Science

For one of nature’s great builders, finding a mate means weaving the perfect nest

4 minutes

What is intelligent life?

Our human minds hold us back from truly understanding the many brilliant ways that other creatures solve their problems

Abigail Desmond & Michael Haslam

Kinship

Science must become attuned to the subtle conversations that pervade all life, from the primordial to the present

David Waltner-Toews

The dinosaurs didn’t rule

When we think of changes in Earth’s history as changes of dynasty we miss out on understanding how life really works

Riley Black

To understand how an animal sees the world, start with the shape of its pupils

5 minutes

Evolution without accidents

Despite advances in molecular genetics, too many biologists think that natural selection is driven by random mutations

James A Shapiro

The key to geckos’ unrivalled climbing skills isn’t sticky feet. It’s subatomic

4 minutes

Far from frivolous, cuteness is a powerful – and still mysterious – force of nature

6 minutes

Time is an object

Not a backdrop, an illusion or an emergent phenomenon, time has a physical size that can be measured in laboratories

Sara Walker & Lee Cronin

How like the kiwi we are

To understand helpless human babies, our big brains and oddly involved dads, look to the evolution of birds not mammals

Antone Martinho-Truswell

Why making if-then connections might be the key to consciousness

5 minutes

Our Earth, shaped by life

Darwin was the first to see that all lifeforms, from worms to corals, transform the planet. What does that mean for us?

Olivia Judson

To understand the limits of human senses, look to the wild world of animal cognition

45 minutes

Symmetry rules life on Earth – but it comes with many fascinating exceptions

9 minutes

There’s no one way for an insect to fly, but they’re all amazing in close up and slo-mo

7 minutes

Fortune favours the shrewd

Attaining and maintaining power lies at the heart of almost all animal societies. And it’s as devious as human politicking

Lee Alan Dugatkin

Like pop music, humpback whale songs spread, mutate, and fall out of fashion

9 minutes

What on earth is a xenobot?

The more we understand how cells produce shape and form, the more inadequate the idea of a genomic blueprint looks

Philip Ball

Connected-up-brains

Bat friends, monkeys sharing, and humans holding hands: the brains of social animals synchronise and expand one another

Sofia Quaglia

The split-body problem

Why we need to stop thinking about parents, offspring and sex when we try to understand how life reproduces itself

Gunnar O Babcock

The web of life

Classic evolutionary theory holds that species separate over time. But it’s fuzzier than that – now we know they also merge

Juli Berwald