An eerily calm photo taken Sunday shows the eye of Hurricane Dorian, one of the most powerful storms ever seen in the Atlantic. US Air Force pilots known as hurricane hunters are flying regular reconnaissance missions into Dorian, which strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane early Sunday as it tore through the northern Bahamas. Garrett

Hurricane Dorian has been unleashing an impressive lightning storm as it continues on its tragically destructive way. Looping together satellite images from the end of August, meteorologist Dakota Smith has put together a spectacular show of flashing lights within and around the storm’s swirling eye. “I created the loop mainly to visualise how incredible hurricanes

For the first time in centuries, compasses in Greenwich are about to point directly at true north: an epic coincidence of time and magnetism that hasn’t taken place for some 360 years. This serendipitous occurrence – which is set to occur within the next fortnight – serves as a startling reminder of how Earth’s magnetic

You’ve probably heard before that Earth has witnessed five mass extinctions. It’s a number plucked straight from the fossil record, but that’s not the whole picture, not even close. Evidence from ancient rocks reveals the oldest die-off in our planet’s history most likely occurred among single-celled organisms more than 2 billion years ago. A recent

We’re sure you have your favourite animal. It may even be a really smart one. But corvids – such as crows, magpies and ravens – really are something special. In fact, they’re some of the most intelligent animals in the world. And here we’ve gathered some of the finest examples of just how clever these

Across the Caribbean this week, island residents docked boats, emptied grocery stores, and boarded up buildings in preparation for Hurricane Dorian, which became a Category 1 storm on Wednesday. Meanwhile, high up in Earth’s orbit, satellites belonging to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) watched the hurricane form and churn. The storm has passed

It was supposed to be extinct by now. The invasive tumbleweed Salsola ryanii only popped up on scientists’ scopes in 2002, but early research concluded it was nothing to worry about. A 2008 study predicted S. ryanii wouldn’t easily adapt, nor be able to expand its range. Those predictions have not aged well. Since the

Manta rays usually like to swim on their own, but that doesn’t mean these creatures are complete loners. Despite their reputation as solitary fish, a five-year-long study in Indonesia suggests manta rays are more social than we give them credit for. Reef manta rays (Mobula alfredi) are known to congregate at feeding and cleaning sites, but

Amongst all of Earth’s abundant life, microorganisms have proven time and time again that they can live just about anywhere. Now, we have more evidence to add to the pile: living microbes have been found some 2.4 kilometres (1.5 miles) below the surface in a Canadian mine, a long way away from sunlight and clean air.

An international team of scientists trying to save the northern white rhino from extinction has just announced another significant victory. Yesterday we reported that 10 eggs had been successfully harvested from the two surviving females Najin and Fatu. Now, scientists have revealed that of those eggs, seven were successfully matured and artificially inseminated using a technique

“Why don’t we nuke them?” President Donald Trump asked during a White House briefing about hurricanes, according to an Axios report. Trump was advocating for a nuclear solution to the tropical storms that hit the southeastern US, according to Axios [although Trump has since denied the comment]. Sources who heard the president’s private remarks told

There are only two of them now: Najin, and her daughter, Fatu. This small family unit is all that remains of an entire subspecies – the last northern white rhinos on the planet. But even now, with just two females left, there is vibrant hope to keep this critically endangered animal alive, researchers say –

Palm tree-like Cycads are flowering and could possibly reproduce in the UK for the first time in human history – and experts think that climate change could be the cause. While Cycads (or more specifically Cycas revoluta) flower in several parts of the world, they only bloom like this in very warm climates. Not, usually,

A mother panther walks into frame and pauses. She looks around, ears alert. One of her cubs appears and looks healthy and strong. Then her other cub stumbles into the frame and falls to the ground. The young cat doesn’t have full control of its hind legs – as if a neurological disease, or even

How do you study the evolution of brains, without any ancient brains to study? It’s not a simple proposition, so it’s no surprise that scientists are excited to have scanned the very well-preserved skull of a 20-million-year-old monkey species, Chilecebus carrascoensis. “Human beings have exceptionally enlarged brains, but we know very little about how far back

Echidna’s are one of Australia’s cutest and weirdest animals. The spiky creatures lay eggs even though they’re mammals, they eat termites but they’re not related to anteaters, and they evolved from an ancestor shared with the duck-billed platypus. And now we’ve learned they also have one of the most impressive bushfire strategies we’ve ever heard

