Deborah Bloomfield

One sneaky bird escaped from Colchester Zoo in the UK last week by hitching a ride on an unsuspecting visitor. The bird in question is a rainbow lorikeet, and is pretty much the least inconspicuous escapee possible as its brightly colored feathers don’t exactly fly under the radar. Despite this obvious disadvantage, it’s been on […]

Using a new technique that makes it easier to precisely measure the number of chromosomes in ancient DNA, researchers have identified the earliest known cases of two genetic disorders. Ancient DNA can provide us with useful insights into our ancestors, but unfortunately, samples can degrade or become contaminated over time, making it more difficult to […]

This week the fossilized skin of a reptile that existed 45 million years before the earliest known dinosaur has been discovered, Jupiter has been discovered to have magnetic jets, and giant 10-foot-tall apes once roamed China. Finally, we investigate why 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Subscribe to the IFLScience newsletter […]

In 2022, an enormous star 16,000 light-years from Earth began mysteriously dimming. After follow-up observations in 2023, a team of astronomers believe they have an explanation. When they aren’t creating green monsters or mysteriously vanishing without a trace, stars are generally pretty reliable constants in the sky. With lifespans of billions of years, you can […]

A US district judge has given the green light for the first-ever execution by nitrogen gas asphyxiation to go ahead. The ruling means that Alabama inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith is currently scheduled to be put to death using the new method on January 25, although his attorney has launched an appeal against the decision. Smith’s […]

Many of us take our passports for granted, but not all are created equal – some will get you into more places than others. But in the first set of rankings for 2024, it turns out there’s not just one that sits atop the rest: there are six. Those with a passport from France, Germany, […]

Human and animal conflict is a touchy subject for many species, whether it is related to loss of habitat, or even the question of whether you should let a moose lick your car. One other aspect of human-animal conflict is the problem of boat strikes, which can injure and even kill many marine species each […]

If you’re driving through any Canadian national parks this winter, there is one thing you shouldn’t do, according to Parks Canada: don’t stop to let moose lick your car. This may sound like a strange instruction, but there is a good reason for it. As the highways through the parks continue to be gritted to […]

Since we found out about energy, right up until the point we found out it violated the laws of physics, people have dreamed of creating a perpetual motion machine. Perpetual motion machines are devices that, once started, could theoretically remain in motion forever without adding any additional energy to them.  Many people have strived to […]

Tyrannosaurus rex is arguably the most famous of all the dinosaur species, with starring roles in pretty much every dino movie ever made. However, scientists have identified a new subspecies of Tyrannosaur, Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis, older and more primitive but still the same size as a double-decker bus. This new species also helps researchers understand where […]

Fossilized skin from a reptile that lived at least 45 million years before the first dinosaur has been found. Although we know nothing else about the animal it came from, along with seven skin casts of similar age, the record-smashing discovery helps reveal the early evolution of skin.  Skin doesn’t fossilize well, so on the […]

We all love a good joke, but what we find funny is individual to each of us. Or is it? Does our gender influence our sense of humor? According to one new study that identified some similarities (but also some differences) in what men and women find funny, it might not be as ridiculous a […]

Conspiracy theorists are exhausting the Internet once more, with a theory about why NASA is “really” postponing humanity’s return to the Moon. On Tuesday, NASA confirmed that their plan to put humans on the Moon has been delayed once more. Having originally been scheduled for 2024, the space agency pushed it back to 2025 in […]

Just a few weeks ago, the United States grew in size by 1 million square kilometers (more than 386,000 square miles) – that’s almost twice the area of Spain. The unexpected growth spurt was not the result of strange geological forces, nor the invasion of a foreign land, but the States attempting to lay claim […]

The final hurdle to retrieving the full sample of asteroid Bennu collected by OSIRIS-REx – the first asteroid return sample in US history – has at last been overcome. NASA technicians have been able to successfully remove the two fasteners from the sampler head that have been preventing them from opening the canister fully since […]

A long-lost species of orchid had scientists scrambling over the summit of Mount Nok on Waigeo – a remote island in West Papua, Indonesia – in the hopes of tracking it down. The successful expedition not only rediscovered the blue beauty Dendrobium azureum, but also stumbled upon a new-to-science species that was bright red. The […]

Life on our planet has been going on for several billion years. Young stars have had a privileged position in our search for life elsewhere. After all, it’s easier to compare past and present than to speculate about the future. However, research has shown that we shouldn’t discard older stars as hosts of life-bearing planets, […]

When we think of galaxies, we often think of bright spiral galaxies full of stars and gas – but some galaxies have very few stars and look quite different. These are known as low-surface-brightness galaxies. They tend to have a lot more dark matter than regular galaxies like our own, and the normal matter they […]

Their roots might be buried in soil or sand, but as for the rest of a tree, we generally think of it as sticking out quite a lot. However, in the remote and nutrient-poor Kalahari sands of Angola, life works pretty differently: research in the region has uncovered two new tree species that are nearly […]

For the curious (something we always encourage here at IFLScience), there are few places better to look for interesting stories than the Case Reports section of a medical journal. Whether it’s the tale of an 8-centimeter (3.1-inch) live worm being pulled from a woman’s brain, or a whole new reason to be frightened of sneezing, […]