Biology

The charming case of a woman yanking a 4-foot tapeworm out of her throat

If that “squid inseminating a woman’s face” incident didn’t single-handedly fulfill your annual quota of heebies and jeebies, here’s another medical oddity to sear your psyche. In 2002, two doctors from the Lady Hardinge Medical College in New Delhi, India wrote to the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia describing the case of a 20-year-old patient who…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Fungal infection causes tarantula to grow antlers

This image may look like something dreamed up for a surreal horror movie, but it’s a real horror for the tarantula in question. This unfortunate arachnid is infected with Cordyceps, a parasitic fungus that replaces its host’s tissue with its own. Cordyceps fungi invades its hosts (mainly arthropods), and its mycelium eventually replaces the host’s…

io9 Lauren Davis

The fine line between replicating cells and cancer, explained

Ever hear someone say that every human has cancer at a given moment in time? Although clinically undetected cancers are common, the natural defenses of your body often eliminate abnormal cells before a cancerous disease state occurs. A number of genetic failures are necessary before unbridled replication begins. We will address the genetic fail-safes forestalling…

io9 Keith Veronese

Bat-bridges don’t stop bat-roadkill

Bats have a habit of flying close to the ground while out foraging in order to protect themselves from airborne predators. So what happens when a new road gets put through their normal hunting grounds? Unfortunately, a meeting between a low-flying bat and a car usually goes poorly for one of them. Currently, the usual…

io9 Tim Barribeau

This is what a honeybee looks like as it loses its stinger

For those who have always wondered exactly why honeybees die after stinging an animal, this photograph spells it out more keenly than any verbal description could, capturing a doomed bee as it zips away from its stinger, its abdominal tissue spilling out behind it. Kathy Keatley Garvey, a communications specialist at the UC Davis Department…

io9 Lauren Davis

Study proves bears can “count” as well as primates

Most people readily accept that bears are smart animals. In fact, most wildlife biologists regard bears as some of the most intelligent land mammals on Earth; and yet, there’s very little formal research to support what everyone pretty much accepts as true. Now, in the first study of its kind, researchers Jennifer Vonk and Michael…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Plant comes up with a new chemical weapon in the war against mice

Plants have it rough. In order to spread their seeds, they have to cater to the animals that eat them, and that means watching their offspring get eaten in the hopes that they’ll be pooped out somewhere better. But when mice start thwarting the best-laid plans of vegetation, it’s up to the plants to strike…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

A life lived in fear leads to a less-productive death

You remember the nutrient cycle from high school? How organic matter breaks down and spreads throughout the ecosphere? Now it looks like the role of animals in this cycle may be larger than previously thought, and far more direct. When the herbivorous grasshopper Melanoplus femurrubrum is under the stress of being in the presence of…

io9 Tim Barribeau

10 Things Aliens Will Harvest From Humans

The biggest question about aliens isn’t whether they’ll overwhelm us with their superior technology, and subdue the human population. The biggest question is: Why? What could they possibly want from us that they can’t get anywhere else? Most of the resources on Earth are available in space, where they’re easier to get at, without any…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

Pro baseball players prove going without sleep is worse than you thought

Two new studies have shown a link between how tired baseball and football players feel, and how well their careers go. Both studies are being presented at the SLEEP 2012 conference by W. Christopher Winter, MD. Top image: SoxyLady/Flickr. The first of the studies involved tracking college football players who’d been drafted into the NFL.…

io9 Tim Barribeau

Older dads could mean longer-lived kids

We’re all used to hearing that the later in life you have kids, the more chance of complications there are. Research has shown that older mothers have children with a higher risk of Down Syndrome. And there’s been some research suggesting that older fathers place their kids at higher risk of mental illness. But could…

io9 Tim Barribeau

Check out every single kind of microbe in your body online — all 5 million of them

The initial phase of the Human Microbiome Project has come to an end — and with it, the mapping of the full community of microbes that inhabit all the various nooks and crannies of the healthy human body. The results of the exhaustive study will be published as a collection in PLoS, making their findings…

io9 George Dvorsky

Cooked squid inseminates woman’s “tongue, cheek and gums”

Here’s a story that could put you off calamari for a while. According to a scientific paper from the Journal of Parasitology, a 63-year-old Korean woman “experienced severe pain in her oral cavity immediately after eating a portion of parboiled squid along with its internal organs.” She spat out the food in her mouth, but…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Testing female athletes to make sure they’re feminine enough is not cool, scientists say

South African sprinter Caster Semenya created a stir a few years back on account of her “intersexed” characteristics — prompting some to demand that sporting authorities screen for these sorts of biological anomalies in the name of fairness. But a Stanford University School of Medicine bioethicist and her colleagues now say that it’s unacceptable to…

io9 George Dvorsky

Could aliens have created life on Earth?

We know a lot about the history of life on Earth, but how it began is still one of our greatest scientific mysteries. One hypothesis is that life actually originated on another planet, and many scientists today take the idea quite seriously. Though it sounds like the plot from recent scifi movie Prometheus, it’s an…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Scientists cure ebola in monkeys — and humans could be next

Monkeys infected with the Ebola virus have been cured by a chemical cocktail administered 24 hours after the initial exposure. The breakthrough could eventually result in a similar human treatment for this disease, which kills up to 90% of those infected. According to the report in Nature, researchers based at the National Microbiology Laboratory in…

io9 George Dvorsky

What can the DNA of bonobos teach us about what it means to be human?

An international team of researchers has mapped the genome of the bonobo for the first time, revealing that this great ape shares as much DNA with humans as its more aggressive cousin, the chimpanzee. Identifying and understanding how all three genomes overlap, researchers say, could offer new insights into what makes each species look and…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Could a single pill make you fearless?

Researchers at Duke University and the National Institutes of Health have developed an experimental drug that calms the fears of anxious mice. They also believe that the exact same changes in brain chemistry could work on humans — a discovery that could lead to a “courage pill.” But would we want to live in a…

io9 George Dvorsky

These live stem cells were recovered from a 17-day-dead human corpse

Researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris have discovered that certain stem cells can stay alive in human corpses for at least 17 days after that person is declared dead. What were we saying the other day about the difficulty with defining death? The research, which is published in this week’s issue of Nature Communications,…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Your DNA Changes as You Age

While our bodies age, scientists believe that our DNA at least remains constant. New research, however, reveals that, even though its sequence remains constant, subtle chemical changes occur to our DNA as we age—and it could explain why the risk of developing disease increases as we get older. DNA is made up of four basic…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe

The charming case of a woman yanking a 4-foot tapeworm out of her throat

Fungal infection causes tarantula to grow antlers

The fine line between replicating cells and cancer, explained

Bat-bridges don’t stop bat-roadkill

This is what a honeybee looks like as it loses its stinger

Study proves bears can “count” as well as primates

Plant comes up with a new chemical weapon in the war against mice

A life lived in fear leads to a less-productive death

10 Things Aliens Will Harvest From Humans

Pro baseball players prove going without sleep is worse than you thought

Older dads could mean longer-lived kids

Check out every single kind of microbe in your body online — all 5 million of them

Cooked squid inseminates woman’s “tongue, cheek and gums”

Testing female athletes to make sure they’re feminine enough is not cool, scientists say

Could aliens have created life on Earth?

Scientists cure ebola in monkeys — and humans could be next

What can the DNA of bonobos teach us about what it means to be human?

Could a single pill make you fearless?

These live stem cells were recovered from a 17-day-dead human corpse

Your DNA Changes as You Age

SpaceX Starlink Satellite Malfunctions, Breaks Apart in Orbit

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Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

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