This week in nature: some grim karma for a poacher, sock-sniffing mosquitoes, forced abstinence for endangered fish, alien ant invaders and some very eloquent prairie dogs!

If you've never heard of a wildlife auction, think 'Storage Wars' crossed with an Attenborough special. Well, maybe not exactly ... but substitute the rows of storage containers with bomas (special wildlife enclosures) and the secondhand treasure with rhino and giraffe, and you’re pretty close.

The sun will come out tomorrow, right? Well, not for the crew at the Concordia research station in Antarctica it won’t. This past Sunday they said farewell to the sun for nearly four long, cold months.

We have to admit: strange animal sightings seem to trigger a remarkable burst of creative speculation online. Take the animal carcass that washed up on a New Zealand beach late last month...

It seems like a freak occurrence: vultures swoop in & devour the dead body of a hiker in the French Pyrenees in less than an hour. But there's a back story here you should know.

Around 20% of the world’s invertebrates are now at risk of extinction, so we’re happy to back any effort that highlights the importance of protecting the spineless species that make up the majority of life on earth. That’s why we're sharing the work of macro photographer Robert Oelman, who’s been exploring remote rainforests in search of some of the world's most exotic insects...

This week on the roundup: fungal communication, saving turtles with LEDs, everything you need to know about entomophagy and why serving lion meat tacos is a stupid thing to do.

Bees were the big newsmakers this week with the pesticide ban, but there were also insect-sized drones, lemurs in portrait, transgenic salmon and trees simply gasping for a drink. It's all in this week's roundup.

Cheetahs on the brink, massive eggs on auction, decoding the language of elephants, the cultural life of whales and a bit of cheeky Mars graffiti from the Curiosity rover. That and more in this week's roundup.

Conservation charity Durrell has teamed up with the makers of Wallace and Gromit and the likes of Stephen Fry to produce an animated short that aims to save other species from the dodo's sad fate.

Like most dates in the eco-calendar, 22 April is likely to attract its share of the usual dismissive criticism. But if you can bear to shelve that cynical reticence for just a few minutes, here's some good evidence to back Earth Day's world-changing credentials.

Bugs in nanosuits, bears in surgery, cracking the coelacanth code and tracking sharks with robots ... that and more in this week's roundup of nature news.

Her camera skills need a little refining, but then Eden Jane McCloskey is only five ... and she's taking us on a video tour of springtime sights in her backyard!

This week on the roundup: whaling goes to court, beavers get dangerous, conservation drones await deployment and THAT eel story (yes, that one).

If you ignore the missing scales and the transparent blood, the ocellated icefish (Chionodraco rastrospinosus) in this video is just like all the other fish in the sea.

Face-sized tarantulas, protective elephants on a rampage, toxic rhino horns, cleaning up our oceans and why nature is good for your brain - all in this week's roundup of nature news.

The cicadas are coming. And they have their own hashtag. In fact, all that stands between now and #swarmageddon is a little heat.

The beautiful and detailed drawings created by German naturalist & illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian inspired Google's latest doodle ... and here's a little selection of them to feast your eyes on.

Locust swarms of biblical proportions, tracking whales by song, primate discoveries and environmental warnings – all in this week's roundup of nature news.

Arming ourselves against rhino poachers starts with knowing the facts. So every month, we'll be releasing an Earth Touch Rhino Tracker with the most recent poaching and arrest statistics and the latest rhino news.

The recent mass stranding of 20 pilot whales in Cape Town, South Africa triggered a race against time to save the beached animals – but all 20 died. So what do we actually know about stranding behaviour?

Another Friday, another roundup of nature news from the Earth Touch staffers. This week: species discoveries, suicidal microbes, black mambas on the loose, giant squid genetics and lots more...

This week on our news roundup: alligator prosthetics, mosquito invasions, four-winged birds and adorable seals that love watersports!

If you want a great overview of the illegal trade in endangered wildlife, from dollar signs down to trade routes, this infographic is it.

Earth Touch staffers pick the nature and wildlife news stories that grabbed their attnention this week.

11 February marks Inventors' Day in the US (and, rather aptly, it's also the birthday of Thomas Edison, one of history's most prolific inventors). To mark the occasion, we're looking back on some the coolest inventions that caught our eye in 2012.

A (pretty magical) video of a swirling murmuration of starlings got us thinking about other curious and unusual animal collective nouns. A pungent of sasquatch, anyone?

Cute and fluffy companion? Or adorable little serial killer? This infographic by New Zealand economist Gareth Morgan says wildlife needs protection from ferocious Felix.

NASA's Curiosity project, the most challenging and elaborate in the history of robotic spaceflight, took more than eight years of planning and a team of several hundred. That's worth a tribute or two in our books...

Do you need shock therapy? Environmental non-profits of all shapes and sizes love shockvertising. But if persuasive power is the yardstick by which we measure an ad's success, how do shockvertisements stack up? Are fear messages effective?

When Japanese scientists announced recently that looking at images of cute animals helps to improve our concentration, no one in the Earth Touch office was surprised. We've been harnessing the secret power of cute for years.

The third annual World Rhino Day takes place tomorrow. We're celebrating the imposing beauty of Africa's endangered rhinos with some incredible photographs.

Greenpeace's brand new campaigning ship, the Rainbow Warrior III, docked in our city for some maintenance work recently ... and we took the opportunity to step on board!

It's hard work but someone's gotta it. Check out what it takes to clean endangered African penguins coated by spilled oil...

Take an early-1990s hip-hop track, throw in some neuroscience and a squid's color-changing skin and what have you got? A video that’s about to go viral.

A great infographic showing how the rubbish we dump in the ocean ends up on our plates!

To end off this year's Shark Week, we thought we'd shine the spotlight on a few extraordinary shark species that don't get the attention they deserve...

Take some iconic and remote destinations in 24 countries on seven continents, put in six years of work ... and what do you get? One goosebump-inducing timelapse we just had to share.

Another environmental summit kicks off. The world keeps on not caring. How do we muster some optimism?

We’ve been so busy with the launch of our new website that some really interesting wildlife stories seem to have passed us by! Like this little gem about Najin and Suni - two rhinos whose romance might save a subspecies...