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There’s no place like home

All around you, animals are building, burrowing or stealing dwellings for themselves and their families....

Open wide…

Teeth are extreme: they evolved at roughly the same time as bones, and they’re the...

The big swap

Why stick with being male or female your whole life when you could have a...

Hostile takeover

Need a mobile home? An incubation chamber? Dinner? Hundreds of species have hit on an...

Secretes of success

All around us, creatures are quietly getting on with secreting—oozing not just milk and tears,...

Tails, you win

The enviable upsides of having something sticking out of your backside....

The selfless gene

If it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and if nature is red in tooth and claw, why...

Forget me not

If our memories make us who we are, what’s it like to have a different...

Flight plan

How the animal kingdom first grew feathers—and got off the ground....

Pick a side

Bees and cockatoos, walruses, spider monkeys, pūkeko—throughout the animal kingdom, individuals often favour a certain...

Rainbow world

Nature is queer in tooth and claw....

Glow it up

Plants can do it. Fish can do it. Worms can do it. Even single-celled plankton...

To get a date, cockatoos try drumming

Hitting things with sticks: a failsafe technique for attracting the ladies. Right?...

So you think you can dance

For a long time, scientists thought that moving to the beat was an act unique...

Looking to start a family? Bust a move

Some animals get only one chance to find a mate—and there’s a lot riding on...

May the most turquoise grasshopper win

But what has their colour-changing ability got to do with their tendency towards violence?...

The mystery of the colourblind cephalopods

It doesn’t make sense that octopuses can camouflage themselves so well—because they can’t see any...

How animals choose what to wear

Sometimes you need to dress to impress a potential mate—or rival. Mostly, you need to...

There and back again

How do animals know where they’re going? Humans have been puzzling over the mysteries of...

Weaponised

Evolution is an arms race writ large—nature red in tooth and claw. With each generation,...

Magazine

Issue 198

Mar - Apr 2026

Black-Backed Gulls
Meth & HIV in Fiji
Dung beetles
Centro
Rogaining

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Issue 198 Mar - Apr 2026

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Gull spotting

Pushing it uphill

For the mapheads

Food music

Omnibird

Bogans of the sky

The elephant has left the room

Two days in the forest of nightmares

When black-backs attack

All that you can see is blue

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