Category: Technology

There’s no trait that distinguishes humans from all other mammals more clearly than the way we walk. Human habitual bipedalism – obligatory walking on two legs – has long been a defining trait of our species, as well as our ancestors as far back as 4.5 million years ago. Science’s growing understanding of chimpanzee culture, […]

Joe is a full-time college student who also works some nights as a security guard. He played basketball all through high school and loves to follow the sport. Tonight one of his favorite teams is playing and he’s placed a US$100 bet for them to win. As he sits in his vehicle with one eye […]

Having the capability to launch satellites from UK soil has been a long time coming. The recent attempted launch from Cornwall did not succeed, despite high hopes. Nevertheless, it marks an ambitious new chapter in the UK’s long record of space exploration. As a country, we are good at making satellites, but we have typically […]

Scientists and government agencies have been worried about the space junk surrounding Earth for decades. But humanity’s starry ambitions are farther reaching than the space just around Earth. Ever since the 1960s with the launch of the Apollo program and the emergence of the space race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, people have been […]

Picture a professional couple, Jack and Jill, who are committed to a relationship in which household responsibilities are shared evenly. Now imagine Jack and Jill differ in how they see their home. When Jill enters the messy kitchen, she sees the dishes as to be washed and the recycling bin as to be taken out. […]

Keeping track of the world’s wildlife populations is fundamental to conservation efforts in the face of the continued deterioration of global biodiversity. But some species are harder to study than others. Some aquatic species, for instance, elude detection because they are extremely rare and sparsely distributed. One especially elusive example is the estuarine pipefish (Syngnathus […]

Editor’s note: This article contains minor spoilers for the Netflix series “Wednesday.” The popular Netflix series “Wednesday” chronicles the adventures of the Addams family’s teen daughter. After her parents send her to Nevermore Academy, a school for “outcasts,” Wednesday Addams, played by Jenna Ortega, is pulled into a perplexing murder mystery. The show is infused […]

The sometimes astonishing sex lives of animals are well known, especially the huge range in penis structures, evolved to increase the number of offspring that males father. For example, ducks have corkscrew-shaped penises, and echidnas (also known as spiny anteaters) have a four-headed penis. But what about female genitalia? For hundreds of years, scientists assumed […]

The largest flightless bird found anywhere in the world today is the ostrich. It stands about 2.7 metres tall and can weigh up to 150kg. But millions of years ago ostriches would have been dwarfed by several other flightless bird species. One was Dromornis stirtoni, nicknamed the thunderbird. It lived in the late Miocene period […]

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected]. If dinosaurs died, how come there are birds? Caiden S., age 9, Wylie, Texas Everyone knows what a bird is – and pretty much everyone knows what a dinosaur is. […]