Britain is a country mercifully bereft of threatening fauna–or so you might believe. John Lewis-Stempel provides a miscellany of our otherwise benign land’s more fearsome critters

Imagine coasting through flu season with barely a sniffle. Or brushing off COVID, no matter how many times it mutated. Imagine, in fact, that no virus can harm you, from chickenpox to Dengue to HIV. E

Can we really bring back long-extinct animals, or are scientists just making close copies?

Neither arachnid nor bird, the tarantula hawk is a large wasp (there are over 130 known species) that gets its confusing name from a fearsome habit of preying on tarantulas and other large spiders to

t’s a hot november morning in the Western Ghats of southern India, and I’m sitting on a wooden verandah surrounded by dense forest. Suddenly, the shrill ring of a mobile phone breaks the silence. Ajay

Nature’s spiky deterrents–thorns, spines and prickles–may be quick to catch us out, but they can also prove to be a useful ally, discovers Laura Parker