The noise pollution that comes from living in an urban area may be irritating to humans, but what about the animals that live nearby? Does noise have an impact on creatures that don’t have a voice of their own? As it turns out, new research says yes – specifically in the case of birds (“Noise …
What is the world’s oldest living vertebrate? As it turns out, it just might be a Greenland shark, and it could date back to medieval times. This is what marine biologist Julius Nielsen and his team of researchers have claimed in a new paper published in Science. The group discovered a Greenland shark, 18 feet …
When goldfish are swimming around in their bowl, have you ever stopped to think about what they may be producing through their gills? As it turns out, these otherwise common fish have an uncanny ability to create something humans never would’ve guessed: alcohol. This is what one group of researchers recently determined in a study …
What if you could design your own children? As it turns out, we may not be far away from this. Thanks to CRISPR, scientists are honing in on the ability to alter DNA and create what we never could’ve imagined. (“Human embryos reportedly edited for first time in the US using CRISPR,” 2017) Shoukhrat Mitalipov of …
Most of us know that dogs evolved from wolves thousands of years ago, but how did they become as domesticated as they are today? Furthermore, is there any science behind their friendliness toward humans? As it turns out, there is data on this very topic. Recently, a group of researchers came together to look at …
What encouraged some water species to evolve into land-based creatures? This is what some scientists attempted to determine by analyzing the bodies of terrestrial vertebrates that existed about 385 million years ago. (MacIver, Schmitz, Mugan, Murphey, & Mobley, 2017) They found that their eyes – rather than their limbs – may have played a large …
Dogs are man’s (and woman’s) best friend, and they know about us than we may think. This is what researchers have concluded in a report published in Current Biology. As it turns out, dogs might remember and relive experiences just as their [human] owners do. The researchers looked at a group of 17 dogs to …
Editor’s note: This post has been updated and broken links removed. Please see our policy on broken hyperlinks for more. If you smell something good cooking in the kitchen, you head over to check it out, right? This is exactly what sea birds think when they’re hovering over the ocean. A new study found that this may …
If you’ve ever caught yourself telling a white lie, don’t feel too bad – blame it on your brain. New research suggests that your brain might be accustomed to lying if you’ve done it enough in the past. A study published in Nature Neuroscience shows that the brain can pick up on these types of …
Could your fingers be linked to fish fins? Scientists’ new research may just lead us to the answer. A new study published by a team of researchers at the University of Chicago claim that there are significant evolutionary connections between our appendages and fish fins. Evolutionary biologist Neil H. Shubin has been seeking connections between …