Brain & Behavior
Americans partly owe today’s tipping culture to Prohibition
How a century-old financial crisis turned tipping from a scandal into an obligation that Americans now can't escape.
Sep 3, 2026
Writer at Science Blog
Daniel Moran
Daniel Moran is a writer at Science Blog covering the intersection of psychology, technology, and human behavior. Daniel brings a background in technology research and a focus on how scientific findings translate into the way people actually live, work, and think.
Life
A four-kilogram miniature dachshund survived 529 days alone on Kangaroo Island
A miniature dachshund spent seventeen months wild on an Australian island, returning half again her original weight and seemingly more dachshund than ever.
Sep 2, 2026
Life
Alligator blood can inhibit HIV and kill drug-resistant bacteria in laboratory tests
A prehistoric reptile's superpower against modern plagues: why researchers are racing to unlock the alligator's natural antibiotic defenses.
Sep 2, 2026
Brain & Behavior
Delaware dropped 714 retired New York subway cars into the Atlantic 16 miles offshore
What started as garbage disposal became one of the ocean's most productive ecosystems, proving that human waste and marine life can thrive together.
Sep 1, 2026
Earth & Environment
An 8,500-year-old ornament carved by hand from a scallop shell was found deep inland in California, hundreds of miles from where the shell…
A thumb-sized bead suggests California's inland people were trading across vast distances when most of the world still lived by the ice age's rules.
Sep 1, 2026
Life
A fanged “vampire deer” thought gone from West Bengal for nearly 70 years has appeared on a camera trap
A secretive mountain dweller thought extinct in the region for seven decades has finally been documented—but scientists still don't know if it's a survivor or a sign of something larger stirring in the Himalayas.
Aug 31, 2026
Earth & Environment
Scientists sent robots more than two kilometres beneath the Pacific and mapped enormous lava fields around an active volcano
The ocean floor's violent geology remains largely hidden—until robotic expeditions reveal how molten rock sculpts the seafloor in ways that challenge what we thought we knew about underwater volcanism.
Aug 31, 2026
Life
Scientists once thought zebra stripes might help confuse predators, but when researchers dressed horses in zebra-striped coats, biting…
A simple visual trick—stripes that repel insects—may explain why evolution favored one of nature's most iconic patterns over millions of years.
Aug 30, 2026
Life
Humpback whales have been seen helping seals, sea lions and even sunfish escape orca attacks
Humpback whales routinely abandon their own safety to rescue unrelated species from predators, a pattern so consistent it demands an explanation—but marine biologists have none.
Aug 30, 2026
Earth & Environment
A single cotton T-shirt can have a water footprint of roughly 2,500 litres
The world's thirst for cotton is draining aquifers faster than they can refill, threatening communities that can least afford the shortage.
Aug 30, 2026
Life
The rule that you should drink eight glasses of water a day has been repeated for decades, but when a physiologist went looking for its…
A physiologist's hunt for the source of the world's most famous health advice reveals it was never based on any evidence—just a misreading of a 1945 report that mentioned water was mostly coming from food anyway.
Aug 29, 2026
Science
Scientists drilling through Antarctic ice pulled up a core containing air bubbles trapped 800,000 years ago, before modern humans existed…
What eight hundred millennia of Earth's breath reveals about the climate we're inheriting.
Aug 29, 2026
Earth & Environment
The oldest water ever found was hiding inside Canadian bedrock
Fracture water in Canadian bedrock was dated as old as 2.64 billion years and holds chemical energy that could support microbes living deep underground.
Aug 27, 2026
Life
Elephants don't simply walk away when one of their own dies
Scientists are finding evidence that elephants may grieve their dead in ways that challenge how we understand animal consciousness and emotion.
Aug 27, 2026