Are badgers at the forefront of synurbization? (image: Andrew Parkinson / NPL)

Some animals are synurbic, and some aren’t.

Badgers are. As are wood pigeons. Tigers most definitely aren’t.

It is, by definition, impossible for a whale to be synurbic, but perhaps not a frog.

What on earth am I going on about?

I’m talking about those animals and plants that like living where we do.

This is a phenomenon most of us are aware of, even if not explicitly. We feed garden birds, and enjoy catching a furtive, shadowy glimpse of an urban fox or hedgehog.

But the concept of synurbic species, and the process of synurbization, is being taken increasingly seriously by scientists, as too is the whole concept of urban ecology.

Because they address the intriguing question of whether wildlife is finding ways to live alongside people, and our urban sprawl.

More intriguingly, they also examine whether some species are going further: and are positively adapting to life in towns and cities, becoming more successful as they do.

That could lead to the rise of synurbia – where wildlife comes in from the country, and learns to live all around us. That’s interesting in itself. But it is something we can all look out for. Are animals and plants encroaching on your back yard? Are you increasingly living in synurbia?

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How did carnivorous dinosaurs get their meat? (image:Mark Hallet Paleoart / SPL)

Tyrannosaurus rex’s name means “tyrant lizard”: its moniker reflecting the carnage supposedly wrecked by this famous ancient reptile’s huge jaws and rows of impressive teeth.

In the now classic film Jurassic Park, another big-jawed, two-legged theropod dinosaur, Velociraptor, was depicted as a salivating, fleet-of-foot hunter of more sluggish species.

But the truth is that we still know little about the meat eating habits of dinosaurs.

Now some of that may change with the discovery of a fossilised sauropod bone.

Because on this bone are scoured a series of bite marks made by carnivorous dinosaurs, including the longest and deepest bite marks made by a dinosaur yet documented.

Even more intriguingly perhaps, the bone appears to have been bitten or chewed on by a series of different carnivores, revealing something about how groups of dinosaur scavenged carcasses just as big cats, hyenas and vultures might scavenge a kill in modern Africa.

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An Emperor penguin leaps from the water (Image: Blue Planet, BBC)

Penguins can’t fly. But they can get airborne.

In fact, taking to the air, for even a brief instant, is actually a vital strategy penguins employ to avoid being eating by predators such as leopard seals or orcas.

Now scientists have worked out the secret technique that penguins use to get airborne. It involves wrapping their bodies in a cloak of air bubbles – and it turns out to be the same technique that engineers use to speed the movement of ships and torpedoes through water.

Another interesting aspect of the discovery is that it was made by scientists examining in minute detail footage shot for the programme Blue Planet, a landmark natural history series filmed by the BBC’s own Natural History Unit.

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