Researchers have revealed that chimpanzees are not only capable of learning from one another, but also use this social information to form and maintain local traditions. A recent study shows that the way in which chimpanzees groom each other depends on the community to which they belong. Specifically, it is the unique handclasp grooming behavior…
Bill Nye, the famed “Science Guy,” found himself the center of attention this week after a video in which he said creationism should not be taught to children went viral. “I say to the grownups, ‘If you want to deny evolution and live in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we’ve observed in the…
Astronomers have for the first time discovered two alien planets whirling around a pair of stars: a complete solar system with twin suns just like Luke Skywalker’s fictional home world Tatooine. Most stars like our sun are not singletons, but rather come in pairs that orbit each other. Scientists had found planets in these binary…
Certain apes appear to be much smarter than others, with at least one chimpanzee now called “exceptional” when compared to other chimps. The standout chimp, an adult female in her 20s named Natasha, scored off the charts in a battery of tests. The findings, published in the latest Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B,…
Roughly 230 million years ago, two mites and a midge got stuck in oozing resin from a now-extinct species of conifer tree in the mountains of northeastern Italy. They never moved again. Despite their ignoble deaths, the insects have now earned the distinction of being the oldest arthropods — invertebrates that include insects, arachnids, and…
The LiftPort Group has launched a rather unusual Kickstarter project. They’re looking for money for an experiment to serve as a stepping stone to their ultimate goal – building a space elevator on the Moon. Well, that’s the ultimate goal, anyway. For the immediate future, their goal is much more modest – they want to…
The total mass of life on Earth may be one-third less than thought, altering how active we think life on our planet is, researchers say. Past estimates of how much life there is on Earth suggested living organisms store about 1 trillion tons of carbon, of which about 30% dwells in single-celled microbes in the…
Kids love smartphones and tablets, and that makes the devices great tools for learning math and science. Apps for mobile devices can help make even the most abstract concepts—like algebra or physics—engaging. And smartphones and tablets can be carried out into nature to help students understand what they’re seeing. Star Walk, for example, identifies more…
Florida State University oceanographer Kevin Speer has a “new paradigm” for describing how the world’s oceans circulate — and with it he may help reshape science’s understanding of the processes by which wind, water, sunlight and other factors interact and influence the planet’s climate. Working with John Marshall, an oceanography professor at the Massachusetts Institute…
In his recent book The Social Conquest of Earth, the great myrmecologist and evolutionary theorist Edward O. Wilson comments at several points on animals with especially complex social behavior. Leading that parade: human beings. A close second: leafcutter ants. It might seem odd that tiny ants, with their necessarily tiny brains, could rival humans in…