Biology News

Ants use their own bodies for rapid road repairs

This week we heard some bizarre news from the world of the ants.  It seems that some types of ants are prepared to get walked all over to let their fellow ants bring home the ...

Turtle conservation could be working

Numbers of endangered sea turtles are on the up in British and French waters, thanks to conservation efforts on the other side of the Atlantic. That’s acco...

The encyclopaedia of life

This week scientists have announced plans for a wonderfully ambitious project – they are setting out to create a huge online Noah’s arc.  The web-based encyclopaedia will hold...

Scientists Swollen with Success

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Sixth Sense for Submarines

Scientists would like to build robotic submarines that can be used in complex tight spaces such as coral reefs, wrecks, oil rigs etc. The problem is that to avoid crashing in these...

Fighting both dandruff and epilepsy

It may not seem like an obvious treatment for epilepsy, but results from a team at  Johns Hopkins Medical Institute have found that a chemical in anti-dandruff shampoo might b...

Humans have worm-based brains

For some of us, feeling like we have the brain of a worm is a common experience.  But new research has shown that our brains may actually have evolved from worms, making the o...

Heat Triggers Sex Change in Lizards by Turning Off Genes

A new study out this week has shown for the first time that heat causes lizard eggs to change sex by switching off a key gene....

Looking at Lemmings

It’s a common belief that lemmings commit suicide by flinging themselves off cliffs en masse.  However, this isn’t actually true. Like most of us, lemmings are quite keen to s...

King of the Swingers

As a famous character in a great Disney cartoon once sang about, it turns out that Orang utans really are king of the swingers because they know just the right way to swing their w...