Olivia Colman and Helen Mirren have teamed up with the creators of Wallace & Gromit in a film called Turtle Journey to raise awareness about climate change and ocean pollution

Since the discovery of Asgard archaea in 2015, evidence has mounted that these peculiar single-celled organisms could be the source of all complex life – including us

Wolf pups have been seen playing fetch with humans, a behaviour we thought was unique to domesticated dogs

The extinct shark Edestus used its teeth like saw blades, sliding them past each other like a power tool to slice through the soft flesh of its prey

The late Devonian mass extinction around 375 million years ago may not have really happened, according to an analysis using machine learning

Orangutan orphanages nurse animals back to health and release them into the wild, but that doesn’t seem to increase the population of these endangered apes

The exhibition Animalesque celebrates what we share with Earth's other species – and offers hope for reforming our relationship with the natural world

Nick Lehane's performance piece, Chimpanzee, in London for the first time, reveals how tragedy stalked the amazing achievement of raising chimps in human families

Artist Ken Rinaldo encourages the bacteria on banknotes to grow and spread to explore colonialism in his touring show, Borderless Bacteria/Colonialist Cash

Fossils now confirmed to be at least 715 million-year-old fungi could help us understand how they interacted with the earliest plants on Earth

When asteroid Armageddon is upon us, we can't just call Bruce Willis. Meet the people who really do watch the skies – and make detailed plans for our survival

Sauropod dinosaurs grew to 25 metres or more in length and weighed several tonnes – but footprints in Texas seem to suggest they sometimes walked on just two legs

Attach a radar sensor to an albatross and you have a bird spy. Researchers deployed 169 of them in the Indian Ocean and found that a quarter of fishing vessels may be operating illegally

We know viruses invaded animals’ genomes in the ancient past, but only now have we actually witnessed it happening and the DNA being passed to offspring

Genetically modified diamondback moths designed to replace pesticides by wiping out female moths have been released in New York state

Jellyfish have been equipped with embedded electronics that let researchers remotely control their motion, and the next version could add sensors for monitoring ocean conditions

Modifying bacteria found in the guts of bees could help protect the insects against lethal infections affecting hives worldwide

Puzzling, slow-living microbes named after Loki, the trickster of Norse mythology, are helping solve one of evolution's biggest mysteries: the origin of complex life

It’s not just about the sperm: the semen of male fish carries unidentified substances that influence how quickly the offspring develop and even how well they can swim

Olm are salamanders that spend all their lives in pitch-black caves, and it turns out they don’t move very much – sometimes lurking in the same spot for years

Mudskippers are known for their unusual ability to climb trees, but now they have been spotted hopping across water. They are thought to be a living example of how fish transitioned to land

An extinct variety of date palm tree has been grown from ancient seeds preserved in the Judean desert for 2000 years, the oldest seeds ever germinated

Climate change has significantly increased the likelihood of bumblebees being driven to extinction in certain regions across North America and Europe

The genomes of 2514 new viruses have been identified in DNA recovered from human and animal cells, many of them belonging to wholly new families

With the help of their webs, spiders are capable of foresight, planning, learning and other smarts that indicate they may possess consciousness

The worst invasion by desert locusts in decades has hit Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. The swarms are destroying crops and could cost millions of dollars to contain

The dense, bristly hairs on the skins shed by tarantulas when they moult are naturally efficient sponges and could be used to soak up ocean oil spills

When a bizarre fossil appeared for sale in Europe, it looked so odd it had to be fake. But a high-tech investigation introduced us to Halzkaraptor escullei – part velociraptor, part penguin

Upside-down jellyfish release tiny balls of stinging cells that can move through water on their own and survive for days – leaving a network of mucus that can sting you

An analysis of eggshells from three kinds of dinosaurs shows they were all warm-blooded, suggesting that dinosaurs’ ancestors were also warm-blooded

Fossils of single cells found in China are 2 billion years old, making them the oldest eukaryotic cells in the fossil record and possibly our distant relatives

These images showcase the incredible ways mushrooms can be used for everything from boosting well-being to fashioning baroque high heels

Most tadpoles breathe air but they are too weak to break the elastic "skin" on top of ponds created by water tension – so they suck air bubbles from the surface

Amber from the Cretaceous period trapped a leaf-footed bug with extremely long and wide antennae, which may have helped disguise the insect or confuse predators

Blue tits and great tits don’t need to taste unpleasant foods to avoid them – they can learn not to try them by seeing another bird’s disgusted response, even if it’s only on video

A number of ant species produce acid in a poison gland in their abdomen to spray at enemies, and now it seems they also drink it to kill pathogens in their food

The earliest cave-dwelling animal identified from the dinosaur era is a ghostly white cockroach with tiny eyes and wings that was preserved in amber

As the world gets warmer, animals whose sex is determined by temperature are finding cool ways to control their own fate. But can they adapt in time?

Green seaweed fossils found in a billion-year-old rock are the oldest complex plants discovered, and may have given rise to plants that evolved to live on land

Healthy grey whales are four times more likely to become stranded when solar activity produces lots of radio noise, suggesting solar storms may be blinding their ability to sense magnetic fields

All animals rely on oxygen at least at some stage of their life, but a parasite that infects fish seems to have completely lost the ability to use it – where it gets its energy from is still a mystery

Seagulls are known for aggressively attempting to swipe people's food, and it seems that when given the choice between identical meals, they favour the one handled by humans

Genetic analysis suggests that the Himalayan and Chinese red pandas are two different species that diverged about 200,000 years ago

A worm-like creature from 518 million years ago evolved to lose its back legs, the earliest known example of an animal losing body parts it no longer needed

We knew that some fish glowed when placed under certain lights, but researchers have now shown that many amphibians can also shine bright

Silver has an antibacterial effect by stopping the motors that bacteria use to move around from working properly and making them move more slowly

The bell of an upside-down jellyfish has structures that can provide a scaffold for growing human skin cells, which could be used to help repair wounds after surgery or a bad burn

We know some birds use fluorescent pigments to enhance the brightness of their feathers or beaks – and now it seems some dinosaurs might have done this too

It’s 2038 and Earth's trees are dead, bar some firs on a tiny island. The tale of what happened is an epic combining sci-if, mystery and an exposé of capitalism, says Sally Adee

A mixture of two carbon-based chemicals can spontaneously form molecules that can copy themselves, hinting at how life may have begun on Earth