New Research

African elephants in Kruger National Park

Elephants Never Forget When You Slaughter Their Family

Culling an elephant pack can destroy the survivors' social skills

Snakes’ Vision Sharpens When They’re Under Stress

This likely allows them to optimize their vision for situations that require the most attention to detail, and in the meantime save that visual energy

Your Dog’s Trying to Tell You Something by the Way He Wags His Tail

The tail wag is a complicated form of communication—left and right matter

How Much of a Subway Map Can One Person’s Brain Process?

A group at MIT has figured out how to build a better subway map, by replicating how the brain processes a map

Oysters Don’t Have Ears But Still Use Sound to Choose Their Homes

Oyster larvae find their homes by responding to the unique sounds of a reef

Stop That Foot Massage! Feet Are Not an Erogenous Zone

If you've been begrudgingly giving foot massages, you might want to check with your partner to see if they actually like them

Damming and dredging a California river for gold

The Gold Rush Left Behind Mercury That’s Still Contaminating California

Leftover mercury will continue to flush through the environment, eventually making its way into the San Francisco bay, for the next 10,000 years

Reindeer Eyes Change Color to Match the Season

Reindeers' wintery blue eyes are about 1,000 times more sensitive to light than their summery gold ones

Our Brains Evolved to Recoil at the Sight of Snakes

Around 60 million years ago, our primate ancestors figured out that the sight of a snake meant trouble

A Family Tree of You And Your 13 Million Closest Relatives

A big data project to connect all the people

These Scientists Are Using Bees to Spread Pesticides

Since they're already going to the flowers anyway, why not give them some pesticides to carry?

A fake mastodon fights for survival in a display at the La Brea tar pits.

Animals Trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits Would Take Months to Sink

New research shows that animals trapped in the tar would linger for months on end

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The Arctic Hasn’t Been This Hot for 44,000 Years

The average temperature in the Arctic, says new research, is hotter than at any time in the past 44,000 years, and maybe more

In the Wake of the Boston Marathon Bombing, Twitter Was Full of Lies

Of the 8 million tweets sent in the days following the Boston bombing, just 20% were accurate pieces of factual information

What Percent of the Population is Gay? More Than You Think

There may never be a time when people will accurately answer surveys, but at least survey givers are getting better at tricking us into being honest

There are 37.2 Trillion Cells in Your Body

You know that your body is made of cells - but just how many? Turns out that question isn't all that easy to answer

The First Venomous Crustacean We’ve Ever Found Liquefies Its Prey

Whether or not the remipede venom would have any effect on a curious diver poking at the tiny creature, however, remains unknown

Fire Is a Quickly Growing Threat to the Amazon Rainforest

If the Amazon continues to dry at just half the pace as it has over the past 30 years, yearly drought will become the new norm by the end of this century

Female Killer Whales Go Through Menopause

This life history pattern likely evolved as a way for the female whales to ensure their genetic mark in the world does indeed get passed on

Female Breast Tissue Ages Three Years Faster Than the Rest of the Body

Not all your tissue ages at the same rate, according to new research on systems to identify and age human cells

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