New Scientist

Horses experience hyperflexion when their necks bend far towards their chests – forcing this position can hurt a horse but when it happens naturally it can be harmless

Turning around and backing up out of pools found in tree hollows may help mating Charles Darwin’s frogs find a safe place to lay their eggs while fending off competitive males

This year marks half a century since the discovery of Lucy, a hominid fossil that would go on to drastically alter our understanding of human evolution. The man who unearthed her, Donald Johanson, shares more about the momentous excavation and the legacy it has left.

A strain of green algae has been artificially evolved to turn carbon dioxide into sustainable fuel and plastic

The graft involved in trying to bring the peregrine falcon, Hawaiian crow and California condor back from the brink in the US makes for compelling reading in Feather Trails by Sophie Osborn

Tulip trees have a structure that is somewhere between hardwood and softwood – called "midwood" – which could increase their ability to store carbon

Fossils in rocks that are 3.8 billion years old have puzzled biologists as they look nothing like modern cells, but now it seems they may be an ancient precursor life form that was unable to control its structure

Elephant-like species started going extinct faster when early humans evolved, and the rate of extinction rose even higher when modern humans appeared

Ants and other insects are capable of astounding navigational feats. Perhaps an appreciation of this could aid conservation efforts, says Robert Barrie

The 166-million-year-old fossils of an adult and a juvenile of the same extinct mammal species reveal that they had longer "childhoods" and lifespans than similar species today

An orange layer on the tips of Komodo dragons’ teeth may give the enamel extra strength for ripping apart their prey

Researchers are calling for greater protection for basking sharks after a camera on a tagged shark recorded a collision for the first time

Humans and chimpanzees both take part in rapid social exchanges, suggesting some foundational principles of language may have evolved earlier than previously thought

Genetic analysis shows that there are four varieties of Portuguese man o’ war, or bluebottle, including an Antipodean species that has yet to be named

Science is at last confirming what many people have long suspected - that mammals, birds and perhaps some invertebrates have elements of consciousness

When ants try to invade their nest, Japanese honeybees flutter their wings and tilt their bodies to beat away their enemies

Hunting in packs seems like a complex social behaviour, but it isn't limited to large carnivores like wolves. A simple sea slug species teams up to swarm its venomous anemone prey as a group

All life on Earth can trace its origin to LUCA, the last universal common ancestor – and now it seems this organism may have lived a few hundred million years after the planet formed

A complete genome has been extracted from a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth, which might bring us closer to resurrecting the species

Two lions, one missing a leg, made a 1.5-kilometre swim through crocodile-infested waters in Uganda, probably in order to mate with females