Zebras are famous for their contrasting black and white stripes – but until very recently no one really knew why they sport their unusual striped pattern. It’s a question that’s been discussed as far back as 150 years ago by great Victorian biologists like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
Since then many ideas have been put on the table but only in the last few years have there been serious attempts to test them. These ideas fall into four main categories: Zebras are ...read more
Testosterone often gets a bad rap as the cause of male aggression, but the hormone actually interacts with our bodies in far more, and more complex, ways. Now, in a new study in mice, researchers find that testosterone protects embryos from harm by reducing inflammation during development. It's a new role for the hormone, and one that could prove beneficial to humans, the researchers say.
Female Fatality
Genetics researcher John Schimenti and his research team at Cornell Universit ...read more
Neptune has a new moon, and it's also the gas giant's smallest to date — only a little over 20 miles across. The brand new satellite is called Hippocamp.
Astronomers led by Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute discovered it using the Hubble Space Telescope combined with an innovative method to track dim and tiny objects as they orbit.
Because the object is so tiny, there’s still a lot astronomers don’t know about Hippocamp, named after a Greek sea monster in ke ...read more
Some 45,000 years ago, the tropical rainforests of Sri Lanka teemed with dangerous plants and lacked big game, yet people made a life there. Our key to success in that seemingly inhospitable region? It was monkeys and squirrels, researchers say — or rather, our ability to catch them.
“These animals are difficult to catch and suggest a certain level of sophistication in terms of hunting strategies,” said Patrick Roberts, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the ...read more
Why did the hominin cross the plain? We may never know. But anthropologists are pretty sure that a smattering of bare footprints preserved in volcanic ash in Laetoli, Tanzania bear witness to an evolutionary milestone. These small steps, taken roughly 3.5 million years ago, mark an early successful attempt by our common human ancestor to stand upright and stride on two feet, instead of four.
Nearly 50 years ago, Neil Armstrong also took a few small steps. On the moon. His bootprints, al ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine