Deborah Bloomfield

A newly discovered parasite has caused quite a stir among microbiologists who were left scrambling to place it on the tree of life – and it seems even the organism itself is confused as to its identity. Sukunaarchaeum, as it’s been provisionally named, is not a virus – but it sure behaves like one – […]

Like the icy ocean depths it inhabits, the Greenland shark is ancient, vast, and hella mysterious. Thanks to a new study from researchers at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and the Natural History Museum of Denmark and colleagues, though, we now know one more thing about this gentle arctic giant: the fact that it’s […]

The relationships that exist in the natural world are extremely complex. However, by looking more closely at the way moths and plants interact, scientists have revealed that the animals can respond to sounds produced by the plants. According to the team, this is the first time such an interaction has been demonstrated, and it could […]

Life in the deep sea can often appear slow, still, and unchanging, like an alien ecosystem that works on a different timescale to the rest of the world. However, research is starting to show that even this environment is constantly restless and even subject to seasonal changes. Scientists used to think that deep-sea ocean currents […]

We know, we know – it’s only been about a month since we introduced you to the Nimbus variant of COVID-19, but there’s yet another new variant we think you should know about. Sticking with the cloud theme, this one’s called Stratus, or more officially XFG, and the World Health Organization (WHO) is officially monitoring […]

The Amazon rainforest has long been a source of inspiration for novel solutions to modern problems, from biopharmaceuticals to sustainable ways of living. One of its most commercially coveted resources ignited a global rubber rush in the 1800s, one that came at enormous human cost. By the 1920s, Brazil’s rubber trees had caught the eye […]

You scratch your hand and notice some faint irritation. There’s a small red bump on your skin, curiously close to where you swatted a mosquito just a few days ago. You prod it, and it moves. Congratulations, new parent, you’re officially with botfly! Known to science as Dermatobia hominis, the human botfly can be found […]

One minute it’s sunny, the next the heavens have opened – and now you can feel a headache brewing. Coincidence? Or can abrupt changes in the weather trigger migraines?  There certainly seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence suggesting this could be the case. According to the American Migraine Foundation, just over a third […]

Ever get told off in school for letting your mind wander? It’s time to feel vindicated. According to a new study, “zoning out” could actually be helping us to learn, so if you want to pause here and share this article with all your old teachers, we’ll understand. Done? Okay, let’s get into it. Scientists […]

Neanderthals and Homo sapiens repeatedly interbred, shared genes, and merged populations over the course of nearly 250,000 years. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), this intermingling of human species/subspecies is being revealed with never-before-seen clarity.  Scientists at Princeton University and Southeast University have mapped the gene exchange of H. sapiens (modern humans) and Neanderthals (Homo […]

Humans are a suggestible species. We see a friend yawn, we yawn. We see a stranger yawn, we yawn. We see an animated blob do something resembling yawning, we yawn. Heck, there’s a fair chance you’re yawning right now just from having read the word a few times.  Now, why this happens is a question […]

Prehistoric footprints found at the southwestern tip of mainland Europe show how Neanderthal families worked together to ambush prey on the beach. Dated to around 80,000 years ago, the trackways were discovered at two coastal sites in the Algarve region of Portugal and include prints made by adults, children, and toddlers. The older of the […]

Not that we like to tell anything to stay in its lane, but there are some animals out there showing behavior that, well… just doesn’t sit right with us. That’s particularly the case when it comes to jumping. Kangaroos, hares, toddlers who were accidentally given caffeinated cola at a birthday party – all of those […]

Two newly identified patterns in the stratospheric polar vortex can send cold air over North America to cause extreme cold snaps, but the parts of the country that suffer differ between them. Those keen to halt climate action will seize on any cold spell, no matter how brief and local, as evidence against worldwide trends. […]

When a team of scientists studied a group of olms in a Balkan cave, they were hoping to reveal new information about how these fascinating amphibians behave outside of the lab. They weren’t, however, expecting to find they were mind-blowingly lazy, with some individuals not moving from a single spot for years and years.  Olms […]

One of the best meteor showers of the year is about to commence, as comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle sends debris at Earth.  The Perseid meteor showers are the result of Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, a 26-kilometer (16-mile) wide comet that takes 133 years to orbit the Sun. This “parent” comet, around twice the size of the rock which dinosaured […]

Here’s a weird thing that people have noticed; large language model (LLM) chatbots have a weird tendency to give the same answer when asked to randomly generate a number. When asked to “guess” a number between one and 50, a lot of language models will consistently choose 27.  ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared […]

If you’re old enough to remember the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, you will likely remember the controversy that year surrounding the official ball of the tournament. Developed by Adidas, the Jabulani (“be happy” or “to celebrate” in Zulu) was supposed to be an improvement on the 2006 ball, using new methods. “The newly-developed […]

Did you know that the ocean has its own canaries? They’re a bit whiter and kind of enormous compared to the sort you see on land, but hoo boy, do they love to chatter.  Squeaks, clicks, buzzes, and babbling, little is off the cards when it comes to the remarkable complexity of beluga communication, but […]

A physics conference has received a report of the gravitational wave from the heaviest pair of black holes we’ve so far observed merging. The result is larger than theoretical models allow through straight-forward means, implying either a very complex prelude, or some astronomical phenomenon we don’t currently know about. In 2016 when the gravitational wave […]