The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is gobbling up ever more plastic
There's at least four times as much plastic floating in the Pacific as we thought, and a lot of it may have floated over from Japan after the 2011 Tohoku tsunami
Medicine for sick koalas turns out to actually kill them
Koalas are often given antibiotics to treat a lethal strain of chlamydia, but the medicines often kill the koalas by wiping out friendly bacteria in their guts
These searing hot chilli peppers are in danger thanks to snakes
The donne’ sali chilli is a major feature of the cuisine of the Mariana Islands, but thanks to an invasive snake this pepper faces an uncertain future
Leopards that live in cities are protecting people from rabies
Wild leopards wander into the Indian city of Mumbai to prey on feral dogs – and in doing so they stop the dogs biting people and passing on the rabies virus
A deadly predator could save the UK’s threatened red squirrels
Britain’s native red squirrels have been retreating for decades in the face of invasive grey squirrels, but predators called pine martens could help save them
Drones reveal huge colonies of 1.5 million penguins on islands
Two massive colonies of Adélie penguins have been discovered on the Danger Islands off the coast of Antarctica, bringing the global population to 8 million
Breeding crisis as no North Atlantic right whales born this year
The failure of the breeding season bodes ill for endangered North Atlantic right whales, which are down to a population of just 430
Mute male crickets are still trying to serenade females
Male Hawaiian crickets that have lost the ability to chirp still go through the motion of “singing”, even though females can’t hear them
People are slaughtering orangutans and wiping them out
The population of Bornean orangutans fell by almost half in just 16 years, and it was not a sad by-product of deforestation: many apes were killed deliberately
Polar bears waste lots of their energy and it could be a problem
We thought polar bears had neat tricks for conserving energy in lean periods, but it turns out they are not that thrifty, which could cause them trouble in the future