Levitate a Frog Go to your refrigerator and grab a magnet. Now try to stick it to your body. Of course, the magnet falls to the ground because our bodies are not magnetic. Right? Colloquially, yes. Technically, the answer is more complex (though you obviously still won’t find magnetism in your vaccines; I can’t […]
Moose and Flying Squirrel From 1959 to 1964, Rocket J. Squirrel, affectionately known as Rocky, and Bullwinkle J. Moose taught television audiences to be wary of evil Russians and, anachronistically, Nazis, while instilling a love for Canadian Mounties, all with a dose of wry comedy. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, which has
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Draco If you’re a fantasy-phile, you’ve probably encountered the word draco many times. Latin for dragon, it gives us Dracula and drakes and, I’m told, a character from Harry Potter, amongst many others. In our previous exploration, we discovered a monkey that “flies.” Unfortunately, today, I do not have evidence to present you regarding the existence of dragons.
Proboscis Monkeys Today we travel not to Oz but Borneo, the world’s third-largest island. It’s so big that it houses three nations: Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia. On this island lives a bizarre animal that might have you believe Borneo actually is in Oz, not Southeast Asia. Borneo’s location in Southeast Asia The word proboscis more
The Wandering Meatloaf Chitons are a class of mollusks specific to the oceans of the planet. Unlike some mollusks with which you might be familiar, chitons appear more like blobby flapjacks than the normal shell topographies of a clam or a snail. When a snail feels threatened she can dive into her hard home; when
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Apesongs Primatologist Dian Fossey famously studied vocalizations in gorillas. For my money, she produced the greatest piece of evidence that these great apes and humans descended from a shared ancestor at some point in the distant past: the most common form of communication in gorillas is belching. (credit the notion to Steve Mirsky, cited in
The Army Ant Death Spiral Renowned ecologist and conservationist William Beebe’s 1921 tome, Edge of the Jungle, chronicled an incredible event in the teeming forests of Kartabo in Guyana. In the recorded history of entomology, no human had witnessed anything like it. He wrote: Yet, whatever the simile, the net of unconscious precedent is
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Pingu A couple of months ago, we followed the path of an adventurous walrus named Wally. He left his home in the Arctic Circle and took a circuitous tour of western Europe. Today’s topic switches hemispheres but maintains the wandering nature. Unfortunately, Pingu the Penguin does not seem to be joyriding like Wally, but the
Numbats I recently encountered a trivial question, which asked the reader to identify a specific Australian animal. One of the answers was “numbat.” Thinking that seemed a word created to sound like another, real creature from Australia, I discarded it. I confidently clicked “wombat” and was rewarded with a big, fat, red X. Turns out
Mr. Goxx The combination of the relatively recent advent of fee-free stock trading and a global pandemic led to record numbers of entities trying their hands at playing the market. This uptick was not limited to traditional stocks. Cryptocurrencies are de riguer, as well. Bitcoin is the most famous decentralized currency, but dozens or hundreds of others