Deborah Bloomfield

If you grew up in the 80s and 90s and struggled with picky eating, chances are you have some painful memories of mealtime battles and stressed-out parents. Thankfully, knowledge and understanding of these issues has moved on somewhat, but there’s still stigma attached to the label of “fussy” or “picky” – both for kids and […]

Scientists examining the teeth of ancient pandas discovered at a fossil site in southern Germany have identified evidence that rewrites our understanding of their evolutionary history. Unlike modern pandas, these extinct bears were omnivorous. Advertisement Existing giant pandas are famous for their laziness and their fastidious diet of bamboo shoots, leaves and stems. In fact, […]

Members of the San and Khoe Indigenous populations of southern Africa can still trace much of their genetic ancestry back to prehistoric hunter-gatherers who lived in the region 10,000 years ago. According to the authors of a new study, this degree of genetic continuity over multiple millennia is “exceptional in the global archaeogenetic record.” Advertisement […]

Supplementary materials don’t get any better than those of a recent preprint that dives into the dancing skills of crested gibbons. Armed with ridiculously long limbs, these primates were already primed to throw some serious shapes – but nobody at IFLScience was quite expecting the scenes that would unfold in “Dance displays in gibbons: Biological […]

The highest peak of the Great Smoky Mountains, formerly known as Clingmans Dome, has officially returned to its Cherokee name: Kuwohi (pronounced koo-WHOA-hee).  Advertisement The decision comes after the US Board of Geographic Names voted in favor of a request put forward by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. “The Great Smoky National Park team […]

Cats appear to know (or at least consider) whether they can fit through a gap that is wide but not very high, indicating an understanding of their own dimensions. However, this only seems to work one way, as they will tackle a tall but narrow gap with confidence, even if it’s far too thin to […]

The not-so-sensual courting behavior of sharks has been captured on camera at an aquarium in Australia. The rare footage reveals how grey nurse sharks let each other know they’re interested, in a spectacle that, frankly, makes you kind of relieved not to be a shark. Advertisement Famous for their jaws, sharks don’t hold back in […]

This week in Break It Down: Earth’s about to get a new mini-moon (if only for a while), ancient rock art may have been based on an extinct fossil, a “third state” identified between life and death, a truly supermassive black hole with jets spanning 23 million light-years, there’s a new blood group, and the […]

With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), spy satellite images from the Cold War are revealing the engineering mastery of ancient civilizations in the Middle East and North Africa.  Advertisement In a new study, researchers at the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology have tested out a creative way to search for qanats, a system that […]

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is just a day away from its closest encounter with the Sun and it is getting brighter. It has now crossed the brightness threshold to be visible to the naked eye. While from Earth it is still just a fuzzy dot without help, with a modest magnification you can see its […]

Ask a child to draw water and, armed with crayons, they will make it blue. However, many adults would consider water to be colorless. The blue hue that large bodies of water have is not simply a reflection of the sky or light scattering on the surface – the kids are right, water is ever […]

The Ocean Photographer Of The Year winners have been announced, and among the many categories you can spot some truly wild animal behavior. The jack fish in the above photo hasn’t been eaten, and nor has the jellyfish become its dinner.  In the deep and dangerous sea, these two animals have formed a curious symbiosis […]

Throughout the relatively short history of the US, it’s become a tradition that presidents have their coffins draped in the American flag at their funeral. Of the 39 US presidents who have died, all have received this burial rite – except one: John Tyler, the 10th president of the US, who was laid to rest […]

Researchers looking for objects in the Kuiper Belt – the donut-shaped region beyond the orbit of Neptune containing icy objects including dwarf planet Pluto – appear to have found 11 objects far beyond it. It could be a major discovery – revealing, among other things, that the Solar System is much larger than we thought. […]

Astronomers have found an incredible gravitational lens. Thanks to a chance alignment, a foreground cluster of galaxies has magnified the light of not one, but seven background galaxies, creating a gravitational lens that has been described as “most exquisitely aligned”. It has been dubbed the Carousel Lens. Advertisement Gravitational lenses are created by the gravity […]

Stupendously rare footage of a bigfin squid, known for its alien-like appearance and unbelievably long tentacles, has been captured in the dark depths of the Pacific Ocean. Advertisement The video was recently shot by scientists from Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre and Inkfish as part of the ongoing Tonga Trench Expedition 2024. From July until October […]

A study published in July of this year sent shockwaves through the scientific community by claiming that metallic nodules in the deep ocean have the capacity to split seawater and produce oxygen. Now, however, the sensational discovery has come under scrutiny as researchers pick holes in the original findings, arguing that this so-called “dark oxygen” […]

It often feels like conservative and liberal voters have next to nothing in common, and it turns out their differences extend right down to the structures in their brains. While in the past much has been made of these contrasts, a new study has found that they’re less extensive than many believe – but they […]

The first in-depth global analysis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) forecasts over 39 million deaths from infections by 2050 if more is not done to combat the problem. The global research team looked at data from over 200 countries between 1990 to 2021 to inform their modeling.  “It is important to understand that AMR is not […]

We have known about the phenomenon of static electricity since at least the time of Aristotle. Aristotle credits fellow philosopher Thales of Miletus, who lived between 640 and 546 BCE, with the discovery that amber picks up pieces of dried grass after it has been rubbed with a cloth. Advertisement For a very long time, […]