Line up human and chimpanzee DNA and the first surprise is how little separates us. We share more than 96% of the sequences used to make proteins, the molecules that build and run a living body. And yet the human brain is roughly three times the size of a chimpanzee’s, and it does things a […]
Every autumn, Corvo Island in the Azores turns off its public lighting for a few key days to help fledgling Cory’s shearwaters as they attempt to fly to the ocean guided by the stars
Once a year, Corvo, the smallest and most northerly island of Portugal’s Azores archipelago, goes dark. Since 2019, the island’s 450 or so inhabitants have chosen to switch off the lights every autumn for five nights to tackle the disastrous effects of artificial light on Cory’s shearwaters, a seabird endemic to the Atlantic Ocean.
It began in 1991 when the community noticed huge numbers of deaths among young shearwaters.
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