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New Research

That's a lot of hot dogs!

How Many Hot Dogs Can a Person Eat in Ten Minutes?

83 hot dogs might be the human limit—but only after specific training to stretch the stomach

The violin-shaped artifacts lack signs of wear associated with use as tools or weapons.

Cool Finds

Do These 10,000-Year-Old Flint Artifacts Depict Human Figures?

Archaeologists say the objects’ grooves evoke the hips and the narrowing of the neck around the shoulders

An array of 24 speakers can quiet city noise by as much as closing the window

New Research

Window-Mounted Device Could Keep Out City Noise

A microphone outside the window measures the incoming noise so that an array of two dozen speakers can cancel it out

A Rufous Hummingbird sips on the nectar from an Orange Justicia plant in California

New Research

Hummingbirds Learn to Count to Find Their Favorite Flowers

Researchers found that wild rufous hummingbirds could remember which flower in a sequence held nectar

“For the elite, the nobility, everything did change radically—the administration of the country, legal frameworks, the organization of the landscape,” says study co-author Richard Madgwick. “But at a lower level, people adapted to the new normal rapidly.”

New Research

How Did the Norman Conquest Change English Cuisine?

After the invasion of 1066, pork and possibly chicken spiked in popularity

New research suggests this legless amphibian called a caecilian may be the first known amphibian to possess a venomous bite.

This Worm-Like Amphibian May Pack a Venomous Bite

A new study suggests that legless burrowers called caecilians may be the first known amphibian to have venom glands in their mouths

Canada's white-throated sparrows have remixed their classic song by trading a series of triplets for doublets at the end.

New Research

Canada’s White-Throated Sparrows Are Changing Their Tune

The new song is catching on and spreading across the country at an unprecedented speed

A worker disinfects a hog pen in Suining in southwest China's Sichuan province in February 2020.

New Swine Flu Strain With Pandemic Potential Isn’t Cause for Alarm

The findings are a reminder not to forget about seasonal viruses, but also shows that virus surveillance systems work

The Maya city of Tikal thrived for hundreds of years but was abandoned in the ninth century A.D.

New Research

Why Did the Maya Abandon the Ancient City of Tikal?

New research suggests mercury and toxic algae poisoned the settlement’s reservoirs

Without wiggling, a paradise tree snake couldn't glide nearly as far.

New Research

Flying Snakes Need to Wriggle Through the Air to Glide

The paradise tree snake flattens its body and swerves in three dimensions to glide through the canopy

Ducks might be responsible for ferrying fish eggs to new bodies of water, according to new research.

New Research

Fish Eggs Can Survive a Journey Through Both Ends of a Duck

A new study finds some eggs remain viable even after being eaten and pooped out by waterfowl

A new computer model gives insight into how Europa's ocean formed, and how life could use its chemical energy to survive.

New Research

Heat in Jupiter’s Moon Europa Might Have Made Its Oceans Habitable

An upcoming NASA mission will get a closer look at the ocean moon

A new study presents evidence that a massive eruption in Alaska may have influenced the rise of the Roman Empire.

New Research

How an Alaskan Volcano Is Linked to the Decline of the Roman Republic

New research suggests Mount Okmok’s eruption in 43 B.C. sparked extreme weather halfway across the world

In Australia, pyrocumulonimbus clouds sent somewhere between 300,000 and 900,000 metric tons of smoke into the stratosphere.

New Research

Australia’s Fires Sent Smoke 19 Miles High

The unprecedented plumes of were carried aloft by smoke-filled thunderclouds and exhibited unusual wind patterns

In 2016, fluid like water or liquid carbon dioxide broke into the fault system. Over four years, it filled the cracks and set of a swarm of tremors.

New Research

Earthquake Swarm Reveals Complex Structure of a California Fault Line

In 2016, fluid broke into the cracks of a fault system, setting off a four-year-long swarm of mini earthquakes

This cheese is real, but by stimulating certain parts of a mouse's brain, researchers were able to trick the critter into smelling scents that were not present.

New Research

Experiment Tricks Mice Into Smelling Things That Aren’t There

Researchers stimulated certain of the mouse’s brain cells in a particular order to produce ‘synthetic smells’

Researchers tested their pollen-carrying bubbles on lily, azalea and campanula flowers (shown).

New Research

Soap Bubbles Can Pollinate Flowers, but Can They Replace Bees?

New research shows that carefully calibrated soap bubbles cause pear trees to bear fruit

A fossilized Mussaurus egg that was the subject of one of two new studies documenting soft-shelled eggs at the time of the dinosaurs. Mussaurus was a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur that grew to 20 feet in length and lived in modern-day Argentina between 227 and 208.5 million years ago.

New Research

First Soft-Shelled Dinosaur Egg Fossils Found

Twin discoveries reveal that some ancient reptiles laid soft-shelled eggs, challenging long-held assumptions in paleontology

One of the interior passages of the 5,000-year-old Irish megalithic tomb of Newgrange. In this photo, sunlight enters the monument's main chamber at dawn on the winter solstice.

DNA Extracted From Ancient ‘Irish Pharaoh’ May Reveal Royal Incest

New analysis of elite man buried in Stone Age monument suggests he was the product of either a brother-sister or parent-child pairing

A male Broad-tailed Hummingbird photographed at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, where researchers conducted field experiments on avian color vision.

New Research

Compared With Hummingbirds, People Are Rather Colorblind

Experiments reveal the tiny birds can see “non-spectral” colors that blend ultraviolet light with colors humans can see to create distinct hues we can’t

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