People stop their cars simply because a little light turns from green to red. They crowd onto buses, trains and planes with complete strangers, yet fights seldom break out. Large, strong men routinely walk right past smaller, weaker ones without demanding their valuables. People pay their taxes and donate to food banks and other charities.Most of us give little thought to these everyday examples of cooperation. But to biologists, they’re remarkable — most animals don’t behave that way.“E ...read more

Bronze Age humans, 3,000 years ago, got high on hallucinogenic plant alkaloids so powerful and dangerous that even psychedelic users of today avoid them, according to a new study. The humans may have had out-of-body experiences or thought they were growing fur or feathers as a result of consuming the anticholinergic substances atropine or scopolamine. Symptoms would have started more mildly with dilated pupils, dry skin and a racing heart. As the trip set in, the user would have experienced full ...read more

Vestigial structures are body parts that we've evolved to no longer need. The natural selection process dictates that we keep the traits that continue to serve a purpose while the others become functionless or degenerate. Here are five vestigial body parts.  1. AppendixIn humans, this organ dates back almost 80 million years and helped by our ancestors to digest tough plants and vegetables. Located in the lower right part of the intestine, the appendix is approximately 3.5 inches long and les ...read more

[embedded content]Male fiddler crabs attract mates by waving around comically oversized pincers, the same ones they use to threaten other potential suitors. Male elk leech calcium from their very bones to grow antlers that weigh as much as coffee tables. There are countless other examples of big horns and big swagger: The African Buffalo, the Striped Love Beetle, the Capra Ibex.Isn't there an easier way for sex relations to sort themselves out in the animal kingdom?Such horns and claws, accordin ...read more

This story appeared in the May 2020 issue and was published on the web on April 17, 2020. Subscribe to Discover magazine for more stories like this. The article has since been updated. Powerful Facts About Trees You Never Knew 1. I think that I shall never see an organism as vital as a tree. Without these woody, perennial members of the plant kingdom, we might still be squirming around the seafloor.2. About 400 million years ago, early trees transformed terrestrial environments by reducing atmo ...read more

Isabelle Lousada was in her early 30s when she collapsed at her Philadelphia wedding in 1995. A London architect, she had suffered a decade of mysterious symptoms: tingling fingers, swollen ankles, a belly distended by her enlarged liver. The doctors she first consulted suggested she had chronic fatigue syndrome or that she’d been partying and drinking too hard.But her new brother-in-law, a cardiologist, felt that something else must be going on. A fresh series of doctor’s visits led, finall ...read more

This article originally appeared in Nexus Media News.After a series of winter storms pummeled California this winter, thousands of trees across the state lost their grip on the earth and crashed down into power lines, homes and highways. Sacramento alone lost more than 1,000 trees in less than a week. Stressed by years of drought, pests and extreme weather, urban trees are in trouble.  The U.S. Forest Service estimates that cities are losing some 36 million trees every year, wiped out by ...read more

In 1991, two German tourists were hiking in the Ötztal Alps — a mountain range shared by Austria and Italy — when they stumbled upon the frozen remains of a dead man. The ice preserved the man so well that his body, clothes and tools never decomposed.Scientists dubbed him Ötzi the Iceman and began studying the naturally-preserved mummy. They’ve determined he lived more than 5,000 years ago, which makes Ötzi the Iceman the oldest mummy ever found.Researchers are still studying the moun ...read more

Poison frogs across Central and South America display some of the most stunning colors in the animal kingdom. Some species are cobalt or indigo; others are yellow, golden, strawberry pink, or bright stop-sign red and striped down the back.While these hues are splendid to marvel at, the color actually serves as a warning sign to potential predators: Eat me and I will poison you.The way that these creatures and other animals evolved to be just colorful enough to signal their toxic defense — but ...read more

On April 12, 1955, virologists announced that they’d developed a safe and potent vaccine against polio, the deadly, paralyzing disease that then tormented thousands of individuals in the U.S. Setting off a series of concentrated vaccination campaigns in the country and abroad, the announcement sowed the seeds for a polio-free future.Today, 68 years after the arrival of the vaccine, the disease teeters on the verge of disappearance. In the U.S., cases of wild, community-circulating polio were w ...read more