Honey has really interesting antimicrobial properties. You can read more about it in Mandal and Mandal (2011) “Honey: its medicinal property and antibacterial activity” from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3609166 Cesar et. al. (2020) “Bacterial Evolution in High-Osmolarity Environments.” from https://mbio.asm.org/content/11/4/e01191-20 looks into how bacteria handle being in environments…

I mean.. I don’t even like coffee, so this is probably not for me. Also, I do not have US$1300 for wild-collected beans ( https://elevencoffees.com/what-is-the-price-of-kopi-luwak ). But if I were to try it, i would definitely pay more to get the wild type. Caging these…

The scientists constructed a little car the rats could enter and control by touching some metal wires to either turn or drive forwards. They found that not only could rats be trained to drive in fairly complex patterns, but learning to drive lowered their stress…

House training puppies would be easier if all animals smelled like this. Anyway, enjoy further reading about the bearcat (who is neither a bear nor a cat btw) at trusty National Geographic   —– Langley “Why This Animal’s Pee Smells Like Hot Buttered Popcorn” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/160423-dogs-animals-pets-smell-science-scents/…

Of course, it does not actually mimic a virus, but it can mimic scary poisonous creatures like a lion fish or a sea snake. Mimicry is not really new in nature, like when a fly has evolved to look like a bee, but this octopus…

In case you did not get it from the illustration, I have compared a bell pepper to the Carolina Reaper and the Dragon’s Breath, two very, very, you-do-not-want-it-in-your-taco-hot peppers. Here is an easy read on bell peppers and their pungency: https://www.pepperscale.com/are-bell-peppers-spicy/ You can also find…

But even though they are not all that smart, they have remained pretty much unchanged for the past very many million years. So they must be doing something right! Here are some other Misconceptions of evolution. You can also check out this article to learn…

It might be thorny, but it does not need to be thirsty. This is thanks to “their microstructured skin surface, with channels in between overlapping  scales, [that] enables them to collect water by capillarity and passively  transport it to the mouth for ingestion”. Read more…

This is a cool example of how evolution works. During the industrial revolution, coal powered plants turned tree trunks and nesting places of peppered moths darker. This led to a rapid increase in the proportion of dark (melanistic) moths, as they had better camouflage than…

Pandas are kind of awsome, with their “thumbs” and bamboo-eating abilities. “The way in which the giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, uses the radial sesamoid bone — its ‘pseudo-thumb’ — for grasping makes it one of the most extraordinary manipulation systems in mammalian evolution. The bone…