Griffith University

Play is a vital part of animal behavior, helping to form social structures and bonds, develop cognitive function and enhance physical abilities. Now, it's believed whale play with seaweed to scrub off dead skin cells and parasites as they migrate.

Researchers have found that tire wear and tear is a major contributor to urban waterway pollution, producing particulate matter that includes microplastics. But they also found effective ways of reducing this type of potentially harmful pollution.

Environmental modification has a flow-on effect on natural ecosystems, including the insects that carry disease. For the first time, researchers have shown how environmental change affects the transmission of insect-borne diseases.

Archeologists have discovered the oldest evidence of a surgical procedure in humans. A Stone Age hunter-gatherer, who lived more than 30,000 years ago, had a carefully amputated leg, making it the earliest known surgery by tens of thousands of years.

Researchers have uncovered how a certain enzyme triggers the breakdown of nerve fibers in neurodegenerative diseases – and how to potentially switch it off. The find could lead to a new class of drugs that slows the progression of these disorders.

A new study has found that nose bacteria can make their way into the brain through nerves, and could lead to Alzheimer’s disease. The work adds to the growing body of evidence that Alzheimer’s may be triggered through viral or bacterial infections.

We’re all familiar with the march of time, but why it does so is a mystery. In 2016 Australian physicist Joan Vaccaro proposed a new quantum theory of time, and now a team will test the hypothesis by searching for time dilation in a nuclear reactor.

Archaeologists have discovered what they claim to be the oldest example of figurative art made by human hands. An ochre painting of pigs, found on a cave wall in Indonesia, has been dated to be at least 45,500 years old.

Human civilization wouldn’t be where it is today if we hadn’t domesticated animals. Now researchers have discovered the first example of an animal domesticating another animal, with a fish species found to recruit shrimp to tend their algae farms.

Fossilized human footprints have been discovered in Saudi Arabia that help fill in the story of the early migration of our species. Dating back 120,000 years, the tracks are the oldest evidence of the presence of modern humans on the Arabian Peninsula.

Scientists have uncovered what may have been the “last stand” of Homo erectus. Previously thought to have disappeared about 300,000 years ago, Homo erectus could have survived in Indonesia until as recently as 108,000 years ago.

Researchers at Griffith University in Australia have used the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system to effectively cure cervical cancer in mice.