The spider-tailed snake

An ecosystem evolves across thousands of years, a biological interaction that is both intricate and fragile. The arrival of a new species can disrupt the balance, as we have seen in Britain with grey

Clouds of noxious gas, stink bombs and purple smokescreens may sound like schoolboy pranks, but the animal world is just as capable of executing arresting chemical warfare, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee

Some years after he had swallowed a snake’s raw gall bladder “for a dare”, a man named Li, from Hunan, China, started getting optical disturbances in the form of a “mosaic like thing” appearing in his

SNAKE EYES Dr Bryan Fry (left) with Will ...

Fluid in flight and perplexingly wide-ranging, the short-eared owl is a singular figure in the family– and a figure of particular terror to the vole

Echidnas are spiky and slow-moving mammals that have long or short snouts known as beaks. They’re also called spiny anteaters because they lack teeth and rely on their long, sticky tongues to catch in