No substance has been as constant an ally to insidious scheming as arsenic, the so-called “king of poisons.” In its chemically pure form, it isn’t much of a threat because our bodies don’t absorb it well; it’s when arsenic combines with...

In 1935, researchers found that after removing the frontal lobes of two chimps, they no longer experienced frustration or anxiety. Neurologist Egas Moniz believed that replicating this in humans could cure mental illness— leading to one...

Today, rats are often regarded as the most successful invasive species in the world. The most common species of rat scurried onto the scene roughly 1 to 3 million years ago in Asia. There, they craftily survived Earth’s most recent ice...

Of all Shakespeare’s plays, perhaps none is stranger than “Macbeth”— a parable on power rife with supernatural elements. But according to texts from the 11th century, this tragedy has its roots in reality. What’s more, other accounts...

Lots of languages and species are going extinct, but because others keep getting found or described, the official counts of languages and species are still increasing.

Hurricane path prediction seems straightforward, until it is not – that’s because hurricanes can encounter atmospheric effects that turn their paths into erratic nonsense.

Many animal species stuff themselves with toxic chemicals for protection, which forces them to use a handful of distinct strategies to avoid becoming victims of their own weapons.

The Grand Canyon is super-wide and super-deep, which might make you think that the Colorado River, which carved it, is particularly old or powerful. Or at least that's what I thought.

It seems wild that some animals basically trade in their bodies for new ones during their lifetime, but it's actually really common – and it makes a lot of sense.

The average human, in theory, eats 3 spiders a year. If you're not eating them and I'm not eating them, who is?

A world without predators. It sounds like a safer, happier world, but come on, this is science…

Most living things on Earth need oxygen to survive, but scientists discovered a species of bacteria that uses oxygen totally differently from every other organism on Earth.

Premature babies majorly benefit from skin-to-skin contact with a parent –also known as “kangaroo care”– because it reduces infections and hypothermia and increases weight gain and parental involvement.

When we say a meme goes “viral,” we aren't actually saying it's making people sick. But the math behind a meme’s spread suggests it's actually a pretty spot-on analogy.

Despite the seemingly basic things we don't know about dinosaurs, we do know some surprising things – like their body temperatures.

Because of the way digestion works, human poop not only contains dangerous microbes, it also contains a wide variety of other things, many of which we could potentially put to use.

There are huge varieties of birth control methods because there are lots of different ways to disrupt the process of sperm-egg fertilization.

Plants can tell when competitors are nearby because they can see them.

Many crustaceans from all sorts of starting points evolve to end up looking similar, likely due to outside pressures. That’s sort of like what happens with YouTube videos.

The ancestors of gars, horseshoe crabs and coelacanths looked almost the same as their modern relatives. Darwin called species like these “living fossils'' because they seem like they are evolutionarily frozen in time. But Darwin was wrong.

There’s an island in the Caribbean where David used to perform magic tricks for monkeys. And it was super cool because it suggested that they have the ability to count! (but only up to four)

Beehives always have a queen, who is the mother of the entire hive. But have you ever wondered, what happened to the king, if there was ever any? Can a male bee become a king?

Sewers are a great way to make pooping safe, but they’re not always the right solution because they require specific resources that many places just don’t have.

Electric eels can emit some of the largest shocks in the animal kingdom - but why don't they shock themselves?