A poplar tilted onto its side laid a band of pulling wood along the top of the bend to haul itself upright, then, once the experimenters…
Proprioception is the sense that lets a person touch their nose with their eyes shut.
Sep 7, 2026
Deeper reporting,
thinking made visible.
Longer essays and features from Science Blog. Pieces here go through additional research and review.
Earth & Environment
We’re travelling around Queensland and the water in this tiny outback town smells rather strange
Beneath the red dust of remote Queensland, ancient groundwater carries the smell of deep time—and reveals surprising secrets about survival in the arid interior.
By Jeanette Brown · Sep 7, 2026
Over roughly 150 years, Dutch men gained about 20 centimetres in average height, while American men
America began the nineteenth-century comparison several centimetres ahead. Military records and modern surveys show how the Netherlands reversed that gap, and why no single cause explains it.
Sep 6, 2026
Before 2018, sulphur-crested cockatoos had been reported opening bins in just three Sydney suburbs
Community reports and direct observations showed a difficult bin-opening technique spreading socially through Sydney cockatoos and developing local variants.
Sep 6, 2026
The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment beneath South Dakota found one particle interaction in 220 live days that researchers have struggled to explain…
One 248 keV recoil survived LUX-ZEPLIN’s background checks, producing a 2.6-sigma global result that remains far short of a dark-matter discovery.
Sep 6, 2026
Two researchers who measured real campfires report that firelight is bright enough to read a pair of hands, and argue that its flicker may…
A review in Proceedings of the Royal Society B argues that language itself began in fireside storytelling. It brings light meters to a question that has run for years on description alone.
Sep 6, 2026
Researchers analysing 469 rumbles from wild African elephants in Kenya found that calls contained name-like information identifying their…
Machine learning found receiver-specific information in 469 Kenyan elephant rumbles, and 17 wild elephants responded faster to calls originally directed at them.
Sep 6, 2026
In 2006, University of Washington biologist John Marzluff wore a caveman mask while trapping and banding seven Seattle crows
Seven Seattle crows learned one masked face during a 2006 banding. The warning moved through the local flock and across generations before a 2023 walk finally drew silence.
Sep 6, 2026
Black vultures nested a metre or two from an incubating Chaco eagle on an abandoned Argentine hunting tower, and the eagle's egg was gone…
Black vultures nested within a metre or two of two different predatory raptors in Argentina.
Sep 6, 2026