Deborah Bloomfield

Red-footed tortoises have moods, at least of optimism and pessimism, just as so-called higher animals do, a new study has concluded. The work has important implications for how we regard and treat reptiles, and how deep such capacities run in our evolution. Philosophers spent thousands of years arguing about whether animals think, so it’s not […]

The age-old question of what would happen if you threw a paper airplane out of the International Space Station (ISS) has been answered in a new paper. Space around our planet is getting quite full. We are a messy species, and low-Earth orbit is apparently no exception to our “we’ll clean up later” rule. One […]

July 10 will see the first full moon of astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and it’s set to be an ideal time to witness the still-unsolved Moon Illusion. July’s full Moon, known as the Buck Moon, will reach peak illumination at 8:37 pm UTC on July 10, 2025. This is the point when the […]

A lot of the animals of planet Earth could give you a pretty nasty bite if they wanted to, from the bone-crushing power of the hyena to the mighty jaws of a tiger, but which creature has the sharpest teeth of the animal kingdom? To find out, we need to wind back the clock. A […]

For around four decades, the southwestern United States has been experiencing prolonged drought, but it’s never been exactly clear why. Now, researchers at Cornell University have identified the likely causes for this extreme water shortage and it has everything to do with climate change and human activity. The Southwest is generally a semi-arid region with […]

South Korea’s caves are something of an untapped treasure trove for cave-adapted species. It’s thought there are over 1,000 to be explored, but a significant proportion have never been studied. Now, new research has shown that they are home to a greater diversity of bizarre blind arachnids than we thought, including four new-to-science species with […]

On the internet, there is a particularly fascinating resource – NUFORC (the National UFO Reporting Center). Over the past five decades, it has aimed to receive, record, corroborate, and document reports from individuals who have claimed to have seen (or been involved in) a UFO-related event. Since it first popped onto the scene in 1974, […]

In 2022, NASA slammed a spaceship into an asteroid about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza in an attempt to alter its course. The mission was a success, and demonstrated that it is possible to redirect objects in space, great news for a planet that isn’t a huge fan of being wiped out […]

Elton John was right: Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. And not just because it’s cold as hell. The combination of a thin atmosphere and lack of magnetic field means that the planet experiences higher levels of radiation – both energetic particles and energetic light – compared to Earth. But just […]

Thousands upon thousands of prehistoric animals are pristinely preserved at the site of an ancient sinkhole-pond in the US. The mind-blowing site is a snapshot of a beautiful ecosystem that thrived nearly 5 million years ago, a time when rhinos, tapirs, giant salamanders, red pandas, and giant flying squirrels roamed North America. It’s known as […]

Who gets to decide what children are taught in school? This politically charged question may resonate with many public debates today concerning contentious topics such as gender, sexuality, or climate change, but it is far from being a new problem. In fact, this year marks the centenary of what is probably the most (in)famous response […]

Using gestures is part of communication and language and can be found across the animal world, from fish to apes and birds. However, having more complex gestures is something that has really only been seen in primates. Researchers took a closer look at gestures in elephants to find out if they can use them to […]

A study looking at data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has found evidence for a “helicity barrier” in the atmosphere of the Sun. In 2018, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe on a trajectory that would eventually have it dive into the Sun’s atmosphere (corona), getting seven times closer to our host star than any […]

How do you listen to recorded information? Do you listen at the regular speed, or are you among the many who digest podcasts, audiobooks, or even recorded lectures at increased playback speeds? It might be tempting to think that the faster the playback speed you’re able to follow then the quicker you’ll be able to […]

In 2008, humans on Earth sent a message to exoplanet Gliese 581c. The message will arrive at the planet in 2029. If (an “if” of astronomical proportions) there were aliens there, the earliest we could expect a reply is 2050. Discovered in 2007, Gliese 581c is the second planet discovered in the Gliese 581 system, […]

Robotic surgery has reached a new milestone after a robot successfully – and autonomously – performed gallbladder removal operations while listening and responding to voice commands. Just as a human trainee would be directed by a senior surgeon, the robot was able to act on verbal instructions after having been initially trained on videos of […]

Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) don’t believe in waste, digesting not only the muscle and fat of their prey, but the bones as well. Where other predators might eat the flesh off the bone, or regurgitate up the parts they can’t digest, these snakes use the whole creature – and now we know how. The fact […]

Alchemists, you’ll be overjoyed to hear that you can create gold in a lab. All you need is a nuclear reaction, a particle accelerator, or the blast of a supernova. Most of the gold on Earth came from outer space. When massive stars exploded in supernovae or neutron stars collided, they unleashed staggering energy that […]

Scientists have got their hands on the oldest animal proteins yet, extracted from 18-million-year-old fossilized mammal teeth in East Africa, pushing the record back by an astonishing 14 to 15 million years. Even older partial fragments of proteins were obtained in North America from a rhino tooth dating up to 24 million years old, offering […]

Six of the US’s most prominent medical organizations and an unnamed physician have teamed up to sue health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, as well as the heads of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and National Institutes of Health (NIH), over what’s been called a “baseless and […]