Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

Inside Science Every species of wild bird in the UK is continuing to decline at a stark rate. In the episode Wild Birds in Crisis, guest presenter Ben Garrod sees the impact for himself and finds out what is happening to tackle the problem. Catch up on BBC Sounds The Americas If you missed any episodes of this epic series, catch up with them now on iPlayer. From the frozen north to tropical beaches, mountain peaks to arid plains, this breathtaking supercontinent is a place the most unexpected creatures call home. Catch up on iPlayer Scotcast Who thinks lynx should roam the Highlands, asks this episode. After four lynx and a group of feral pigs were let loose, the Scottish news podcast speaks to rewilding campaigner Peter Cairns and the…

A NEW STUDY WARNS THAT A RARE FOREST ecosystem in South America may be under threat – from a voracious wild pig species imported from Europe. Native to the slopes of the Andes Mountains in Chile and Argentina, the monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) has sometimes been called a ‘living fossil’ because of its resemblance to fossils from the Late Triassic period, more than 200m years ago. After years of illegal logging, the tree was declared Endangered in 2013. Now wild boar, originally shipped from Germany around 1950 and released as prey for hunters, may pose a growing threat, according to the authors of a study published in PeerJ Life and Environment. Wild boar can cause major damage to delicate ecosystems because their foraging habits frequently disrupt the growth of native…

Scientists are calling for the reclassification of the Critically Endangered Sundaic (or Javan) rhino. The proposal follows research revealing differences in body structure and ecology that set it apart from the closely related Indian rhino. Researchers say that recognising the Sundaic as a separate genus, renaming it from Rhinoceros sondaicus to Eurhinoceros sondaicus, will help to tailor a suitable conservation strategy.…

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER Robb Hirsch is a photographer from California. He is the author of The Nature of Yosemite: A Visual Journey (Yosemite Conservancy, £28.99). His new book with Beth Pratt, Yosemite Wildlife, is out in October.…

AT FIRST GLANCE, SOMBRERO Island doesn’t look like a place where life thrives. The surface of this tiny, remote, windswept land mass, 54km north-west of the Caribbean island of Anguilla, has an austere, moon-like appearance, with white-grey rock, strewn rubble and gigantic craters that are an uncomfortable reminder of the phosphate mining that devastated and permanently altered its landscape. The remains of the old lighthouse and other abandoned buildings are windowless, weathered and worn, giving the impression of a ghost island. There are no trees, and vegetation is scarce, with little soil for anything to grow. Indeed, Sombrero Island – which forms the heart of the Sombrero Island Nature Reserve Marine Park – was on the verge of total ecological collapse. Look at a picture of the island now and…

Email your questions to wildlifemagazine@ourmedia.co.uk How did pigs get to Pig Island? AN UNUSUAL WELCOME AWAITS VISITORS to Big Major Cay in the Bahamas. Moor your boat off the beach (which is the only way to reach this tiny, uninhabited island) and you are likely to be greeted by dozens of excited pigs bursting from the undergrowth and hurling themselves into the water before you can reach dry land. These are not wild pigs but feral ones, and many a tale is told about how they got to Pig Island, as Big Major Cay has inevitably come to be known. One story goes that they are descended from animals stowed there by sailors of old, who never returned for them. Another is that they are the survivors of a shipwreck.…

Floating stars When I saw this common toad relaxing in water, I waited for hours for it to move to an area filled with light. I didn’t expect the galaxy of ‘bokeh’ [artistic blurring] that surrounds it. Harish Raghavan, Tiruppur, India A lucky look up I was hiking around a nature reserve when I glanced up a tree and found this Sunda flying lemur halfway up the trunk, with its back facing me. Then it turned inquisitively to look at me. Sean Nelson, Singapore Peeping beauty Renowned jumpers, short-horned grasshoppers are found around the globe, in diverse colours and sizes. Saurabh Chakraborty, Kolkata, India Eat like a king A king penguin youngster requires a constant stream of fish to eat. Unfortunately for the parents, this colony on the Falkland Islands…

1. Coelacanth This prehistoric-looking fish was thought to be long extinct, until a freshly killed fish showed up at a market in Eastern Cape, South Africa, in 1938. As a group, coelacanths first appeared in the Early Devonian period, around 409m years ago, and prospered until the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, 66m years ago. Two surviving species live in deep-water caves and hunt at night. 2. Bristle worm With more than 10,000 species known to science, this family of marine worms is incredibly diverse. The oldest confirmed species lived about 520m years ago. They are still found in all levels of Earth’s oceans, from the surface to the abyssal plain. 3. Tuatara It might look like a lizard but the tuatara belongs to an entirely different family…

