. The instant rush of cool water is a relief, and the heaviness of the equipment eases as gravity releases […]
Researchers find ‘remarkable’ hot-pink insect in Panama rainforest
In March 2025, biologist Benito Wainwright and his colleagues were searching for katydids — leaf-mimicking insects related to crickets and grasshoppers — in the rainforest of Barro Colorado Island in Panama, when they came across an unexpected sight: a hot-pink katydid individual of the species Arota festae. The researchers captured the katydid and raised her in […]
“Faced with a rugby scrum of suitors, females have little choice over who to mate with.” Here’s why these weird frogs suddenly turn blue
In the world of amphibians, sexual dichromatism, where one sex appears a different colour, is an unusual phenomenon. Dichromatism can be further split into ‘ontogenetic’, where the sexes remain different colours, and ‘dynamic’, where the colour change occurs temporarily – something considered rare as hen’s teeth among anurans. Fighting this froggy trend to a spectacular […]
Two Cheetah Cubs Rescued from Illegal Wildlife Trade in Somaliland
When a tip came in that two cheetah cubs were about to be loaded onto a boat and smuggled into the exotic pet trade, responders had only hours to act. What followed was a remarkable effort that not only saved two young lives but also shone a spotlight on a crisis that continues to threaten […]