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March 26, 2026, 12:37 PM - 5 min read
Cacti are icons of slow growth. A towering saguaro may take a decade to reach an inch tall and the psychedelic peyote takes decades to mature. Yet the cactus family is one of the fastest-evolving plant groups on Earth. Over the past 20 to 35 million years, around 1,850 cacti species have come into existence. Although this sounds slow, in geological time it is the blink of an eye.
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March 24, 2026, 05:36 PM - 4 min read
By combining GPS data with waterbird counts, and analyses of regurgitated pellets, scientists have estimated that an average of 400kg of plastics, plus more than two tonnes of other debris such as glass, textiles or ceramics, are deposited by this gull species into the lake each year.
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March 23, 2026, 02:28 PM - 6 min read
Feral and free-roaming pets increasingly threaten wildlife conservation. There is a legislative gap to address the impacts of pets on wildlife. Harmonised EU legislation is needed to align animal welfare and conservation aims.
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March 20, 2026, 05:03 PM - 3 min read
Supreme Court warned that destruction of wildlife habitats in protected areas will attract penalties under multiple laws, taking note of illegal sand mining in National Chambal Sanctuary.
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March 5, 2026, 02:19 PM - 6 min read
The picture for 2026 is complicated. Although flooding can kill overwintering eggs and adults, a mild wet winter will have reduced slug mortality. It may also affect slug predators.
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March 1, 2026, 01:08 PM - 5 min read
After being abandoned by his mother and rejected by the rest of his troop, his zookeepers provided Punch with an orangutan plushie as a stand-in mother. Videos of the monkey clinging to the toy have gone viral worldwide. But Punch’s attachment to his inanimate companion is not just the subject of a heart-breaking video. He’s a reminder of the importance of emotional nourishment.
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February 25, 2026, 02:27 PM - 6 min read
This species was once abundant along the coasts of South Africa and Namibia. But the population has fallen by about 78 per cent over the last 30 years.
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February 15, 2026, 12:49 PM - 6 min read
The turkey vulture’s keen sense of smell was put to use by oil company engineers in 1930s California. Workers were having trouble with leaks along a 42-mile-long natural gas pipeline but noticed that vultures would often congregate around these leaks. The engineers used this to their advantage, observing the vultures to pinpoint and repair leaks.
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February 6, 2026, 01:25 PM - 6 min read
Claims that de-extinction can reverse extinction are misleading. Genetic engineering can introduce lost traits from an extinct species into a closely related living species and restore lost ecological functions, but it can’t re-create the extinct species. Problems arise when companies present these limits cautiously within the scientific community but make stronger claims in public-facing communication.
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January 29, 2026, 04:25 PM - 6 min read
Shark teeth are also disposable—they are constantly replaced throughout their lives, like a conveyor belt pushing a new tooth forward roughly every few weeks.
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January 21, 2026, 03:55 PM - 5 min read
Frogs are one of the most threatened groups of animals on the planet. One in five species of Australian frogs—almost 50 species—are threatened with extinction. Disease, habitat loss and climate change are their greatest threats.
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January 5, 2026, 04:13 PM - 7 min read
The team of researchers used special audio recorders that could capture bird songs over long distances and for long periods without them being there. These recorders picked up all the singing from the start to the end of the dawn chorus.
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