A dyeing poison frog showing off its bright colors. Photo by Bernard DUPONT
The conspicuous colors of poison frogs are presumed to be a warning. Indeed, vibrant patterns so often signal toxicity that biologists even have a special term for them: aposematic coloration. But, weird as it might sound, new research suggests that radiant skin patterns might help these frogs stay hidden, too.
Poison frogs are armed with some of the planet’s most potent toxins. T ...read more
Lava flows approaching Kapoho Bay in the lower East Rift Zone of Hawaii on June 3, 2018. USGS/HVO
The active eruption from Fissure 8 on Kīlauea has now produced a lava flow that is reaching the ocean at Kapoho Bay — across the middle of “Vacationland Hawaii” (see above), another development with many houses. The lava flow is forming a lava delta into Kapoho Bay, extending the land out into the ocean. The lava flow itself is almost 0.8 kilometers wide when it ...read more
The world’s attention has been on Hawaii, but an explosive eruption today in Guatemala has now become the deadliest of the year. At least 6 people died and 20 were injured in an eruption that generated multiple pyroclastic flows and heavy ash fall across the area near Fuego, the Central American country’s most active volcano. Three hundred people living near Fuego have been evacuated as a precaution for more pyroclastic flows. Emergency responders are trying to reach people injured b ...read more
As everyone knows, Roseanne Barr posted a racist tweet. She claimed that the sleeping medication Ambien affected her behavior, but her show got cancelled anyway.
Now, I think this scandal raises some surprisingly interesting philosophical questions about moral responsibility and the nature of self-control. What follows is a dialogue between two hypothetical speakers exploring some of these questions. To be clear, this is a post about philosophy, not about Roseanne. I don’t know or care if ...read more
A closely-related species of long-beaked echidna. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
We all know Schrödinger’s cat, right? It’s a neat thought experiment (and one of the best analogies for quantum physics) but the situation always felt a bit forced to me. When are you really going to find a cat in a box with a radioactive substance and a flask of poison?
So here’s a more realistic version of the quantum analogy, one, in fact, that’s currently playing out in natu ...read more
(Credit: pathdoc/Shutterstock)
Take a second and try to talk about a person without mentioning gender.
If English is your native tongue, odds are you failed. But if you had been born in Indonesia, you might have succeeded.
Lera Boroditsky, who studies language and cognition at the University of California, San Diego, recalled a conversation with a colleague from the Southeast Asian country. He was asking her about someone she knew back in the states, and gender didn’t pop up until questi ...read more
(Credit: Lizardflms/Shutterstock)
Walking and chewing gum, at various points in this nation’s history, has served as a benchmark to gauge one’s competence as a leader.
Democratic vice presidential-nominee John Edwards in 2004 assured Americans that a president must possess the ability to walk and chew gum. During that same campaign, Sen. Jim Bunning boasted to Kentuckians that he could indeed walk and chew gum. Last year, Rep. Paul Ryan promised citizens that Republicans in the Hou ...read more
A kind word or gesture from a friend can give you the warm fuzzies. But a warm, fuzzy friend can give a macaque a better chance of surviving the winter. After following dozens of macaques through snowy woods for months, scientists found that friendlier monkeys earned themselves more cuddle buddies on cold nights.
Earlier studies in macaques, baboons and even wild horses have shown that animals who are more social may live longer and have more offspring. In other w ...read more
