The fly agaric's road from Siberia to fairyland
How a poisonous mushroom from Siberian travel tales became fairyland's favourite toadstool, a Christmas card staple and Mario's power-up.
category archive
Nature.
Living things, local habitats and a closer look at the world outside.
Cat licking is usually affection, but a sudden rise needs a vet
Most licks signal affection, says the cats.org.uk blog. A sudden rise in licking, or licking with hiding or a change in appetite, calls for a vet visit.
Bats and Halloween: what the myths get wrong
Only three bat species drink blood, and other bats forage for insects and fruit. The Natural History Museum and National Geographic sort fact from legend.
Underground fungi trade phosphorus for plant sugar
Plants pay arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in sugars and fats. In return the fungi can supply up to 80 percent of a plant's phosphorus, reports show.
The world's longest-running whale hunt still feeds the Faroes
The Faroese defend the grind as food, shared free and taken from a large population. Critics point to mercury, missing foetuses and a hunt with no quota.
How a fish thought extinct turned up on a trawler
In 1938 a South African museum curator found a coelacanth on a fishing trawler. Textbooks said the fish had died out with the dinosaurs.
Click beetles flip upright with a snap, not their legs
A click beetle stuck on its back loads a latched hinge behind its head, then lets it snap. That throws it into the air, with little control over the landing.
Two tricks bats use to leave a packed cave without crashing
Thousands of bats leave a cave at once and almost never collide. Tracking studies show they spread out and switch to short, quiet, high-pitched calls.
A chameleon rearranges skin crystals to shift colour
A chameleon shifts colour by rearranging crystals in its skin, not by mixing pigment, and the switch is mostly about signalling, not hiding.
An owl's feathers break up sound at three points
A comb along the leading edge, a velvet nap on top and a soft fringe at the back break up the noise an owl's wing would otherwise make.
Cold feet on ice: why a duck lets its toes chill
A duck's feet run close to the temperature of the ice. Blood vessels in its legs swap heat, so the body stays warm and the feet never freeze solid.
America's 17-year cicadas wait for warm soil to surface
Some periodical cicadas spend 17 years feeding on tree roots, then surface together once the soil warms. Why they keep such long cycles is still unclear.
Banyan roots grow from branches, then thicken into trunks
A banyan drops roots from its branches. Once they reach the soil they thicken into pillars, which is how one tree in India came to cover five acres.
Macadamias are Australian, but the world grows Hawaiian ones
Macadamia is native to Queensland, but Hawaii turned it into a crop. Genetic studies trace most orchard trees to one small wild population near Gympie.
Dogs eat grass, and the upset-stomach story doesn't hold up
Most dogs graze, and the settle-the-stomach story does not hold up. Dogs Trust and BBC Bitesize point to taste, low fibre and boredom, though none is proven.