If you were wading ashore in Australia in 1788 and walked into the forest, what would this forest have looked like? Would it have been an easy stroll because the forest was open and park-like with widely spaced trees and grassy ground cover? Or would the forest have been characterised by closely spaced tall trees and a dense, wet understorey of tree ferns and other mesic plants? There has been much debate about the state of tall wet forests when the British first arrived in Australia. This matters for several reasons. First, the condition of forests 236 years ago is linked to how they were man ..read more

Research that was started during COVID lockdowns by a crack team of fossil experts, led by world-renowned Australian biologist, Professor Tim Flannery, has revealed yet another internationally significant discovery, with the identification of an animal that looks like a cross between a platypus and an echidna – possibly an ancestor of both. The work was published this week in the journal Alcheringa. The ‘echidnapus’ (Opalios splendens) was possibly an ancestor of both the platypus and echidna. Illustration credit: Peter Shouten The weird new species, dubbed the “echidnapus” (Opalios splendens ..read more

Scientists from Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (RBGV) have joined forces with handlers from Zoos Victoria’s Wildlife Detection Dog Squad to sniff out one of the world’s rarest fungus species. Daisy, a seven-year-old Italian water-dog from Zoos Victoria’s Wildlife Detection Dog Squad, was put to the test in a recent study comparing her ability to locate critically endangered tea-tree fingers (TTF) to that of highly skilled human surveyors. The study, published in iScience in April 2024, revealed Daisy outperformed humans by detecting more TTF specimens in a shorter amount of time, while produci ..read more

There were no Australian painted-snipes the morning I searched the drainage ditches near Brisbane Airport in November 2023. Although one had been photographed there days earlier, the wily wader eluded me. I’m not the only one who hasn’t seen this endangered shorebird; according to BirdLife Australia, the painted-snipe is one of the 10 most difficult-to-find bird species in Australia. That not only means it’s difficult for birdwatchers to find but, more importantly, it’s also a challenge for researchers.  For most of the 20th century – up until the 1990s, when DNA testing confirmed the Aus ..read more

Amid the devastation of the 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires, a story started doing the social media rounds claiming wombats were selflessly ushering fellow native wildlife into the safety of their burrows. Surrounded by catastrophic loss, it’s no surprise people shared the ‘good news story’ far and wide. Even Greenpeace New Zealand shared a (now-deleted) post at the time, stating: “Reports from Australia say that countless small animals have escaped death because wombats, unusually, opted to share their massive complex burrows.” Some reports stated that the animals have even been observed ..read more

Honey runs through Cedar Anderson’s veins. A third-generation beekeeper, the 44-year-old is at the forefront of a global movement championing bees and protecting their habitats in the face of a worldwide biodiversity crisis. In 2015, together with his father, Stuart, Cedar developed the Flow Hive, an innovative Aussie invention providing a non-invasive honey harvesting system that is gentle on bees and easy on beekeepers. Their company, Flow, has grown into a multimillion-dollar business with some 110,000 Flow Hives in use in more than 130 countries. Now it’s giving back. As well as promoting ..read more

A group of students, rugged up in beanies and puffer jackets and carrying clipboards, scurries into the Engineering Building at the Australian National University (ANU), in Canberra. Deep in the bowels of the drab building is a mechanical workshop, its walls plastered with mission statements, mathematical equations and shelves of tools. Taking centre stage on the floor is what appears to be the fibreglass shell of a spaceship. Or is it a catamaran?  Turns out, it’s neither. It’s the chassis of Solar Spirit, a solar-powered car being constructed by the ANU Solar Racing team. It’s a frigid ..read more

Every year thousands of whales and dolphins – some dead, some ill or injured, some perfectly healthy – are found on beaches worldwide. This phenomenon – called stranding or beaching – isn’t new. It’s been happening for thousands of years, at least. Even Aristotle wrote about it back in the 4th century BCE. “It is not known why they sometimes run aground on the seashore: for it is asserted that this happens rather frequently when the fancy takes them, and without any apparent reason,” he wrote in Historia Animalium. A stranding occurs when one or more cetacean species (whale, dolphin or porpois ..read more

Agriculture and energy have been essential to humanity for at least 10,000 years. Recently we’ve begun “farming” them together. However, the protestors at the “Rally Against Reckless Renewables” (held outside Federal Parliament House in February 2024) claimed that we couldn’t have both renewables and agriculture. They may have based their concerns on a media release from the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) claiming that about one-third of Australia’s “prime agricultural land” would have to be “taken over” to accommodate these renewables. Actually, the real figure is closer to 0.027 per cent ..read more

In winter 2021, Australia’s frogs started dropping dead. People began posting images of dead frogs on social media. Unable to travel to investigate the deaths ourselves because of COVID lockdowns, we asked the public to report to us any sick or dead frogs. Within 24 hours we received 160 reports of sick and dying frogs, sometimes in their dozens, from across the country. That winter, we received more than 1,600 reports of more than 40 frog species. We needed help to investigate these deaths. We asked people across New South Wales to collect any dead frogs and store them frozen until travel res ..read more