How many species can be found in a glass of ocean water?
If you’ve ever been involved in a school experiment looking at ocean or river water under a microscope, you’ll know that even a single drop teems with life, from larvae and fish visible…
Groundwater could speed the loss of Antarctic ice
Australian research has uncovered groundwater beneath the Antarctic ice which may increase glacial loss and the rising of ocean levels. Antarctica preserves Earth’s largest ice sheet, and scientists have been warning for decades…
Aussie lungfish has largest animal genome known to science
Scientists are teasing out the secrets that place the Australian lungfish near a critical moment of evolution. A team of researchers at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna has sequenced…
Why do Christmas Island crabs swarm every year?
Once a year on Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean, some 120 million terrestrial crabs migrate from the jungle to the water to breed. The crabs swarm during the rainy season, which takes…
What is beach ‘foam’?
Beach foam is produced from proteins. The white beach foam is due to fat and protein in ocean water, which the surf ‘whips’, just like whipped cream. Animals and plants in both salty…
Timelapse of swarming monster worms and sea stars
Three-foot nemertean worms and carnivorous sea stars prowl the Antarctic in search of flesh.
Why do whales and humans have such long menopause?
Long menopause allows killer whales to care for sons.
Dancing chromatophores
Music has the ability to get these pigmented cephalopod cells moving to the beat.
Colour-changing robot inspired by octopus
The cephalopod’s impressive camouflage led scientists to create a rubbery new robot.