Scientists have discovered evidence of a massive distributed reservoir of methane formed by chemical reactions deep inside the ocean floor. Abiotic methane – created in reactions that don’t involve organic matter or living creatures – has long been known to exist buried in the seabed and released via deep-sea vents, but the origins of the

It’s one of the deepest unknowns in geophysics: the hidden movements of Earth’s innermost core. While we think of the ground beneath our feet as terra firma, that reassuring rigidity only extends so far. Deep below the planet’s surface, Earth’s super-hot inner core sits within a molten liquid outer core, detached from the overlying mantle

Early Earth grew up in a chaotic time. As our planet tried to find its place in a relatively young Solar System about 4.5 billion years ago, it was under constant attack from waves of comets, whizzing asteroids, and even some failed proto-planets. The Late Heavy Bombardment period was the absolute zenith of all this

A careful inspection of super-deep diamonds has revealed what geologists have long suspected: Hiding somewhere in our planet’s interior, there exists a vast reservoir of primordial magma, undisturbed for more than 4 billion years. The location, the size and the contents of this ancient reservoir are still up for debate, but thanks to these diamonds,

Ah, New Zealand. The ancient home of enormous parrots. And, apparently, penguins that would tower menacingly over them. Researchers have found the remains of a beast that would have stood nearly as tall as a human, one of the biggest penguins to ever waddle the Earth. Paleontologists have named the penguin Crossvallia waiparensis, and it

Around 54 million years ago, in the early Eocene, there lived a tiny crane fly. It may not have been a particularly remarkable crane fly while it was alive, but after it died, geological processes turned it into something magnificent: a fossil so brilliantly preserved, we can make out the individual cells of its compound

When scientists ran DNA analysis on a sediment core taken from the floor of the Arctic ocean back in 2010, they found something surprising. A previously unknown organism belonging to the strange domain of microbes called Archaea appeared to have genomic characteristics associated with a totally different domain – Eukaryota. They named their discovery Lokiarchaeota,

The aptly named goliath frog is the biggest species of frog in the world, and scientists now say it’s the first African amphibian we know of to engage in ‘nest-building’ activity – something that may actually be responsible for their gigantic size. The nests that these frogs build are small, protected ponds for their young

Some people don’t like sharing their food – we all have a friend who gets cranky when you steal a chip from their plate. For wild animals, this makes sense, because any food shared is energy lost that could otherwise have been used to pursue more food. So it was a big surprise to discover

Glowing catsharks that lurk the briny depths have a fluorescence mechanism never seen before in another organism. And that glow could be conferring some serious perks – such as the ability to pick out other sharks among the many fluorescent things on the seafloor. “Studying biofluorescence in the ocean is like a constantly evolving mystery

The human species has done some incredibly smart things. We’ve revealed gravitational waves. We’ve discovered and confirmed 118 chemical elements. We have a whole spacecraft taking beautiful photos of Jupiter. But humans can also be stupid. Especially when it comes to the way we treat living, breathing, animals. And so, as many news organisations have

New research suggests Earth’s most recent magnetic field reversal took longer to complete than previously thought: around 22,000 years in total. Figuring out why this particular flip was so drawn out will let us better understand this mysterious process, and maybe even help us to prepare. It’s a fact geologists know about our planet: every

A collection of bird bones sat in lab storage for more than a decade, believed to be the remains of an ancient eagle. Little did scientists know what was hiding in the fossils: “Squawkzilla.” Heracles inexpectatus was discovered by scientists in New Zealand, according to a study published Wednesday. At about 3 feet (1 meter) tall,

If there’s one thing seagulls are famous for, it’s their pro-grade pilfering. They steal your snacks, nick your nosh, purloin your pudding, and liberate your lunch. No morsel is safe in the range of a seagull’s beady, greedy eye. But, as scientists in the UK have discovered, there’s a way you can hold them off:

Deep in the Gulf of Alaska, ocean explorers have filmed an unusual see-through squid with saucer-like eyes, iridescent organs and a bright orange crown. Looking at its face, the bizarre creature somehow looks more like a bird than a fish. “It’s a cockatoo #squid (Cranchiidae)!” NOAA recently tweeted along with the video. “Pretty, huh?” It’s a cockatoo

