The page cannot be found

How do I look in these?  That age old question about sunglasses is now not only restricted to our own species.  Now the dogs are getting in on the act too.  A surprise hit, it has been described as one of those money making ideas that should never have worked but in fact makes millions.

Species of animals change over time, some just a little but others quite a lot! Science took a while to catch up but in 1858 the idea of Natural Selection was put forward.  We have Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace to thank for that, because it’s been around ever since. Soon after, Darwin would publish “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, a book that shook educated society to the core. In fact, the theory of evolution was not taught in many schools because people disagreed with it - and there is still some dissent today (in some places!).

But how does natural selection work?  This hugely interesting video from the Natural History Museum in London takes the giraffe as an example. We know how well suited they are for survival, especially because of their long necks and tongues that help them pick off the juiciest leaves from even the tallest of trees.  They didn’t always have long necks and tongues – and the changes that happened to make it so are called adaptations. There is also the fact that every single member of one species is just a little different from all the others – and that’s called variation. This variation can sometimes mean that certain individuals have an advantage over others in their natural environment.

So, natural selection happens because animals with adaptations that make them  more successful are way more likely to survive long enough to produce offspring who will have the same adaptation.  SO, that’s why if you go back far enough, and encountered the ancestor of today’s giraffes, you will probably have great difficulty in recognising it as such.  To learn more about variation, adaptation and natural selection, look at the video below. It’s put forward in a very straightforward way which makes you wonder why it too so long for us to get to Darwin and his ideas.  I guess something is only obvious when it’s made obvious.

Some frogs spend their lives in the tree canopy and only come “down to earth” when it’s time to find a mate and breed.  They can live in the treetops because the environment is so humid that they do not have to rely on puddles or pools to get by. That is the case with the gliding leaf frog, and the way it gets itself back to the ground is quite spectacular.   The gliding tree frog (also known as the gliding leaf frog) is endemic to the humid forests of the tropical east pacific, in countries including Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador (but not spread throughout these countries).

They have huge webbed feet – and that’s just as well.  They use them, effectively, as parachutes.   Once they get to the ground the males begin to sing – to attract the females. This fills the surrounding forest with noise – so it is the female who makes the ultimate choice of which male she wants to mate with.   She always seems to go towards the loudest calls – this generally means a bigger frog! However, in order to get to her choice, she has to get past the other frogs who want to get overfriendly with her… and so she sometimes has to use her very large feet to kick unwanted suitors away. That is more difficult than it sounds, given that once attached, the male frogs are almost impossible to remove.

Watch some amazing footage of the gliding leaf frog in the video below.  To be honest, it looks like something of a free for all!

Although there are only a fraction of the suburban hedgehogs in the UK that were around even twenty years ago, life must go on.  This clip from the BBC documentary Secret Gardens shows a female hedgehog looking for a mate.  She really does have to search far and wide in order to find a mate, but eventually she succeeds!  This is a sweet story but sad too, as it underlines just how few of these lovely, harmless creatures are left in the towns and cities of the UK.

Perhaps, as is featured in the video, more effort should be put into creating hedgehog corridors, so that they can safely navigate routes between properties in order to find the love of their life (well, of the evening at least).   A little patience and a little help can go a long way – and it would be great to think that hedgehogs are considered when new houses are built too.  Sometimes, one has to wonder why people even build houses with gardens – they are in such a rush to pave them over that it is little wonder that the hedgehogs of England are becoming something of a rarity.

Did you know that 7.5 billion landbirds currently call North America home?  That’s an awful lot of birds, but here is a question – think about it.  When did you last see a dead bird?  The adult  mortality rate of songbirds is around 45% in their first year, so why is it we don’t see many (or any) dead birds?  So, what happens to birds when they die, when they fall off their metaphorical perch?

It seems that behavior changes when a bird senses that it is not long before it slips off its mortal coil.  They become lethargic and seek cover.  When a bird knows that its health is compromised it retreats to places where predators are unlikely to spot it.  It is an instinctive threat response – to hide because it even though it is on its way out, it still doesn't want to be killed by a predator.  So birds die in places that you can’t see into - dense foliage often covers them up after death.   Even if the bird dies in plain sight, the average time it is visible is about 30 minutes to 4 hours.  Scavengers get them. As well as insect action, cats and even other birds can come along and pick up the carcass.  Watch this fascinating video by Bird Whisper, which delves into more detail below.

