If breaking a mirror actually brought bad luck, surely the government would have public service announcements regarding reflecting-glass safety. And if tossing salt over the left shoulder after spilling a shaker was truly effective, schools would host regular drills.Superstitions don’t make sense. Yet, many logical people wince if they break a mirror. They avoid the number 13 or hold their breath when passing cemeteries.Social scientists are learning more about the psychology behind superstiti ...read more
We’ve known for some time now that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, also known as archaic humans, interbred before Neanderthals went extinct around 40,000 years ago. In fact, in some ways, Neanderthals never went extinct because modern humans are still made up of around 3 percent Neanderthal DNA.But many questions still linger around where these two groups got together and what their interbreeding might have looked like.Previous research has highlighted a key migration point for H. sapiens after ...read more
Sometimes, resemblances between parent and child or siblings can be uncanny. Other times, such resemblances can pop up between aunt and niece or grandfather and grandchild. And still, other times, resemblances don’t exist at all.One child may look like one parent, and their sibling may look like the other parent. Sometimes, certain facial traits seem to jump from one generation to the next repeatedly.All of these outcomes lead us to wonder what impacts facial features. What part of our DNA is ...read more
Humans derive their sense of taste from tastebuds, which allow us to identify bitter, salty, sour, and sweet. In 1990, umami was identified as the fifth taste. Many animals also get their sense of taste through tastebuds, although there are other methods in the animal kingdom for identifying taste. Let’s take a look. What Animals Have the Best and Worst Sense of Taste?(Credit: MEDIAIMAG/Shutterstock)The animal with the best sense of taste is the catfish. Possessing over 100,000 (and in some c ...read more
Many fish owners have tapped on their aquarium and hoped little Bubbles was merely taking a nap inside the tiny castle.It can be difficult to determine whether a fish is sleeping, and even scientists have struggled to understand the sleep process of fish in the past.In recent years, technology has made it possible for researchers to scan fish brains and learn how they snooze.Do Fish Sleep?“Fish sleep, but not the same as humans or mammals,” says Jared Guthridge, the aquarium curator at the A ...read more
