SO-CALLED ORGANIC crops, grown without recourse to synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, are credited with miraculous properties by many of their fans. Unfortunately, there is little scientific ...

ECOSYSTEMS ARE complex things, and monitoring their health is hard. To track every species would be impossible, so ecologists commonly focus on those that, like canaries in coal mines, are thought to ...

A study has claimed to show that modern ‘green’ products recycled from human excreta are excellent – and importantly, safe – fertilizers to use on food crops. The idea of using human urine and faeces ...

Dog faeces can still be troublesome thousands of years after being dumped. Archaeologists can end up in deep doodoo if they mistake it for human faeces. But now an artificial intelligence system has ...

The accessory olfactory system (AOS) guides behaviours that are important for survival and reproduction, but understanding of AOS function is limited by a lack of identified natural ligands. Here we ...

Healthy adults who have a good constitution and have a healthy heart are being called forth to donate samples of their faeces to science. The donors would be screened rigorously before they can be ...

Desperate times call for desperate measures. As food shortages hit, European earwig babies resort to eating each other’s faeces in their underground homes, helping to keep hunger and death at bay. In ...

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...