This gorgeous bird is a brood parasite (like most other cuckoos), meaning females lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species. The picture is of a male (he has a bright yellow breast). During the rainy-season breeding period between September and March, a female can lay about 19 to 25 eggs. Although they do not need territory to raise chicks, male cuckoos still defend territories to attract mates. The species is widespread across sub-Saharan Africa. Image

Animals that are cave specialists are known as troglobites and can be counted as the most specialist species in the world – one species of angel fish troglobites lives only in two small cave waterfalls in Thailand.  To say that they have a precarious grip on survival in this day and age is putting it mildly.  Many of these species have lost the use of their eyes altogether as the sun never penetrates their cave dwellings. However, to become troglobitic can take thousands of generations. 

This fascinating video from BBC Earth, narrated by Sir David Attenborough looks at troglobites in general – those who have lost the pigment in their skin and also their eyes.  However, to compensate for their blindness, creatures like the Texas Blind Salamander has other senses fine-tuned to compensate for their lack of sight.  Take a look at this video – and discover more about the strange cave-dwelling species, who somehow manage to survive despite the odds being massively stacked against them.

This morning, as I walked to the shops, I spotted a crow.  That wasn’t hard because it was making a loud cawing sound – a proper South East London crow, indeed.  Perhaps there was a cat around, maybe it was trying to locate its mate, or it could have been defending its territory.  I’m not sure what was going on, but one thing was for sure – this crow was perched very precariously on a sapling in a planter.  Perhaps six foot tall, the young tree has been damaged (perhaps by the crow?), meaning that a bird, if it lands elegantly enough, can perch atop it.  Yet what bird would want to do that? This one, obviously.  I didn’t see it land, but the level of expertise it must have taken is astonishing.  I say this because I can’t even do a three-point turn very well, so I can’t imagine calculating angles with height involved too.

Still pondering these avian acrobatics, I reached home and popped the eggs I had just bought into the fridge. I discovered a single egg at its back, and I decided that, since the crow had given me a visual treat, I would give the ones that haunt my garden an edible one. Now, this isn’t something I do often.  Although I do like to see the bigger birds in my garden (the rivalries between the crows and the magpies are legendary for their riotousness, noisiness and general length!) I generally do not feed birds at all. I used to, but then read up on it and discovered that it could produce an over-reliance on feeders, not to mention that lots of birds congregating together isn’t necessarily good for their general health.

Some species don’t need males.  Take the New Mexico Whiptail Lizard for example.  There are no males in this species. So, of course, the sensible question to ask is how do they reproduce?  They use something called parthenogenesis which involves no males and no sperm.  The female can produce an egg all by herself.  The eggs will produce an all-female brood, clones of the other – who will go on to… you get the point.  While this does allow some species to rapidly increase their range, it does somewhat limit the genetic diversity of the species!

For a closer look at parthenogenesis, take a look at these videos created by the Natural History Museum in the UK.

Did you know that a health queen honey bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day in the peak season?  That is one busy queen – and running the whole colony on top of that must sap her strength somewhat.  But wait a second – does a queen bee actually run her colony?  That is what most people would naturally assume, but they would be wrong.  She doesn’t make any decisions about what goes on in the hive, she simply secretes a pheromone that reassures the other bees that she is still around and healthy to boot.  If she stops producing the pheromone the colony would quickly become chaotic.  The worker bees that make up 99% of the colony and they are really the ones who keep the colony together, through a variety of tasks that they do throughout their lives.

There is a strict hierarchy in a hive and that includes not just the workers, but drones too. These are the only males in the colony and – unfortunately for  them – they get thrown out of the hive when times get hard.  I suppose having one job (mating) is a plum one when times are good (except for one gruesome fact!). Find out all about bee hierarchies in this fascinating video. 

The ruddy duck is small compared to other ducks (even though their eggs are huge relative to their size), but once you have seen one, you won’t forget especially if you see a male in mating season (when his beak turns blue and he plumps his head feathers up to make himself look like he has horns!).  Although they come from North America, they are making some inroads into Europe.  Yet it’s when it comes to their courtship that these ducks become truly memorable! All Things Birdie explains why the duck makes these bubbles (yes, it’s the mating game again) and just as importantly how it is created to become the fascinating bubble display that you can see in the video below.  To our ears the mating call of the male doesn’t sound very attractive – it’s something like a belch, but I am sure the female ruddies just love it!  Find out more about the ruddy duck by watching the video. Image Credit

Over on our sibling site, Kuriositas, there is a  new article about the fascinating bird’s nest fungi.  Not only does it say what it does on the label (its correct name is Nidulariaceae so you can see why it got its common name), it has an intriguing way of ensuring its survival. In a world where many organisms rely on wind, wings or brute abundance to spread their offspring, bird’s nest fungi have evolved a system that turns rainfall itself into a delivery mechanism – precise, forceful and repeatable. A raindrop becomes a trigger, a launcher and a dispersal strategy all in one, converting something as ordinary as weather into a highly targeted reproductive event.  Find out more about it at Kuriositas, which also has a lovely gallery of images of the bird’s nest fungi. Image

Did you do a double take? This striking behaviour reflects the strong parental care (and perhaps patience) shown by female alligators during the early months of a juvenile’s life. After hatching, young alligators often remain close to their mother, who offers protection from predators and even other adult alligators. Resting on the adult’s head or back provides safety, warmth, and a vantage point above the water’s surface. Contrary to common belief, adult alligators do not indiscriminately attack everything nearby; feeding behaviour is context-specific. In this case, the adult recognises the juvenile as its own offspring and tolerates its presence, demonstrating an important survival strategy within the species.

Image

Snakes have been around for about 150 million years – which is a little longer than we have, that’s for sure.  One of the questions that snakes provoke from kids (of all sizes) is how on earth do they manage to eat things that look, to all intents and purposes, way, way bigger or longer than them?  How can this happen? It looks impossible.

Well, if you have been around for as long as snakes, you have the time to solve this kind of problem.  Plus of course, we sometimes look at problems from our perspective.  Our jaw bones are fused which means that we would not be able to get something ridiculously large in our mouths and down into our stomach (although I have seen people try at parties).  The jaw bones of the snake, on the other hand, are not fused.  They are still connected but by a ligament of such elasticity that their mouths can be dramatically stretched.  The gape can be large – even up to 180 degrees (and that has to be seen to be believed).  That always leads to another question – when a snake swallows something much bigger than itself, how come it doesn’t suffocate?

This and other questions are answered in the video below, a TED-Ed lesson by Niko Zlotnik, directed by Anna Benner and narrated by Adrian Dannatt.

There have been no beavers in the English county of Bedfordshire for four hundred years.  They were hunted out of existence throughout the country as farms expanded due to the increase in population and demand for more food.  There was, it seems, no place for beavers.  Incredibly, they were thought to do more damage than good. The beaver is of course one of the best ecosystem engineers that we have available to us.  The landowner, Charles Whitbread, had to get a licence (The Beaver Trust helped with the application) and build an enclosure for the beavers (which must have cost him quite a lot of money), so he is obviously particularly please to see his plan come to fruition, at Southill Estate. This video from the Wildwood Trust shows the release of the family of Eurasian beavers at the Estate.  What a wonderful day it must have been for everyone involved!

Beavers are among the most transformative agents of ecological recovery in the natural world. In the English landscape, where vast areas of wetland have been drained, channelled, and degraded over centuries, these remarkable animals quietly reverse the damage all on their own. By building dams and reshaping waterways, they slow the flow of water, reducing flood risk and allowing it to spread and soak into the land. In doing so, they create complex, thriving mosaics of ponds, marshes, and wet meadows.

These newly formed habitats support an extraordinary diversity of life, including insects and amphibians to birds and mammals - triggering a chain reaction of returning species. At the same time, beaver wetlands lock away significant amounts of carbon in waterlogged soils and vegetation, contributing to climate resilience. What makes this even more striking is that all of this is achieved without costly infrastructure or intensive human intervention (OK, once the new habitat is set up, but after 400 years some groundwork had to be done!). Beavers, working instinctively, accomplish landscape-scale restoration in ways that are not only effective, but also self-sustaining and economically efficient.

Let’s hope the beavers at Southill Estate thrive! Watch the video below.

Here’s the story of Doris the duck and her nine eggs, as told on the BBC’s new nature programme, Secret Garden.  Narrated by David Attenborough, it shows how the ducklings “talk” to each other and so trigger hatching at the same time, so that all nine get to experience life simultaneously.  Of course, the mother duck does not have the father around, and looking after  nine ducklings present her with a set of big challenges. The first one is getting the ducklings from the nest to the water.  As they jump down, you will  be forgiven for keeping fingers, toes and everything crossed, but thanks to the cushioning effect of their downy feathers, they all make it to where they want to go intact. Phew!  

Mum Doris is waiting at the bottom of the drop to escort them the last of the way to  the water, and once they make it, she gets them into hiding as soon as she can.  There are predators about, and she wants to make sure they all her ducklings survive!  This is a beautiful piece of film-making from the BBC and I look forward to watching the rest of the episodes on iPlayer.  Let’s keep our fingers (at least) crossed that Doris and her ducklings make it through!

The Greater Glider is cute, but not many people get the chance to see one in the eastern Australian wilds it calls home.  They are shy, solitary and nocturnal, yet one thing is certain – this endangered marsupial species has adorable down to a fine art.  It was, until 2020, believed to be a single species, with variations according to habitat.  After careful research using high-throughput genetic marker techniques, it was discovered that the genus Petauroides was not monotypic – it did not contain a solitary species, after all: there are three species of greater glider. Image

Southern Greater Glider

So, what does one do when this happens?  Keeping things simple and straightforward is always a good plan, so we now have the Northern, Central and Southern greater gliders – named after the regions of the range in which they are found.  Just to make matters a little complicated, each species comes in two forms.  The central greater glider is usually silvery-brown, while the southern greater glider is especially well known for having both dark and pale grey-white forms (the variation seems to be a normal colour morph rather than a sign that they are different sexes or ages. In other words: some are naturally darker, some paler).

The South African Dwarf Chameleon has to contend with a problem.  It can sometimes get cold where it lives and that means that if it laid eggs, they probably wouldn’t hatch. So, evolution came up with a neat solution to that – instead of laying eggs, this chameleon carries it young like a mammal.  In order to properly incubate her eggs, she finds the sunniest spots in which to bask and enable them to grow.  When it is time for them to be born, she gives birth from fairly high up in the branches.  Fortunately, the young do not drop to the ground.  They are born with a membrane that temporarily encloses them – and the membrane is sticky and so attaches itself to a branch on the way down!  Once the newborn has dried off, as it were, it is ready to pursue life in the branches.

Watch the amazing video, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, below: 

In the coral reefs of Indonesia, something remarkable happens on remote coral reefs.  The Banded Sea Krait, which lays its eggs on land but hunts in the water, has a problem.  They aren’t fast enough to catch free-swimming fish, so resort to trying to find those hiding among the coral. A single bite is sufficient to paralyse prey, but getting at it is the problem! Fortunately (for them), they get assistance from the yellow goat fish which live around the reef, as well as trevally fish – and together they form what can only be described as a pack – at some points in this film there are around fifty snakes and countless fish, banding together with only one thing in mind – food!

The fish will chase the prey into the coral and then the snakes go in. When some of the smaller fish try to escape, then the yellow goat fish and trevally are waiting for them. It’s a win-win situation for both the snakes and the fish.  It is thought that this behavior was much more widespread when Indonesia’s reefs were pristine, but these days it only happens in some of the more remote reefs – the main reason why this kind of hunting is not seen very often.

Watch the intriguing video from BBC Earth below.

The last insect you would expect to be buzzing around the Falkland Islands is the humble bumblebee.  The islands are harsh, not to mention isolated in the South Atlantic, so it is difficult for any insects to reach them naturally.  Not only that, but it is even more difficult for them to create and continue a presence on the island.  However, this is what local scientists believe may have happened in the Falklands.

This could have come in on the deck of a boat or a plane.  However, once arrived, it only takes one queen to set up a nest.  Locals would quite like this to be the case as the sight of a bumblebee in one’s garden is always a pleasure. Plus, the Falklands do not have any native bees, so unless they have a negative impact on the local ecosystem, we can only hope that the bumblebee can establish itself on the islands.

Watch the video describing the appearance of the bumblebee on the Falkland Islands below.

When you look at the butterfly above, what do you immediately see? Yes, the clue was in the title of this article, but we definitely can make out the number 88 on its wing.  Found in Middle and South America, these butterflies are, unsurprisingly called mariposa ochenta y ocho (eighty-eight butterfly) in Spanish. Image Credit

 

Image Credit

Perhaps more of a revelation is that, depending on where you are, you might not be looking at the same species. Just as we have not one “8” but two, so there are two distinct species with variations of the name the eighty-eight butterfly (there are 12 altogether, it would have been more fun had there been eight).   Of course, they certainly share one big thing in common, but evolution shaped the wing pattern for survival, not for numeracy (and more about that later).

Now, there is a question and I would guess the answer is very much down to the tastes of the individual responder.  Sometimes the plainest of butterflies can be a person’s favorite, and so considered the most beautiful in ways other than those which greet the eye.  This fascinating video covers a number of butterflies, all of which are quite stunning.

We have featured a few on Arkinspace before – such as the amazing glasswing – and that species is on this particular list too.  This list features the Top 20, including the Island Marble, linked closely to the San Juan island area in Washington State. Then there is the Peacock with its amazing eyespots.  Then there is the ulyss, with its iridescent blue markings. My own is the Anna's eighty-eight, which does exactly what is says on the packet.

Of course, there are another 16 on this list, beautifully created by 4 Ever Green, besides those mentioned above. Will your favorite be on it? Watch the full video below and find out.

Much is known about orangutan physiology and behavior. Yet there is one thing that is still unsolved – the exact reason why some male orangutans develop a flange while others do not. These large cheek pads certainly have their advantages as we shall see - it’s most certainly about dominance and mating with as many females as possible – so why do they only develop in some males and not others?

First things first – the flange is not a physical signal that a male has reached sexual maturity as was once thought – they already have quite a while back. Even though orangutans are among the slowest mammals to reach reproductive age, between 7 and 10 years of age for the male, they are capable of producing offspring at this age. However, it is rare for the male to mate before the age of 15. Females mature at about 5 years of age but like many great apes undergo a period of infertility in their adolescent years which preclude offspring for between 2 and 4 years and will not produce offspring until they too are well in to their teens.

Japan is a crowded country but stull has many diverse wildlife and landscapes. Many of the animals have adapted and continue to thrive alongside humans.  This documentary is a very sweet and beautifully created piece of work and features narration by Michelle Dockery.  You will witness frogs and their amazingly complex nests, the tadpoles feeding off it before they make their way out into the world.  Then there are the macaques raiding the local farms for the fresh produce (well, everyone has to eat, don’t they?).  These and many other animals will thrill and engage you for 20 minutes. I particularly liked the underwater sequences - simply phenomenal.  It leaves me wondering how on earth it was done. Enjoy!

The wonderfully eccentric Snares penguin is always up for a spot of self-care.  In their New Zealand forest habitat they thrive, but there is something that happens in a forest that wouldn’t if they were, say, to live in ice-bound conditions further south.  Mud.  Forests are muddy. 

The clingy mud (which they themselves have helped to generate as they waddle through the forest) could be a threat to them. If the feathers are clogged, regulation of body temperature is very difficult and so this might kill the penguin if they don’t get their feathers clean soon.  So, they go to the baths and give themselves a proper scrub, after which they lay on a special wax to their feathers!

Watch the delightful video below.

There are lots of videos doing the rounds that feeding birds in our gardens helps to spread disease.  Not only that, it favours some of the more aggressive species of birds to thrive to the detriment of others.  What exactly does help the birds in our gardens?

As landscapes changed – bird-feeding spread.  Here, Joel Ashton tells, with great clarity, the steps that can be taken to help stop the spread of disease.  It is also very sensible advice.  For example, the blue-tit is quite an assertive bird and people think that it is hogging the feeding stations – as well as the  nest boxes we place in the gardens, too.  As a fan of the blue tit, I was relieved to find that it is not the thug in the garden that many people think it is.

Bird behaviour changes when resources are limited.  So a lot of birds behave badly – but of course that is a human interpretation of their actions.  Gardens are shared spaces, and competition is normal – the birds don’t quite see things as we do.  A simple tip is to spread different types of feeding stations around the garden to avoid the birds having to feed shoulder-to-shoulder.

Watch the video below – it’s a great watch wherever you are.

You may or may not know this but Ark in Space is curated by just one person – and that person would be me! There are a number of expenses that the site incurs each month and so, with my cap in my hand, I’m going to beg a favor.

If you enjoy Ark in Space, please consider helping out with the cost of running the site.  As you can guess, it takes a lot of time and effort, too!

Below this post you will see a button which will enable you to make a contribution safely and securely. You can give as little or as much as you like – I’m not going to limit your choices! Anything will be gratefully received and will help to ensure that I can carry on bringing you all the great features, photographs and videos about the natural world that makes the site what it is.

So, if you read or watch something that you have really enjoyed, please think about sending us a small donation. Thanks!

Best regards

Robert-John

Geoffroy’s tamarin (Saguinus geoffroyi) is a small New World monkey native to Central America, particularly Panama and parts of Costa Rica. This picture was taken at Gatun Lake in Panama. It is easily recognised by its distinctive black-and-white fur and reddish nape. Living in social groups, Geoffroy’s tamarins are active, agile and highly vocal, using a range of calls to communicate. Their diet is omnivorous, consisting of fruit, insects, nectar and small vertebrates. They play an important role in seed dispersal within tropical forests. Although adaptable, they are threatened by habitat loss and deforestation.

They can seem a bit grumpy – like the one in the picture - mainly because of their sharp facial markings and intense expressions. Geoffroy’s tamarins often look stern or suspicious, especially when alert. Behaviour-wise, though, they’re not especially bad-tempered. They’re lively, curious and quite social, but they can be noisy and feisty, particularly when defending territory or competing for food. So while they may look grumpy, it’s more a case of “serious face” than a genuinely grumpy personality.

This picture is by Charles J. Sharp, shared here with a Creative Commons license.

High up in the Ethiopian mountains lives the Gelada.  It lives nowhere else and although its closest living relative is the baboon, with its hairless face and short muzzle the gelada looks more like a chimpanzee.  Isolated in these remote Ethiopian Highlands (often called The Roof of Africa) this primate has developed a way of existence (one might call it a culture) all of its own.

To begin with the gelada is a graminivore which means that it only eats grass.  Fortunately, the highlands in which they live are cooler and a lot less arid than many parts of Ethiopia and they rarely experience any kind of food shortage.  They will also become granivorous when the grass is in seed.  In fact, they actively prefer the seed to the grass – it is probably a welcome change.

Chimps love honey – and who could blame them? However, our close relative cannot, as we do, pop down to the shops and buy some over the counter. They have to do it the traditional way – and as such things can get a little messy, not to mention a little dangerous. In this video from the BBC, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, one chimp decides that it must be honey for lunch – and she is willing to go to extremes to get it.

Unfortunately for the bees, the chimp is quite adept at getting what she wants, using a variety of different wooden “tools” in order to extract the honey.  How on earth does she know how to do this? At one point, a chimp did learn and passed it on. Down the generations these skills have been honed until now they make it looks very easy. You can see in this video a young chimp learning through imitation and although he doesn’t seem to be doing too well, I bet in a few years he will have mastered the art.  It’s just a shame that what took the bees years to create is destroyed in minutes.  It seems they are closer to us than we might imagine, after all.

Watch the chimps hunt for honey below.

This is amazing footage.  Occasionally barnacle geese, usually keen to keep to the British coastline when in flight, as forced inland because of poor weather.  When they do, the lucky inhabitants of cities like Edinburgh will be lucky enough to witness the flight of a whole flock as they make their way further north.  The sight is something to behold from the ground, so just imagine if you were in the sky with the geese! Well, imagine no more because thanks to John Downer Productions, you can now see these remarkable  birds doing what they do best.  If this seems familiar, you may have seen it while watching the Earthflight TV series, which was called Winged Planet in the US.  The result is more than a little jaw meets floor to say the least.

Edinburgh’s sites are not the only thing barnacle geese might see as they complete their annual migration. The Svalbard population (the most likely to be in our video) of barnacle geese migrates annually between the high Arctic and western Scotland. They breed during the short summer in Svalbard, where predator pressure is low, then begin their autumn migration in September, flying south across the Norwegian Sea. The geese winter mainly in south-west Scotland, particularly the Solway Firth, with smaller numbers dispersing along the east coast and occasionally over Edinburgh. In spring (April–May), they return north via the Norwegian coast to Svalbard, completing a round journey of around 3,000 kilometres. This remarkable migration is typically undertaken in tight family groups, forming the distinctive V-shaped skeins often seen crossing Scottish skies.

 

Did you know that a new species can be named by qualified scientists all over the world, as long as they follow international rules? Probably, a more amazing fact is that new species are still being discovered on a daily basis.  The Natural History Museum in London helped to identify 262 species in 2025 alone. The global number runs into the thousands.

The species do not have to be around – many of the new species that are identified each year are fossilised remnants.  However, in 2025 the Natural History Museum helped with animals including a toad whose tadpoles skip the tadpole phase, and some dazzling new jewel butterflies (one or two of which were around, but alas may not be any more).

To discover more about how many species were discovered last year, watch the Natural History Museum video below.

In the subantarctic region of the Southern Ocean, roughly halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica lies Macquarie Island. Although it is closer to New Zealand, Australia, in fact, owns the island.  Not that the royal penguin cares – it has called the island its (only) home for tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of years, relying on its rocky shores and tussock-covered slopes for breeding, nesting, and raising its chicks in one of the most remote and windswept environments on Earth.  As such, it is the only place on Earth (apart from two small islets about 30 miles away where around 1,000 breed) that the royal penguin mates and reproduces. Image Credit

Image Credit

So, why the name? This is almost always the first question that people ask when they first come across the royal penguin.  We’re not really sure when they acquired their common name, but it is likely that it was at around the same time that they were first recorded by European sealers in 1810 (and that was an oh dear moment for the species, to say the very least).  The sealers were no doubt struck by the bird’s bright yellow crest, which resembles a crown or royal ornament.  They were also struck (with no doubt at all), by the opportunity the royal penguin presented to make some money. More about that sad chapter later.

Once thought to be functionally extinct, the kākāpō — New Zealand’s iconic, flightless parrot — may be heading for its largest breeding season on record. Image Credit

Conservationists expect all 84 breeding females in the population to lay eggs this season, a remarkable milestone for a species that numbered just 51 individuals in 1995. Today, the population stands at around 273 birds, the result of decades of intensive conservation work.

The surge in breeding activity is linked to an unusually large crop of rimu fruit, a critical food source that triggers kākāpō reproduction. When food is abundant, the birds are far more likely to mate and lay eggs. What’s particularly intriguing is that the fruit will not be fully ripe until after chicks hatch - yet the birds appear to “predict” the coming abundance and begin breeding in advance.

That said, success is far from guaranteed. Eggs must still hatch, chicks must survive, and juveniles must reach independence - a process that will not be fully assessed until late 2026. The species’ slow breeding cycle and long lifespan mean recovery is measured in decades, not years.

There are also lingering concerns about genetic diversity. The severe population bottleneck has led to fertility issues and increased vulnerability to disease, challenges conservationists continue to manage as best they can.

Still, the outlook is hopeful. If even a portion of this breeding season succeeds, it could mark another significant step away from extinction for one of the world’s rarest parrots - and a powerful reminder of what long-term conservation efforts can achieve.

Will these turtle hatchlings reach the sea without being captured by predators, and will they withstand the power of the waves once they get there?

On the beaches of Africa, a clutch of tiny turtle hatchlings emerges from the sand, driven by instinct alone. The journey before them is short in distance, but immense in danger. Every movement draws attention, and every second increases the odds stacked against them.  Although this video from the BBC does not explicitly state this, I have an idea that these are hatchlings of the Leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea).

To say that they have the odds stacked against them is something of an understatement. Above, yellow-billed kites circle patiently, their sharp eyes trained on the shifting sand. Nearby, crows watch from a distance, intelligent and opportunistic, waiting for the moment to strike. At ground level, ghost crabs scuttle across the beach, perfectly adapted ambush predators ready to seize any hatchling that strays too close. Together, these hunters form a gauntlet that few will pass unscathed.

Of course, there is always one hatchling that emerges last. Smaller, slower, just a heartbeat behind the others. Naturally, our attention fixes on this one. We root for it, silently urging it forward, as if encouragement alone might tilt the balance in its favour. But what are the odds?

Even reaching the shoreline is not the end of the trial. The surf itself is a formidable barrier, its waves capable of dragging a fragile body back onto the sand or tumbling it helplessly in the shallows. And beyond the breaking waves, the danger does not disappear. A moment’s hesitation can be fatal, as a shadow passes overhead and a pair of sharp talons plunges down from the sky.

This is nature at its most uncompromising. No quarter is given, no second chances offered. Yet enough hatchlings survive to keep the species alive, just as they have for millions of years. Each successful dash to the sea is a small victory, not just for the turtle, but for life’s stubborn persistence against overwhelming odds.

Narrated in the measured, reverent tones we associate with Sir David Attenborough, this scene reminds us that survival in the natural world is never guaranteed — it is earned, moment by perilous moment.

Watch the video below: