A pair of whooping cranes look for food at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. A new study shows that migrating birds could suffer as climate change shift the onset of spring. (Credit: critterbiz/shutterstock)
Thanks to climate change, spring now comes earlier. But how much sooner the season arrives varies across the U.S. That’s according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE that assessed the first appearance of leaves and flowers in nearly 500 U.S. Natio ...read more
The ochre hashtag drawing found in Blombos Cave. (Credit: Craig Foster)
The hashtag is far more ancient than we think.
In a South African cave, inscribed on a flake of rock, nine lines of red ochre inscribe a familiar crosshatched pattern. The find, dated to 73,000 years ago, is the oldest abstract drawing discovered to date, and it was made by ancient Homo sapiens in the area, say researchers writing Wednesday in Nature.
Blombos Cave, on the country’s southern coast about ...read more
Bonobos, like this female in the Democratic Republic of Congo, will share food with their social groups. However, unlike humans, they wont share tools and other objects. (Credit: Sergey Uryadnikov/shutterstock)
The chimp-like apes known as bonobos are legendarily generous when it comes to sex. New findings now reveal they also share food with others, but not toys or tools. This research underscores that sharing is not unique to humans, but the breadth and flexibility of this sharing may be.
Al ...read more
Aqua MODIS image of Hurricane Florence, seen on September 11, 2018. NASA.
Hurricanes are massive meteorological events and, as we’ve seen recently in Puerto Rico, enormous humanitarian disasters. Yet, on a geologic timescale, massive storms like hurricanes and typhoons are ephemeral moments that are surprisingly difficult to read in the rock record, even if they seem like such powerful forces when they occur. Right now, Hurricane Florence is bearing down on the Carolinas a ...read more
(Credit: Pressmaster/Shutterstock)
Body odor gets a bad rap, but a person’s fragrance doesn’t have to reek like teenage boys after sports practice. Some bodily smells are pleasant. And new research suggests they might appeal to more than our noses.
Straight men find the smell of women’s reproductive hormones attractive, scientists report today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The discovery suggests women’s body odor is a cue for fertility.
The Sce ...read more
Ancient changes in human biology and skeletal structure let our ancestors run longer distances, offering a survival advantage in hunting prey. (Credit: Maridav/shutterstock)
Humans aren’t as strong as lions, can’t run as fast as cheetahs and don’t see as well as owls. But there is one thing we are pretty good at: endurance running.
Between 2 and 3 million years ago, our African ancestors adapted to a climate period that caused forests to thin and arid savannahs to expand. Cha ...read more
Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids are shown in this artist’s concept as they orbit in harmony with the gas giant — one group ahead of Jupiter, and one group behind. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Much like the famed Trojan horse, Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids are hiding a secret.
According to a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the existence of a bound pair of “Trojan asteroids” trapped in a stable orbit around Jupiter suggests the early solar system wa ...read more
Our universe was born in the Big Bang. But confirmation of this incredible theory came as a surprise to its discoverers. (Credit: Astronomy/Roen Kelly)
Sometimes scientific discoveries are made in world-class laboratories, when brilliant scientists come together to prove a wonderful idea true with fresh experiments. And sometimes, the secrets of the universe are hidden under a pile of pigeon poop.
And so it happened that the first observation of the crackle of nascent energy left over from the ...read more
An artist’s illustration shows fast radio waves zooming their way toward Earth. Credit: Jingchuan Yu, Beijing Planetarium
Blazing across the sky for mere milliseconds, fast radio bursts (FRBs) are among the newest and most puzzling astronomical phenomenon. They come from extreme distances and appear without any known rhyme or reason, making them almost impossible to study in detail.
But luckily, artificial intelligence is helping researchers learn about this mysterious occurrence. By usi ...read more
