Ann Jones

They walk up walls and across ceilings, seemingly defying the rules of gravity. What is it about geckos that makes them so sticky?

How many insects live in Australia? And even more importantly, how many have already been lost? Scientists are turning to technology to try to find out.

A group of scientists is looking for funnel-webs spiders on Queensland's Fraser Island in the hope of recovering a chemical treasure from their venom.

From snake bites to hijacked animal traps, here are some of the horrific and hilarious stories from scientists working with animals in the field.

Bubble-filled volcanic rock becomes a life raft for tiny marine organisms, transporting them from one side of the ocean to the other. This can help transport diversity, but can also bring unwanted invaders.

In the middle of the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia, scientists and Indigenous rangers are working side by side to take care of the land. But even in such a remote place climate change's effects are being felt on bush medicine and native animals.

On a dot of land halfway between South America and South Africa, scientists are racing to save some of the world's biggest seabirds from a tiny but persistent predator.

When a crowd of cockatoos spreads the contents of your bin all over the street, you might be tempted to brand them #jerkbirds. But this behaviour shows they can learn and teach their friends new tricks too.

From mimicking chainsaws to shooting lasers, myths and misunderstanding surround the incredible lyrebird.

Dr Barbara Anne York Main OAM, who died last week, was one of Australia's leading spider researchers and conservationists. She studied the world's oldest spider and championed their home at a time when both the environment and women were given no fighting chance.

Can you spot a footprint? A poo? A burrow? In the middle of Western Australia, scientists and Indigenous rangers are searching for a trace of a bilby. They're like a search-and-rescue line, but for the environment.

A population of eastern quolls in Mulligans Flat Sanctuary near Canberra has reared enough teenagers that they are being caught and transferred to a breeding program at Mt Rothwell in Victoria.

When John Young claimed in 2013 to have found an elusive bird that had not been seen in more than a century, he became a hero among bird watchers, but his latest fieldwork has been found to be unreliable.

The search for the night parrot is as old as the Dreaming and punctuated by larrikins, obsessives and bush-telegraph legends. Can a partnership between scientists and traditional custodians finally flush this creature from the spinifex?

To save one of the rarest butterflies in the world, we also need to save an unnamed ant species, an endangered woodland and a parasitic plant.

This is a story about the dawn of Great Barrier Reef conservation, and how a few important players raised hell and had the ear of a prime minister.

Conservation relies on data, not dreams, of koalas — but these Australian icons are notoriously hard to spot.

At any given moment in the hanging swamps of the Blue Mountains, there are hundreds of thousands insects being eaten alive by carnivorous plants.

He was a real life Crocodile Dundee before Crocodile Dundee was a twinkle in a film producer's eye. Take a look back over the life of renaissance bushman Jack Absalom.

When spiders are disturbed by the rumble of an idling diesel 4WD, they become agitated beyond sense and abandon their normal self-preservation instinct to run towards danger. An Australian arachnologist is using the phenomenon to unearth large amounts of hard-to-find spiders at one time.

Humans are now driving environmental change so quickly that we are witnessing what is called "rapid evolution" and water dragons found in city parklands — island-like, human-made ecosystems — are starting to move away from being water dragons, and evolving into something else.

Humans are now driving environmental change so quickly that we are witnessing what is called "rapid evolution" and water dragons found in city parklands — island-like, human-made ecosystems — are starting to move away from being water dragons, and evolving into something else.

Professor Darryl Jones is an urban ecology expert and a bird feeder — an unusual combination in Australia where the practice is widely frowned upon. Here are his golden rules for maintaining a healthy feeding arrangement.

Strange as it may sound, big cat poo sitting in the high-altitude dust of the Himalayas could be the key to better snow leopard conservation.

Lurking within the Kosciuszko National Park is a weed that could do serious damage to this stunning environment. Luckily, spaniels Sally and Connor are on the case.