Graceful, intelligent and endlessly charismatic, bottlenose dolphins are the ocean’s most recognisable ambassadors. This guide dives into their behaviour, biology and the remarkable social lives that make them one of the sea’s most captivating species. What are bottlenose dolphins? Bottlenose dolphins are marine mammals. There are two species of bottlenose dolphin: the common bottlenose dolphin […]
In Mexico, world’s smallest turtle faces big threats from trafficking, habitat loss
It sounds like a scene out of the Ocean’s series of heist movies. Only this one didn’t happen in Las Vegas, but at a Mexican university campus surrounded by lush tropical vegetation. And it wasn’t about taking on a casino, but stealing valuable turtles. Armando Escobedo Galván, a biologist at Centro Universitario de la Costa […]
Watch heart-stopping footage of desperate flying foxes dodging deadly, monstrous crocodiles to collect water from a predator-infested river
In the blazing-hot Northern Territory in Australia, little red flying foxes try to stay cool. As temperatures soar to 38°C, they begin to produce more heat than they can release. At 40°C they will die, unless they find a way to cool down. What they need is water. By skimming the river’s surface they can […]
Bumblebees Have Learned to Read Simple Morse Code–an Ability Seen Only in Humans and Vertebrates
A new study is the first to show that an insect can differentiate between different durations of visual cues. In Morse code, a short duration flash or “dot” denotes a letter “E” and a long duration flash— or “dash”—means letter “T”. Until now, the ability to discriminate between “dot” and “dash” has been seen only […]
There’s an adorable animal in the Rockies that yells at hikers. Experts are worried its call may be fading
American pikas are small, mountain-dwelling lagomorphs that look like a cross between their rabbit cousins and rodents such as guinea pigs or hamsters. They’re common throughout the Rocky Mountains in the USA and southern Canada up to elevations over 4,000 metres. They specialise in inhabiting broken rocky habitats known as talus and are not considered […]
Scientists slam Canada-US proposal to lower trade protections for peregrine falcons
The crow-sized, slate-blue-backed peregrine falcon, with its bright yellow feet, soars across the skies from Greenland’s Arctic tundra to the steppe plains of Patagonia in South America. Falco peregrinus is one of the most widespread birds on the planet, with 19 subspecies that call coasts, mountains, deserts and river valleys home. These eye-catching raptors are […]
How do diving gannets avoid breaking their necks when entering the water at speeds of nearly 100 km/h?
Plunge-diving gannets hit the water at speeds of up to 86kph – fast enough to do some serious damage if they were a human diver. The bird’s long, slender neck may look like it would buckle on impact, but the muscles are arranged to lock the vertebrae in place before entry. To the extent that […]
Three-metre giant oarfish, ‘palace messenger’ of doom, washes up on Tasmanian beach
It was a beautiful warm day in north-west Tasmania when a fish with a reputation as a harbinger of doom washed ashore. Tony Cheesman, who lives in the seaside town of Penguin, was walking his two dogs, Ronan and Custard, along the beach at Preservation Bay on Friday morning when something silvery and surrounded by […]