Biology

The last time anyone saw a Clarion nightsnake – the gorgeous, nocturnal snake pictured above – was in 1936. Now, after going missing for close to 80 years, researchers have rediscovered the species on the remote Mexican island of its namesake. Photo Credit: Daniel Mulcahy via BoingBoing

This Is What It Looks Like When A Mammal Hatches From An Egg

The echidna – aka the “spiny anteater” – is a mammal. But unlike almost every other mammal, baby echidnas (aka “puggles,” aka “baby Max Rebos” aka “the most adorable creatures on Earth with four-headed penises“) emerge into the world not from their mother’s wombs, but from eggs. This short clip from a 1974 film called…

The Truth About Saccharin and Your Health

Saccharin is noted as being the first artificial sweetener, outside of the toxic Lead(II) acetate, and the first product to offer a cheap alternative to cane sugar. Interestingly enough, like the Chocolate Chip Cookie, it was also discovered entirely by accident. The chemical was discovered in 1878/9 in a small lab at Johns Hopkins University.…

This Is the Closest We’ve Ever Come to Recreating Shark Skin

Shark skin is famously sleek and dragless, the envy of swimsuit designers. Perhaps less famous is what shark skin’s oddly rough surface looks like up close: an eerie matrix of microscopic tooth-like scales. Now, scientists are 3D printing artificial shark skin in hopes of unlocking its swimming secrets. The 3D-printed shark skin above is the…

The Mysterious Disease That Prevents Girls From Growing Older

A handful of girls diagnosed as having ‘Syndrome X’ seem to defy one of the biggest certainties in life: aging. Scientists who are working to understand this rare condition say it could inform our efforts to radically extend the human lifespan. Richard Walker has been trying to conquer ageing since he was a 26-year-old free-loving…

Curiosity Took Hundreds of Microbes to Mars—And Many May Still Be Alive

Despite the best efforts of NASA, it’s impossible to put craft into space that are entirely clean. Now, a study shows that Curiosity was sent up to Mars with 377 strains of microbes aboard—and up to 11 percent may have made it to the surface of the red planet. Swabs taken prior to launch show…

How a Rare Medical Condition Could Help Extend All of Our Lives

A handful of girls seem to defy one of the biggest certainties in life: ageing. Virginia Hughes reports. Richard Walker has been trying to conquer ageing since he was a 26-year-old free-loving hippie. It was the 1960s, an era marked by youth: Vietnam War protests, psychedelic drugs, sexual revolutions. The young Walker relished the culture…

The Cancer Gene That Lurks Inside All of Us

Inside every cell in every human body there’s a very special gene, called BRCA1, that regulates how fast cells can divide—and a simple mutation within it can be all that’s required for us to develop cancer. BRCA1—the short name for ‘breast cancer 1, early onset’—is essentially a tumor suppressor: when it functions correctly, it controls…

Every Neuron in a Brain Recorded in 3D on a Millisecond Timescale

To learn how the whole brain works, it doesn’t do to just record from one neuron—you want to know what every single neuron is doing every millisecond. Now scientists have invented a technique that can actually capture the 3D activity of an entire brain milliseconds at the time—possibly the most complete picture of brain activity…

What Kind Of Ecology Forms Multi-Colored Pus?

Gonna eat soon? I hope not, because we’re going to talk about pus. Although mostly it’s white, it can be yellow, red, green, and blue. The color depends on the kind of stuff that formed it. Let’s find out about the ecology of pus. The moment anyone hits puberty, it becomes apparent to them that…

Scientists Finally Understand Shark Skin, Thanks to 3D Printers

If you described a shark as a toothy torpedo covered in sandpaper, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark. It’s that rough sandpapery skin that gives sharks their highly efficient swimming abilities, and scientists finally understand why. A shark’s skin is covered in millions of microscopic denticles, rigid tooth-like scales that jut out from…

Scientists Discover How Octopuses Avoid Tying Themselves In Knots

There are many things that make the octopus a strange creature, but one of them is that each of its eight arms has an essentially infinite number of positions, and yet each arm operates independently. How does an octopus keep from tying itself in knots? A group of Israeli and American researchers think they’ve discovered…

5 Real Life Mouth Weapons More Terrifying Than Godzilla’s Atomic Breath

Godzilla is known for his atomic breath, a weaponized nuclear exhalation that forms deep inside the beast’s belly. There aren’t any animals who turn their mouths into radioactive heat rays, but there are lots who throw, spit, project, or heave things from their mouths. Here are five amazing real life mouth weapons. Spitballs Made of…

This Chemical Transforms Lab Animals Into Transparent Works Of Art

A group of grad students have invented a chemical formula called Visikol that makes animal tissue transparent. The technology has been available to research labs for over a year, but the researchers are now hoping to see it used to create works of art and as an educational tool. Above: Whole body anole. To that…

Vicious-Looking “Alien” Fish Defies Classification

Researchers have compared the mouth of Kryptoglanis shajii to the jaws of H.R. Giger’s xenomorphs, and with good reason: K. shajii is technically a catfish, but scientists say the bones of its face are so alien that they’ve “had a hard time fitting it into the family tree of catfishes.” Photo Credit: Mark L. Riccio,…

This Is the World’s Oldest Sperm

You’re looking at the world’s oldest sperm. At 17 million years old, it’s not quite as lively as it once was—but it still took scientists some serious investigation to identify it. The samples in which it resides were discovered at the Riversleigh World Heritage Fossil Site by a team including University of New South Wales…

Why Your Armpits Smell So Bad

Why do armpits smell so bad? Well, those millions of bacteria have to live somewhere. Sweat and Odor There are two universally-accepted types of sweat glands. Eccrine Glands The most abundant of the sweat glands, eccrine are found on most of the body andsecrete a sweat that is: “A sterile, dilute electrolyte solution that contains…

We May Have Solved the Mystery of the Dying Bees

For over a decade, a disease called colony collapse disorder has been destroying bee populations worldwide. Because bees pollinate many of our staple crops, their deaths threaten our food supplies. Now, new evidence is solidifying a case against the likely culprit in their deaths. Photo by Alex Wild Researchers have previously argued that colony collapse…

Has Humanity Carved the Earth into Many Islands?

In 1967, biologists Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson developed a new ecological theory: Island Biogeography. It wound up becoming crucial to the way we understand how animals adjust to living in a world that has been completely altered by humans. Islands are surrounded by water, and this water is typically pretty inhospitable to the animals…

Can That “Pins and Needles” Feeling Result in a Dead Hand?

Waking up in the morning is sometimes accompanied by the refreshing sensation of one’s hand being stabbed thousands of times by tiny needles. What exactly causes the “pins and needles” sensation? And is the sensation ever dangerous? Pins and Needles Our morning routines are occasionally enlivened by a little dance. A person curls up and…