Boiling water and the stench of sulphur hardly seem a combination conducive to life, yet some bacteria thrive in such hostile environments. Biologists are beginning to think that the first life forms ...

Carrying a red hold-all, 22-year-old Neil Roberts strode through the darkness towards the doors of Wairere House in Wanganui—home of the ‘Wanganui Computer’. It was some 25 minutes past midnight on ...

First introduced in the 1870s for hedges, African boxthorn soon went rogue. It thrives in coastal areas, as it can handle dry, salty, sandy, windy, hot and cold conditions. Up to six metres tall, it ...

A cave beneath Mt Albert, was found to have become a dumping ground for rubbish. One hundred kilometres below Auckland, a vast reservoir of magma seethes, still testing the crust that keeps it captive ...

Lampreys have done without bones—even jaws—for 360 million years, making do instead with a mouthful of rasps designed for shredding. But those teeth are no match for a new and invisible enemy. Are ...

Listers Tickers or twitchers” ornithologist­speak for those who have master lists of all the bird species in the world, and delight in marking off each species they have spotted will find this book a ...

This insect was snapped by New Zea­land Geographic Trust’s inaugural young gun Bryce McQuillan, while holidaying in Port Waikato over Christmas. McQuil­lan thought it was a weta, although the presence ...

New Zealand’s 11 wilderness areas offer adventure, solitude and a glimpse of the world as it was. But what does the future hold for what one tramper termed our “hunting grounds for the imagination”?

Here we are—a nation of parents, grandparents and children all in the same boat, together at home. He waka eke noa. Every day of the lock-down we will post a story or video and set of activities that ...

Hatched in rivers, mayflies rise to the surface and unfurl new wings, the final phase of their precarious and astonishing lifecycle. At dusk, on the upper Waiau River under the swingbridge entrance to ...

A resonant whoosh of air and water blasts skywards as a Bryde’s (pronounced “broode­rs”) whale surfaces 60 metres in front of us. The twin blowholes on the top of its head are clearly visible. The ...

Our colonisers sent us bumble­bees, and now they want them back. The extinction of the short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus) in England has prompted conservation groups to reinstate the species ...