Off the coast of southwest England, the small island of Lundy was once a textbook case of how invasive rats can devastate seabird colonies. By the late 1990s, puffin numbers had crashed to just 13 breeding pairs, and many other seabirds had abandoned the island altogether. In 2002, conservationists launched an ambitious rat-eradication project to…
Dogs may be doing more than simply choosing a spot when they stop for a break. A 2013 study by Czech researchers found that dogs tended to align their bodies along Earth’s North-South magnetic axis while defecating, but only when the planet’s magnetic field was relatively stable. The research involved 70 dogs from 37 breeds,…
Japanese researcher Tokuji Unno wins the Ig Nobel Prize for a study on blowing the nose. Have you ever wondered whether there is a right way to blow your nose? A Japanese researcher spent years studying exactly that question — and nearly five decades after publishing his findings, his work has now won an Ig…
Millions of years ago, several species produced higher frequencies, just like the native leaf grasshopper. Image Credit: Thoris Jonsson/University of Graz Jurassic World was not silent. Around 165 million years ago, forests in present day Inner Mongolia were filled with the calls of insects communicating through sounds that ranged from low tones to frequencies beyond…
Image: ResearchGate/François Génier Deep in the rainforests of Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea, a deceptively simple field technique helped reveal beetles that science had never formally recognised. Canadian entomologist François Génier, from the Beaty Centre for Species Discovery at the Canadian Museum of Nature, surveyed the island’s dung beetles using traps baited with animal dung. The…
Moroti Adegboyega. Image Credit: Jonas Borg / Stockholm Water Foundation A 17-year-old Canadian student has developed an AI-powered robot designed to tackle one of the most persistent forms of water pollution i.e plastic. The project, called ‘Ecoferroquatics,’ uses artificial intelligence, robotics and a magnetic liquid known as ‘ferrofluid’ to identify and remove plastic from water…
Winter on Mars is not simply a season of plunging temperatures and long polar nights. As the planet moves into winter, its atmosphere begins to change with it. Carbon dioxide, the dominant gas in the Martian atmosphere, can freeze directly onto the ground or fall as snow, building temporary polar caps that hold a substantial…
A flock of White Storks. Image Credit: Society for Ecological Restoration(SER) White storks once formed a familiar part of the landscape in southern Sweden, but by 1954 the species had disappeared as a breeding bird from the country. Their decline was closely linked to dramatic changes in the countryside, where wetlands were drained and other…
In 2019, scientists at the University at Buffalo developed an electricity-free cooling system that uses a thin aluminium film coated with the polymer polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS, to send heat from its surroundings through the atmosphere and towards outer space. The approach, known as radiative cooling, was designed to overcome a key challenge: making passive cooling…
Wild saiga antelope. Image Credit: Andrey Giljov/Wikipedia In 2015, Kazakhstan’s vast grasslands became the scene of one of the most devastating wildlife losses in recent history. Around 200,000 saiga antelopes died within weeks, leaving a population already weakened by poaching and earlier declines facing another impossible setback. The disaster wiped out more than two thirds…