Friday, 23 October 2026
International edition · English
Ecosystems, rivers, forests, parks and places where nature is still in charge. Rigorous science writing to understand (and protect) the planet.
10 articles · RSS
Wildlife Feature
Freezing and coming back to life, living without haemoglobin in sub-zero water or surviving the vacuum of space. Eight animals that push the limits of what we think is possible, explained with what science really knows.
Plants Feature
Some forests look like film sets: trunks a hundred metres tall, bamboo corridors, carpets of blue flowers or pines that grow bent without anyone quite knowing why. Ten places to see at least once.
Where a human struggles to breathe, some animals live, hunt and breed. A mouse on the summit of an Andean volcano, a spider above 6,000 metres and a goose that can fly over the Himalaya.
Some rise on a glacier in Tibet, others at a lost spring in the Andes whose title two mountains dispute. Ten rivers that are still wild, told from their source.
With a wingspan of almost three metres and a diet made up mostly of bones, the bearded vulture is one of the most astonishing birds on the planet. After disappearing from much of Europe, it is soaring over its mountains again.
There are still corners of the planet where human presence is minimal and natural processes set the pace: active volcanoes, deltas in the middle of the desert, immense ice fields and rainforests still to be explored.
It lives in twelve countries, roams huge territories above 3,000 metres and is so elusive that many researchers study it for years without seeing it. This is how the snow leopard survives.
It lives only in the canals of Xochimilco, in Mexico City, never loses its juvenile look and can regrow legs, tail and even parts of organs. While it thrives in labs and aquariums, in the wild it is on the brink of extinction.
There are only a few dozen of them, they live between the Strait of Gibraltar and the Bay of Biscay and since 2020 they have been interacting with the rudders of sailing boats. We review what is known —and what is not— about this unique population.
Its velvety look is not decorative: it is armour against the radiation, cold and dryness of the high mountains. The natural and cultural history of the most famous flower in the Alps.
Also in Wildlife, Plants.
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