Even if you don’t share your home with a cat, you probably know from social media that cats love to get in boxes. My favorite cats-in-boxes memes show several cats sitting in boxes with the caption “Cat traps.”But have you ever wondered why cats have this weird thing for boxes? The answer is pretty much what you’d expect: They feel safer and more secure, all tucked up in a tiny space.Why Do Cats Like Boxes?(Credit:Khomulo Anna/Shutter)Some studies have found that when shelter cats are ...read more
If you looked up 66 million years ago you might have seen, for a split second, a bright light as a mountain-sized asteroid burned through the atmosphere and smashed into Earth. It was springtime and the literal end of an era, the Mesozoic.If you somehow survived the initial impact, you would have witnessed the devastation that followed. Raging firestorms, megatsunamis, and a nuclear winter lasting months to years. The 180-million-year reign of non-avian dinosaurs was over in the blink of an ...read more
The recent discovery of a long-legged bird that lived about 150 million years ago shows how the evolution of modern birds occasionally took an odd turn. The bird also fills an important gap in the fossil record of early birds, which evolved from theropod dinosaurs.Fujianvenator prodigiosus “exhibits a bizarre assembly of morphologies” borrowed from various groups of early birds, including the avialans that preceded modern birds, according to a press release. Read More: 99-Million-Year-Old Ba ...read more
There’s a lot that can be done with a blank slab of stone. It can be scored, splattered with paint, or plastered with clay. Transformed with a smattering of scrapes or scratches or a smear of red ochre, its surface can become a swirl of abstract shapes or a field of frolicking antelopes. Ancient rock artists tried it all, becoming remarkably skilled at representing themselves and their surroundings in stone.In the Later Stone Age of southern Africa between around 5,000 years and 1,000 years ag ...read more
A single bite from a tick can cause a permanent allergy to pork, beef and other kinds of red meat. This condition is increasing in the United States, with a jump in positive test cases from 2017 to 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the CDC, as many as 450,000 people in the U.S. have been estimated to have been infected with alpha-gal syndrome, which can cause an assortment of symptoms when they eat red meat.The connection between a tick b ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine