Faulty memory sometimes gets the best of us, like when we're scrambling to find a lost pair of keys or a phone. There's good reason to invest in recent research on the humble chickadee, which apparently has the mind of a steel trap. In fact, these birds can remember things so well that they could help us understand how a memory takes form. Researchers from Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute took a closer look at the brains of black-capped chickadees, an endeavor that has hatched an exc ...read more

Striped polecats (Ictonyx striatus), or the African zorilla, are small carnivores that look like North American skunks but aren't. They're more closely related to weasels and have smaller, slender bodies. There are plenty of fun facts about this creature, like what they actually use a stink gland for, and more. Let's take a closer look at the striped polecat.1. Striped Polecats Are the Skunk’s Doppelgänger (Credit: Karel Bock/Getty Images)If a striped polecat looked at a North American skunk ...read more

When you think about dirt, you’re probably picturing soil. There’s so much more going on under our feet than the rock dust, or “dirt,” that gets on your pants.When I began studying soil, I was amazed at how much of it is actually alive. Soil is teeming with life, and not just the earthworms that you see on rainy days.Keeping this vibrant world healthy is crucial for food, forests and flowers to grow and for the animals that live in the ground to thrive. Here’s a closer look at what’s ...read more

It resembles a mouse with big round ears and the tiniest little pouch to hold its young. But this isn’t your average rodent, in fact, it’s the world’s smallest marsupial. Yet, it should never be underestimated. The long-tailed planigale is an itty-bitty but fierce carnivorous mammal found in Australia and Papua New Guinea.Linette Umbrello is a biologist at the Western Australian Museum who has spent her career studying the planigale, a tiny creature that makes its home down under. The smal ...read more

Eclipse day is almost here! Come April 8, 2024, the next solar eclipse will capture the awe of millions of people in North America and across the globe. To prepare for this historical event, we invite you to join us on April 1, 2024, at 12:30 p.m. CST for a live Q&A session with our friends David Eicher, Editor-in-Chief of Astronomy Magazine, and Michael Bakich, Contributing Editor at Astronomy Magazine, as we dive into the wonders of the upcoming solar eclipse. Hop on the live stream here: ...read more

With their huge horns and their spike-spotted frills, triceratops weren’t the world’s friendliest-looking dinosaurs. But over a decade of digging at a fossil-laden bonebed in Wyoming has found a troop of five fossilized triceratops that lived and died together, supporting the long-standing suspicion that these dinosaurs were friendlier than they looked. The find serves as some of the strongest fossil evidence that these horned dinosaurs traveled in herds — a survival strategy potentially a ...read more

Social media is rife with recommendations to consume one supplement or the other. Promising to fill you with energy, enhance your memory, or more, these pills, tablets, drinks, and more can often stand on shaky scientific ground. Knowing which supplement is safe to take is essential.Vast amounts of supplements are consumed each year; one 2022 survey found that 75 percent of Americans take them, most on a regular basis. That means the industry rakes in billions each year. In the U.S., vitamin and ...read more

Though terrifying to people, spiders aren’t always treated with trepidation. Instead, for most of their predators, spiders are a safe snack — a tame and tasty treat — rather than a threat, forcing spiders to follow some pretty strange strategies for self-preservation.According to a new paper published in Historical Biology, some spiders take a particularly creative approach to protecting themselves from fearless predators, posing as much more threatening creatures: ants. The strategy is so ...read more

Mild cognitive impairment – an early stage of dementia – is widely underdiagnosed in people 65 and older. That is the key takeaway of two recent studies from our team.In the first study, we used Medicare data for about 40 million beneficiaries age 65 and older from 2015 to 2019 to estimate the prevalence of mild cognitive impairment in that population and to identify what proportion of them had actually been diagnosed.Our finding was sobering: A mere 8% of the number of cases with mild cogni ...read more

Humans have observed and tracked solar eclipses for millennia. In many cases, a solar eclipse brought on fear and foretold the end of the world or was a sign of great misfortune. To explain the causes of a solar eclipse, ancient humans would seek spiritual justifications and tell folkloric tales for why they occur. From these explanations, many myths and superstitions exist. Most of these are only myths and have since been disproven.Myth 1. Eclipses Are an Omen of MisfortuneMany of the beliefs t ...read more