The Guardian

Comedy comes in all shapes and sizes. From the clever to the quirky, there is something for everyone in this selection of 25 of our funniest films. Warm up your winter with a little humour from some of the masters of modern comedy

Polling indicates 71% would be more likely to vote for a party that supported distributed small-scale solar and storage

Battery storage technology has the potential to reshape not just the energy and transport sectors but also the upcoming Australian federal election, according to a new report.

The Australia Institute report Securing Renewables: How Batteries Solve the Problem of Clean Electricity includes polling indicating that 71% of Australians would be more likely to vote for a party that supported distributed small-scale solar and storage.

Officials in Thailand take three tigers away from a Buddhist temple during a raid over wildlife trafficking claims. The tigers are tranquilised and taken away on stretchers to be transferred to a state-owned sanctuary. Dozens of tigers remain at the temple in Kanchanaburi province, and tourists are seen taking selfies with the big cats. The temple claims it is a wildlife sanctuary, but authorities are investigating it for animal trafficking and abuse

Data released to Greenpeace in response to FoI requests show number of prosecutions has dropped significantly in recent years

Far fewer pirate fishermen are being caught in English and Welsh waters, with prosecutions, warnings and inspections all plummeting in recent years following cuts at the enforcement agency.

The reduction in action against illegal fishing, a multi-million pound activity, is putting marine life at risk and allowing “blackfish” to become a normal catch for some rogue operators, according to experts. Those convicted of major fishing crimes are also free to continue fishing afterwards.

A worried mother elephant looks on as her calf is rescued by wildlife officials in Sri Lanka, after it fell into an open drain. Rescuers in the town of Hambantota fire smoke bullets to keep her from coming too close while they dismantle the drain and pull the calf to safety

Officials remove three animals following raid at temple, which has been investigated for animal abuse in recent years

Wildlife authorities in Thailand have raided a Buddhist temple where tigers are kept, taking away three of the animals and vowing to confiscate scores more in response to global pressure over wildlife trafficking.

The Buddhist temple in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, has more than 100 tigers and has become a tourist destination where visitors take selfies with tigers and bottle-feed their cubs.

The new Tun Mustapha marine park & shark sanctuary in Borneo is the biggest marine protected area in Malaysia

Malaysia has just established the biggest marine protected area (MPA) in the country. The Tun Mustapha park (TMP) occupies 1m hectares (2.47m acres) of seascape off the northern tip of Sabah province in Borneo, a region containing the second largest concentration of coral reefs in Malaysia as well as other important habitats like mangroves, sea grass beds and productive fishing grounds.

It is also home to scores of thousands of people who depend on its resources – from artisanal fishing communities to the commercial fisheries sector – making it in many ways a microcosm of the entire Coral Triangle bioregion, where environmental protection must be balanced with the needs of growing coastal populations.

Farming minister George Eustice says leave vote would free up £2bn now spent on insurance schemes and incentives for farmers

The UK could develop a more flexible approach to environmental protection free of “spirit-crushing” Brussels directives if it votes to leave the EU, the farming minister, George Eustice, has said.

Footage shows collapsed buildings and cars buried under rubble, following violent storms that caused severe flooding in southern Germany on Monday. Four people have died and several more are injured. The scenes are from the streets of Braunsbach, which according to German media, have been strewn with debris after two streams burst their banks and unleashed floodwaters that brought down one house and damaged several other. Photograph: REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

Four dead after severe floods hit southern Germany

The Springwatch presenter’s revelation may seem a tad unpalatable, but he is sending an important message to parents about children’s encounters with nature

As celebrity revelations go, it’s one of the more unusual: as a boy, Chris Packham would decant tadpoles on to a special spoon and eat them.

The naturalist and Springwatch presenter reveals his tadpolephagy in his new memoir, Fingers in the Sparkle Jar, and he’s not sorry either. They are gritty and tricky to chew, Packham reports, comparing them to watery semolina with a bit more “thrashing” under the tongue.

Sydney biologist Jürgen Otto has discovered seven new peacock spider species. All within the Maratus genus, these tiny spiders can be found in particularly in Western Australia. Otto believes there are 48 confirmed species of peacock spider, which he says “behave more like cats and dogs”. Otto has a Facebook page with more than 61,000 followers and a YouTube channel, both dedicated to the colourful arachnids

Peacock spiders: scientist finds seven new species of ‘fairly cute’ creatures

More photos

In a country hit by a devastating poaching surge for rhino horn and elephant ivory, local people are turning the tide – but the wider problems of demand, corruption and organised crime remain

“It’s hard work. I cut their tusks off with an axe,” said Abdi Ali, a northern Kenyan pastoralist who became a full-time poacher at 14. With three other men it took him about 10 minutes to kill each of the 27 elephants he poached, cutting off the trunk, splitting the skull and removing the ivory that would later fetch 500 Kenyan shillings (£3) a kilo.

But while he became rich compared with the cattle herders, who mostly live on less than $1 (68p) a day, he did not find happiness. “Much as I had money, it was money I couldn’t enjoy in peace, because I was on the run.”

Australia’s iconic Great Barrier Reef is clearly at risk from climate change, so why would Unesco agree to censor its own report?

That quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet comes to mind: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

The lady in question is the Australian government, which some time in early January saw a draft of a report from a United Nations organisation.

Castor Hanglands, Cambridgeshire I listen for 30 minutes, imagining this delicate thing inhaling, exhaling, creating that sound

It’s odd going somewhere to listen. Usually you go somewhere to look. I’d never knowingly heard a nightingale. The word is so resonant. It’s maybe 1,000 years old, that name: nihtgale, “night songstress” – but now they know it’s the male that sings so distinctively by dark, to defend and attract. I’d always thought the name elegantly, evocatively, benignly crepuscular. Probably I’d heard it passively. But I’d never gone somewhere to find it.

Knowing little of birds, I had to be told where and when to listen. “Dusk and into dark, and you’ll hear the nightingales. You’ll know it because nothing else will be singing.”

Sydney biologist has a Facebook page dedicated to the colourful arachnids, which he says behave more like cats and dogs

Peacock spiders - in pictures

A scientist with a passion for peacock spiders – only a couple of millimetres long, extraordinarily colourful and “like dogs or cats” in their behaviour – has discovered seven new species.

Jürgen Otto, a biologist from Sydney, has been researching the arachnids since 2005, and has gained a significant following online with his footage.

Several new species of peacock spider – just a few millimetres long and featuring extraordinary colours – have been discovered in Western Australia and South Australia. Sydney biologist Jürgen Otto, who discovered the seven new species, has compared their behaviour to that of cats and dogs

As cities expand and trees are sacrificed for housing and infrastructure, the cost of losing green spaces grows

Deforestation. It is a word that conjures up mental images of loggers cleaving their way through pristine woodlands and grim statistics measuring how many football pitches worth of Amazon jungle get cleared every minute, but it isn’t something that only happens in the wild.

Trees in the city are also being chopped down, a fact that is of increasing concern to urban planners as it becomes apparent that tree canopies serve as much more than a decorative backdrop for the lives of residents.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 2 June 1916

Although we could not see them, shoals of small fish raced seaward on the falling tide, hastening through the shallowing water on the banks; the terns, however, could see them, and, following in a dense, screaming crowd, literally fell upon them. Out of the mass of noisy hovering birds a score or more at a time dived head-long, splashing up the water as they struck. Nearer shore, where the water runs in channels between the rocks and banks, the lesser terns were feeding in smaller numbers, and one amorous male carried his squirming captives to his mate upon the shore. A mob of pied oystercatchers lined the edge of the water, and now and then a whimbrel, with rippling call, flew down to join them.

Where the sand was dry the ringed plovers fed, where still wet the dunlins ran, probing the mud, and wading till the water washed their breasts were a number of short-billed sanderlings. Turnstones, some gay in the black and orange dress of summer, tossed the seaweed strands with their slightly upturned and stout bills; they knew where to find the lurking crab and sand-hopper.

Leakage of natural gas from drilling and pipework means more methane is entering the atmosphere

One of the justifications for fracking is the use of natural gas as a bridging fuel between coal and a low-carbon future. However natural gas is mostly methane, which has strong global warming impacts in its own right. Natural gas therefore only provides climate benefits over coal if the leakage is no more than 2-3%.

We cannot measure leaks from every pipe joint. One alternative is to measure the sum of lots of leaks from a distance. Flights over US shale gas fields reveal large methane sources, but these areas also have cattle farms that produce methane and the two sources need to be separated.

Climate Institute says risk data held by regulators, state and local governments, insurers and banks, but homebuyers and developers do not have access to it

The risk that houses in some areas of Australia are likely to become uninsurable, dilapidated and uninhabitable due to climate change is kept hidden from those building and buying property along Australia’s coasts and in bushfire zones, a Climate Institute report says.

The report says there is untapped and unshared data held by regulators, state and local governments, insurers and banks on the level of risk, but that most homebuyers and developers are not told about the data and do not have access to it.