New Scientist

Long thought to have walked bipedally, like us, Australia’s extinct giant kangaroos have features that indicate they could also have bounced

A striking shot of biting flies on the head of a crocodile is among the winning entries in the British Ecological Society’s annual Capturing Ecology photography competition

Ludovic Orlando's Horses is an enthralling account by one of the main players, detailing how genetics has rewritten what we know about the intertwined story of horses and humans, now spanning over 4000 years

Extraordinary fossils of 518-million-year-old jawless fish, among the earliest known vertebrates, appear to show that these animals had two pairs of eyes

The light-sensitive tissue of birds’ eyes is not supplied with oxygen by blood vessels – instead, it powers itself with a flood of sugar, and this may have evolutionary benefits

A popular idea suggests a link between big brains and a rich social life, but octopuses don't fit the pattern, which suggests something else is going on

Humpback whales off the west coast of Canada have learned a cooperative hunting technique from whales migrating into the area, and this cultural knowledge may help the population cope as food becomes scarce

A pet cow has learned to scratch herself with a broom, showing creative problem-solving skills that make it harder to ignore the fact that these animals have minds, says Marta Halina

The protein that protects tardigrade DNA from radiation and mutagenic chemicals was thought to be harmless, but can in fact have major downsides

Hallucigenia was such an odd animal that palaeontologists reconstructed it upside-down when they first analysed its fossils - and now we may know what it ate

Our growing understanding of how other animals also share skills and knowledge will help us chip away at the folly of human exceptionalism, say Philippa Brakes and Marc Bekoff

A piece of woolly rhinoceros flesh hidden inside a wolf that died 14,400 years ago has yielded genetic information that improves our understanding of why one of the most iconic megafauna species of the last glacial period went extinct

An analysis of growth rings in the leg bones of 17 Tyrannosaurus rex individuals reveals that the dinosaurs matured much more slowly than previously thought, and adds to the evidence that they weren't all one species

A study of the hearts of Greenland sharks has found that the long-lived deep-sea predator has massive accumulations of ageing markers, such as severe scarring, but this doesn't appear to affect their health or longevity

Sexual behaviour among same-sex pairs is common in apes and monkeys, and a wide-ranging analysis suggests it does boost survival

There is a growing trend to see our relationship with nature as a spiritual thing. This is a mistake, argues Richard Smyth

The benefits of sleep may be more universal than we thought. We know it helps clear waste from the brain in humans, and now it seems that even creatures without brains like ours get similar benefits

The science behind why stroking your seedlings actually works. If you’re worried about your seedlings getting long and leggy, try a bit of home thigmomorphogenesis, advises James Wong

In the latest in our imagined history of inventions yet to come, Future Chronicles columnist Rowan Hooper reveals how by the 2030s, botanists had worked out how to grow hybridised superplants to help feed the world

It has been claimed that because most of our DNA is active, it must be important, but now human-plant hybrid cells have been used to show this activity is mostly random noise