We drive through the dusty road that promises to take us to my much-awaited destination ensconced in the Siwalik Hills in Himachal Pradesh. The hills grow bigger as we get closer, and soon we are in Suketi village, driving past … Read More
“…until we turned to another book to find the age of the Earth, the one that was written in the rocks themselves.” – Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in ‘Cosmos’ Beauty of fossils lies not only in the fact that they … Read More
An already fascinating species made more fascinating by the virtue of it being super elusive. In India, even today, first-time reports of the honey badger (Mellivora capensis), also called ratel, continue to pour in from various regions, taking one and… Read More
The amazing complexity of multicellular organisms arises from pure simplicity – a single cell. Organisms boast of their idiosyncratic morphologies which follow seemingly distinct paths but be it a human arm or a chicken leg, it all grows from a … Read More
Millions of years of evolution has gifted this planet with astonishing diversity of life forms. Insects in particular, which make up three fourths of all the world’s animal and plant species, come in staggering sizes, shapes and forms. Every insect … Read More
What if I told you that a carnivorous dinosaur even more ferocious and stronger than the Tyrannosaurus rex, once lived here in India? We had our very own “king lizard of the Narmada” or the “royal lizard” with a characteristic … Read More
Sea turtles have graced the oceans for millions of years, evolving resilience to countless challenges. But the dawn of the Anthropocene has brought newer, deadlier threats: millions of tons of plastic, destruction of nesting beaches, light pollution that disorients hatchlings … Read More
Every time I see a blue tiger moth, my mind travels to the forest of Matheran, a pocket-sized but incredibly biodiverse hill station a stone’s throw from Mumbai. Every time, I relish the memory of a crisp January morning spent … Read More
What if life on Earth is older than Earth itself, and arrived aboard an interstellar rock from within the unexplored hinterlands of our cosmos? Space rocks like asteroids and comets abound in our cosmos. Stars are forming and dying constantly … Read More
Mind boggling connections have emerged in the course of evolution of species. Innumerable species have established a multi-faceted range of partnerships with each other. There are mutualistic (or symbiotic) partnerships, as well as parasitic and commensal (an organism benefitting from … Read More