The central fact is that honey contains far more dissolved sugar than water can normally hold, and very little water at all. Almost every peculiar thing about it follows from…
There is a category of behaviour that everybody recognises immediately and nobody can define precisely, which is usually a sign that something interesting is going on.
Play is obvious when…
There is a strong intuition that coordinated group movement requires coordination — something issuing instructions, or at minimum some shared signal that everybody is responding to.
That intuition is wrong,…
Everything about a lake follows from how its basin was made. Ice, movement of the crust, volcanic collapse, dissolving rock and a river changing its mind all produce lakes, and…
There is a constraint that shapes plant biology more than almost anything else, and it is easy to overlook because it is so obvious.
Plants cannot move. Not slightly limited…
There is a common assumption that a hot place is hot and a cold place is cold, and that a location is one or the other.
Deserts break that assumption…