Biology

A Television Show About The World’s First Cafe For Wild Birds

Norway’s wildly popular Piip-Show will give you 24-hour tits. Also, finches, nuthatches, magpies — and even the occasional fluffy-eared squirrel. It’s the creation of a photographer and model-maker who built a miniature cafe in the woods, stocked it with seeds, and turned on the cameras. Here’s model-maker Lars Aurtande with the completed cafe. Photographer Magne…

The “Motor” That Allows a Fly to Flap Its Wings 50 Times a Second

What you’re looking at is a 3D visualization of a fly’s thorax in action. The 3D animation, which was put together using data pulled from a particle accelerator, offers a glimpse into the inner workings of one of nature’s most complex mechanisms. So why a particle accelerator? It allowed researchers from the Imperial College London,…

A Whale Has Crushed The Record For Length And Depth Of An Ocean Dive

Guess how long it stayed down. Go on, guess. 30 minutes? 60 minutes? 90 minutes? Nope. More. Keep guessing. Above: An adult male Cuvier’s beaked whale, with satellite tag attached to its dorsal fin. Photo Credit: Erin A. Falcone/Cascadia Research. Humans have been known to hold their breath underwater for over 20 minutes. That’s a…

“Doggy Style” Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

Rear entry, right? I mean, like a dog does it? Well, yes, there’s that, but human rear-entry sex is – fortunately, mercifully, blessedly – different from dog rear-entry sex. Photo Credit: Big Max Power (BMP)/CC BY 2.0. Over at Slate, Jason Bittel has a great SFW piece about the ins and outs of dog coitus,…

Why 18th Century Biologists Made Copulating Frogs Wear Tiny Pants

The image of a copulating frog dressed in tight-fitting pants sounds quite silly, but it was done in the name of serious research. In fact, more than one biologist dressed up their frogs to solve the mysteries of fertilization. During the 18th century, there was some question as to how fertilization worked and whether semen…

Watch This Scary Amazing Talk About How Parasites Control the World

Last week, science journalist Ed Yong gave a very uncharacteristic TED talk. It wasn’t designed to make you feel good — in fact, it was actually a bit sarcastic, full of crawly descriptions of how parasites control behavior. But it blew the audience away. Just watch it. And when you’re done, read Yong’s blog, Not…

This Amazing Flexible Heart Cover Could Replace Pacemakers For Good

This amazing 3D piece of silicone dotted with electronics looks like something out of the future—because it is. In fact, this potential pacemaker replacement fits over the human heart and is capable of monitoring and, soon, responding to, its vital signs. Developed by researchers from the University of Alberta and the University of Illinois, the…

How Malaria Defeats Our Drugs

In the war against malaria, one small corner of the globe has repeatedly turned the tide, rendering our best weapons moot and medicine on the brink of defeat. Ed Yong reports. The meandering Moei river marks the natural boundary between Thailand and Myanmar. Its muddy waters are at their fullest, but François Nosten still crosses…

How Testosterone Makes You Hairy

Male or female, most of us have body hair—some far, far more than others. This video explains how testosterone fuels the growth of hair all over your body. Whether you want more of it or less of it—and wherever that may be—the key driver in hair production is the male sex hormone. This video explains…

What Happens When Scientists Ask Whether Milk Makes Mucus

Occasionally, when you are idly clicking around the web, you strike gold. Sometimes it’s a kitten video. Sometimes it’s a study about whether or not milk fills you with mucus. I love everything about this study. Supposedly it is meant to see how dairy products affect the production of mucus, but actually it is one…

MIT’s Living E. Coli Materials Could Provide Self-Aware Surfaces

Researchers at MIT have been busy creating a new type of biolfilms—sheets of living E. Coli cells combined with materials such as gold nanoparticles and quantum dots—that could provide large, self-aware surfaces. The new materials are grown using E. Coli bacteria as a substrate. E. Coli naturally forms itself in thin sheets, known as biofilm,…

Molten Lava Fossilized This Plant Down to Its Single Cells

When this Jurassic plant was smothered in molten lava one hundred and eighty million years ago, it was almost instantly fossilised—in incredible cellular detail. In fact, the fern—seen here in cross section through the stem—was preserved right down to the level of chromosomes, which can be seen frozen in the process of cell division. The…

Animals Could Help Reveal Why Humans Fall For Illusions

Visual illusions, such as the rabbit-duck (shown above) and café wall (shown below) are fascinating because they remind us of the discrepancy between perception and reality. But our knowledge of such illusions has been largely limited to studying humans. That is now changing. There is mounting evidence that other animals can fall prey to the…

A South American sea nettle floats ethereally in this captivating image by photographer Randy Wilder. It is one of the many species featured in the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s ongoing “Jellies Experience” exhibit. “We grew [the sea nettles] behind the scenes from tiny ephyrae (babies),” writes the aquarium on its tumblr, “and are the first aquarium…

What Happens When A Walrus Falls Asleep On A Surfacing Submarine?

Adorableness, that’s what. Turns out it’s a Russian sub, too; paint the hull yellow and you’ve got a visual pastiche of at least three Beatles hits. https://observationdeck.kinja.com/blockquote-lang-en-p-such-sleepy-rt-a-href-https-1549207124

This Great Horned Owl Is Either Really Stoned Or Defending Its Young

(Yeah, it’s the latter.) “She was ‘staring me down’ because she had eggs to protect,” said Dennis Demcheck, the USGS employee who snapped the photo of a female Great Horned Owl nesting in a Live Oak tree in southwest Louisiana. Via The U.S. Department of the Interior: @USGS was in the area to study the…

Now Police Can Reconstruct Your Face From DNA Evidence

Criminals who inadvertently leave traces of their DNA at the crime scene now have something more to worry about. By isolating 24 genetic variants, researchers have developed a computer program that can construct surprisingly accurate 3D models of facial features. Forensic science is progressing quickly these days owing to a number of breakthroughs. Investigators can…

Lemming Suicide Is a Myth That Was Perpetuated by Disney

We’ve all heard that lemmings jump into the sea every year, drowning themselves because they are just following the herd. Except they don’t. That’s actually a myth invented for a Disney wildlife documentary, and it has blinded us to the truth about the weird lives of lemmings for decades. Top image by kgleditsch Lemmings are…

Now I Want to Nuzzle A Baby Penguin

The Oregon Zoo is home to some Humboldt penguin chicks. The baby birds need routine check-ups from the zoo vets, which means adorable videos for everyone. [Oregon Zoo]

It’s possible that cat domestication has been around a lot longer than we thought. A newly discovered burial site suggests that Ancient Egyptians were burying – and, archaeologists suspect, domesticating – cats as early as 3800 B.C. That’s 2,000 years before the earliest known evidence of cat domestication in Egypt.