Biology

Real-Life Dinosaurs Are Way Scarier Than The Movies

Jurassic Park nothing. The most terrifying dinosaurs are the ones that walk among us today, in real life. In light of recent events, we feel it necessary to remind the public that dinosaurs still exist and that, yes, feathers can be scary: Exhibit A: “The Zombie Tit” The Great Tit seems like a gentle enough…

How Do Our Bodies Know Left From Right?

Our bodies may be (nearly) symmetrical on the outside, but our insides are a different story. Your heart, your stomach and spleen are all on the left side of your body, your liver on the right. But in one in 20,000 people, the sidedness of the organs is reversed. https://gizmodo.com/thom-yorke-demonstrates-why-facial-symmetry-isnt-everyt-1580668426 Does organ symmetry have any…

Some Genius Designed A Hamster Wheel For Cats

It’s called One Fast Cat. At 48-inches across, the circular, cat-powered cat-treadmill is a gigantified version of the exercise wheels commonly associated with lab rodents. It’s designed to help your feline companion exercise indoors, when it isn’t busy bringing death and destruction to the outside world. https://gizmodo.com/as-many-as-30-of-cats-are-stone-cold-killers-5932939 https://gizmodo.com/domestic-cats-are-destroying-the-planet-5979891 Via One Fast Cat’s Kickstarter page, where…

The Detail In This Hummingbird Photograph Is Unreal

Scotland-based photographer Chris Morgan captured this remarkable macro shot of a hummingbird while visiting Bosque De Paz Nature Reserve in Costa Rica. In case you were wondering: Yes, that is Morgan’s reflection in the hummingbird’s eye. Images used by kind permission of Chris Morgan Morgan tells io9 the key to capturing this photograph was patience:…

“Venomous” vs “Poisonous,” Explained With Adorable Talking Animals

Science and nature cartoonist Rosemary Mosco’s latest webcomic explains the difference between venomous and poisonous in just half a dozen panels (fewer, if you count the intro and the kicker), which makes it as pithily informative as it is charming. Here’s a little more information for those interested. See more of Mosco’s work here and…

Animals Shaped the Evolution of Colorful Fruits

Fruits can get their colors from a lot of places. New research suggests that the color preferences of the animals that eat fruit are among the strongest influences on fruit color. It’s an assumption scientists have always made, but now they have some evidence to support it. It has long been thought that part of…

Why So Many Domesticated Mammals Have Floppy Ears

Take a look at several domesticated mammal species and you might spot a number of similarities between them, including those cute floppy ears. Domesticated mammals, including dogs, share a number of characteristic features. Klearchos Kapoutsis/Flickr, CC BY 2.0 The famous naturalist and evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin even observed in the first chapter of his On…

This Man Wants to Genetically Engineer Trees to Save the World

Carbon fiber is one of the strongest and most resilient materials on the market, used in everything from car frames to body armor. It’s also incredibly expensive to make. But one plant biologist says that in fifty years, we’ll be growing it on trees. https://jalopnik.com/the-koenigsegg-one-1-is-swedens-280-mph-carbon-fiber-h-1532088783 This may sound like a weird assertion, but consider that…

A Horde Of Mobula Rays Invades Baja

Mobula rays are perhaps best known for their bold attempts at flight*, but these animals can be every bit as stunning below the waves as above them, as this remarkable photograph reveals. They almost look like an alien invasion. https://gizmodo.com/david-tennant-narrates-a-herd-of-flying-devil-rays-5872124 “The rays were moving quite fast,” writes photographer Eduardo Lopez Negrete, who photographed the mob…

This Animal Is Almost Impossible to Kill

Hydras are tentacled, freshwater animals that vaguely resemble tiny sea anemones. They’re rather unremarkable except for one trait: if they’re torn into tiny pieces, they can reassemble themselves. At the Conversation blog, Rebecca Helm, who studies jellyfish and other sea life at Brown University, has instantly won my admiration by describing the Hydra as the…

Biologists Have Finally Realized That Animals Don’t Live in Flatland

Animals live their lives in three dimensions. By incorporating data from the third, vertical dimension – elevation, altitude, or depth – scientists can finally have a more accurate understanding of how animals move. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions was an 1884 parable written to satirize the hierarchies of Victorian culture, but it also provides…

Why Does Your Apple Turn Brown, and How Can You Stop It?

Cut an apple in half and you begin a race against time. Every second you waste is a second that your apple uses to turn into a flaccid brown mess. Why do apples try so hard to foil your quest for vitamins? Science has the answer. Photo by nayladen via Shutterstock The Browning Enzyme Certain…

Why Do We Have Blood Types, Anyway?

More than a century after their discovery, we still don’t really know what blood types are for. Do they really matter? When my parents informed me that my blood type was A+, I felt a strange sense of pride. If A+ was the top grade in school, then surely A+ was also the most excellent…

What Do You Find Out When You Put An Alligator On A Treadmill?

When you come across a paper on “alligator kinematics,” it’s time to pay attention. Somewhere, at some time, a scientist wanted to find out deep secrets of evolution and decided the best way to do it was putting an alligator on a treadmill. Crocodilians have two ways of getting around on land. There’s a sprawling…

Watch As A Black Bear And Her Two Cubs Are Released Into The Wild

This is simple, charming video, but there’s a lot of things worth noting here. First, there’s the emotional element: The three bears in the clip – a sow and her cubs – were captured after they were spotted rooting through household garbage. When animals become so habituated as to venture unafraid into cities and towns,…

These autonomous, floating robots are embarking on their first trip out along the Alaskan coast. They are headed out on a 5-month expedition to survey the melting glaciers, which researchers have long suspected are contributing to ocean acidification in the area.

6 Animals Shaped By Artificial Selection into Beautiful Monsters

Artificial selection, also known as selective breeding, is a nice way of saying that humans have guided the evolution of other animals until they become mutants. The stories of these six human-created mutants offer a fascinating perspective on how evolution works. The lowly pigeon. Flying Rat. Carrier of disease and dirt. They bob around our…

The Grisly Truth About Tiny Hamsters And What They Really Eat

As Jason Bittel explains in somewhat distressing detail over at Slate, the truth about hamsters and burritos is that hamsters, contrary to what viral videos would have you believe, do not eat little burritos, tiny cakes, or mini pizzas. They eat each other. Here’s the video in question, on the off chance you’ve been avoiding…

A Breakthrough in Our Understanding of How Intelligence Evolves

It’s hard to study intelligence in humans — our cultures are incredibly complex, and what counts as “smart” is defined as much by our societies as it is by our genes. So some researchers have turned to chimpanzees to understand what actually gives rise to intelligence in the brain. Photo by innotata.

Watch a Researcher Zip Line Over the Door to Hell For Science

The more biologists look, the stranger the places they find life. Whether it’s in the boiling mud ponds of Yellowstone or in radioactive seams miles beneath the surface of the Earth, microbes seem capable of surviving just about anywhere. That’s why one team is heading to the deep desert of Turkmenistan to see if life…