OVERALL, NORTH AMERICAN BIRD populations have plummeted by 30 per cent since the 1970s, mirroring a similar trend in the UK, according to the 2025 US State of the Birds report. The trend among common and abundant birds is a particular worry to scientists, such as Amanda Rodewold at the University of Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology. “We are talking about species that should be able to live alongside us,” says Rodewald. “This should wake us up, because we know from the loss of the passenger pigeon how an abundant species can reach a tipping point.” Grassland birds have been particularly badly hit, with populations decreasing by 43 per cent in the past half century. In the American Midwest, there are an estimated 130 million ha of grassland, but these are…

The broadcaster, naturalist and tour guide shares the most breathtaking seasonal events in the world WILDLIFE SPECTACLES THAT dominate both streaming platforms and column inches inevitably tend to come from the ‘fur and feather brigades’. Given that many mammals and birds are often colourful, large, biologically well-known and with interesting behaviours, this ‘wildlife chauvinism’ can more easily be understood. However, some biological phenomena from the ‘less sexy’ taxonomic groups can be just as enthralling, with Palau’s golden jellyfish the supreme example. Consisting of more than 250 islands in the Micronesian subregion of the Pacific Ocean, Palau is the 16th-smallest country in the world. A significant proportion of its economy relies on tourism, especially diving, with its barrier reefs, coral walls, World War II wrecks and celebrated Jellyfish Lake the most…

THE CLEAR, COASTAL WATERS OF MONTEREY Bay, California, are renowned as a diver’s paradise and home to rich kelp forests teeming with life. Though biodiverse, Elkhorn Slough, an estuary at the mouth of the Bay, provides a striking contrast. The waters of Elkhorn Slough are shallow and often murky, making it a challenging place to dive. “I don’t do it for fun, I can tell you that,” says Brent Hughes, a coastal ecologist at Sonoma State University. Yet, for more than two decades, Hughes has immersed himself in this habitat, blindly counting blades of seagrass as he gropes along the estuary’s silty bottom. Like trees in a forest, seagrass is the backbone of Elkhorn Slough’s ecosystem. Its leaves form a flowing underwater meadow that provides shelter for juvenile fish and…

OFF SRI LANKA’S southern coast, where the ocean drops into an indigo trench, a blue whale dives below the surf, her gargantuan size belying the grace of her movement through the silent water. Her hymn of clicks and whistles resonates through the deep, calling to her young calf. Her kind has lived here for generations, at the pinnacle of a food chain that begins in the ocean’s depths. But her world is different from that of her ancestors. Overhead, giants of another kind carve across the sea – ships, hundreds of them, their steel hulls an invisible threat. This female had grown accustomed to the ships’ presence. But one spring morning proved to be her last. In March 2012, the lifeless body of an 18m female blue whale was found…

SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE, in nature at least, because speed often involves spending too much energy in a short amount of time. But some vital activities – such as capturing prey, defence and reproduction – do require sudden, explosive actions through ballistic movement. What is ballistics? You’ve probably heard the word on TV shows when police match bullets to a gun, but ballistics is actually the study of how any object – including a projectile launched by an animal, plant or fungus – is rapidly propelled by mechanical force. What do animals fire? Solid projectiles are typically body parts (very few species are able to launch foreign objects, such as spears thrown by humans). Though porcupines shooting quills is a myth, some animals can launch spines: Cnidaria, the…

How did your career start? Wildlife has always been my passion. My first photo project was in my mid-20s, on 11 endangered species in northern California, from tiger salamanders to sea otters, and culminated in an exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History in 2011. When it dawned on me how powerful photography can be for conservation, I decided to make it my career. Which of your images is the most important to you, and why? My shot of a wild Borneo bay cat from 2014. It’s probably the least studied wild cat in the world – we barely know anything about its ecology. My image was published all over the world and drew lots of funding. It is something I am still proud of. What is your…

EVERY YEAR OR SO BBC WILDLIFE HAS a pop at zoos and with the April issue that time has come around again. Once again the scions of the Born Free organisation are brought out to repeat much of the same stuff that they have said before. I believe that some zoos are good. Good for conservation, science, education and people, and able to provide a good life for the animals that live in them. The fly in the ointment is that there is a germ of truth in everything that Born Free says. I long for zoos where just a few species are kept really well in appropriate social groupings in bespoke environments and for sound reasons, whatever those reasons might be. The only zoo that ever got close to…

