New Scientist

Warm retreats made using bricks in greenhouses give frogs a place to keep toasty in winter, which helps protect them from deadly chytrid fungal infections

Sleeping cuckoo bees, colourful cotton harlequin bugs and a thorny lacewing trapped in amber appear in some of the best entries to the Royal Entomological Society Photography Competition

Chimpanzees with wounds or gut infections seem to add unusual plants to their diet, and tests show that many of these plants have antibacterial or anti-inflammatory effects

Researchers have confirmed a centuries-old rumour that leeches can jump, which they may do to land their next blood meal

A new species of dinosaur discovered in Montana and related to Triceratops had one of the strangest, most asymmetrical skulls that scientists have ever studied

In this week's Future Chronicles column, which explores an imagined history of future inventions, we visit a cult in 2080s Japan that engineered a way of becoming chimeric with fungal biology. Rowan Hooper reveals their history

A giant flower, one of the smelliest in the world, is currently blooming at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Humans may have shaped the development of aromatic herbs like lavender and mint, but did herbs also shape our own evolution?

How Indonesia’s only firefly conservation lab aims to repopulate Bali's jungle amid habitat loss and pollution  

Scientists have identified a new species of pterosaur from a 100-million-year-old fossil in Australia, which appears to have had a massive tongue to push prey down its throat

An analysis of their vocalisations suggests that African savannah elephants invent names for each other, making them the only animals other than humans thought to do so

Biological processes such as DNA replication or cellular structure formation may become more accurate when done as quickly as possible, offering new hints into life's origins

When bacteria were put in alternating environments, some became better at evolving to cope with the changes – evidence that “evolvability” can be gained through natural selection

A kneecap and two teeth found in Germany have been identified as belonging to a new species of ape from 11.6 million years ago, thought to have weighed as little as 10 kilograms

Dominant male Verreaux’s sifakas always have the largest testicles in their group to make the most sperm, and they can grow their gonads to make sure of it

The mystery of how a single-celled predator extends its "neck" by more than 30 times its overall length has finally been solved

A genetic analysis of ancient horses reveals that breeding techniques developed by people in the Pontic-Caspian steppes enabled the rapid spread of horse-powered travel

Social media is adamant that you can fertilise your houseplants with milk, but I'll be saving mine for a hot drink, says James Wong

This astonishing image may look like a deep-sea monster, with its big teeth and gaping mouth, but the humpback anglerfish is really no bigger than your hand

Researchers trained a hawk outfitted with microphones to fly through a swarm of 600,000 bats, revealing how they can hear their own voice in a crowd