New Zealand Geographic

03/01/2025

They’ve been here 300 million years. They grow on rock, or in deserts, or underwater, or on dead animals—and they can survive for centuries. In short, mosses are super cool.

📷 Adrian Malloch

They’ve been here 300 million years. They grow on rock, or in deserts, or underwater, or on dead animals—and they can survive for centuries. In short, mosses are super cool.

31/12/2024

To design sleeker, sneakier aircraft, researchers are mimicking the physics of our feathered friends.

📷 Simon Runting

To design sleeker, sneakier aircraft, researchers are mimicking the physics of our feathered friends. Pigeonbot II is a robot garbed in genuine bird plumage. Fifty-two feathers are attached to a mechanical wing with joints akin to wrist and finger. Programmed to imitate the reflexes of a bird in fli...

27/12/2024

The 191st issue of New Zealand Geographic is out in stores and online now! In stores and online at nzgeo.com

26/12/2024

Buff-tailed bumblebees, important pollinators in Aotearoa, have a taste for flowers with bigger “bullseye” markings at the centre, a study published in Science Advances indicates.

📷 M Hart and J watts

Buff-tailed bumblebees, important pollinators in Aotearoa, have a taste for flowers with bigger “bullseye” markings at the centre, a study published in Science Advances indicates. UK scientists 3D-printed targets to mimic three species of hibiscus, and laced them with sugar water. They found the...

24/12/2024

When you go on a pig hunt in Niue there’s really only one option for dinner. So it was for photographer Richard Robinson and writer Pete McKenzie. After documenting a hunt with Huggard Tongatule, who is leading an ambitious plan to rid the whole island of pests (page 80), they headed back to his place.

📷: Richard Robinson

When you go on a pig hunt in Niue there’s really only one option for dinner. So it was for photographer Richard Robinson and writer Pete McKenzie. After documenting a hunt with Huggard Tongatule, who is leading an ambitious plan to rid the whole island of pests (page 80), they headed back to his p...

20/12/2024

What happens to the psyche when a person walks and walks, starving and alone?

📷 Aritra Basu

What happens to the psyche when a person walks and walks, starving and alone?

17/12/2024

How did the chicken (and the chihuahua, and the chinchilla) cross the country? By bus, of course. Lottie Hedley documents an extraordinary journey.

📷 Lottie Hedley

How did the chicken (and the chihuahua, and the chinchilla) cross the country? By bus, of course. Lottie Hedley documents an extraordinary journey.

13/12/2024

What to do when giant eagles are hunting you? Change colour, if you’re a kākāpō.

📷 Jake Osborne

What to do when giant eagles are hunting you? Change colour, if you’re a kākāpō. Researchers now think the reason kākāpō come in two hues—green or olive—is that once, they had to dodge flying apex predators such as the Haast’s eagle and kērangi, Eyles’ harrier. Department of Conserv...

09/12/2024

How building a traditional vaka, and navigating like her ancestors, led Ana Maine home.

📷 Ruth McDowall

How building a traditional vaka, and navigating like her ancestors, led Ana Maine home.