One Giant Leap for Tortoise-Kind
The first of Earth’s creatures to hurtle into the Moon’s orbit were slow and sedentary residents of the Great Steppe.
Natural History
The End of Turtle Soup
How food fashion changed the economy of the Cayman Islands.
Benjamin Banneker’s Broods of Cicadas
Captivated by swarming cicadas, the young son of a freed slave was inspired to become one of the greatest minds of the American Enlightenment.
Placing the Platypus
Defying categorisation since its discovery, was the platypus a mammal, a reptile, or something else?
Catullus and Lesbia’s Sparrow
Roman poet Catullus transformed an unremarkable bird – the sparrow – into a contested symbol of eroticism.
A Feather in her Cap
A global trade in feathers, with London at its heart, saw hundreds of millions of birds killed every year. Emily Williamson waged a long and furious campaign against it.
Pigeon Racing: A Miner’s World?
Men who spent their working lives underground found a new world of freedom in racing birds.
Writ in Water
A kaleidoscopic tour of the Volga and the history of the people who have resided by it.
Tutankhamun’s Ostriches
Ungainly but fleet of foot, the flightless bird offers insights into the life of a legendary pharaoh.
How did the Elephant get its Trunk?
It took millennia to find out.