Kyoto, Japan -- With their massive flapping ears and long trunks, it isn't hard to believe that elephants tend to rely on acoustic and olfactory cues for communication. They use gestures and visual displays to communicate as well, but we don't really know how much. Visual communication research has mainly focused on species that are primarily visual, like nonhuman primates.

A previous study demonstrated that African savanna elephants can recognize human visual attention based on a person's face and body orientation, but this had yet to be investigated in their Asian cousins. Asian elephants split from African elephants millions of years ago, so their behavior and cognition differ in some aspects.

Motivated to find out whether Asian elephants share this ability with African elephants, a team of researchers at Kyoto University turned their attention to elephants in Thailand.

A new analytical method is revealing how conservationists can further boost breeding programmes dedicated to saving some of the world’s most threatened species, according to new research led by the University of Sheffield and ZSL. 

Conservation zoos, and the global breeding programmes they facilitate, are vital to maintaining or restoring populations and boosting genetic diversity of threatened birds. But not every egg produced in a breeding programe hatches into a chick. 

New research by an international team of scientists - from ZSL’s Institute of Zoology, the University of Sheffield, University College London, University of Canterbury and the Department of Conservation in Aotearoa New Zealand - has shown that new diagnostic methods could help amplify the success of conservation breeding programmes, by offering a better understanding of why eggs don’t hatch. 

A groundbreaking project has been launched to help protect one of the UK’s most spectacular insects – the British Swallowtail butterfly.

The British Swallowtail’s population has significantly declined over the last 20 years and researchers from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in England are working with Jimmy’s Farm & Wildlife Park and Nature’s SAFE, a UK biobank specialising in conservation, to investigate if cryopreservation can support the long-term conservation of the species.

It is believed this is the first time that cryopreservation, where the eggs will be stored in liquid nitrogen at -196 Celsius, has been attempted with butterflies.

A new study, led by researchers at the University of Liverpool, has revealed how pathogenic bacteria construct tiny protein-based compartments, known as Eut microcompartments, which enable them to digest ethanolamine - a nutrient commonly found in the gut.  Eut microcompartments are critical for bacterial growth and virulence. Understanding their assembly offers new insight into how bacteria survive and thrive in the gut and could help identify potential targets for antimicrobial therapies.