They’re watching you
Don’t get paranoid, but you are being watched… if there is a fly on a wall anywhere near you. That may not surprise anyone who has tried swatting a fly, only to have it fly away leaving the person smacking an empty wall. It had been watching the whole time. The fly wasn’t turning its head to follow the movement of the shoe or rolled up newspaper about to attack it. Flies can’t turn their eyes as we do… or can they? When you think about it, the point of moving your eye is to move the light-detecting retina at the back of your eye into a position to focus on what you want to look at. It turns out that instead of moving their whole eye, flies just move the retina in each tiny segment which makes up their compound eyes. This allows them to follow moving objects without moving and enhances the fly’s depth perception. Reference: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05317-5
Clever Cockatoos
Watching their antics might not automatically lead to the conclusion that cockatoos are smart, but they are much more clever than you might think. Goffin's cockatoos have been shown to not only use tools,…
Calculus on my mind
Do you roll your eyes at the first mention of calculus? Whatever you think of it, when we need to do something fast our brains do calculus anyway. Our brains send signals to our bodies using electrical…
Earwig Origami
They keep it well hidden, but earwigs are masters of the art we call “origami.” You have probably seen it practiced by someone who takes a flat sheet of paper and folds it into a bird, boat or paper plane.…
Back together again
Rose-breasted grosbeaks are very different from scarlet tanagers. These bird species live in different places, they sing different songs and each sports a distinctive look. They are so different that many…
Holding their breath
The Guinness Book of World Records lists an impossibly long 24 minutes and 37.36 seconds as the human record for holding your breath. So, how do crocodiles manage to stay submerged for hours? They were…
They’re watching you
Don’t get paranoid, but you are being watched… if there is a fly on a wall anywhere near you. That may not surprise anyone who has tried swatting a fly, only to have it fly away leaving the person smacking…
Imaginary Numbers
Imagine other physicists cringing during 1623 when Galileo said, “the universe … is written in the language of mathematics”. Maybe they should have worked harder learning math, because Galileo may have…
Hyper-compound Eyes
Over the years, cars evolved from jalopies into super cars and finally into hyper-cars; like the 1,200 horsepower Bugatti Veyron, capable of speeds over 400 kph. “Hyper” cars are definitely the fastest,…
Junk no more
In the 1980s, people believed that 97 % of human DNA did nothing, thinking it was just “junk” left over from evolution. The logic was simple; “junk DNA” doesn’t code for proteins, so it must do nothing.…
Mucus
Snot, phlegm, boogers, mucus; whatever you call it, the substance that lubricates and protects everything from our nasal passages to our bowels seems rather disgusting. But without it, humans and other…
Struggle for survival
Perhaps one of the most notorious displays of the struggle for survival is the epic chase of a lion as it hunts down a gazelle. In such dramatic struggles, it is uncommon for the lion to pursue the strongest…
