Everything to know about emus

In the 1930s, three Australian soldiers were sent to fight emus with machine guns—and lost

As part of a post-WWI initiative to turn veterans into farmers, soldiers were given plots of land. After emus were found damaging the farmland, three men were sent to handle the flightless birds. These men ended up losing to the second-largest bird species in the world and potentially exacerbating crop losses by sending swaths of the birds running and trampling over wheat.

The ancestors of ostriches and emus could fly

The discovery of a 56 million-year-old fossil bone helps explain how this (mostly) flightless family of birds spread to so many different continents.

Dinosaurs ranged from the size of chickens to multistory buildings

The largest known dinosaur, Argentinosaurus, was about 39 meters long and outweighed a Boeing 737. Species like Parvicursor and Epidexipteryx were less than 45 centimeters long, though the actual smallest dinosaur is likely lost to history.

Why parrots can talk like humans

Birds are built with incredibly versatile tracheas that can mimic all kinds of sounds from their environment. For parrots, that includes human speech. This brief video explains why birds, who have such distinct anatomies from humans, are somehow able to talk like them, anyway.

Meet the bowerbird, the bird world's greatest architect

There are roughly 20 species of bowerbird in and around Australia. It is a remarkable species known for its sophisticated nests. From what experts can tell, the bird has one thing in mind when building its elaborate abode: attracting a mate. See the variety of structures each bird makes in this well-written blog accompanied with incredible photos of bowerbird constructions.

Two marsupials thought to be extinct discovered in New Guinea

The pygmy long-fingered possum and the newly described ring-tailed glider were discovered in 2026 after scientists believed the species had been extinct for 6,000 years. The pygmy long-fingered possum is partially defined by its unusual trait of one finger on each hand that is twice as long as the others.

Airplane travels 14 hours with a hole in its side

Passengers traveling on an Emirates flight to Brisbane, Australia were stunned when they noticed a huge hole in the side of the aircraft while they were disembarking.

Articulating weird memes

Some memes eschew established formats and references, creating new variants that resonate with scrollers through strange meta-jokes or compositions. This episode of this podcast, geared toward blind netizens, dives into some of the weird memes being shared online, such as one in which a pigeon sitting on a shoddy excuse for a nest, single egg forgotten, is meant to inspire comfort in those whose efforts have fallen short.

Some animals seem to live well on little sleep

African bush elephants typically sleep for about 2 hours per 24-hour day, coming in well under a human's recommended seven-hour minimum. Other animals also appear to skimp on sleep, by human standards, without the consequences humans associate with being sleep deprived. This academic article details the sleeping habits of animals that appear to thrive on fewer than 40 winks and explores whether their sleep processes are just built different.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Kangaroos evolved exceptionally thick knee cartilage to absorb shock

There is significant conflict in the medical field regarding chronic arthritis. Some advocate for keeping the joint as active as possible while others argue progressive overuse leads to worsening arthritis. To settle the score, scientists have looked outside the human population, discovering kangaroos rarely suffer from arthritis in their knees.

The okapi was once considered a cryptid, or an animal with an unverified existence

Similar to dragons or Bigfoot, the okapi was once believed to be a mythical animal, known colloquially as an "African unicorn." Its confusing features include zebra-like legs on a donkey-esque body with a giraffe-like head. However, this animal is both real and quite cute.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

What a tiny marine worm can tell us about our brains

Meet the amphioxus, a small eel-like animal that has a lot to teach us about brain evolution. The genetic roots of our brains can be seen in these unusual creatures. This three-minute educational video focuses on the evolutionary history of the human brain through these odd little critters with a 500-million-year-old history.

Learn the history and science of influenza in 'This Podcast Will Kill You'

In their flu episode, cohosts Erin Welsh and Erin Allmann Updyke unpack influenza’s biology, history, and impact—explaining everything from past pandemics to modern vaccines, all with their trademark mix of science and storytelling.

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

Being a Byzantine emperor

The Byzantium and Friends podcast, hosted by Anthony Kaldellis, surveys current research in the history of the Byzantine Empire and its neighbors. In each episode, Professor Kaldellis interviews a scholar about their recent work. The cumulative effect is to reveal a world much more complex, and much more interesting, than the Byzantium found in traditional surveys. The linked episode considers the perks and pitfalls of being a Byzantine emperor.

Porcupines, when threatened, go piloerect—essentially, they get goose bumps

If stressed, the animal appears to grow to about twice its normal size because it goes piloerect, which causes the quills to stand erect. If this intimidation tactic to avoid conflict doesn't work on the predator, the animal may get stabbed by the quills upon contact with the porcupine.

How to properly use semaglutides

This podcast with a nutritionist and a medical doctor discusses how useful semaglutide can be for weight loss. It also outlines the need for patients to set reasonable expectations and to make changes to both diet and exercise as part of an overall weight management strategy. The experts note that failure to make meaningful changes outside of using semaglutide may mean patients need to stay on the drug in order to keep the weight off.

Foot-and-mouth disease, which affects animals, has been eradicated in many locations

The disease, which causes fevers and painful blistering in the mouth, muzzle, snout, teats, and feet—somewhat similar to hand, foot, and mouth disease in people—is transmitted via contact with infected animals or their fluids or eating infected foods or meat. Though it primarily affects cloven-hoofed animals, it's also been known to sicken camels and even elephants.

What's happening to the snowy owl?

This article explores the alarming decline of snowy owls in the Arctic. Once abundant in these northern regions, the snowy owl is now classified as "vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The adult population...

What (and why) is ASMR?

ASMR podcasts and videos are appearing all over social media, so what exactly is it, and what does it do? This immersive article explains the phenomena of ASMR, which stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. ASMR is when certain sounds or...

Women are born with all the eggs they will ever produce in their lifetime

Girls are born with an estimated 1 million to 2 million eggs in their bodies, but around 10,000 die monthly before puberty. Scientists have not yet figured out why there's such an excessive number of eggs prior to menstruation, but they've calculated that there are roughly 300,000 to 400,000 eggs left at puberty.

Mosquitoes stop flying at wind speeds equivalent to the swishing of a horse's tail

This low-threshold for wind—halting flight at 2 to 3 miles per hour—underscores that the bugs are actually not particularly strong flyers. But they don't need to be particularly robust fliers since their tiny, dark bodies and erratic movements can make them challenging to spot.

Hot, semiarid, coastal, cold: An overview of the four desert types

This article describes the various characteristics of deserts, including their geography, their climate, their soil, and the wildlife and vegetation that inhabit them. All desert climates are characterized by extreme temperatures and low rainfall,...

Larger animals like giraffes, elephants, and blue whales have developed a unique defense against cancer, a phenomenon known as Peto's Paradox

The essential facts to know about ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt spanned three millennia—more than 10 times the history of the US—but disappeared from the world's consciousness until the 18th century when it was rediscovered by Napoleon's army. Take a trip through the dynastic periods in this three-minute video.

'Planet Money' explains how Temu became one of the most downloaded apps in the US

According to some estimates, as of 2024, Temu was shipping as many as a million packages a day into the US, and was among of the most downloaded iPhone apps in the country with around 50 million monthly active users.

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.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

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.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

When caught in the mouths of cardinal fish, seed shrimp release glowing, bioluminescent chemicals, which alert predators of the cardinal fish, prompting the shrimp's ejection.

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

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.

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

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.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.