Lush and vibrant cinematography plus a "cast" of real animals make Heart of an Oak an enthralling celebration of the natural world

Invasive cane toads have decimated native freshwater crocodile populations in northern Australia, as the predators don't know they should avoid the toxic amphibians

The South American lungfish has a whopping 180 gigabases of DNA in each cell, compared with 6 gigabases in human cells

The Maugean skate (Zearaja maugeana) is only found in one habitat in Australia, which is under threat from human activity. Now the species has been saved from extinction by hatching in captivity

All living creatures use only the left or right-handed forms of certain molecules, and now we might understand why

The noises made by organisms like ants and worms as they move around in the soil can be used to assess whether an ecosystem is in good shape

From birds and bats to horses and great apes, Bill Schutt's seriously fun history of teeth, Bite, explains their role in both shaping evolution and our understanding of it

See the incredible shots that have won this year's BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology Image Competition

Up to 100,000 extraordinary species, from spiders and beetles to salamanders and fish, live in subterranean caves and cracks. They aren’t as safe down there as we thought

A big rethink of our planet’s early years adds to growing fossil, chemical and DNA evidence that Earth was only a few hundred million years old when life began

The veteran presenter adds authority to Secret Lives of Orangutans, a film about a family of endangered orangutans in Sumatra. File this new entry in his vast oeuvre under lovable but lightweight

Tracking data from a pregnant porbeagle shark near Bermuda suggest it was eaten by a great white shark – a kind of predation that has never been seen before

Cyanobacteria exposed to shorter days are better at surviving cold conditions, showing that even simple organisms can prepare for the arrival or summer and winter

Breaching is a common behaviour in a wide range of sharks and rays, and it is thought to have functions related to courtship, birthing and hygiene

A camera trap at an Australian nature refuge has captured a boisterous interaction between a northern hairy-nosed wombat and an echidna

When worker ants are exposed to a pathogenic fungus, they build nests that are more compartmentalised to reduce the risk of an epidemic

Cleaner wrasse use their reflection to build a mental image of their body size, which they use to compare themselves to rivals before picking a fight

Feeding bees edible bits of hydrogel increases their odds of surviving pesticide exposure by 30 per cent

African giant pouched rats proved adept at detecting four commonly trafficked products derived from endangered species including rhino horn and elephant ivory

Our gardening columnist James Wong isn’t convinced, and does the maths to get some answers

An octopus will work with several different species of fish to find and catch prey - and punch those that aren't helping

In most vertebrates, a pattern of chemical marks on the genome is a reliable indicator of age, but in axolotls this clock seems to stop after the first four years of life

Northern sea robins are formidable marine hunters, and they owe their success to modified fin rays that let them find prey buried in the seabed

Bacteria that have been genetically engineered to work like computers can solve a range of problems, using a very simple type of artificial intelligence

From colonialism to AI, this Booker-longlisted novel urges us to wake up to how we treat wild creatures and places

Unravelling the complex biological process that allows fish to regrow injured fins could help advance regenerative medicine in humans

Musing on John Lewis-Stempel's latest book, England: A natural history, James McConnachie marks the flowering of other, more diverse voices in nature writing

A traditional yogurt-making practice from south-eastern Europe uses live ants as a starter, with the insects providing the bacteria and acid needed to initiate fermentation

A pair of ctenophores, or comb jellies, can fuse their bodies together, merging their digestive and nervous systems, without any issues with immune rejection

Kew scientists use paramotorists to collect rare plant species from Peruvian desert oases

A new book from the science-writing legend is an Attenborough-esque romp through some of the wonders of the natural world. Just beware the title's misfiring metaphor

Evolutionary molecular biologist Beth Shapiro on the hunt for ancient DNA and her groundbreaking de-extinction and environmental mission  

Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico have tiny bits of plastic in their breath, and this is probably a worldwide problem

Britain should be too cold for the invasive Aesculapian snake to survive, but it is thriving by exploiting the warmth of attics, wall cavities and compost heaps

Colossal, a US firm that is aiming to revive lost species such as the woolly mammoth, says it now has a near-complete genome of the extinct thylacine

The oriental hornet shows no ill effects – or behavioural changes – when it spends a week drinking an 80 per cent alcohol solution

Not all winged dinosaurs were necessarily capable of full flight, but this anatomical feature may have enabled them to travel further by flapping or gliding

Animals that hibernate need a way to keep their blood flowing as their body temperature drops, and it seems that the mechanical properties of red blood cells may be key

Rival tribes of bacteria armed with poison darts are fighting it out in your gut, with armies of traitors often winning the day

For nervous newbie gardeners, starting out with a single plant in a small pot is pitched as an easy win by the horticultural industry. James Wong explains why it isn't

DNA analysis suggests Pando, a quaking aspen in Utah with thousands of stems connected by their roots, is between 16,000 and 81,000 years old

Experiments where vampire bats were made to run on a treadmill have revealed how they extract energy from protein in their latest blood meal

Asian elephants at Berlin Zoo show impressive skill when using a hose as a tool, and even appear to sabotage each other by stopping the flow of water

An analysis of thousands of cognitive tests carried out by chimpanzees finds that the number of spectators influenced their performance in different ways depending on the difficulty of the task

Never underestimate what a single gopher can achieve in a day: one of the burrowing mammals helped boost soil fungi in an area blanketed by ash from the explosive eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington state

Experiments show that illuminating the underside of a decoy seal reduces attacks by great white sharks, revealing a possible strategy to protect surfers and swimmers

Campaigners are calling for stricter controls on rodenticides after finding that birds of prey in England are increasingly being exposed to high doses of rat poison

Eurasian reed warblers don’t just get a sense of direction from Earth’s magnetic field – they can also calculate their coordinates on a mental map

There are real benefits to a positive mindset, but the idea that we should always look on the bright side has gone too far. Research into toxic positivity can help restore balance

Strange solids called temporal metamaterials finally make it possible to investigate the controversial idea of quantum friction – and push special relativity to its limits