NICK BAKER “Any predator foolish enough to take a bite ends up with a mouthful of poison-slavered hairs” p36 GILLIAN BURKE “Nature was a wild, vivid and abundant protagonist in almost every adventure and misadventure” p27 MARK CARWARDINE “All sorts of wildlife is trapped, snared, shot and sometimes poisoned on grouse moors” p30 LUCY COOKE “These microscopic relatives of the flatworm haven’t had a sniff of sex for 80 million years” p29 MIKE DILGER “If you arrive in the morning, a huge wall of jellyfish should be heading straight for you” p32…

IT’S JANUARY 2022 AND A CRUISE SHIP OFF Coronation Island – halfway between South Georgia and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula – finds itself among a ‘superpod’ of about 1,000 fin whales. Beaming expedition guide Conor Ryan describes how you can smell the breath of these whales, the second-largest animals on the planet. “It smells like rotten broccoli but it’s wonderful,” he says. Incredible footage from the encounter shows exhalations from the whales’ spouts firing into the air like hundreds of vertical cannons and thousands of seabirds swooping over the maelstrom. “Other predators – humans, aboard a fleet of fishing boats – are also hoovering up the crustaceans” The whales are feeding on a vast patch of Antarctic krill, a 6cm-long, shrimp-like crustacean said to be the most abundant…

IF THE BDELLOID ROTIFER could talk, she’d tell you sex is overrated. These microscopic relatives of the flatworm haven’t had so much as a sniff of sex for some 80m years – a commitment to celibacy unmatched in the animal kingdom. All 450 species of this class of rotifer are female. No males have ever been described. Bdelloids make their home in brackish water, such as puddles (cute) and sewage treatment tanks (less so), which might not be terribly enticing on a dating profile. But these self-replicating sisters care not, for they’ve cracked the conundrum of how to survive without the genetic shuffling of sex. The standard explanation for the existence for sex is that it increases genetic diversity, which helps species stay ahead of harmful mutations and ever-evolving parasites.…

Before maritime transport was motorised, whales could easily outpace seafaring vessels, but modern ships pose a much greater risk. The first accidental whale collision was recorded in 1877 off the coast of Rhode Island, where a small whale became caught in the propeller of the Munroe, a steamship. Documented collisions remained rare until commercial shipping surged in the 1950s, introducing heavier and faster vessels. Large oil tankers and cargo ships joined the fray in the 1970s, around the time global trade began coalescing around internationally sanctioned shipping lanes, many of which overlapped with whale migration paths. It wasn’t until the 1990s that scientists began aggressively tracking ship strikes through long-term studies. More recently, predictive modelling has helped researchers estimate where collisions are likely to happen, and some ships have adjusted speeds…

THE OFFICIAL MARINE EMBLEM OF the state of South Australia is a creature that you might associate with myth, but leafy seadragons really do exist. They are less fearsome than their name would suggest – beautiful in shape and colour, they seemingly drift through the ocean. These bony fish are endemic to the coastal waters off south and east Australia and are hidden in plain sight – their camouflaging appendages give them a plant-like appearance. These unique and fascinating marine creatures suck up their food and, like seahorses, the males are responsible for childbearing. What are their physical characteristics? They may be fish but leafy seadragons don’t have scales. Instead, their rigid bodies are covered with bony plates, with long spines along the sides of their bodies that may be…

The crossword ACROSS 1 Wasp-like insect, voracious in the larval stage (6) 4 Atlantic territory, home to some 400 endemic species (2,6) 9 Invasive ___, book by Dan Eatherly (6) 10 Plant also known as fleabane (8) 11 ___ milk cap, fungus found near beech trees (6) 12 Vegetable derived from wild celery (8) 13 Garrulous, forest-dwelling corvid (3) 14 Dung beetle (6) 17 Songbird in the diverse family Timaliidae (7) 21 Very small seabird that may be crested or whiskered (6) 25 Zygote vessel? (3) 26 Another name for the common poppy (4,4) 27 Season when waxwings visit the UK (6) 28 Orchid also known as a fox brush (4-4) 29 Branching (6) 30 Dunnock, for example (8) 31 Reproductive part of a flower (6) DOWN 1 Echinoderm in…

Jaws caused a global sensation on its release 50 years ago this summer. Steven Spielberg’s jump-scare blockbuster emptied beaches and fuelled fear and hatred of sharks – with bloody consequences. Yet Jaws also inspired a generation to study these awesome apex predators. We explore the complex ecological legacy of a classic film. ON SALE 29th MAY…