Vianet Djenguet is an award-winning wildlife film-maker and camera operator whose work has featured in a number of major nature documentaries.

In this podcast, Vianet joins us to talk about his career, how wildlife film-making have changed, and his experiences working with local researchers to capture footage of endangered animals on the new television series The Wild Ones.

The Wild Ones Apple TV+ (2025)

Music supplied by SPD/Triple Scoop Music/Getty Images

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Ancient DNA evidence shows that the advent of agriculture led to more infectious disease among humans, with pathogens from animals only showing up 6,500 years ago. The DNA, extracted from human teeth, shows the history of diseases present in Eurasia over tens of thousands of years. The approach used could be a powerful way to understand how illness has shaped humanity, but it is unable to detect some bacteria that enter the bloodstream at low concentrations or some viruses, so future work could seek to fill that gap.

Research Article: Sikora et al.

News: Animal diseases leapt to humans when we started keeping livestock

DNA studies confirm that sardines were a major ingredient of the Roman Empire’s favourite fish sauce, and how analysis of animal manure identified global hotspots for antibiotic-resistance genes.

Research Highlight: Ancient DNA helps trace stinky Roman fish sauce to its source

Research Highlight: Poo of farm animals teems with drug-resistance genes

A 19-year experiment sampling bowhead whale faeces reveals a link between warming Arctic waters and increasing levels of toxic algae, researchers say. While climate change is expected to drive increases in the prevalence of harmful algal blooms, long-term data is lacking. To address this, a team worked with indigenous communities to collect and sample whale poo, showing that increases in algal toxins in the Arctic food chain are linked to rising ocean temperatures. The researchers suggest levels of these toxins need to be closely monitored to protect Arctic communities that depend on marine resources for food.

Research Article: Lefebvre et al.

An object from beyond our solar system has been spotted zipping past Jupiter, and evidence that Neanderthals created ‘fat factories’ to extract vital nutrients from animal bones.

Nature: Neanderthals boiled bones in ‘fat factories’ to enrich their lean diet

Nature: Rare find: interstellar visitor seen blazing through our Solar System

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Questions and doubts about vaccines are on the rise worldwide and public-health specialists worry that these trends could worsen. But while the shift in public attitudes towards immunizations can leave scientists, physicians and many others feeling disheartened, a surge of research on vaccine hesitancy is starting to offer ways to address the issue.

This is an audio version of our Feature How to speak to a vaccine sceptic: research reveals what works

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In this episode:

Many harmless animals mimic dangerous ones to avoid being eaten, but often this fakery is inaccurate. To help explain why evolution sometimes favours imperfect mimicry, a team 3D printed a range of imaginary insects. The novel creatures were designed to mimic wasps with varying degrees of accuracy and the team then presented these models to different predators. They showed that while birds were hard to fool, invertebrate predators were less able to discern between the mimics and accurate wasp models. The results suggest that predator perception plays a key role in the level of accuracy needed to fool them and may help explain the existence of inaccurate mimics in nature.

Research article: Taylor et al.

News and Views: 3D printing offers a way to study mimicry by insects

Ritual ‘retirement’ rather than family feud may explain broken statues of a female pharaoh, and how kelp ‘loofahs’ made by killer whales might be the first example of toolmaking by a marine mammal.

Research Highlight: The shattered statues of Queen Hatshepsut: the reasons for the wreckage

Research Highlight: Killer whales exfoliate each other with home-made scrubbers

The sea slugs that steal chloroplasts to snack on, and the researchers re-enacting a Stone Age sea-voyage.

Nature: ‘Wildest thing’: solar-powered slug steals chloroplasts and stores them for emergencies

Nature: These scientists re-enacted Stone Age voyage to Japan’s remote islands

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A significant amount of research in the AI field of computer vision is being used to analyse humans in ways that support the development of surveillance technologies, according to new research. By analysing the contents of thousands of research papers, the team behind the work showed that 90% of studies, and 86% of patents resulting from them, involved data relating to imaging humans. While there are many positive applications for this technology, such as in medical diagnostics, this work shows evidence of a pipeline from computer-vision research to surveillance.

Research article: Kalluri et al.

