Before there was life, ribonucleic acid (RNA) ruled the primordial soup. Or so the story goes, according to what’s known as the RNA World hypothesis. But it seems we may have been too hasty in leaving out RNA’s more complex cousin, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Chemists from the UK and the US have shown how both

Getting around in a city can be a lot more dangerous than wide open spaces, and that, it seems, is true for migratory birds as well, especially if they’re in the habit of calling out to each other at night. A new study has analysed the deaths of 70,000 songbirds that died after colliding with

Sure, you might think your average acorn-chomping grey squirrel is sort of cute. But seriously, it’s never going to be giant rainbow squirrel from India level of cute.  It’s not just our opinion either. When amateur photographer Kaushik Vijayan posted some pics of Malabar giant squirrels (Ratufa indica) on Instagram, they quickly wowed the internet.  Vijayan took

Miniaturised frogs form a fascinating but poorly understood group of amphibians. They have been exceptionally prone to taxonomic underestimation because when frogs evolve small body size they start to look remarkably similar – so it is easy to underestimate how diverse they really are. As part of my PhD I have been studying frogs and

Human ingenuity is no match for evolution. An exceptional new video shows a tiny tropical lizard breathing underwater from a sort of “scuba tank” on its head. Found in Costa Rica, this intrepid little diver, known as a water anole (Anolis aquaticus), is possibly using its bubble tank to hide from predators and hunt for

We don’t know a lot about the world’s earliest animals, but thanks to their 558 million-year-old fossilised remains, we thought we had a hint as to their appearance. Now, it seems, we were wrong about even that. Scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) have discovered that the iconic Dickinsonia fossils are probably not flat

Its shorelines comprise the lowest land on Earth, and its waters are nearly 10 times saltier than seawater. But rumours of the Dead Sea’s deadness are nonetheless quite exaggerated, an incredible new discovery shows. The famous ‘Sea of Death‘, bordered by Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank, isn’t actually a sea at all, but rather

Sixty-six million years ago, a massive asteroid crashed into a shallow sea near Mexico. The impact carved out a 90-mile-wide crater and flung mountains of earth into space. Earthbound debris fell to the planet in droplets of molten rock and glass. Ancient fish caught glass blobs in their gills as they swam, gape-mouthed, beneath the

Two European crows that look quite different from each other are actually diverging from a single species, right before our eyes. In Western Europe, it’s the inky-black carrion crow (Corvus corone). In the east, the grey hooded crow (C. cornix). They overlap in a very narrow zone running along the River Elbe in Germany, where

The natural world is a strange and wonderful place. But sometimes biologists come across something that is just… odd. Really, really odd. Case in point: this peculiar arachnid photographed by natural scientist Andreas Kay in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest in July 2017. By all appearances, it looks like it has the tiny head of a black

Forget mutant turtles. Kangaroo rats are the true ninjas of the animal kingdom. A series of four high-speed videos has recently captured these little fighters flipping and kicking in mid-air as they artfully dance around their arch nemesis, the hungry sidewinder rattlesnake (Crotalus cerastes). It’s a battle between two extreme athletes, and the result is a lightning

The recent discovery of a comb jellyfish with a disappearing butt had us wondering: what other types of weird animal behinds are producing floaters (or sinkers) out in the world? From wriggling deep sea worms that poop from their mouths, to flatworms that have myriad butt holes on their backs, evolution has concocted a bizarre and

Artificial cells created inside the lab have taken another major step forward, with scientists developing cells that are able to produce their own chemical energy and synthesise parts of their own construction. That makes these artificial cells a lot more like real, biological cells – cells that can construct and organise their own building blocks naturally.

It starts on a single limb. The leaves grow small, and begin to curl, turning a pale yellow or reddish colour. Within weeks, another apple tree is dead. But that’s not the end of it. Adjacent trees in the orchard often begin to show the same thing. Again, the symptoms may start on a single

The super arrogant seem to like the super bloom. Park officials in California’s Antelope Valley, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, said Tuesday that in recent days someone landed a helicopter in a field of poppies – part of the massive bloom unfolding across the state – and then began a hike.

Thousands of poisonous toads have flooded a South Florida neighborhood, raising fears about the dangers they pose to pets and children, according to local reports. The toads started appearing in Palm Beach Gardens, a city of 55,000, north of Miami, in recent weeks, according CBS Miami. They have been found in people’s gardens, swimming pools,

We all knew the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex was big. But palaeontologists in Canada have just identified the biggest lizard tyrant king yet – its name is Scotty, and boy was it a corker. From nose to tail-tip, Scotty measures 13 metres (43 feet), and would have cracked the scales at 8,800 kilograms (19,400 pounds), based

Researchers have discovered that sun bears can precisely copy each other’s facial expressions in social situations. It’s a bigger deal than you might think, especially for scientists. When humans are in social situations, we often adjust our facial expressions in response to someone else. It’s called facial mimicry, and past a point of sufficient complexity

A house proud mouse, considerately tidying up the workbench of the shed in which it lives, has been captured on video and shared online. The mouse pops out of a box, picks up some screws, nail clippers and a metal chain and carries them back into the box. It’s tempting to think the mouse is

Roughly 12,800 years ago, planet Earth went through a brief cold snap that was unrelated to any ice age. For years, there have been geologists that have argued that this period was caused by an airburst or meteor fragments (known as the Younger Dryas Impact Theory). This event is believed to have caused widespread destruction