Scientists have created the most lifelike artificial embryos ever, guiding them through “the most important event in life” – a key development stage known as gastrulation. The researchers combined three types of mouse stem cells into an embryo that was just about ready to be implanted into a womb.
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The winners of the 2018 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year have been crowned. Designed to celebrate the natural beauty of Australia and surrounding regions, the competition includes some stunning shots of animals and stark reminders of the impact humans are having on the world.
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Anglerfish are famous for their head-mounted bulbs that light up the inky blackness of the deepest oceans, but to find out exactly how, Cornell researchers have now sequenced the genome of the bacteria that live inside those lightbulbs, and found a strange story of symbiosis still in progress.
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You don’t want to be staring down the barrel of the mantis shrimp's immensely-powerful club. Now researchers have discovered the mechanism behind just how the creature wields this weapon without permanently damaging itself, and the design strategy could inspire a new class of super-tough materials.
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How does human activity impact the creatures we currently share the planet with? A new study has found that mammals across the globe are increasingly turning nocturnal, in a bid to avoid contact with us pesky humans.
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Scientists have found the earliest animal footprints ever discovered. The tracks and burrows, dating back half a billion years to the Ediacaran Period, were made by some of the earliest bilaterian animals, and reveal that more complex lifeforms arose earlier than previously thought.
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So-called "camera traps" – motion-activated cameras that automatically take photos of passing wildlife – are a great way of determining the type and number of animals present in a given area. Now, they could prove even more useful, thanks to a new artificial intelligence (AI) system.
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If you feel like you’ve had some drawn-out breakups, think of the supercontinent of Pangaea, which took tens of millions of years to split up. Now a unique fossil skull might readjust the timeline, with a strange creature turning up on a different continent to its previously-discovered relatives.
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This year’s ESF list of the top new species discovered over the past 12 months features a bizarre beetle that lives undercover among ants, a fish living deeper in the ocean than ever thought possible, and a previously undiscovered single-celled organism found in an aquarium in California.
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Study of animal behavior is a slow process, with human observers spending years watching and classifying different actions. A team from Columbia University is determined to develop an easier, and more objective method using machine learning and algorithms often used for spam-filtering purposes.
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