Absurd little birds across the world lay their eggs in the nests of other species, leaving the hapless parents to raise a changeling at the expense of their own offspring. The majority are cuckoos – o

Somewhere in the amazonian understorey, beneath a great forest canopy, a cricket leaps on to the stem of a shrub. It’s the last leap it will ever make. It never gets to flex its legs again. It’s stuck

Keepers at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia have noticed a fashion trend spreading among groups of chimpanzees living there – sticking strands of grass in their ears or rectums, and just le

Dr Daniel Allen puts the spotlight on Britain’s only native crayfish

I was recently following the 27s pod of orcas down the coast of Orkney with some fellow whale-watchers, when the pod pulled into a bay close to Burwick and stayed for around an hour. There was blood i

I’m in exeter cathedral and i’m looking up at Antarctica. This is Gaia by artist Luke Jerram: a 7m-diameter model of Earth suspended above the nave, created from detailed NASA satellite imagery of the