News and Views: Computer-vision research is hiding its role in creating ‘Big Brother’ technologies

Video: Is AI powering Big Brother? Surveillance research is on the rise

News: Wake up call for AI: computer-vision research increasingly used for surveillance

Editorial: Don’t sleepwalk from computer-vision research into surveillance

A minuscule robot that can manipulate liquid droplets, and the sensors that can identify hydrothermal explosions at Yellowstone National Park.

Research Highlight: This tiny robot moves mini-droplets with ease

Research Highlight: Sensors pinpoint the exact time of a Yellowstone explosion

This week, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has unveiled the first images from its 3,200 megapixel digital camera. We discuss the images, and how the facility will help researchers learn more about the Universe.

News: First images from world’s largest digital camera leave astronomers in awe

How scientists created hexanitrogen, a new molecule made of six nitrogen atoms, and the why researchers are excited about the first confirmed skull of an extinct Denisovan.

Chemistry World: Most energetic molecule ever made is stable – in liquid nitrogen

Nature: First ever skull from ‘Denisovan’ reveals what ancient people looked like

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Bogong moths use the stars to help them navigate during their enormous migration across Australia, according to new research. Every year, billions of these nocturnal moths travel up to 1,000 km to cool caves in the Australian Alps, despite having never been there before. By placing moths in a flight-simulator that also acted as a planetarium, the team behind the work showed that moths could use the bright Milky Way to help them fly in the correct direction.

Research article: Dreyer et al.

Nigeria's pangolins are under threat because their meat is delicious, and how the gravitational pull of other galaxies may prevent the Milky Way colliding with Andromeda.

Research Highlight: Why pangolins are poached: they’re the tastiest animal around

Research Highlight: A long-predicted cosmic collision might not happen after all

New research suggests that shortly before modern humans successfully migrated out of Africa, they massively expanded the range of ecosystems they lived in. By combining climate modelling with data from archaeological sites across the African continent, researchers put forward evidence that 70,000 years ago, humans expanded the ecosystems they lived in to include diverse habitat types from forests to deserts. The authors suggest this ability to live in different places may have helped the later humans that migrated out of the continent around 50,000 years ago.

Research article: Hallet et al.

Blowing bubble-rings could be humpback whales' way of trying to communicate with humans, and the research suggesting that everyone’s breathing pattern is unique.

Science Alert: Humpback Whale Bubble Rings May Be an Attempt to Communicate With Us

Nature: How you breathe is like a fingerprint that can identify you

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According to legend, physicist Werner Heisenberg formulated the mathematics behind quantum mechanics in 1925 while on a restorative trip to the remote North Sea island of Heligoland.

To celebrate the centenary of this event, several hundred researchers have descended on the island to take part in a conference on all things quantum physics. Nature reporter Lizzie Gibney was also in attendance, and joined us to give an inside track on the meeting.

News: Happy birthday quantum mechanics! I got a ticket to the ultimate physics party

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Researchers have developed a soft electronic implant that can measure brain activity of amphibian embryos as they develop. Understanding the neural activity of developing brains is a key aim for neuroscientists, but conventional, rigid probes can damage growing brains. To overcome this, a team have developed a flexible mesh that stretches with the brain and tested it by monitoring single neuron activity during development of frog and axolotl embryos. More testing and ethical considerations will be required, but the researchers hope that eventually such implants could help with neurological conditions that affect humans.

Research article: Sheng et al.

The exoplanet slowly evaporating into space, and cockatoos that have figured out an innovative way to stay hydrated.

Research Highlight: Solved: the mystery of the evaporating planet

Research Highlight: Clever cockatoos learn an easy way to quench their thirst

By combining AI tools with mechanical engineering techniques, a researcher has developed a new way to speed up the restoration of damaged paintings. The technique creates a removable mask that can be overlaid onto a painting to cover any damage apparent in the artwork. It was successfully tested on an oil painting, fixing a large number of damaged areas in only a few hours. This could offer a significant speed-boost to painting restoration, which can often take months, or even years.

Research article: Kachkine

Video: Meet the engineer who invented an AI-powered way to restore art

A new ranking system could make it easier to spot universities that are chasing publishing metrics at the expense of rigorous science, and evidence that cutting off rhinos’ horns deters poachers.

Nature: ‘Integrity index’ flags universities with high retraction rates

AP: Cutting off rhinos’ horns is a contentious last resort to stop poaching. A new study found it works

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