Other than the sloth, whose smile is pretty much permanently attached, the non-human animal most associated with smiling is the bottlenose dolphin. But somewhat like the sloth, the dolphin’s smile is just a feature of the way its mouth turns up at the sides. A dolphin that appears to be smiling at you when it bobs up beside your boat might not be thinking, “Hey, let’s be friends!” even though it’s difficult for humans to interpret that delightful expression any other way.But if dolphin ...read more
Bright, burning lava surging from a fissure on Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula is so voluminous that it's easily visible to orbiting satellites. The image above, which is about three and a half miles across, was created using data acquired by the Landsat 9 satellite on November 24th. If you look carefully at the left-most extension of the flowing lava you can make out a couple of turquoise-colored spots. This is Iceland's iconic Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa that attracts tourists from around the ...read more
When I was a kid, I liked to dig holes in my backyard in Cincinnati. My grandfather joked that if I kept digging, I would end up in China.In fact, if I had been able to dig straight through the planet, I would have come out in the Indian Ocean, about 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) west of Australia. That’s the antipode, or opposite point on Earth’s surface, from my town.But I only had a garden spade to move the earth. When I hit rock, less than 3 feet (1 meter) below the surface, I couldn’ ...read more
The holidays offer many opportunities for awkward moments. Political discussions, of course, hold plenty of potential. But any time opinions differ, where estrangements have caused lingering rifts, or when behaviors veer toward the inappropriate, awkwardness can set in.Awkwardness is what happens in social interactions when you suddenly find yourself without a script to guide you through. Maybe the situation is new or catches you off guard. Maybe you don’t know what’s expected of you, or you ...read more
Orcas can get organized. When hunting for whale sharks — the world’s largest fish — a pod of killer whales appears to target the youngest most vulnerable sharks, ram them to turn them upside done — thus immobilizing them, and will then focus on high value organs like the heart and liver.Although there have been scattered reports of such incidents, scientists in Mexico recorded and studied four specific attacks, analyzed them, and described them in an article in Frontiers in Marine Scienc ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine