Komodo dragons, the world’s largest lizards, eat carrion and live on Indonesian islands. Their saliva hosts many of the world’s most stubborn and infectious bacteria. However, Komodos almost never get ...

The idea of human bodies being hijacked by parasites might seem like something out of a science-fiction novel. However, to much of the developing world, parasitic infection is a daily reality, with ...

Advances in the science of ‘cryobanking’ animal gametes are helping restore endangered populations and preserve biodiversity, writes William V Holt The Biologist 64(4) p16-21 In the late 1940s a young ...

The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the name given to the most recent common ancestor of all existing life on Earth. It is the population of cells from roughly four billion years ago from ...

After 70 years of cultural shift in the West towards babies being bottle-fed formula milk rather than breastfed, one of the prevailing views in the general population is that there is no difference ...

Surfactants are a group of chemicals that have a daily impact on our lives and yet we have little awareness of their importance, or their ubiquitous use. The word 'surfactant' was coined many decades ...

Arguably the most striking of carnivorous plants, Nepenthes are known for their modified hollow leaves, for which they get their common names: pitcher plants and monkey cups. The fluid lurking inside ...

Solutions to problems in science and engineering are often found in structures, organisms and symbiotic relationships already seen in nature. Examples of this include the construction of artificial ...

Dr Mairi Levitt looks at how lawyers are increasingly looking to use defendants’ genes to defend criminal behaviour, despite the evidence for its use being largely unconvincing Reducing a convicted ...

This course provides practical training in how to perform a basic standard mouse necropsy and describe gross observations made during this process. This training course, hosted at the University of ...

This video discusses key points of a scientific experiment, from coming up with a research question to interpreting your data. Learn how to make your own pitfall traps, attract reptiles and amphibians ...

Richard Fortey found his first trilobite aged just 14, after braving gorse bushes to break rocks on St David's Peninsula, the westernmost tip of Wales. This first encounter with a trilobite – which ...