What gives sharks their extraordinary speed, agility and endurance? It’s not just their muscles or powerful tails – it’s the hidden architecture inside their spines. Using high-resolution micro-CT imaging, researchers found that great white, shortfin mako and porbeagle sharks have rigid, mineral-rich spines built for speed, while sand tiger sharks evolved more flexible vertebrae for maneuverability. Common thresher sharks have reinforced spinal structures for powerful tail strikes, and basking sharks possess lightly mineralized spines adapted for slow, energy-efficient cruising.

World Cultural Council announces its 2026 Science laureate as it prepares to hold its November Award Ceremony at the Universidad de Córdoba, Argentina

Mixed teams of scientists and members of the general public have discovered two new snail species in northwestern Montenegro, with the findings published in the open-access, peer-reviewed Biodiversity Data Journal. The discovery underscores the region's importance for hidden biodiversity. It also adds weight to local conservationists' calls for the Komarnica Canyon to be included in the Durmitor World Heritage Site, and for plans for a hydropower reservoir there to be scrapped.

Our ability to see color comes from changes in proteins around the same retinal molecule in cone cells, which alter how it absorbs light. Unravelling the molecular mechanism of spectral tuning, Nagoya Institute of Technology researchers studied macaque cone pigments, which closely resemble human ones, and found that just three amino acid changes explain nearly all of the difference between red and green light detection. The findings show how small structural changes shape color vision.

Insect wings are fantastically sensitive, feeling the wind, touch and even tasting. Now researchers from Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany, reveal in Journal of Experimental Biology that tobacco hawkmoth wings also have a sense of smell to help them sniff out the plants that they lay their eggs on.

Identifying bird songs using artificial intelligence has now become standard practice in nature conservation. However, in remote regions, practical application has often been hampered by the lack of a mobile network. The new BirdNET Live app is changing that: its AI models recognise more species than other apps and run entirely locally on the smartphone – without any internet connection at all. This enables researchers, rangers and citizen scientists to carry out structured acoustic surveys even in the most remote corners of the globe.

Researchers at IBEC have discovered that epithelial tissues adapt to prolonged stretching by slowly reorganising their keratin cytoskeleton into large multicellular networks. Using advanced live imaging, engineered tissue models and computational simulations, the team found that this process eventually pushes the cell nucleus out of its surrounding keratin cage. The findings reveal a previously unknown mechanism by which tissues respond to sustained mechanical stress, with potential implications for development, organ physiology and diseases linked to defective keratin organisation.