This is one of the stranger problems in biology, and it went unsolved for a long time because every intuitive answer fails. The roots are not pushing hard enough. There…
The intuitive model of a mosquito bite is that something sharp went into you and the hole is now irritated. Almost none of that is right. There is no single…
The shape is the instrument reading. Here are seventeen.
1. The Fluffy White Heap With a Flat Base
Cumulus forms where warm ground heats a bubble of air until it…
Humans Are the Best Long-Distance Cooling System in the Animal Kingdom, and Sweating Is How We Do It
Sweating has a poor reputation, being treated as an embarrassment to be suppressed with products. It is, biologically, one of the more remarkable things about the human body, and among…
A beetle's back does not look like wings. It looks like a shell, hard and glossy, split down the middle by a straight seam. That seam is the clue. The…
There is moss on the wall outside, on the north face of a gravestone, in the gaps between paving slabs, along the damp side of a tree. It looks like…