Deborah Bloomfield

What do you think of when you imagine a hyena? A cackling, meat-eating character, right? Turns out, they’re not all like that. Like any family, there’s one member of the hyena clan that’s something of an oddball – the aardwolf (Proteles cristatus). The name might conjure up images of the cursed result of an experiment […]

To misquote Hamlet, there seems to be more types of planets across the heavens than have been dreamt in our astronomy before the advent of dedicated planet-hunting telescopes. In the Solar System, we have rocky worlds, dwarf planets, gas giants, and icy giants. Beyond, we find super-Earths, sub-Neptunes, hot Jupiters, and more. Now, astronomers have […]

Dogs are great judges of character, right? That’s certainly what lots of people think anyway. If dogs gravitate towards someone then that person must be safe and trustworthy, but if the pooch gets protective then perhaps that someone is untrustworthy. But whether or not this is true and how, if at all, dogs socially evaluate […]

As the search for life on Mars continues – with the Mars Sample Return program set to return samples of the planet in the early 2030s – one scientist has suggested that we may have already found life on the Red Planet, almost 50 years ago. And then, in what would not be an all-time […]

A late Cretaceous trackway in Canada contains the footprints of at least nine dinosaurs from four species. Two of the trackmakers were large tyrannosaurs, which may have sparked the motions of the other dinosaurs, or happened to be nearby a few hours earlier or later. However, while that part of the puzzle remains unsolved, the […]

For the first time in 80 years, a new generation of fully-fledged aspen trees has grown in Yellowstone’s northern range. According to a new study, the reason for the success is thanks to the wolves that were reintroduced into the national park in the 1990s.  Wolves were eradicated in Yellowstone by humans in the early […]

From CCTV and smartphones to dashcams and smart doorbells, cameras follow your every step in the 21st century. While the constant threat of ever-watching eyes may be turning us into a self-conscious surveillance society, it does make for some interesting science occasionally. Case in point: a security camera in Myanmar captured something never before seen […]

Join us as we dive into a fascinating ocean mystery: a massive, unidentified object discovered by explorers on the floor of the Baltic Sea. In one (admittedly blurry) sonar image, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the Millennium Falcon from above. Most intriguingly, the team that found it in 2011 noted it appeared to rest […]

Humanity has successfully landed probes on Mars and Venus, two of the four rocky planets of the Solar System. While a mission to Mercury, being so close to the Sun and nearly as hot as Venus, is a tricky goal for future operations, if it has a rocky surface, human scientists will find a way […]

We’re often told we need to walk “X number” of steps every day in order to stay healthy, although most of these claims are made by people who talk the talk but can’t walk the walk. With little or no scientific evidence to back up these daily benchmarks, it has until now remained unclear exactly […]

In what is being hailed as a “groundbreaking achievement” for Uruguay and South America, a weight loss drug has successfully completed its Phase I human trials. The drug is the first to have been completely developed in the country, and operates by burning calories by generating creatine-based heat without impacting patients’ appetites. The drug is […]

For five months, a toxic algal bloom off South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula has been killing marine life and making swimming and surfing unsafe. Instead of easing with the coming of winter as was expected, the affected area has expanded, including to the Gulf of St Vincent on which Adelaide sits. Damage has worsened, and volunteers […]

To be clear, we’re not making a crack about math problems “sending you to sleep” or anything. It’s actually much cooler than that: a new study from researchers at the University of Surrey has found that the so-called “two-process model” of sleep – the usual framework through which we understand the phenomenon – can be […]

On September 20, 1977, citizens of northern Europe and Soviet Russia were greeted with an unusual sight in the night sky. Early that morning witnesses in Petrozavodsk, but also as far away as Copenhagen and Helsinki, saw a large glowing light which “hovered over the city in the form of a jellyfish sending down a […]

Is there anyone out there? Anyone who’s ever peered into the deepest parts of the night sky has likely asked themselves this question at least once in their life. And, if they’ve ever considered the sheer size of the universe, then they may have even answered in the affirmative; there must be other life out […]

In what must have been like looking for a needle in a stack of small, wiggly needles, scientists have rediscovered a “lost species” of snake that’s so small, it makes a coin look massive. The Barbados threadsnake (Tetracheilostoma carlae), the smallest snake in the world, was rediscovered under a rock in central Barbados during an […]

The terror bird. It’s a name that strikes fear, and with good reason. These “super predators” from the Phorusrhacidae were a family of massive carnivorous birds that were among the largest predators of their time. A rare fossil has now revealed a surprising weakness, however, as it suggests that 15 million years ago, one died […]

Anyone using social media at the moment will likely be aware of the increasingly heated debates surrounding migration, identity, and national cohesion. It feels like everywhere you look, people are getting more divided over the question of how white and Christian America should be. But what if this division is really just an illusion? According […]

Male Hawaiian field crickets typically sing to attract a mate. However, some of these males have evolved a genetic mutation, which means they fall silent, unable to chirp, known as flatwing. While this might seem sad, this genetic mutation actually protects them from a parasitoid fly, their deadly enemy that can find a cricket by […]

Moving around on the Earth, as humans so enjoy, is something we all have an instinctive understanding of. In order to move forward, you push against something else. Your feet push against the floor as you walk, your body against the water as you swim, and your rotating car wheels push back against the surface […]