Most dairy cows in New Zealand are Friesians—the ones with black spots dappling white backs and bellies. Figuring out which genes dictate these markings was particularly devilish, but after analysing ...

For years, scientists have been using water samples to trace plants, microbes, animals and fungi via the invisible bits of DNA they leave behind. Recently this eDNA technology has taken to the air, ...

On page 54, Nic Low writes about a beach settlement at Moeraki. The sea is eating it, graves and taonga and all. Sheep and rabbits are chipping away with sharp hooves and scraping paws. Nic spirals ...

In 2019, scientists asked the public to catch and freeze mosquitoes, then post them to Te Papa. Over three years almost 900 tiny packages turned up. About a third of the insects weren’t mosquitoes at ...

The bone belonged to a songbird, but it didn’t belong to any existing New Zealand songbird, alive or dead, and so Elizabeth Steell was stumped. Steell, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge ...

Since the 1850s, two per cent of marine mammal species have gone extinct. But if we look at the biomass—if we add up everything that makes up whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, dugongs, manatees, and ...

On paper, Wellington city’s not looking too flash. But photographer Louis Elorfi Macalister finds life—loud, colourful, and dynamic—on every corner. Shifting political winds can feel the strongest in ...

On the road before the clean running of an EV makes up for the emissions created during its manufacture, according to scientists at Duke University in the US. The cars get off to a messy start because ...

Rowi are the rarest of the rare—a species of kiwi so critically restricted in distribution and breeding success that they were almost done for. But a last-ditch effort—codenamed Operation Nest Egg—has ...

In 2022, an extraordinary set of images surfaced at auction. Taken in Christchurch around a hundred years ago, they show a small group of young gay men—tops off and grinning in sand dunes; reclining ...

In first-year philosophy we chewed over the theory that humans were most interested in watching water, fire, and sky. The idea always irked me. What about a dune of tussock rippling in the wind?

New Zealand Geographic has engaged the Planetary Accounting Network to calculate the impact of our journalism activities and products, both print and digital. New Zealand Geographic has engaged the ...