Biodiversity

As they were tracking a Nigerian poaching vessel through the South Indian Ocean on Boxing Day last year, Australian conservationists aboard the SSS Bob Barker saw something pretty incredible – a pod of 13 Type D orcas.

Lizards don’t get much bigger than the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), which can reach three meters in length and may weigh as much as 70 kilograms.

There comes a depth at which even fish struggle to survive the titanic pressure. But that depth is only found at the few places on Earth that lie below 27,600 feet of water, where the weight of the water warps piscine proteins and crushes cells.

Bowerbirds are perhaps the most intriguing artists of the bird world. Their beautiful constructions are built purely to impress females (they are not nests, as often mistaken to be).

The flutter of a single butterfly’s wings may or may not be capable of causing tsunamis, but the loss of millions of butterflies is definitely being felt here in North America.

“Hey! One-Eyed Pete! Stop, where are you going? Wait up!" "Yes?" "Hey what are you bringing to Martin's corner on Friday? I'm thinking just Doritos?

Many species don’t have anything to be thankful for this holiday season. Here’s one that may have already been lost. Species name: The Christmas Island shrew (Crocidura trichura) Where found: This miniscule mammal only exists—if it still exists at all—on Australia’s Christmas Island, a tiny dot in the Indian Ocean that is also home to [...]

When I visited the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod in early 2013 for an open house for prospective students, in many senses I was feeling under the weather.

In my efforts to make the most original sciart gift guide I could muster earlier this month I overlooked some fantastic books that I want to plug today in case you’re doing any last minute shopping at bookstores.

Editor’s Note: “Along the Tiger’s Trail” is a  series about the efforts to monitor tigers and their prey in the Malenad landscape in southwestern India that harbors one of the world's largest population of wild tigers.

It's time to wind things down for Christmas, so what better way to do it than to write a short article about robins. And here I mean the `original' or `proper' robin - the European robin Erithacus rubecula - a Eurasian passerine that also occurs in northern Africa and is (conventionally) regarded as the only [...]

Two years ago, after an intense 13-year quest, scientists concluded that the Formosan clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa brachyura) had gone extinct in Taiwan.