Koko playing with a kitten. (Credit: kokoflix/Youtube) Koko, a gorilla who was instrumental in expanding our knowledge of the inner lives and abilities of primates, has died at the age of 46. The western lowland gorilla was born at the San Francisco Zoo in 1971 on the Fourth of July — her given name was Hanabi-ko, Japanese for “fireworks child� — and was trained in sign language from a young age. Koko proved ...read more
I read once that if you want to keep a giraffe in captivity you have to capture it when it is young because an adult giraffe will fight to the death to be free. Giraffes congregating in Kenya are caught on camera as part of Wildwatch Kenya’s citizen science project. Photo by Twiga Walinzi The story was in the book “Zarafa� by Michael Allin, and while I don’t think the statement is scientifically correct, I have alway ...read more
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This Bogong moth is ready for its close-up. (Credit: Ajay Narendra) What if you had to find your way through hundreds of miles of unknown territory with only your eyes and a simple compass to guide you? That’s what the Australian Bogong moth does in its annual migration, flying over 600 miles (roughly 30 million times its body length) to seek a haven from summer heat in the cool caves of the Australian Alps. An international team of researchers announced in the journal Curre ...read more
(Credit: s_bukley/Shutterstock) In a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode from 2007, Larry David and his wife Cheryl and their friends attend a ceremony to celebrate his public donation to the National Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental advocacy group. Little does he know that the actor Ted Danson, his arch-frenemy, also donated money, but anonymously. “Now it looks like I just did mine for the credit as opposed to Mr. Wonderful Anonymous,â€&# ...read more
Daggers like Ötzi’s may have had symbolic significance during the Copper Age. (Credit: South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology) Though he died 5300 years ago in the Alps near the Austrian-Italian border, the prehistoric man known as Ötzi the Iceman has had a remarkable afterlife in the sciences. His mummified body chiseled out of ice in 1991 has undergone extensive examination, revealing details about his life and times. The work has offered a glimpse i ...read more
(Credit: Stefan Holm/Shutterstock) Even with a wetsuit, a cold water dive can be a bone-chilling experience. In Arctic waters, divers typically last only an hour, and even that short time can lead to numb, painful extremities. But, by improving on a design already used in nature, researchers say that they’ve turned regular wetsuits into what they call “artificial blubber,� greatly increasing their performance with just a simple treatmen ...read more
Here’s a big Nope-asaurus for ya: Reconstructions of most dinosaurs with their tongues out and wriggling like this guy’s are wrong, according to a new study. (Credit: Spencer Wright) When it comes to fleshing out dinosaurs, so to speak, based on their nearest living relatives, paleontologists can look to birds or the crocodilians. But a new study says depicting most dinosaur tongues like those of birds with particularly mobile mouthpieces, well, thatâ ...read more
The 2018 Geology World Cup continues! Remember, vote for the other groups so far: Group A, Group B, Group C, Group D. Group E Brazil The mouth of the Amazon River, seen from space in 1990. NASA. Let’s not beat around the bush, Brazil has the Amazon. One of the most remarkable river systems on the planet, it dominates the central portion of the country and flushes an amazing amount of sediment from the base of the Andes to the west out into the Atlantic to the east. But that&a ...read more
Investigators working a crime scene have a potential new tool: a field technique that could quickly determine the age of the person who left behind a bloodstain, whether victim or suspect. (Credit: FBI) There’s a significant gap between the information that real-world forensics teams can glean from a crime scene and what turns up in glamorized tv shows such as “CSI.� Today, however, that gap gets a little smaller: Researchers reveal it& ...read more
