NHS figures show that there were 100 hospital admissions in 2025 linked to spider bites - up from 47 in 2015. Experts are blaming the trend on a sharp increase in the noble false widow spider, which has been described as 'the most dangerous spider breeding in Britain.'
Red-necked keelback snakes possess a potent toxin derived from the toads they consume, which can cause severe harm to predators like mongooses. The snakes store these toxins in specialized nuchal glands.
Something so tiny and trivial if ignored could have led to my thumb or hand being removed, or sepsis could have set in. They don't know if the bite was the infection or if the bite was the catalyst for the infection to take hold. Some people are hypothesising that it could have been a false widow spider but in reality, we don't know.
On a spring day in 1694, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek - the father of microbiology - used a magnifying lens to look at a candle through the dissected eye of a dragonfly. But instead of seeing 1 candle flame, he saw hundreds of tiny flames, repeated over and over. But spoiler alert - this is not how insects see. Hi, I'm Niba, and today we're going to explore how insects really see the world.
When Borkent stops working, biting midges risk becoming an orphan group, a term that taxonomists give for a branch of the web of life that is no longer being studied. It is a pattern playing out across the field, he says. I am one of the last few standing. It's crisis all around. As the taxonomic community ages, we are not being replaced.