2018-08-17 所属栏目:科学美国人

Every winter, huge hordes descend upon the parking lots of big box stores. Not Black Friday shoppers… but crows. There's videos all over YouTube.

<<YouTube clip: "And as

2018-08-17 所属栏目:科学美国人

Hi, I&rsquo;m Scientific American podcast editor Steve Mirsky. And here&rsquo;s a short piece from the August 2018 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches

2018-08-16 所属栏目:科学美国人

Where were you on August 21, 2017? If you&rsquo;re like me—and a couple hundred million other Americans—you were watching the total eclipse of the sun. <<Sound of Karen

2018-08-15 所属栏目:科学美国人

Not too long ago we thought that only humans could make and use tools. Then Jane Goodall watched a chimpanzee called David take a small twig, snap the leaves off, stick it into a t

2018-08-14 所属栏目:科学美国人

Chemists come up with new substances every year to go in everything from makeup to medicines. But introducing these chemicals into products also raises questions about their potent

2018-08-14 所属栏目:科学美国人

Dating apps like Bumble and Tinder can help singles couple up. But online dating is also great for scientists.

"There's so much folk wisdom about dating and very little hard evi

2018-08-10 所属栏目:科学美国人

Baleen whales are the gentle giants of the sea. Despite their colossal size, they feed on tiny creatures such as krill and zooplankton. That&rsquo;s because these whales, instead o

2018-08-09 所属栏目:科学美国人

Plants need three things to grow: air, water and nutrients. Farmers usually take care of the last bit by fertilizing their fields. But now scientists have found a type of corn that

2018-08-09 所属栏目:科学美国人

People speak thousands of languages in the world today. And same goes for the bird world.

"Each bird species has effectively its own language." Andy Radford, a professor of behav

2018-08-03 所属栏目:科学美国人

Every day, five million commuters ride the Hong Kong metro. Human commuters that is. Because there are countless more microbes riding the trains, too.

"Yes it seems they are also

2018-08-02 所属栏目:科学美国人

Eagle Eye by Simon Makin

2018-08-01 所属栏目:科学美国人

Crows react really strongly to one of their own being dead—including gathering around their deceased comrades. Some experts believe that these so-called crow funerals are eff

2018-07-31 所属栏目:科学美国人

When you burn your tongue or cut your cheek, the pain can be intense. But the wound heals pretty quickly, compared to injuries elsewhere.

That&rsquo;s because all the factors nee

2018-07-30 所属栏目:科学美国人

The U.S.&ndash;Mexico border is a hotspot for biodiversity. "You have deserts, you have grasslands, you have mountain ranges." Paul Ehrlich, an evolutionary biologist and ecologist

2018-07-27 所属栏目:科学美国人

Hi, I&rsquo;m Scientific American podcast editor Steve Mirsky. And here&rsquo;s a short piece from the July 2018 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches f

2018-07-26 所属栏目:科学美国人

We have pretty good dental hygiene today—regular brushing, flossing, dental visits. But thousands of years ago? Not so much. Which means the old-timers' teeth had a lot of p

2018-07-24 所属栏目:科学美国人

The big hurricanes last summer—Harvey, Irma and Maria—knocked out internet service for many residents. But another threat to the internet is just regular old sea level

2018-07-23 所属栏目:科学美国人

It&rsquo;s called the whale shark. And, as the name implies, it&rsquo;s huge. In fact, it&rsquo;s the largest living fish in the world. But there&rsquo;s still much unknown about t

2018-07-20 所属栏目:科学美国人

Homo sapiens has an outsized influence on the behavior of other animals. We have long hunted them. More recently, we destroy habitats to build housing and coffee shops, and we buil

2018-07-19 所属栏目:科学美国人

How many moons does Jupiter have? If you said four, you might be Galileo. If you said 69, you were right. Until the announcement this morning by the International Astronomical Unio

2018-07-18 所属栏目:科学美国人

If you've ever watched a moth flutter clumsily around a light on your porch, the insect might seem like a sad match for a predatory bat. The flying mammal is practically a fighter

2018-07-17 所属栏目:科学美国人

Hi, I&rsquo;m Scientific American podcast editor Steve Mirsky. And here&rsquo;s a short piece from the July 2018 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches f

2018-07-16 所属栏目:科学美国人

During intense exercise—sprinting, for example—your body breaks down glucose and produces what&rsquo;s called lactate. That substance can build up faster than it can be

2018-07-16 所属栏目:科学美国人

“The general public, if you look at the broad numbers, it&rsquo;s like 60 percent of vineyards around the world, in the New World, have been planted with just five or six var

2018-07-11 所属栏目:科学美国人

A good disguise keeps you hidden, right? Well, sometimes the best disguise is actually the most dazzling. Because research reveals that flashy metallic iridescence can visually baf