Eight London schools have closed in October because of an infestation of spiders, an annual event as male arachnids go hunting for a mate. Artist Eleanor Morgan finds spiders scary, but has managed to overcome her fear because she likes to incorporate them in her art. Not only are they inspirational, she writes, but spider silk has been used in everything from telescopes to wound dressings.

The European Space Agency will launch its mission to Mercury on Saturday in the hope of unveiling some of the planet’s best-kept secrets. It will be a nail-biter, with the stacked spacecraft having to perform a series of complicated manoeuvres before settling into orbit in December 2025. David Rothery explains.

You might not think of coral as a voracious predator, but it can in fact capture prey using tentacles and mucous nets. Numerous studies have shown that if coral feed, they are more capable of surviving stress associated with warming temperatures and declining pH. Now, using a combination of satellite measurements and isotopic data, researchers have found that this capacity to feed could be a marker of different corals’ resilience too.

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