For ages, humans have ridden on horses, hunted alongside dogs, and curled up with cats, big and small. Along the way, humans have also managed to make companions out of far more unusual animals — from hissing snakes to wily ferrets to even colorful, ornamental fish.Nowadays, the exotic pet market and trade — both legal and illegal — have exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry. The U.S. alone is a major consumer, with over 11 billion animals imported into the country between the year ...read more

We all know too well how easily things get dirty. Dust gathers, and stains appear, seemingly out of nowhere. That’s no exception for the Animal Kingdom, either. But for some of these critters, staying clean isn’t just a matter of being comfortable. It’s also a matter of survival.The question of how animals manage to stay squeaky clean is something that researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology dug into in 2015 — and certainly, there are quite a few inventive evolutionary metho ...read more

To call King Tut’s genealogy complicated might be one of the biggest understatements in Egyptology. For example, Queen Nefertiti, once thought to be Tutankhamun’s birth mother, was actually his stepmother, as well as his mother-in-law. His parents were siblings and Tut’s wife may have also been his half-sister.Tut has fueled fascination ever since archeologists discovered his tomb in 1922. Although the Valley of the Kings burial place held over 5,000 artifacts, much of his heritage remaine ...read more

The fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, the undisputed king of the Cretaceous, is easily the most famous dinosaur to have ever lived. Since its first fossil was unearthed in the late 1800s, T. rex has been immortalized in academic research, museums, and the public imagination. If your diet of T. rex knowledge comes strictly from pop culture, though, you might come away with a skewed perspective on what these titanic predators ate. (In the first Jurassic Park film, its seen chomping on a live goat, a rub ...read more

In the battle to build the world’s first useful quantum computers, one company has taken an entirely different approach to the other frontrunners. The conventional approach is to gradually increase the size and power of these devices and test as you go. But PsiQuantum, a startup based in Palo Alto, California, is gambling on the opposite approach. The company is investing heavily in quantum technologies that are compatible with chip-making fabrication plants that already exist. By using these ...read more

If you’re concerned about getting back to or maintaining a healthy weight, the world is full of companies who are happy to lighten your wallet, at least, by selling you miracle drugs and supplements that they promise will help curb appetite, reduce fat, and cut weight. Unfortunately, far too many weight-loss aids and supplements are heavy on hype and light on evidence. That only adds to the frustration of people struggling with their weight — of whom there are many. According to the Centers ...read more

Pop culture often associates “cave men” with meat eaters. So researchers investigating people who lived in a Moroccan cave 13,000 years to 15,000 years ago were somewhat surprised to find the extent to which they relied on a plant-based diet, according to a report in Nature Ecology & Evolution.The findings may move up the time when agriculture became favored over hunting and gathering — or at least provide a clearer picture of the transition. “Our findings not only provide insights i ...read more

Cicadas emerging in 2024 are part of a historic double brood. Both 13-year and 17-year-old cicada broods are uprising simultaneously. An event like this happens once every 221 years and double broods like the ones emerging in the spring have not been seen since 1803. But 13-year and 17-year-old broods emerging in the same year do happen every 5 to 6 years — just not at the same time as this year’s cicadas. As the cicadas emerge as nymphs and later molt into winged cicadas, they will do a var ...read more

The story has been told many times. At the beginning of the 20th century, physics seemed essentially solved. One or two puzzling phenomena like the photoelectric effect and concerns over black body radiation had scientists scratching their heads but a general feeling prevailed that solving these issues would be dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.In the event, these seemingly minor problems required an entire revolution for the laws of physics. And the result — quantum theory and relativi ...read more

Many people with pets can relate — on sick days, their dog or cat seems to know something is wrong. More so, they refuse to leave their side. They follow them from the bed to the couch and back again.When pets keep close to their ailing humans, researchers have found it is possible to pass on the pathogen. Although scientists typically focus on animal-borne diseases that spread to humans (like the Avian flu), researchers are increasingly considering how diseases can spread in the reverse.Scien ...read more