New Scientist

A fungus named Psilocybe ochraceocentrata is the closest relative of a widely cultivated psychedelic mushroom, giving clues to their evolutionary origins

The past 12 months have seen animals of all shapes, sizes and colours strut their stuff – here are just a few of the best pictures from the year

For a truly exquisite glimpse of plants and animals, check out some of the top entries and the winner of the 2024 Evident Image of the Year contest

They were loved by Charles Darwin, they build brilliantly bad nests and they even produce a kind of “milk”. Surely, these facts are more than enough to foster a love for the urban pigeon

Rats of the sky? Pigeons are often the target of human ire, but there's a lot to cherish – or at least appreciate – in these scrappy survivors

Dog harnesses are sometimes claimed to reduce pulling forces on the leash, but an experiment found they have the opposite effect

A resurgence of the screwworm parasite in Central America could have a devastating impact on livestock farming, and poses a threat to humans and wildlife too

Scuba divers will attempt to collect semen from at least nine wild male leopard sharks for the first time, for use in captive breeding programmes aiming to boost wild populations

Bees visited flowers on plants inoculated with diverse fungi more than plants without this treatment – but not every combination of fungus had the same effect

Mark Catesby's work documents the plants and animals he saw while journeying in North America and the Caribbean

Alternative thinking on the evolution of species is a welcome way to highlight some neglected aspects of life on Earth, but it doesn't mean Darwin was wrong

Natural selection isn't just something that happens to organisms, their activities also play a role, giving some species – including humans – a supercharged ability to evolve

Parts from dozens of different individual comb jellies have been fused together to create strange new animals unlike anything seen before

Want to protect your young plants from the ravages of slugs and snails? A classic gardening tip is to use crushed eggshells to discourage them. Shame it doesn't work, says James Wong

An analysis of hundreds of bromalites – fossilised faeces and vomit – shows how changes in diet enabled dinosaurs to take over the world in the early Jurassic

Scientists studying puppy cognition explore the impact of breeding versus training, shed new light on milestones in dogs' cognitive development and reveal science-backed methods to train a "good" dog

About 40 years ago, researchers noticed a population of orcas had begun swimming around with dead fish on their heads, and now the craze is back

Most dogs aren't bred to feel at ease in our homes, but scientists studying puppy cognition have found ways you can help yours adapt

Arthropods belong to an evolutionary branch – the ecdysozoa – that contains about half of all animal species, and the earliest fossil evidence of the group now dates back 550 million years

Groups of wild chimpanzees with more complex tool-using behaviours tend to be genetically linked, providing evidence for cumulative culture in other apes