Underwater unknown
A strange honeycomb pattern appears on sea ridges around the world. We think that it is created by living creatures, but no-one has ever seen one. Oh, and there are fossils of the patterns going back 500 million years.
Category: Animals
Second-fastest animal
Everyone knows that the cheetah is the fastest land animal in the world – but what’s the second-fastest? And why is it so fast?
Stomach tadpoles
Remember those fish that raise their children inside their mouths? Two Australian frog species went even further: they raised tadpoles in their stomachs.
Hyperparasites
Parasites live off – and often on – other animals. But what live on the parasites?
Elephant justice
Topsy the elephant was famously electrocuted in 1903. History has not been kind to her, so let’s set the record straight. No, she was not a victim of the AC vs. DC wars. No, she was not a killer elephant. Yes, she killed one man, but in clear self defence.
Cuckoo bees and cuckoo fish
Cuckoos are not the only animal to have their young raised by other species. Bees, wasps, and fish also exhibit the same parasitic behaviour.
Learned pig
Before television, people had to make their own fun. So they trained pigs to read.
Whale snot drone pilots
Everyone dreams of being a scientist, but few understand just what that profession entails. Well, among other things, you could be a whale snot drone pilot.
Immortal dog
Some time more than 200 years ago, a dog or wolf in China or Siberia got cancer. It was a strange type of cancer: the cancer cells were contagious. That cell line is still alive today, and will probably be alive forever.
Shakespeare’s starlings
There are more than 150 million European starlings in North America. We have two men to blame for this: Eugene Schieffelin, and maybe William Shakespeare.
Flea poetry
Fleas are not an obvious topic for poetry. And yet it is the core of both the shortest poem in the English language and the dodgiest erotic poem ever written by a cleric of the Church of England.
Trout tickling, flounder tramping, and noodling
Want to catch a fish but don’t have any equipment? Try tickling, tramping, or noodling them.
Most painful sting
Justin O. Schmidt, an entomologist from the United States, has ranked the relative pain caused by bee, wasp, and ant stings. How do you find that out, though? Easy enough, you just sting yourself.
Rooster egg
A tiny yolkless egg shows up in your henhouse. Today, we know this to be a chicken’s first training egg. In the 12th century? It came from a rooster, and you better throw it over your house or it will be born a monster.
Parahawking
Okay okay, I know I said that chess boxing was my favourite hybrid sport, but now there’s a new contender. I have one word for you, just one word: parahawking.
Dead rabbit pregnancy test
In the 1930s there was a reliable and accurate way to find out if you were pregnant or not. But you had to kill a rabbit.
The Generalist Academy 