Deborah Bloomfield

Ants stacking up their dead on Trix cereal surprised and delighted social media users over Christmas back in 2021. The peculiar incident was brought to the attention of The Internet by user OctopusCaveman, whose son owned an ant farm.   “My son put some Trix in his ant farm. Instead of eating them, the ants […]

If you’re a radio fan, or have merely been stuck in a car as day transitions into night, you may have noticed that you don’t get quite as clear signal in the hours of darkness.  Before you assume that it’s a plot by reverse vampires (possibly in conjunction with the saucer people) in order to […]

Scientists love a good rock formation – just ask geologists. From the bizarre crack of Al Naslaa to the hoodoos that haunt Bryce Canyon National Park, they can’t get enough. But there’s nothing quite like a good balancing rock. Today, our favorite is Kummakivi.  The giant boulder known locally as the “strange stone” can be found in Ruokolahti in southeastern Finland. As the scale schnauzer in the […]

Marine archeologists have taken the plunge into the icy waters of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to explore one of the most famous ships of the 19th century, HMS Erebus. The ship was part of the daring – and doomed – 1845 Franklin Expedition that sought to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage […]

Late last year, everyone’s favorite search engine (and all its other services such as Google Maps) was knocked off the top spot of the Earth’s most popular website domain. According to Cloudflare Radar‘s popularity ranking, the tech giant was knocked down to the second most popular domain by a surprise (relative) newcomer. TikTok, which remains […]

Single men are stinkier than guys in relationships, according to the results of a sniff test. However, while pungent body odor (BO) and singleness might seem like they go hand-in-hand, the study authors say that a strong whiff may actually help unattached men signal their availability to women. Previous research has shown that single males […]

Endometriosis is a condition that involves endometrial tissue, similar to the lining of the womb, growing in other pelvic organs, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes. The tissue thickens and bleeds just like it would in the uterus during the menstrual cycle. It’s a painful and long-term condition that can have a significant impact, […]

Penguins may have joined the small roster of animals that have passed the mirror test, believed to be the benchmark for a sense of self. Until now, the only animals to have passed have included a few mammals and fish – but now, a preprint paper suggests that wild Adélie penguins may have passed the mirror test, possibly […]

Dramatic footage shows the moment an avalanche tore down a mountain in Austria in the early hours of December 26. It struck in a Trittkopf mountainous area between Zuers and Lech am Arlberg just before 1 am on Monday, according to the Austria Press Agency. A video (below) shot on a smartphone shows a huge […]

Have you ever been sitting in one position for a long time and felt a numbing sensation in the butt? Yes? Well, this is called “dead butt syndrome” (DBS) or more technically gluteal amnesia or gluteus medius tendinosis. This syndrome can range in intensity, from an occasional numb bum to a condition that is more […]

In 2003, archaeologists looking for evidence of the migration of modern humans from Asia to Australia stumbled across a small, fairly complete skeleton of an extinct human species on the Indonesian island of Flores, which came to be known as Homo floresiensis. Or, as it became more commonly known, the Hobbit, after the small, breakfast-guzzling creatures from J.R.R. […]

The core body temperatures of crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascicularis) have been reduced in warm conditions, purely by controlling their brains. The aim is to find a way to induce hibernation in monkeys, and eventually humans. Whether this justifies the suffering involved is obviously debatable, but the goal goes beyond missing the worst of winter. Instead, […]

The Ancient Pool of Siloam, a 2,700-year-old rock pool used in Jerusalem during the 8th century BCE, is set to be fully excavated and opened up to the public for the first time in modern times.  Located in the southern portion of the City of David, the Pool of Siloam was built by King Hezekiah […]

What officials have dubbed the “blizzard of the century” – a massive winter storm, bringing heavy snow and plummeting temperatures – has ravaged the US in recent days. The freezing conditions caused disruption across a number of states, but the area around Buffalo in western New York was hit particularly hard: at least 28 people […]

In February 2016, Yohannes Haile-Selassie and an international team of anthropologists found the near-complete skull of an early hominin in the dusty Godaya Valley of Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia. Reporting their findings in two papers (here and here) published in the journal Nature, the researchers show the skull dates back some 3.8 million years and belonged to an […]

Has someone ever sneezed beside you, and a few moments later you got hit with an unpleasant odor? Smelly sneezes can say a lot about a person and their health. The occasionally smelly sneeze is normal – however, some prolonged smells may be a concern for which people should head to their medical practitioner. Advertisement […]

The molecular basis for a mutation that causes some people with XY chromosomes to have wombs and vaginas has been identified, demonstrating how minor the differences can be that shape people’s sex. Swyer Syndrome (also known as 46, XY gonadal dysgenesis with female somatic phenotype) occurs in people whose sex chromosomes match most biological males, […]

It’s easy to think of Earth’s geomagnetic poles as features that are set in stone (or ice), but both poles are not stationary and remain in a permanent state of flux. Since it was first documented by scientists in the 1830s, the North Magnetic Pole has wandered some 2,250 kilometers (1,400 miles) across the upper stretches of […]