The solar-powered tracking device is glued to the insect's thorax, and connects to radio towers and Bluetooth signals from users of the Project Monarch app.

A velvety butterfly called the coastal green hairstreak once peppered the fog-capped hills of San Francisco. But then the city began to build out, and new structures fractured the jewel-toned insect’s native range. The butterflies were scattered into isolated populations, some only a few blocks apart—an astronomical distance for a creature that, over its lifetime, can venture only a few hundred feet or so from the native shrubs it depends on. In 2007, when the species was nearly gone from San Francisco, a local nonprofit got to work on a simple solution: Create a butterfly highway between some of the scattered populations by adding more of the insect’s host plants. “We planted microhabitats wherever we could get—a swath of a triangle or a long stairway edge,” says Amber Mahlberg, executive director of Nature in the City, the organization leading the project. It worked. Butterflies from previously isolated populations followed the breadcrumb trail and interbred, boosting their genetic diversity and odds of long-term survival. Microhabitats like these are good for wildlife like butterflies, and they benefit humans, too: Mounting research shows that small green spaces could improve the health of people who live nearby. “Americans tend to think about [the] nature...

A velvety butterfly called the coastal green hairstreak once peppered the fog-capped hills of San Francisco. But then the city began to build out, and new structures fractured the jewel-toned insect’s native range. The butterflies were scattered into isolated populations, some only a few blocks apart—an astronomical distance for a creature that, over its lifetime, […]

A velvety butterfly called the coastal green hairstreak once peppered the fog-capped hills of San Francisco. But then the city began to build out, and new structures fractured the jewel-toned insect’s native range. The butterflies were scattered into isolated populations, some only a few blocks…

A velvety butterfly called the coastal green hairstreak once peppered the fog-capped hills of San Francisco. But then the city began to build out, and new structures fractured the jewel-toned insect’s native range. The butterflies were scattered into isolated populations, some only a few blocks apart—an astronomical distance for a creature that, over its lifetime, […]

From Oct. 12, the first room you hit at MoMA runs a marsh in real time. _Jakob Kudsk Steensen: Wetland_ installs _Berl-Berl_ , the artist's live simulation of Berlin's drowned wetlands, in the Agnes Gund Garden Lobby through March 7, 2027. For five months, the museum's ground floor hosts a world that is always running: moving image and sound computed on the spot, never the same pass twice. 0:00 /0:36 1× __Berl-Berl__ installed at ARoS Museum of Art, 2022; watch the full walkthrough with sound on the artist’s Vimeo. _Berl-Berl_ started in the field. Steensen built it from months in Brandenburg's swamps and the archives of Berlin's Museum für Naturkunde, scanning rocks and flora with macro photogrammetry and assembling them in a game engine, with vocals by Arca and songs from Sorbian and Slavic traditions threaded through the sound. It premiered in 2021 at Halle am Berghain, commissioned by LAS Art Foundation, and has kept mutating since. _Wetland_ is the next evolution, not a rehang. In the announcement, Steensen writes that the simulation "shifts from a total view towards a more fragmented, insect-like perspective." The god's-eye swamp becomes a swamp at compound-eye height, which is how we all want to see a wetland anyway: nothing that lives in one ever sees the whole thing. The presentation is organized by Juyeon Song and Lydia Mullin, per the exhibition page. It's been great watching Steensen's practice since 2021, when Killscreen first wrote about _Berl-Berl_ as a wetland dreamed into software, and we sat down with Steensen this spring to talk about engines as instruments for the landscapes we are losing. Images from the artist’s announcement. Courtesy Jakob Kudsk Steensen. We have followed this swamp since 2021, and the free KS Radar letter is where the next chapter lands first. Three short issues a week on games and the art they feed. Follow along free

Cretodorus noonoo was preserved in amber dating back to the age of the dinosaurs, with researchers naming it after Noo-Noo from Teletubbies.

Steve Collins reaches up and pulls out one of the tens of thousands of thin wooden boxes that line the shelves in a garden shed outside his home on the outskirts of Nairobi. Carefully, he opens the lid to reveal a dark brown butterfly pinned to a board behind a sheet of glass. The insect’s torn wings are dotted in blue and orange. Cramped writing on the accompanying label says that the insect was captured in 1960. Mr. Collins caught it as a boy growing up in western Kenya. This Charaxes castor specimen is one of 4.2 million butterflies in the collection that has been his life’s endeavor. It includes insects thought to be extinct, from environments long since destroyed. And it is, Mr. Collins says, the largest collection of African butterflies in the world. Now retired, Mr. Collins is desperately seeking a permanent home for these butterflies. Collections like his are increasingly a thing of the past. Today, butterfly enthusiasts are encouraged to photograph, rather than pin, specimens. “We will become extinct before the butterflies become extinct,” Mr. Collins says of old-school lepidopterists like himself. Transfixed by insects Mr. Collins was raised on a coffee farm near the peak...

Step Inside Luke Gerram’s Giant Pollen Grain Installation To See London Through a Bee’s Eyes A giant pollen grain has landed beside the Thames in East London. British artist Luke Jerram created Pollenarium, an immersive installation that invites visitors to experience Barking Riverside from an insect’s perspective. The artwork, which premiered at Emerge East on September 12, 2026, resembles an enormous grain of pollen. Its inflated, faceted surface forms a […] READ: Step Inside Luke Gerram’s Giant Pollen Grain Installation To See London Through a Bee’s Eyes

Background of the Cockroach Janta Party The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) emerged in early 2024 as a fringe political group claiming to represent citizens excluded from the formal political process. Its name, a reference to the insect’s resilience, signals the party’s intent to survive systemic neglect.

When a bird lunges at a butterfly in mid-flight, it may see something that is not there — the insect's wings flashing beneath may not be moving where they appear to be ​moving. By the time the predato...