Flight fantastic

Amazing answers to your curious questions

Yossi Yovel The Genius Bat Understanding our most mysterious mammal 336pp. Oneworld. £20. Philosophy begins with wonder, according to Plato and Aristotle. As for philosophy, so, and more so, for biolo

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

W hen a peacock mantis shrimp strikes, it generates the heat of a star. The crustacean retracts a spring-loaded mouthpart known as a dactyl club and puts it on a latch, like a cowboy cocking the hamme

Adrian Thomas looks to the skies for three special birds that you may see over your garden or might even attract into your space to breed

The vibration is as extraordinary as the noise is deafening and we’re not even in the air. But I guess that’s what you get when there’s 1500bhp’s-worth of 27 litres of two stage supercharged, quad-cam