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

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

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

Fishers in Albania caught a blue shark with an 18-centimetre fragment of swordfish bill embedded in its skull, in the first known case of a shark surviving such an injury

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

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

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

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

See the circle of galaxy clusters and voids that surround us in this map of the nearby cosmos, extending 200 million light years in each direction

Some people find the scale of the universe existentially frightening, but here's why you should take it as a source of comfort

We may never know what lies beyond the boundaries of the observable universe, but the fabric of the cosmos can tell us whether the universe is infinite or not

Your body is home to trillions of beneficial viruses crucial for a healthy microbiome. We may one day be able to tweak this "virome" to treat obesity and anxiety

When we take a break from exercise, it can feel like we quickly go back to square one. But this isn't the case, and there are various ways to minimise the decline

The International Space Station will burn up and splash down into the Pacific sometime around 2030. What could possibly go wrong? And will we ever see anything like the ISS again?

For decades, the oceans have absorbed much of the excess heat caused by greenhouse gases. The latest observations suggest they are reaching their limits, so how worried should we be?

We're finally pinning down the mechanisms that drive obsessive-compulsive disorder, revealing a complex combination of imbalanced brain networks, the immune system and even gut microbes

Friends who blow hot and cold put more strain on your physical and mental health than enemies. Here's how to spot them and handle them

The systems we use to produce food have many problems, from horrifying waste to their dependence on fossil fuels. Vaclav Smil explains how to fix them

New research into the moments between wakefulness and sleep could bring hope for insomniacs and even make us more creative problem-solvers

To capture the clearest and most direct images of a “Wigner crystal”, a structure made entirely of electrons, researchers used a special kind of microscope and two pieces of graphene unusually free of imperfections

Ultra-fast pulses of laser light can be shaped into vortices similar to smoke rings – when chained together, they can carry enough information to transmit a simple image

Researchers were surprised to find that a very slightly curved object produces a more dramatic splash than a perfectly flat one

In 2022, physicists were excited by hints that something was wrong with our understanding of the universe - but new results have put that in doubt

Marie Curie redefined the role of women in science by training a generation of “lab daughters” to have stellar careers, shows Dava Sobel's detailed and intimate new biography, The Elements of Marie Curie

Billions of years ago, crushed quartz reacting with water could have created the conditions needed for the evolution of the photosynthetic microbes responsible for most of the oxygen now in Earth’s atmosphere

Carbon emissions within the next 50 years could lead to a tipping point where large parts of the Greenland ice sheet melt over the next 10,000 years

The eruption of the Shiveluch volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia on 11 April sent plumes of volcanic ash many kilometres into the air and could affect flights

Changes in the distribution of groundwater around the planet between 1993 and 2010 were enough to make Earth's poles drift by 80 centimetres

The destruction of telecommunications cables during the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano in 2022 shows that underwater debris currents can travel at 122 kilometres per hour

Analysis of tree rings shows that two faults near Seattle, Washington ruptured at the same time or soon after each other more than 1000 years ago – a repeat today would cause a major disaster in the region

Earth’s iron-rich inner core may owe some of its surprising softness to the motion of atoms, suggest experiments with iron at high temperature and pressure coupled to AI simulations

A better picture of the hidden landscape beneath the frozen surface of Antarctica could help us understand how the ice will respond to climate change

In Iceland, scientists are planning to drill two boreholes to a reservoir of liquid rock. One will give us our first direct measurements of magma – the other could supercharge geothermal power

Photographer Matjaz Krivic has been charting the effects of lithium mining on locals in the world's largest salt flat in Bolivia since 2016

Global warming means many of the world’s ancient rivers of ice will be gone within decades, threatening ecosystems that rely on their meltwater, a looming crisis that photographer Edward Burtynsky highlights in his work

A proposal to define the Anthropocene, a geologic epoch defined by human activity, has been rejected – surprising even scientists who consulted the voting group

These stunning photographs are all shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards 2024

Climate change is making extreme cold upwellings more common in certain regions of the world, and these events can be catastrophic for animals such as bull sharks

Photographer Diane Tuft has documented how global warming is affecting bodies of water around the world

Sea-floor nodules raise oxygen levels in the deep ocean, suggesting they may have a valuable role in ecosystems and adding to concerns about the impact of deep-sea mining

Amazing images of an open-air library, underground lab and design museum show the reincarnation of dead mines, captured in a new book, 102 Things to Do With a Hole in the Ground

The dynamics of how plants and animals change Earth is central to this last book in a trilogy by Other Minds author and "scuba-diving philosopher" Peter Godfrey-Smith

Pascal Maitre's photos from the Democratic Republic of Congo detail the problems arising as demand for cobalt grows

Seismologists were mystified by a strange signal that persisted for nine days in 2023 – now its source has been identified as a standing wave caused by a landslide in Greenland

Endurance sank beneath the ice during Ernest Shackleton’s legendary Antarctic expedition. More than a hundred years later, researchers document their own saga of how they found the vessel

Fewer lakes are freezing over each winter compared with past years, posing environmental and economic consequences around the world

The infinite monkey theorem states that illiterate primates could write great literature with enough time, but the amount of time needed is much longer than the lifespan of the universe

Endurance sank beneath the ice during Ernest Shackleton’s legendary Antarctic expedition. More than a hundred years later, researchers document their own saga of how they found the vessel

A new study amplifies the horror of an excellent series about the doomed Franklin expedition. The Terror is a worthy tribute to the lost sailors, says Bethan Ackerley