All organisms in an ecosystem are interconnected, and any imbalance in this complex relationship can have irreversible consequences for both humans and nonhumans. Numerous examples illustrate how the destruction of one species can lead to unforeseen and devastating impacts on others. ...

Birdsongs have inspired poets and lovers, becoming one of the philosophical focal points in ancient Greece and Rome. They have also led to several long-ago debates about the relationship between birdsong and human language. ...

Editor’s note: This article, “Spontaneous Revolutions: Darwin’s Diagrams of Plant Movement,” was originally published in The Public Domain Review under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. If you wish to reuse it, please see https://publicdomainreview.org/reusing-material/. It was republished for the Observatory by

For the nonhuman animal cause, the 19th century’s end would bring to a close a defining period—a transformative 30-year era beginning in 1866, with the founding of the first animal welfare society. It is a story of activism and activists like George Thorndike Angell,...

No one knows why we dream. It stands to reason that dreams have some purpose because nearly everyone dreams, and we dream 3 to 6 times every night. People typically have several dreams each night that grow longer as sleep draws to a close. Over...

The ocean absorbs 90 percent of the excess heat generated by burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions is the primary driver of long-term global warming. Today, humanity is officially in uncharted waters. According to the Copernicus Climate Change...

Farmed animals in the United States have minimal legal protections, and much of the abuse they endure is legal. Unfortunately, the federal Animal Welfare Act—which establishes protections for pets and nonhuman animals used for exhibition (like in zoos) and research—does not apply to farmed...

The striking paradox is that science tells us both that we’re peripheral in the cosmic scheme of things and central to the reality we uncover. Unless we understand how this paradox arises and what it means, we will never be able to understand science as...

Many species of birds face a deadly threat: window collisions. They cannot distinguish a clear pane of glass from the open sky, and hummingbirds, among the smallest birds, are particularly at risk. The good news is that we now understand this danger and can protect...

Anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss are the most pressing issues for our planet. Carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere continue to rise due to the burning of fossil fuels and land use change, with the latter occurring primarily in the form of animal...