12 h. ago The best films of 2025: Alistair Harkness picks his highlights

From Scott Cooper’s take on Springsteen to an animation about a cat trying to survive a flood, Alistair Harkness names his top ten films of the year

Politics

7 d. ago Hightailing along high streets and raiding ponds: otters’ revival in Britain

Still rare only 20 years ago, the charismatic animals are in almost every UK river and a conservation success storyOn a quiet Friday evening, an otter and a fox trot through Lincoln city centre. The pair scurry past charity shops and through deserted streets, the encounter lit by the security lamps of shuttered takeaways. Each animal inspects the nooks and crannies of the high street before disappearing into the night, ending the unlikely scene captured by CCTV last month.Unlike the fox, the otter has been a rare visitor in towns and cities across the UK. But after decades of intense conservation work, that is changing. In the past year alone, the aquatic mammal has been spotted on a river-boat dock in London’s Canary Wharf, dragging an enormous fish along a riverbank in Stratford-upon-Avon, and plundering garden ponds near York. One otter was even filmed causing chaos in a Shetland family’s kitchen in March. Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago Hightailing along city streets and raiding ponds: otters’ revival in Britain

Still rare only 20 years ago, the charismatic animals are in almost every UK river and a conservation success storyOn a quiet Friday evening, an otter and a fox trot through Lincoln city centre. The pair scurry past charity shops and through deserted streets, the encounter lit by the security lamps of shuttered takeaways. Each animal inspects the nooks and crannies of the high street before disappearing into the night, ending the unlikely scene captured by CCTV last month.Unlike the fox, the otter has been a rare visitor in towns and cities across the UK. But after decades of intense conservation work, that is changing. In the past year alone, the aquatic mammal has been spotted on a river-boat dock in London’s Canary Wharf, dragging an enormous fish along a riverbank in Stratford-upon-Avon, and plundering garden ponds near York. One otter was even filmed causing chaos in a Shetland family’s kitchen in March. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Just not that into ewes: ‘gay sheep’ escape slaughter and take over a New York catwalk

Designer Michael Schmidt’s 36-piece collection was made from the wool of rams who have shown same-sex attractionWhen a ram tips its head back, curls its upper lip, and takes a deep breath – what is known in the world of animal husbandry as a “flehmen response” – it is often a sign of arousal. Sheep have a small sensory organ located above the roof of the mouth, and the flehmen response helps to flood it with any sex pheromones wafting about.Usually, rams flehmen when they encounter ewes during the mating period, according to Michael Stücke, a farmer with 30 years of experience raising sheep in Westphalia, Germany. But on Stücke’s farm, the rams flehmen “all the time”. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Donald Trump labels White House shooter an 'animal' as he takes brutal swipe at Biden

Donald Trump has launched a scathing attack on Joe Biden following the identification of the suspected shooter of two guards by the White House, who he labelled the 'worst in the history of our country'

Politics

3 w. ago I’m A Celebrity contestant hoards liquorice after camp challenge as ‘inner animal’ takes over

There was ‘chaos’ in the jungle after a ‘frenzy’ for sugary snacks

Politics

3 w. ago Not so sweet: I’m A Celebrity contestant hoards liquorice after camp challenge

Tuesday night’s episode saw contestants take on the jungle nursery challenge.

Politics

3 w. ago The Guardian view on animal testing: we can stop sacrificing millions of lives for our own health | Editorial

New technologies can reduce our reliance on animal experiments. This isn’t just morally right, it could have scientific and economic benefits tooScience is a slaughterhouse. We rarely acknowledge the degree to which animal life underwrites the research that provides us with medicines, or the regulation that keeps us safe. Live animals were used in 2.64m officially sanctioned scientific procedures in the UK in 2024, many of them distressing or painful and many of them fatal. But the government’s new strategy to phase out animal testing – published earlier this month – suggests that in the near future emerging technologies can largely replace the use of animals in our scientific endeavours.The UK previously banned cosmetics testing on animals, and has already taken steps to regulate and reduce their use in research. But some needlessly cruel experiments still take place: the forced swim test (FST) for example, in which a rodent is placed in a body of water it canno...

Society