Evolution

Watch as the whale becomes itself: slowly, slowly, from land to sea, through deep time

10 minutes

The eerie otherworldliness of slow undersea life sped up to a human pace

5 minutes

Slime trails and ‘love darts’ – on the strange, slow skirmishes of snail sex

4 minutes

What the spitting archerfish might tell us about small-brain intelligence

4 minutes

A cut-throat case of evolutionary backstabbing in the Peruvian rainforest

3 minutes

What say you, dinosaur?

Did Neanderthals speak? Did dinosaurs roar? And when did birds begin to sing? The soundscape of deep time is coming back

Alex Riley

How the mantis shrimp’s six-pupiled eyes put 20/20 vision to shame

4 minutes

Obsession and electricity: a scientist chases the origins of life in the lab

16 minutes

Wild thing

How and why did humans domesticate animals – and what might this tell us about the future of our own species?

Jacob Mikanowski

Coded vibrations and signal jamming – the secret language of the treehoppers

5 minutes

Unified theory of evolution

Darwin’s theory that natural selection drives evolution is incomplete without input from evolution’s anti-hero: Lamarck

Michael Skinner

If a sea urchin survives the incredible tumult of youth, it’s nearly immortal

3 minutes

Glow worms mimic stars, creating a stunning faux night sky in a New Zealand cave

4 minutes

Extinction is forever: de-extinction can’t save what we had

Brian Switek

Anthropology is far from licking the problem of fossil ages

Paige Madison

The link between language and cognition is a red herring

Frans de Waal

What makes mosquitoes so good at getting under our skin?

3 minutes

Sex is a costly molecular kind of wizardry – why evolve it?

Arunas L Radzvilavicius

Great for killing, and for research: the lethal fangs of saber-toothed cats

5 minutes

How multicoloured side-blotched lizards put game theory into evolutionary action

3 minutes

How lobsters use their 12 ‘noses’ to woo mates, find food and win fights

5 minutes

Dogs love to play, but they don’t do so for pleasure

Raymond Coppinger & Mark Feinstein

Cell growth simulations reveal life-like emergence in stunning digital art

5 minutes

Sexy beasts

Male flamboyance does more than ruffle a few feathers – it helps the female choose a mate in top metabolic health

Alex Riley

A hair-trigger existence – the extreme peril of feasting on Venus flytrap nectar

3 minutes

Are the kung fu skills of a newborn orchid mantis a match for a jumping spider?

4 minutes