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During the 16th century BCE, prehistoric people in what is now Armenia placed a 3.5-meter (9.8-foot) tall basalt stone over a barrow. Buried below the stone were the remains of an adult woman and two newborn children. At first, researchers believed the babies were twins, but new analysis suggests a more complicated and remarkable relationship. […]

Earlier this year, there was a bit of a mystery at the Aquarium and Shark Lab in Hendersonville, North Carolina, after a stingray appeared to become pregnant despite no male stingrays being present. While an interesting mystery in its own right, the case drew extra attention after suggestions by the head of the aquarium that […]

A small mystery has rocked X (Twitter) over the weekend, after a junior doctor in the UK found a living goldfish on his lawn. On Saturday, junior doctor Ben Beska heard a group of birds outside, and went to investigate. Instead of the usual objects you tend to find on the grass (more grass and […]

It was back in 2019 when Elon Musk unveiled the Cybertuck, and it was an event that did not go as Musk probably envisioned. Since then, there has been disaster after disaster, and here are some hilarious and embarrassing examples. Advertisement The original d’oh moment On a brightly lit stage, the Cybertruck was unveiled: a […]

The black hole information paradox is one of those physics problems that can keep scientists up at night. It strikes at the heart of one of the crucial problems in modern physics: the fact that we can’t reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. And it is all black holes’ fault. Deborah BloomfieldSource Link: Can Information […]

Blood and baguettes don’t usually go together in any context, let alone as building materials, yet there’s a palace in West Africa that’s cemented with these bizarre ingredients. Located in the city of Abomey in Benin, the structure is said to have been built using the blood of 41 voodoo sacrifice victims, and a new […]

Issue 23 (June 2024) of CURIOUS is out now, bringing you science highlights for the month plus deep dives into intriguing topics, interviews, exclusives, diary dates, and explanations for some of Earth’s most perplexing natural phenomena and landscapes. Read Issue 23 of our digital magazine now by clicking below! Use the arrows to navigate or […]

Our family dog used to have a rather noticeable extra eyelid that became especially apparent when he dozed off, usually upturned on the rug. This is the fleshy curtain seen at the corner of each eye, closest to the nose. It’s also commonly called the nictitating (literally “blinking”) membrane. You may have noticed these “third” […]

The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) fascinate researchers and the general public alike. They remain central to debates about the nature of the genus Homo (the broad biological classification that humans and their relatives fall into). Neanderthals are also vital for understanding the uniqueness or otherwise of our species, Homo sapiens. We shared an ancestor with the […]

“Medieval history” often brings up images of knights in shining armor, rampaging crusaders, and dying horribly from common and preventable causes. Far away from all those peculiarly disgusting Europeans, though, on what we now know as the Swahili Coast of Eastern Africa, there was something pretty amazing going on – as a study revealed back in 2023. Advertisement “The findings were very eye-opening,” said […]

As a science website, it’s easy to get bogged down in questions like “Is there life on Enceladus?” and “Where are all the aliens?”, when people are struggling with more basic (but fun!) questions like “Why can’t we power our cars with magnets?” and “If you fell from a skyscraper on the Moon, would you die or otherwise […]

One of the deepest metal mines in Europe – the Pyhäsalmi Mine in central Finland – is to be turned into an enormous gravity battery capable of storing 2 megawatts of energy. Advertisement As the planet moves towards renewable energy, we are faced with the problem of storage. The problem is that the wind doesn’t […]

Our bodies are absolutely chock-full of microorganisms, collectively known as the human microbiome. Science suggests that it could impact our health and some people believe they have a simple solution for that: probiotics and prebiotics. Advertisement But do these claims have any substance to them? And what exactly is the difference between the two anyway? […]

This week, a report by whale scientists may finally explain why orcas have been attacking boats, a billionaire has plans for a new submersible trip to the Titanic wreckage, and a tiny fern has broken the world record for the largest genome of any organism. Finally, we explore how humans and chimpanzees are able to […]

If you’ve been trying to convince yourself to exercise more lately, consider the recent case of a woman in the Czech Republic who went out for a walk one day and accidentally found a treasure trove of more than 2,150 silver coins dating from more than 900 years ago. Advertisement It’s a discovery that “can […]

There seems to be a growing debate about whether you should feed your dog raw meat or not. It is a popular trend that is all over TikTok with pet influencers and is encouraged by some holistic veterinarians, but is it all it’s cracked up to be? What is the “Bones And Raw Food” diet? […]

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced a recall of nearly 79,000 cases of Fiji bottled water, after bacterial contamination and high levels of manganese were discovered. Bacteria in your water is clearly something best avoided – but what’s all this about manganese? What is this vital mineral, and what can happen to […]

The saying goes that good things come in small packages, and while the discovery of the world’s largest genome in any organism is an incredible find, the reality is a little bit more complicated than that. The New Caledonian fork fern species Tmesipteris oblanceolata has a genome that when stretched out would be taller than […]

The largest species of great ape to ever walk the Earth was Gigantopithecus blacki. Standing over 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) tall and weighing up to 300 kilograms (661 pounds), the extinct species would have easily dwarfed the gorillas, orangutans, chimps, and bonobos of today.  Advertisement What is a Gigantopithecus? G. blacki is sometimes called the […]

Iceland is famous for its volcanic activity, from the ash cloud produced by Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 that grounded flights, to countless news reports of recent eruptions. Advertisement Footage from the latest eruption shows the lava spreading near the Reykjanes peninsula, the fifth eruption in that area since December. According to the BBC, the small fishing […]