Nature is metal. Carrying the decaying skull of your vanquished enemy as a hat. From a Wildlife photographer of the year contest. www.popsci.com/environment/...

I’ve always thought it would be really cool to compare individuals in a long-term nestbox study with those beyond human interaction, to look for a ‘domestication’ effect. Would you see these differences? Sequence differences?

The oldest known image of an owl: More than 30,000 years ago, someone skillfully scratched the figure of a long-eared owl (Asio otus) into the soft outer layer of the walls of Chauvet Cave, France. The owl is looking backward over their wings, head turned 180 degrees carnegiemnh.org/ancient-owl-...

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) averaged about 429 ppm in January 2026 10 years ago January averaged about 403 ppm Data available at gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

Imagine wearing a #jellyfish as a helmet!?! Well, that’s exactly what this juvenile jack is doing! Mostly immune to its sting, the jack has taken the jellyfish prisoner. Shot using #scuba, out over the deep abyss, drifting at night. #blackwater #blackwaterdiving #scubadiving #gug

Utterly stunning. Every. Single. One.

Only 10 cases of Guinea worm disease were recorded *globally* last year. It may become the second human disease we eradicate, after smallpox.

reading about organisms that aren’t your specialty is like margins of the quorbus eplungulate, ploobular processes bent posteriorly towards the foobulum define term “eplungulate” - lacking plungae. synonym: thubulous

5️⃣ Watson & Crick 1953 paper was not peer reviewed. It was not until 1973, when David Davies was hired as Nature's editor, that peer review became a requirement for every paper printed there. royalsocietypublishing.org/rsnr/article...

A Black-capped Chickadee showcasing winter fashion by donning a snowflake accessory.

A 400 year old Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa) in Fredville Park, the Kingdom of Kent A standard 6’ 6’’ Oliver as a size guide

When I think about measles I think about the number 1,000. Thats the number that epidemiologists use to explain harm from measles in children. With 1,000 cases, about 200 children will require hospitalization, 50 will develop pneumonia, and one to three will die. South Carolina is at 789.

Wow, this is spectacular! Evolution of beak size in an urban population of juncos in response to the loss of supplementary food (bird feeders) during the COVID pandemic, and subsequent regression. Is the UCLA campus the new Daphne Major? pnas.org/doi/full/10....

A reward structure that favours productivity over quality will always incentivise the use of tools that make it easier to generate papers. Who cares if anyone actually reads them?

27 January 1824: Oxford geologist William Buckland, en route to Lyme Regis and Plymouth, calls on William Conybeare in Bristol to bring news that 'the Annings have discovered an Entire Plesiosaurus', the specimen found by #MaryAnning on 10 December 1823. For more, see doi.org/10.17704/194...

For no particular reason, here's a photo of some pebbles and a coarse-grained, small sand dune on Mars, photographed earlier today.

Of all the animals, it is a king penguin.

On the subject of penguins and madness, did you know that 9 King Penguins were released in 1936 in Arctic Norway by the Norwegian Nature Protection Society? At least a couple possibly survived until 1944. So for a brief period Polar Bears and penguins could in theory have met. #biologicalinvasions

Bit of mammal action locally this morn. This Stoat killing an unusual black rabbit on the beach, a tideline casualty Porpoise, and a Weasel carrying a mouse made up for lack of birds. #Lowcarbonbirding #Northumberland #LocalPatch #Mammals #Springwatch

Some of Saturn’s moons sculpt its rings with gravity. Here’s Prometheus (right) dragging ripples through the F ring as it passes. Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute #astronomy

Move over Tolkien, make some space Pullman. There’s a new top trilogy in town.

It gives me a surprisingly warm feeling to see an exhibition SUV crippled by a pothole.

It’s quite amazing, in an age when citizens can feel so powerless, how vulnerable even the largest corporations remain to organised protest.

The world’s most beautiful plumage.

Was feeling a bit low but a prince popped past my office.

I just thought everyone should see this

The geneticist Steve Jones argued that the bicycle was responsible for the greatest mixing of human genomes in the UK.

In *relative* terms. I’m not saying this necessarily hides anything, but if power consumption is increasing then the picture isn’t so rosy.

To the person who left a bowl of fudge in the staff coffee room: may all your revisions be minor.

Chatting calmly to the camera as the world's largest terrestrial predator tries to prize open your Tupperware shelter. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1g...

Utterly wild, a live-tweeted version of the film Speed.

Fun to have an impromptu Swedish evening at home in Devon.

Popped out to the car to fetch some boxes and came back with an aurora experience!

Missed this: ecology documentary, but with the backing of a thunderous orchestra: www.theserengetirules.com. Film is free to watch on Amazon, based on the book by Sean Carroll.

What will it take for this insanity to end? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The birthplace of evolutionary ecology makes an inspiring place to start a research career in avian ecology.

#OTD in 1832, #CharlesDarwin tried his first banana! He didn't like it very much. As a side note, the HMS Beagle made its first stop on its 5 year survey voyage, making port at the islands of Cape Verde. But it's really all about the fruit adventure.

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian Kernighan (From the MARK website)

Spiralling global temperatures (1850-2025) The last 3 years really jump out, rather like 2015-6 did when we first produced this graphic back then. Now, 2015-6 looks rather cool... More on the spiral: doi.org/10.1175/BAMS...

This is absolutely staggering: the rate of sea level rise has DOUBLED in the last 30 years. It's now ~5cm per decade. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Raven? My son suggested snowy owl. But he also insisted bike tracks were a “snow snake” so I want a second opinion.

1. Heartbreaking news: the largest big tusker elephant in Kenya has died. I feel so fortunate that I got to see Craig in the wild. He was 54 years old and, thankfully, died of natural causes. It’s safe to assume that Kenyan authorities have already removed his tusks to keep them from poachers.

A great example of sustainable science. Using images generated once to represent two entirely different experiments. Check out my thread on Jabbar et al. 2023 (10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e19418) in 'Heliyon' on PubPeer for more issues in this paper: pubpeer.com/publications...

The rate of global mean sea level rise has increased from ~2.1 mm/year in 1993 to ~4.5 mm/year in 2023. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Happy New Year and happy 25th anniversary to the Jurassic Coast WHS! This #FossilFriday we're introducing a fossil of the month to celebrate the collectors who make this place what it is. We're kicking it off with this beautiful ammonite from local collector Lizzie Hingley. (1/2)

Happy "worst week to get a paper published in Nature" to those who celebrate.

I adore daffodils, and the passing of Xmas heralds the arrival of the earliest-blooming cultivars in the shops. Perhaps including some from the Scillies, for which they remain a (the?) primary productive industry

The world as 100 people over the last two centuries