off-beat

One reason why insects have been neglected in conservation is that they are often ignored, if not feared, by many people.

A cup falling to the floor, a car speeding past on the street or a series of lightning strikes – for us humans, an event on the scale of a second is typically a blur, something we can just about register but not in much detail. But animals all process a different amount of visual information in a second.

Inspired by bats, a new ultra-low-power sensing system enables tiny drones to navigate through darkness, smoke and dust, where cameras and other light-based sensors fail.

Muholi uses the non-binary pronouns they/them/their and prefers the term “visual activist” over “artist” or “photographer”. This makes it clear that their work is explicitly political and is intended to bring about change through transforming how Black LGBTIQ+ people are portrayed and perceived. Their photographs are a powerful meditation on Blackness and being. They summon a new and resistant form of visual language to expose and contest racist violence.

Rich in mood and texture, “Tunnel Number 33” unfolds in a landscape of dusk, sleet, and shifting shadows, where the past quietly presses against the present.

This voluminous coffee-table book presents a glowing narrative of Lahore’s last royals and features over 550 images together with numerous original artefacts from the author’s collection.

Cacti are icons of slow growth. A towering saguaro may take a decade to reach an inch tall and the psychedelic peyote takes decades to mature. Yet the cactus family is one of the fastest-evolving plant groups on Earth. Over the past 20 to 35 million years, around 1,850 cacti species have come into existence. Although this sounds slow, in geological time it is the blink of an eye.

By combining GPS data with waterbird counts, and analyses of regurgitated pellets, scientists have estimated that an average of 400kg of plastics, plus more than two tonnes of other debris such as glass, textiles or ceramics, are deposited by this gull species into the lake each year.

Feral and free-roaming pets increasingly threaten wildlife conservation. There is a legislative gap to address the impacts of pets on wildlife. Harmonised EU legislation is needed to align animal welfare and conservation aims.

Traditional circumcisions can carry fatal risks, including poorly trained practitioners and cutting tools that are unsanitary or used more than once. Dehydration and badly managed septic wounds are among the main causes of death, and the remote settings mean help is usually far away.

Recent research explores a very different possibility: using sunlight and an iron-based catalyst to convert common plastic waste directly into acetic acid—the key component of vinegar and an important industrial chemical.

In early 20th century American life, women might not have been able to vote or to serve on juries in most states, but in the ring, they commanded the audience’s attention riding bareback on horses, displaying strength and stamina, and performing gravity-defying acrobatic feats. Stark was acutely aware of the path she was paving. “I deliberately chose a field in which no other woman had specialised,” she wrote in her autobiography.