Ranjit Lal

Lal is an author, environmentalist and bird watcher.

Sibling rivalry in animal kingdom

Sat, Aug 01, 2020

Unlike human greed, it's usually the lack of food that makes sibling rivalries among avians and mammals to frequently take a deadly turn, leading to siblicide

Why the light hummingbird needs to drink its weight in nectar

Sat, Jul 25, 2020

How various species of birds evolved different types of wings and flying techniques

Why snails have a complicated courtship

Sat, Jul 18, 2020

The mating behaviour of snails is all about slow-burn romance

Why we should listen to the many sounds of nature

Sat, Jul 11, 2020

All too soon, the noises of human development will drown out the birdsong

Why the animal kingdom is no different – when dating and mating

Sat, Jul 04, 2020

While some might take their girls up to their palatial penthouse apartments others with biceps, like bull elephants in musth, bash up anyone who goes near their chosen one.

Why, after 40 years, I still miss the sea

Sun, Jun 28, 2020

A beach gives you a sense of freedom unlike any other landscape and in these corona-riddled times, especially, it seems like an ideal place to escape to.

How to have a healthy relationship with spiders

Sun, Jun 21, 2020

There’s no need to scream every time you see one of these remarkable creatures

Why munias are real charmers

Sun, Jun 14, 2020

Let their expressive eyes and affectionate nature tell you.

Locusts aside, have you met infiltrator wasp?

Sun, Jun 07, 2020

Wasps can be unreasonably belligerent, besides having nasty baby-rearing techniques.

The lockdown may ruin our protected areas and forests

Sun, May 31, 2020

With COVID-19 lurking around, its pretty much open season for miners, dam builders and other industries.

Can we catch up with Mother Nature?

Sun, May 24, 2020

Historian Peter Frankopan on how plagues reset social relations and why this pandemic reveals a dangerous lack of global cooperation.

The small but Kaleidoscopic world of insects

Sat, May 16, 2020

Peer into a water drop and see the whole world suspended inside it. Or, spiders’ webs strung like strings of pearls on the foliage on dewy mornings.

Return to Innocence: Why humans still respond to the tug of nature

Sun, May 10, 2020

We are still creatures of nature, no matter how much we fiddle with our genes and try and insert robots into our systems.

Why the dove speaks softly?

Sat, Apr 18, 2020

On the birds we see and hear and those that we don’t in these quiet, lockdown days.

What to read to counter viral pseudo-scientific information?

Sat, Apr 04, 2020

Books by Richard Dawkins, Jay Griffiths and Tara Westover can help enlighten us about the natural world.

How to introduce children to birdwatching

Fri, Mar 27, 2020

Always do it with experts, but prepare for some confusion and questions you can’t answer

As coronovirus rampages through the world, an animal kingdom representative says the epidemic is ‘poetic justice’ and presents a charter of demands for a likely truce — ‘leave us and our habitats alone, stop pumping noxious gases into the air’ etc — and issues a warning: ‘Destroy us and destroy yourself’.