A while ago we shared the story of F.D.C. Willard, an ordinary housecat who through a confluence of mistakes and errors, ended up being listed as the co-author of a widely cited science paper on low temperature physics. Today we’re telling a similar story about an equally impressive Tabby called Larry who is, believe it or not, an official employee […]
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Over two decades before Buzz and Neil put their feet on the Moon, humans were already preparing for that day by sending other living organisms to space. In 1947, the United States blasted fruit flies into space in a captured Nazi V-2 rocket. Alongside packets of rye and cotton seeds, the original intention of the flies’ mission was to determine […]
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Today I found out that dung beetles use the Milky Way to navigate. Dung beetles have long surprised scientists with their remarkable navigation abilities, despite the relatively small sizes of their brains. Scientists have also known that after dung beetles collect the dung, they do a little dance on top of it before moving it in a straight line to […]
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Medical science has advanced an astounding amount in the last 50 years or so and we can do things today that a half a century ago even in that era’s science fiction would have been considered science fiction. By the same token though, there were things done in the 1950s and 1960s that people today are still skeptical actually happened, […]
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Kiaan D. asks: Why do you say “sic him” to dogs when you want them to attack someone? People have been telling dogs to “sic ’em,” with the intent to have the dog attack individual(s), since at least the nineteenth century. While this may seem odd given common modern definitions for “sick” or the variant “sic,” at the time this […]
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Gideon S. asks: Why is a final performance called a swansong? When someone performs for the last time, we often refer to it as a “swan song” which seems odd given that swans aren’t particularly known for their stage presence… So where exactly did this phrase come from? This expression is generally thought to have its genesis in the over […]
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Laura asks: Is it true that lobsters can’t die of old age? You’ll often hear it claimed that lobsters are biologically immortal. So is it true? Not really, though this is partially an argument in semantics as you’ll soon see. (And while we’re on the topic of lobster myths, no: Lobsters do not mate for life. In fact, the male […]
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Of the 300-plus species in the frog family Dendrobatidae, only three members of the Phyllobates genus have been documented as having their poison used for hunting darts: Phyllobates aurotaenia (a.k.a. Kokoe), Phyllobates bicolor (a.k.a. Black-Legged) and Phyllobates terribilis (a.k.a. Golden). While in the wild these frogs harbor poison sufficient to kill a grown man, after they have been held captive […]
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Kyle D. asks: Why do oysters make pearls? Oysters make pearls as a defensive response to foreign objects. The process begins when some foreign body, such as sand, a parasite or some other organic material, manages to make its way inside the oyster’s shell and comes in contact with the mantle, a layer that protects the oyster’s internal organs, sometimes even […]
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There are 289 different species in the Octopoda order, each of them just as strange as the last. With eight (or so) wriggly appendages, a bulbous mantle, homicidal tendencies and high intelligence, even a mid-sized octopus can be intimidating. And the more you get to know about them, the more you realize just how extraordinary these cephalopods are. Their best […]
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Kay P. asks: Is spider blood really blue? When it comes to spiders, people generally know two facts about them- that you swallow around eight of them per year and that their blood is bright blue. Fortunately, the former is absolutely not true at all, the latter, on the other hand, is mostly correct. While it’s certainly true that spiders […]
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In the world of physics the name F.D.C. Willard is simultaneously treated with both reverence and derision. On one hand, he co-authored an often cited paper on low temperature physics at age 7 and was the sole author of another entire paper on the subject in French just a few years later at age 12. On the other hand, he […]
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In 1936, the crew of the British gunboat HMS Gnat lacked a mascot, and the captain and crew decided to remedy that situation before starting patrols on the Yangtze River. Their sister gunboats, the Bee, Cicada, and Cricket already had mascots of their own. So Lieutenant Commander J. Waldergrave and Chief Petty Officer Charles Jefferey purchased an English Pointer puppy […]
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For most people, saying “a monkey could do my job” is a roundabout way of saying that their current position of employment isn’t exactly that mentally taxing. For James Wide though, it was more of a statement of fact because for 9 years in the late 19th century, his job of railroad signalman at Uitenhage station in South Africa was literally done […]
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Karl G. asks: Why do we call an elephant’s nose a trunk? It’s not clear who first tagged the elephant’s snout with the name “trunk,” but it seems to have happened sometime in the late 16th century. The first documented instance appears in the 1589 work by Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations: “The Elephant . . . With water fils his […]
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At only a few inches long and with no distinguishing external physical features to speak of, Scutisorex somereni, better known as the Hero or Armoured Shrew, is seemingly an unremarkable creature. That is, until you accidentally step on one. You see, the Hero shrew can comfortably survive being stood on by a typical adult human without any injury. The secret to […]
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It is surely the stuff of science fiction: An extraordinary being arrives on Earth that can withstand a tortuous array of conditions: boiling, freezing, tremendous atmospheric pressure, near total dehydration, and exposure to massive amounts of ionizing radiation. While many joke that “cockroaches would be the only thing to survive an extreme global nuclear war”, in fact, cockroaches would not. […]
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Making zombies of ants, Swiss cheese of snails and Sherpas of sheep and cows, the lancet liver fluke proves that you don’t need to be big to be powerful. Growing up to 10 mm by 2.5 mm (0.5 x 0.1 inches), Dicrocoelium dendriticum is a parasitic flatworm (also known as a trematode) that begins life as eggs living in the […]
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