As much as we like to think of ourselves as superior, humans are animals. We descended from a common ancestor of humans, shared with what became chimpanzees and bonobos between 6 and 8 million years ago. Though we’ve evolved since then, we’re still 98.8 percent the same as chimpanzees and bonobos. Humans and monkeys are so much alike that documenting our similarities is much easier than listing our few differences.   Shared Use of Tools  According to Stephanie Poindexter, a primatologi ...read more

La Niña typically casts a bit of a chill over the globe, and that certainly has been the case during its reign over the past three years. Yet despite the climate phenomenon's continuing influence, last month turned out to be one of the warmest Januarys ever recorded globally. Moreover, even though La Niña exerted its maximum cooling effect in 2022, that year still entered the record books as being warmer than 2021. The reason, of course, was human-caused climate change. Now, La Niña is fadin ...read more

Without the aid of modern anesthesia or, for that matter, modern disinfection, a Bronze Age practitioner of some kind wielded a tool with a sharp, beveled edge and began a grisly business. In about 1500 B.C., the primitive surgeon cut away a polygon of scalp just above the left eye and peeled it off, leaving scratches in the bone below. Then began the painstaking process of slicing into the “living bone,” according to a new archaeological study, leaving remarkably clean grooves and carving ...read more

The speculations surrounding the death of Dr. Charles R. Drew are steeped in rumor. Drew, a pioneer in blood banking and blood and plasma storage, may have died after being refused a blood transfusion.  In 1950, Drew was brought to a segregated hospital in North Carolina after falling asleep at the wheel while driving to a medical conference with other physicians. But surgeons at the hospital recognized the famed scientist and tried to save his life, making the rumors about his death false. ...read more

Einstein’s special theory of relativity governs our understanding of both the flow of time and the speed at which objects can move. In special relativity, the speed of light is the ultimate speed limit to the universe. Nothing can travel faster than it. Every single moving object in the universe is constrained by that fundamental limit. Speed and Mass This isn’t something like the speed of sound. Early scientists wondered if we could ever go faster than that speed, not because of some fundam ...read more

From jewelry to tattoos, the picture of a snake that bites its tail is engrained in many of our minds. But experts argue this is just symbolism we've inherited from ancient mythology and not actually a concern of herpetologists and snake scientists alike — with a couple of exceptions.  Rooted in Myth: Ouroboros and Hoop Snakes The visualization of a snake biting its own tail is deeply rooted in myth. In ancient mythology, a tail-eating snake is called an ouroboros, from the Greek word that ...read more

Drinking alcohol grew into a socially acceptable activity in multiple societies, starting in the Neolithic period. From the earliest traces of brewing, which happened about 10,000 years ago, to former trade negotiations and family celebrations – the use of alcohol intertwined with people’s everyday life. In the U.S., data from the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) shows that over 85 percent of adults aged 18 and older admitted to drinking alcohol at some point in their lif ...read more

“Snakes,” swashbuckling archeologist Indiana Jones famously groans in Raiders of the Lost Ark. “Why’d it have to be snakes?” If, like Indy, the mere thought of a serpent makes you shiver, you’re not alone — a fear of snakes is among the most common phobias, even for people who have never seen one in person. In fact, humans may have evolved to be born with an innate fear of snakes and spiders, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2017.  But even if yo ...read more

When a male humpback whale sings, it hangs its 40-foot-long, 40-ton body upside down in the water and emits some of the most distinctive sounds in the world. According to a 2018 study that analyzed the songs of Australian humpbacks, the whales share an ever-evolving language, like a local dialect, composed of “phrases” joined together to form “themes” that are then arranged to make songs. The squeaks and moans grow more complex as humpbacks add their own embellishments, akin to a folk si ...read more

Every four months, pathologist Aaron LeBeau scoops into a net one of the five nurse sharks he keeps in his University of Wisconsin lab. Then he carefully administers a shot to the animal, much like a pediatrician giving a kid a vaccine. The shot will immunize the shark against a human cancer, perhaps, or an infectious disease, such as Covid-19. A couple of weeks later, after the animal’s immune system has had time to react, LeBeau collects a small vial of shark blood. Halfway across the countr ...read more