Adam Hartstone‐Rose, Assoc. Prof. of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State Univ. The aye-aye is one of nature’s most fascinatingly bizarre creatures. Native to Madagascar, this lemur is the largest nocturnal primate in the world and has unique features that set it apart. It has bat‐like ears that allow it to echo-locate and rodent-like ever-growing incisors […]

ASPCA Dogs communicate with one another and with us using their own elegant, non-verbal language. They use facial expressions, ear and tail positions and overall body posture to signal their intentions. Breaking body language down one body part at a time can be helpful in building your observation and interpretation skills. It is vitally important […]

The puff adder is an ambush hunter that relies on its camouflage to sit and wait for prey to walk by. It is the fastest striking snake in the world at 5m per second strike speed. Unfortunately this is also why the most amount of medically significant bites come from the species. They are wide […]

Lauren Dawson, Postdoctoral fellow, Animal Biosciences, University of Guelph With an estimated 200 million pet cats worldwide, more pet cats than pet dogs, two million cat videos on YouTube, and countless famous cats, like Grumpy Cat and Lil’ Bub, each with millions of followers on their social media accounts, cats are very popular! Despite their […]

Darren Evans, Reader in Ecology and Conservation, Newcastle University 18 January 2019 The sheer scale and intensity of the Australian bushfire crisis have led to apocalyptic scenes making the front pages of newspapers the world over. An estimated 10 million hectares (100,000 sq km) of land have burned since 1 July 2019. At least 28 […]

by Steve Venom Man Cape Cobras are a medium sized cobra that usually reach around 1.5 m, they have been recorded 2.5 m in some areas but it’s not common. They have round pupils and are smooth scaled, there scales are glossy with 19-21 rows mid body, and the subcaudals are paired 50-68 with 195-227 […]

Cape sea urchins (Parechinus angulosus) provide important nurseries for abalone (perlemoen). The spines of the urchins protect juvenile abalone from predators such as octopus, klipfish and rock lobsters. The dramatic disappearance of these urchins has left juvenile abalone in the open, making them an easy target for hungry predators. Sea urchins move by increasing or […]

Sound doesn’t fossilize. Language doesn’t either. Even when writing systems have developed, they’ve represented full-fledged and functional languages. Rather than preserving the first baby steps toward language, they’re fully formed, made up of words, sentences and grammar carried from one person to another by speech sounds, like any of the perhaps 6,000 languages spoken today. […]

Jacob Blokland, Palaeontology PhD Candidate and Casual Academic, Flinders University 11 December 2019 A new species of extinct penguin has been discovered. It’s helping us bridge the gap between modern penguins and their counterparts from the Paleocene epoch – the 10-million-year period following dinosaur extinction. The world’s oldest known penguins existed only a few million […]

Lauren Finka, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Nottingham Trent University Many of us will have experienced that super friendly cat who seems to love being stroked one minute, only to bite or swipe at us the next. It might be easy at this point to blame it on the cat, but what’s likely happening here is that […]