Showing posts with label Animals. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

‘Every time I look at one, I smile!’: how axolotls took over the world

Our passion for these cute-looking salamanders means they are everywhere – except in the wild, where the species is under increasing threat

Julio Cortázar / Axolotl

Paula Cocozza
Wednesday 21 January 2026

xolotls are the new llamas. Which were, of course, the new unicorns. Which triggered a moment for narwhals. If you are an unusual-looking animal, this is your time. Even humans who have never seen an axolotl – a type of salamander – in the smooth and slimy flesh will have met a cartoon or cuddly one. Mexican axolotls have the kind of look that is made for commercial reproduction. The most popular domestic species is pink. Some glow in the dark – and their smile is bigger than Walter’s in the Muppets.

THE NATURE OF

A piranha: it is boiling the water you’re swimming in and taking bites out of you

This article is more than 5 months old

They don’t chew: they bite, the meat goes straight into their stomach, and they bite again

Helen Sullivan

Imagine a bulldog flattened with a meat tenderiser, shaved and sprinkled with glitter. Imagine more, and everywhere, or else: when I was a child, as sure as all cartoon sand would turn into quicksand, in every fictional body of fresh water swam very real fish with very real, sharp, tiny little teeth.

In The Simpsons, Millhouse is more worried about piranhas than that his mother will stop loving him. Bart is reduced to a skeleton by piranhas from a hosepipe.

WE’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT ANIMAL SEXUALITY ALL WRONG

A new documentary, Second Nature: Gender & Sexuality in the Animal World, explores our misconceptions of the animal kingdom

Raquel Brodsky

24 June 2024

I want to take you back to the year 2008, when New York City’s Museum of Sex Launche an exhibit on the sex lives of Animals.The exhibit ran for a full decade, and I have the chancrto check it out about a year or so before it closed in 2018. “The Sex Lives of Animals” exhibit is, in fact, where I learned that ducks possess massive, corkscrew-like penises. But duck genitalia aside, the Museum of Sex’s intention, nearly 20 years ago, was to reveal the “astonishing array” of sexual behaviors animals routinely engage in, from kissing to hugging to, well, everything else. And definitely not always male-on-female.

When fashion meets the year of the horse

Horse, Isen’in Hoin Eishin (Japanese, 1775–1828), in the style of Ren Renfa (Chinese, 1255–1328), 1816–1828 (Edo period), ink and colors on silk, Japan and Korea. Credit line: Acquired by William T. or Henry Walters

When fashion meets the year of the horse

Using style as a grounding and intentional practice for 2026

Virginie Tolly

22 January 2026

What does Chinese New Year have to do with style or fashion, apart from selling endless tons of decorative merchandising products in retail? What if there were a more meaningful correlation between the two? What if the way you dress in 2026 could influence how you move through your year, your decisions, your presence, your being, and even your state of mind?

Carol Carter | Watercolor on paper

Carol Carter (American, born 1955)

Watercolor on paper

Carol Carter is an internationally recognized artist whose career has spanned more than 35 years.

Axolotls in crisis: the fight to save the 'water monster' of Mexico City

This article is more than 7 years old

The city’s floating gardens are a prime party spot – but pollution has driven the axolotl population to the verge of extinction. Can a radical plan save them?

Alan Grabinsky in Mexico City

Tue 4 Dec 2018

Like many residents of Mexico City, my experience of the floating gardens of Xochimilco has mostly been tinged with alcohol. After all, every weekend, this Unesco world heritage site turns into a bacchanal, with groups aboard the canals’ iconic boats celebrating everything from high school graduations to engagements and weddings.

Animals by Alfredo Cáceres

Animals

by Alfredo Cáceres

Alfredo Cáceres is an author and illustrator from Santiago, Chile. He has worked in picture books, magazines, newspapers and video games. His latest project is a graphic novel that's based on the city of Valdivia, Chile where he grew up between rain and moss.

Franco Matticchio

ANIMALS

His drawings are witty, elegant and full of fantasy; sometimes dark, often enigmatic, always very personal. Animals are consistent inhabitants of Matticchio's unpredictable and humorous universe. Notably, an eyepatch-wearing cat called Jones is the protagonist of a series of surreal comics stories collected in the volume Sensa Senso, while a lonely bull terrier features in the animated title sequence for Roberto Benigni's movie "Il Mostro".

Nataliya Bagatskaya / Women and cats

Nataliya Bagatskaya
WOMEN AND CATS

Avian flu halves South Georgia’s breeding elephant seals

ENDANGERED SPECIES

Avian flu halves South Georgia’s breeding elephant seals

New research has documented the first major impact of the avian influenza HPAI on the world' largest southern elephant seal population - a colony that represents more than half all breeding-age individuals globally.

Greenland sharks aren't born or grow up near Greenland

Despite being most associated with cold Arctic waters, the Greenland shark - the world’s longest-living vertebrate - aren't born in Greenland or anywhere else in the Arctic, while the species’ nursery is most likely Skagerrak.