A reed warbler feeds a cuckoo fledgling

The reed warbler and the cuckoo: an escalating game of trickery and defence

22 February 2016

Professor Nick Davies, who gives this week’s Darwin Lecture, has been studying reed warblers for more than 30 years – and has unlocked many of the secrets of their interactions with the cuckoo. His work shines light on the evolutionary games played out in nature as species compete with environmental pressures, with other species, and with the opposite sex, to pass on their genes.

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Photo of a white wolf of Canada, taken Gevaudan wolf park in Lozère

Wolf species have ‘howling dialects’

08 February 2016

The largest quantitative study of howling, and first to use machine learning, defines different howl types and finds that wolves use these types more or less depending on their species – resembling a howling dialect. Researchers say findings could help conservation efforts and shed light on the earliest evolution of our own use of language.

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Gecko and ant

Why Spider-Man can’t exist: Geckos are ‘size limit’ for sticking to walls

18 January 2016

Latest research reveals why geckos are the largest animals able to scale smooth vertical walls – even larger climbers would require unmanageably large sticky footpads. Scientists estimate that a human would need adhesive pads covering 40% of their body surface in order to walk up a wall like Spider-Man, and believe their insights have implications for the feasibility of large-scale, gecko-like adhesives.

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