The world’s largest rats could help conservationists in the ongoing fight against the illegal wildlife trade. Researchers have trained African giant pouched rats to pick up the scent of highly-sought elephant tusks, rhino horns, African blackwoodand pangolin scales. The rare wood is threatened and the animals are critically endangered. TheContinue Reading
The second man to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, has endorsed former President Donald Trump for a second term. In a lengthy statement on Wednesday, the 94-year-old brigadier general said he was “impressed” by the first Trump Administration’s efforts to elevate “human space exploration” and how it was “madeContinue Reading
A first-of-its-kind study has finally revealed how Indigenous Australians delivered deadly strikes with their two iconic weapons. The research, published in the journal Scientific Reports last week, shows how Aboriginal Australians deployed the kodj and the leangle. Kodj is an indigenous invention that is part hammer, part axe and partContinue Reading
Experts have found the reason crocodiles can’t dive into the deep like others in the ocean. A team of scientists have reported that the sinuses of the prehistoric ancestors of crocodiles prevented them from evolving into deep divers. The researchers from the universities of Southampton and Edinburgh compared thalattosuchians, whichContinue Reading
A 450-million-year-old fossil of an ancient relative of spiders found in fool’s gold could shed light on how scorpions for their pincers. A newly discovered species has been called Lomankus edgecombei, and is distantly related to scorpions and horseshoe crabs. Named after arthropod expert Greg Edgecombe, the fossil belongs toContinue Reading
People who have difficulties falling or staying asleep may have a higher risk of developing dementia later in life, scientists have found. Scans of nearly 600 middle-aged people showed sleeping badly aged the brain by nearly three years and was associated with poorer brain health years later – despite adjustingContinue Reading
X-ray scans have finally unravelled the mystery of how a famous ancient Egyptian “locked mummy” was placed inside a coffin with seemingly no entry point. Out of the over dozen Egyptian mummies housed in Chicago’s Field Museum, the one of an aristocrat Chenet-aa who lived 3,000 years ago has stoodContinue Reading
A mass extinction event that brought about the rise of the dinosaurs more than 200 million years ago was believed to be caused by the planet’s warming. Now, scientists at Columbia University say sudden freezing temperatures may be to blame. The causes of the End Triassic Extinction, which wiped outContinue Reading
Archaeologists in Italy have discovered intricate artwork inside a small Pompeii house that was buried in ash and debris from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago. The “tiny” house, the Pompeii Archaeological Park said, was found during excavations at the Insula dei casti Amanti construction site, whichContinue Reading
Kissing in humans evolved as a symbolic expression of love from grooming behaviours seen in ancestral great apes, a comprehensive new study says. The kiss has been a versatile way by which humans across civilisations and societies have shown affection, intimacy, or social bonding, most often in a way thatContinue Reading
