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A laboratory accident at a Canadian university led to a discovery about one of North America's most familiar pollinators. Queens of the common eastern bumblebee, an insect with no known aquatic adaptations, can survive complete submersion in water for up to seven days.

Scientists in Australia have explained how the world's largest living reptile may reach islands separated from its home rivers by hundreds of kilometres of open water, despite having limited capacity for sustained swimming. A crocodile weighing around ten kilograms, roughly the size of a young animal rather than a fully grown adult, may survive for up to four months adrift in full-strength seawater without eating.

In 1990, a small bird became an unlikely symbol of one of America's fiercest environmental battles. The northern spotted owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the future of vast stretches of old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest at the centre of a bitter fight between environmentalists and the logging industry.

Diamond is celebrated as one of the hardest materials known, but new research shows that even its famously rigid structure can be dramatically altered by an impact travelling at hypersonic speed. Scientists have found that diamond particles embedded in a specially engineered ceramic composite can undergo a near-complete transformation into graphite during a collision lasting only microseconds.

An international research team has identified a remarkable insect fossil from western Texas that could represent a crucial missing link in the story of insect evolution. The fossil, from the Late Mississippian period approximately 324 million years ago, belongs to a stem group of insects and may help scientists understand how these early insects transitioned from aquatic to terrestrial environments.

For years, conservationists have judged our impact on wildlife mostly by what we build: roads, farms, housing estates, fences. A sweeping new tracking study suggests that measure misses something important.

For years, the Dead Sea presented scientists with a genuine puzzle. Its upper waters, warmed by relentless sun and thickened by evaporation, seemed to shed salt each summer rather than accumulate it, while the lakebed far below kept gaining a fresh crust of crystals regardless of season.

Expired dairy products can become a disposal problem, but researchers have tested a different use for them. In a greenhouse experiment, scientists extracted protein-rich material from expired milk, yogurt and cheese, dried it into a powder and mixed it into sandy soil used to grow wheat.

Red dye moving through Missouri's Big Piney River has helped scientists visualise how genetic traces left by animals travel through flowing water. According to the U.S.

Between 2015 and 2017, researchers dropped four brightly coloured, food-grade dyes into five sinkholes scattered across the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and then waited to see where the water carrying them would resurface. Although researchers selected sinkholes known to funnel water underground, they did not know which springs the dyes would reach or how quickly they would travel.