Organisers of a nationwide survey are urging people to keep a sharp eye out for feathered visitors to their back gardens.

People have been trying to understand how living things know where they're going for more than 100 years.

COMMENT: Pigs with human organs may sound "yuck" but is just another case of swapping DNA, writes John Harris.

A major environmental group wants to see more money for conservation funding amid Thursday's Budget announcements.

Male nursery web spiders best not show up at a lady's house empty-handed. Because they could get eaten alive for it.

How did the giraffe get its improbable neck? Genetic analysis finds some clues

Tagging sharks, walking on volcanoes - science is a lot more than being stuck in a lab. Jamie Morton finds out how some researchers spend their days.

The University of Otago has announced plans for a new $50 million, five-storey animal research facility to be built at an undisclosed location.

The Madagascan Darwin's bark spider gives oral sex to female mates up to 100 times during sex. Its reward? Being eaten afterward.

The team tested the two groups of birds using not only associative learning tasks, but innovative problem-solving tasks.

Plan to create better chances for protection appears to have been scuppered for greater mineral exploitation, writes Anton Van Heldon.

Crows and parrots have sophisticated thinking skills on a par with those of apes such as chimpanzees, researchers claim.

A new Israeli study has indicated that arachnophobes overestimate spider size compared with other neutral animals, such as birds and butterflies, that do not cause fear.

Why has one of our largest endangered bird species just become two new ones?

The curious case of a huddle of Aussie invaders that long managed to blend in with our native little blue penguins has just taken another twist.

Digby Livingston and Stephen Franks suggest the way to protect indigenous species is to farm them.

An Auckland biodiversity student is part of a team of scientists researching and monitoring humpback whales and their migration in the Cook Islands.

Stuffing wool in a shark's nose suggests smell is vital for navigation.

If I had been given one wish as a child, it would have been that the Tasmanian tiger wasn't extinct. To me, extinction was a tragedy.

A giant squid made its way into Japan's Toyama Bay on Christmas Eve, treating onlookers to a rare sighting of the magnificent creature.

Temba, a male chimp at Wellington Zoo, died on Saturday night after a fight with the alpha male of the group.

Pandas don't want no scrubs. They have a higher success rate of having cubs if they are coupled with a bear they love.

Scientists have demonstrated how robots can learn much like tots do.

Cool and aloof, the cat will never be known as man's best friend. But its solitary nature may be the key to its long life, say scientists.

WATCH: Video shows national icon has a rather nasty mean streak.

A kiwi destroying a robin nest and causing the death of the chicks in it has been caught on camera by a Victoria University of Wellington researcher. The footage, taken at Zealandia over two consecutive nights, shows a little spotted kiwi pushing the robin nest down a slope, pecking the chicks, and returning the next night to tear the nest apart. Supplied/Victoria University

Currents are shifting, temperatures are climbing and the availability and dynamics of nutrient upwelling is changing.

Scientists investigating the rising spread of drug-resistant bugs in our homes have thrown up a hairy potential culprit: our pet pooches and moggies.

That fossil also happened to come from the same deposits as the world's oldest penguin, Waimanu