Raising children can be a tough job, especially when doing it alone, but some animals like meerkats and mongooses work together to raise their young. Studies of these cooperative creatures are revealing how this highly social behaviour evolved and is shedding light on the roots of our own species’ collaborative abilities. Living in the flat, … Read more
Sloths and guppies appear to have little in common – one is an arboreal mammal living in the slow lane, while the other is a tiny tropical fish with a frantic existence. Yet both could hold the key to better understanding a fundamental process of evolution. Hanging lazily from tree branches where they barely move … Read more
They may peck greedily at feeding tables – and have it easier than country birds do in the warmer urban winters – but city birds, it turns out, are in turmoil on the inside. Researchers have found that many internal defence mechanisms that are quiet in rural birds are much more active in those in … Read more
It was a life-altering event. Around 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, an asteroid struck the Earth, triggering a mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs and some 75% of all species. Somehow mammals survived, thrived, and became dominant across the planet. Now we have new clues about how that … Read more
Newly-discovered genes that helped supersize human brains along with DNA retrieved from extinct humans, which can still be found in people living today, are expanding scientists’ understanding of how our species evolved. One of the major features that distinguish humans from other primates is the size of our brains, which underwent rapid evolution from about … Read more
Studies of the relationships between microbes and the organisms they live on are revealing how plants and animals could adapt to climate change. With the world facing a global warming somewhere between 1 and 5.5 degrees Celsius, organisms that have evolved to thrive in specific environments need to adapt or they could struggle to survive. Our … Read more