With their impressive eyes, Herculean strength, and punches with the force of a 22-caliber bullet, mantis shrimp are some of the ocean’s most impressive tiny wonders. These sucker punches are used on animals like worms, squid, and fish that they are preying on, predators, and each other. New research found that…
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Chicken fat supercapacitors could store green energy of the future
As vital as it is for society to transition to renewable energy, it’s not as easy as simply swapping out fossil fuels for solar panels. To ensure they’re as efficient as possible, power infrastructures need powerful batteries to reliably house their excess generated energy for later use. Storage equipment has…
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Expressive elephants use gestures and vocal cues to communicate
Communication is more than just verbal cues. It’s also glances and gestures and many primates, including humans, use motions to convey their message. Similarly, African elephants (Loxodonta africana) may change their greetings depending on whether the other elephant is looking at them. The gentle giants also use different combinations of…
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Why these parrots sometimes kill each other’s chicks
Green-rumped parrotlets appear to have high instances of both adoption and infanticide, showcasing two very different sides of life in the animal kingdom. A study published May 6 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) details what drives them to go to two extremes when it…
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Swarm of tiny snail robots stick together to form new structures
Researchers have built a swarm of miniature, snail-inspired robots, minus all the mucus. Instead, a retractable suction cup works in tandem with the remote-controlled machine’s tank-like treads to maneuver across both difficult terrain and over each other. Biomimicry is nothing new within the field of robotics. But while many aquatic…
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These birds break the sex binary like it’s nothing
What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your…
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Sperm whales may have their own ‘alphabet’
Sperm whales have their own unique cultures, accents, and potentially a phonetic alphabet. A team from MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) may have decoded this phonetic alphabet that reveals sophisticated structures within sperm whale communication that could be similar to human phonetics…
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Bigger-brained gull species thrive in urban spaces
Despite the reputation for being the trash pandas of the bird world, seagulls are kind of the masters of evolution. They can survive and thrive alongside humans, have a remarkable memory, and some have been observed using pieces of food to bait fish the way primates use tools. The seagull…
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Orangutan observed using a plant to treat an open wound
Observers have documented multiple animal species using plants for self-medicinal purposes, such as great apes eating plants that treat parasitic infections or rubbing vegetation on sore muscles. But a wild orangutan recently displayed something never observed before—he treated his own open wound by activating a plant’s medical properties using his…
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Boston Dynamics gives Spot bot a furry makeover
Boston Dynamics may have relocated the bipedal Atlas to a nice farm upstate, but the company continues to let everyone know its four-legged line of Spot robots have a lot of life left in them. And after years of obvious dog-bot comparisons, Spot’s makers finally went ahead and commissioned a…
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