See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Animal phobias are likely the most common type of phobias, followed by an extreme fear of heights

Dr. Martin Antony, a Canadian expert on phobias and anxiety, says that fears of creepy, crawly animals like snakes, spiders, and mice are particularly common.

Animal phobias are likely the most common type of phobias, followed by an extreme fear of heights.

Fear has a specific 'smell'—at least to machines

This excerpt from a Mythbusters episode takes on the smell-of-fear question, comparing the sweat composition of individuals exposed to snakes, rats, and scorpions with that of people exercising. Molecularly, the sweats are different to a gas chromatography machine, but to most noses would be indistinguishable.

Fear or disgust related to clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may stem from evolutionary processes to help us avoid pathogens.

Charles Darwin studied goose bumps by scaring zoo animals in London with a stuffed snake

Read the famous naturalist’s work from the late 1800s, detailing how he sought to draw comparisons between how animals and humans respond to fear. As part of that work, he exposed monkeys and a peccary to a stuffed snake and noted the animals’ hair-raising fear response.

Twelve artworks you'll love zooming into

Zoom in on these famous paintings to see what's hiding up close, then go exploring the rest of Google's incredible Arts and Culture hub.

One artist's horrifyingly ornate jack-o-lanterns

Ray Villofane is a world-renowned artist known for his realistic and scary pumpkin carvings which take the art to the next level. Spook yourself with a dip into just a few of his pieces, ranging from the silly to the truly terrifying. Villofane's...

Some theorize that horror's artifice turns fear into enjoyment

The “excitation transfer theory” suggests that the unpleasant feelings a jump scare might elicit (like shortness of breath) are quickly relieved when the audience member remembers what they’re witnessing is fake.

Millions of years of evolution produced dinosaurs with bizarre features

This list of the 17 weirdest dinosaurs includes a cross between a parrot and a porcupine, a dinosaur whose arms each ended with one finger, a vampire dinosaur, a dinosaur with wings on its legs instead of its arms, and a Harry Potter-inspired “dragon king of Hogwarts.”

In 2015, a custom virus program was used to destroy and transform art images

At the Art Laboratory Berlin's "bOdy pandemOnium: Immersion into Noise" exhibit, Chicago-born artist Joseph Nechvatal explored viractualism—the interface between the biological and the technological—via a custom virus program that randomly altered images representing the human eye and rectum.

Contemporary horror novelists on their favorite scary stories

Ten of horror's best writers name the books that still give them nightmares. From established classics, like Stephen King's "IT" and Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House," to unexpected picks like Katherine Dunn's "Geek Love," this collection of scary stories is a perfect reading list for Halloween.

Portraits of a pest: a photo gallery of bedbugs

Bedbugs are reemerging as a major urban pest after half a century of relative dormancy. These wingless insects take blood meals at night, hiding during the day in dark crevices. Check out these sophisticated images of the common bedbug, Cimex...

View a collection of glass sculptures of corals threatened by fishing and deep-sea mining

In "Depicting Dark Waters," British sculptural model maker Alice Baker depicts European cold-water corals, which make up 65% of all known coral species, to raise awareness of deep-sea ecosystems threatened by commercial and industrial activities. The project involved a collaboration with marine biologists from the Netherlands and Sweden.

Jasper Johns’ works often captured familiar symbols and made them abstract

Some of pop art’s most famous works toy with the push and pull between recognizable and hidden. ARTnews dissects seven well-known pieces by Jasper Johns—including works of American flags and maps—to explore the relationship between obvious iconography and invited analysis common to the genre.

See February 2026's best science images, including raining iguanas.

Watch insects and animal pollinators in slow motion

Louie Schwartzberg's "Moving Art" series showcases slow-motion footage of oceans, forests, deserts, flowers, and more. In this excerpt, organisms such as bats, monarch butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds are shown interacting with one another and with flowering plants.

Twenty of the coolest products from CES 2025

This roundup from Cybernews showcases standout CES 2025 innovations—from flying cars and robot dogs to VR headsets and AI-powered gadgets—showing the event’s most talked-about tech.

See this collection of mental health cartoons

These cartoons were curated around mental health themes in celebration of World Mental Health Day, which is observed annually on Oct. 10. The 15+ cartoons include thematic nods to weathering mental health challenges and looking forward to better times ahead.

Is synbio really cool, really scary, or both?

There’s always been a divide between technology, the inanimate stuff that we build, and biology, the living stuff that nature builds. Synthetic biologists are trying to figure out how to close the gap by building living things.

These invasive spiders are weaving their way across the US

The Joro spider was first spotted in the US in 2013 and has since spread throughout the Southeast. Get the 101 on this massive (and massively) invasive Asian spider in this article and infographics.

Meteorologists believe they know the weather that inspired the terror behind Munch's painting 'The Scream'

Helene Muri, a meteorologist at the University of Oslo, believes the clouds causing the man such terror are nacreous. "We do know that there were mother-of-pearl clouds in the Oslo area in the late 19th century," she said, though she was careful to note that it was still a hypothesis.

AP Photos: 20 images documenting the enormity of 9/11

The Associated Press shares 20 photographers’ frames from Sept. 11, 2001, when hijackers crashed commercial planes into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

Watch this octopus win every single Escape Room challenge

Octopuses are famously intelligent, solitary creatures covered in hundreds of chemical-sensing suckers. They're also pretty fascinating pets, and even enjoy playing. The crew at OctoLab put one of its more playful mollusks into four different Escape Room-like cages to see how long it would take for it to escape. Watch this video to see the brilliant, if a bit unsettling, methods the animal uses.

Marina Abramović subjected herself to pain and humiliation in her ‘Rhythm’ series

The five performances, which included an invitation for the audience to use 72 objects as they pleased, helped put her on the map as a fearless artist, but they also caused her physical harm.

Monks and peasants once used cobwebs as canvases for painting

The tradition goes back to the 16th century, when the delicate canvases were hung in churches and cloisters. The difficulty in painting on the cobwebs was intended to illustrate one's devotion to their faith.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

'Do one thing every day that scares you.'

-Mary Schmich (1953-present), a columnist for the Chicago Tribune

O’Keeffe collected animal skulls and bones for her art

O’Keeffe used bones as motifs in her work throughout her time in New Mexico. She famously stated, “The bones do not symbolize death to me. They are shapes that I enjoy … They're very lively.”

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

See images of medical cases of firework injuries shared on this 'Instagram for doctors.' (Warning: Graphic content)

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

This poison ivy knowledge quiz—accompanied by photos of the plant's varied forms—may help you identify this common rash-inducing growth.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.