Sometimes the discovery of a new dinosaur species doesn’t require an extensive archaeological dig – it just needs a closer analysis of the dino bones already sitting in the collection of a university. That’s turned out to be case with the newly described Ngwevu intloko. The new species, now named “grey skull” in the South African

When Grandma Fish was just a tiny fry, the Titanic was yet to set sail. Humans had yet to reach the South Pole. The First World War wasn’t even a rumble on the horizon, the first public radio broadcast yet to spill its arias into New York City. As new dating techniques have revealed, one

The way bats use sound to locate their prey is even more clever than we thought. It turns out that leaf-nosed bats can even find insects that hide themselves from echolocation. In what’s known as acoustic camouflage, insects that sit motionless on leaves can be protected because the echo from the bat’s cry bounces off

Bottlenose dolphins are attentive and flexible parents: The very survival of their calves depends on it. And in some rare cases, their adopted offspring, too. For the first time ever, scientists have witnessed a mother dolphin caring for the orphan of another species as though it were hers. For more than three years, researchers in French

Baby jumping spiders have vision that’s almost as extraordinarily good as the grown-ups, scientists have discovered – despite the baby spiders being around a hundredth of the size. A new study reports on how this feat of biological engineering is achieved. The teeny tiny spiderlings pack the same number of light-capturing photoreceptors into their four pairs

Chase Dekker gripped his camera with anticipation. A couple hundred feet from his seat on a whale-watching boat, the waters of Monterey Bay in California teemed with activity. A group of California sea lions had just come up for air after feeding on a school of anchovies, and following close behind them was the main

Indian tiger numbers are up, according to one of the most detailed wildlife surveys ever conducted. Tiger populations have risen by 6 percent, to roughly 3,000 animals. The massive survey may set a new world standard in counting large carnivores. The encouraging results validate India’s impressive investments in tiger conservation. A mammoth effort Large, solitary

Many of us will have experienced that super friendly cat who seems to love being stroked one minute, only to bite or swipe at us the next. It might be easy at this point to blame it on the cat, but what’s likely happening here is that we’re just not stroking them right. To understand

There are some strange things down there, in the ocean depths, where crushing pressures and low light make for some bizarre adaptations. It’s not easy for humans to get down there, but remote-controlled submarines have, in recent years, been slowly revealing to us the strange wonders at the bottom of the sea. Like this: for

Sometimes all you need is a wild weekend in Las Vegas, amongst the lights, sounds, and attractions of the Sin City. And it seems like grasshoppers are no exception, descending on Las Vegas last week in such numbers that you can even see them on the weather radar. 🤓 Some of you have been asking

Thanks to a chance observation during a woodland ramble, scientists have found evidence that trees can keep each other alive by sharing water and other resources – forming a type of ‘superorganism’ that works together to keep individuals alive. In this way, a tree stump has been able to survive and cycle water, even without

Ever since humanity split into dog and cat people, we’ve been arguing over which one of our beloved companions is a smarter species. A study from 2017 mightn’t be the last word on the matter, but for those who think more neurons means more intelligence, it looks as if dogs stand out among carnivores for

Something peculiar has been found inside fossilised clams from the Tamiami Formation in Florida: dozens of tiny, silica-rich glass spheres, no more than a few millimetres in size. Such beads are forged by heat, and can be created by volcanic or industrial activity – but in this case, there’s one big problem. The Tamiami Formation

On a dry summer day in July, the last thing the United Kingdom weather service expected to see on their radar was rain. At first, it looked as though a light sun shower was falling on the south of England, but upon closer inspection, it was clear that these were not your average clouds. They were,

Unhatched bird embryos can not only hear the warning calls of adult birds – they can communicate that information to their unhatched brothers and sisters sharing the same nest, remaining safely tucked away in their shells until it is safe to hatch. It is a finding that reveals how birds can adapt to their environment

We all know sharks have had a bit of an undeserved bad rap (thanks Jaws!). But if you’re one of those people who find sharks scary, this newly identified species of pocket shark might just change your mind. First up, it’s only about 14 centimetres (5.5 inches) long and has its own pockets tucked in

More than 28,000 species around the world are threatened, according to the Red List of Threatened Species compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The list, updated on Thursday night, has assessed the extinction risk of almost 106,000 species and found more than a quarter are in trouble. While recent headline-grabbing