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NPR
Science
Lightning may play have played a key role in the emergence of life on Earth.

How A Building Block of Life Got Created In a Flash

Mar 16, 2021
Lightning strikes may have supplied a key ingredient that allowed life to emerge on the early Earth, according to a new study of "fossilized" lightning.
NPR
Goats and Soda
Saint Augustine was among the saints who pushed some of the bans and policies that may have paved the way for a breakdown of extended family networks in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.

Western Individualism May Have Roots In The Medieval Church's Obsession With Incest

Nov 07, 2019
Researchers combed Vatican archives to find records of how ancient church policies shaped Western values and family structures today.
NPR
Shots - Health News
A California two-spot octopus extends a sucker-lined arm from its den. In 2015, this was the first octopus <strong></strong>species to have its full genetic sequence published.

Why Octopuses Might Be The Next Lab Rats

Jun 03, 2019
Move over, fruit flies, rats and zebrafish. Squid and octopuses have elaborate brains and behaviors, and scientists say studying them in the laboratory could yield important biological insights.
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NPR
Goats and Soda

Living Near Your Grandmother Has Evolutionary Benefits

Feb 07, 2019
Humans are evolutionary oddballs for living long past our reproductive prime. New research explains how grandmothers might be the reason why.
NPR
Goats and Soda
Unlike humans, chimpanzees don't readily share food, even with their own children.

Animated History: The Evolution Of Parenting

Jun 22, 2018
A new theory claims that shared child care and food were the original secrets of our species' success.
NPR
Goats and Soda
A Tanzanian Hadza grandmother sits in the shade with her grandchild during the 1995 dry season.

Why Grandmothers May Hold The Key To Human Evolution

Jun 07, 2018
What made us human might have had less to do with men out hunting, and a lot more to do with what was going on at home — with grandmas and babies.
NPR
The Two-Way
A CT-scan image of the skull of an ancient bird shows how one of the earliest bird beaks worked as a pincer, in the way beaks of modern birds do, but also had teeth left over from dinosaur ancestors. The animal, called <em>I</em><em>chthyornis</em>, live

How Did Birds Lose Their Teeth And Get Their Beaks? Study Offers Clues

May 02, 2018
Modern birds are dinosaurs without toothy jaws, and with bigger brains. Newly published research fills in some of the missing links in their evolution.
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NPR
13.7: Cosmos And Culture

Would Aliens Look Like Us?

Oct 04, 2017
Though natural selection might have sculpted a well-adapted species on another planet, they wouldn't look like us, says guest blogger Jonathan Losos.
NPR
Parallels
Zeynep Terzi, left, 23, a medical student in Istanbul, and Betul Vargi, 22, a college student studying English literature, are part of what Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan calls a new "pious generation" of Turks. They wear headscarves and attend

In Turkey, Schools Will Stop Teaching Evolution This Fall

Aug 20, 2017
When Turkish children head back to school, something will be missing from their textbooks: any mention of evolution. The government is phasing in what it calls a values-based curriculum.
NPR
Education
A new Florida state law allows parents, and any residents, challenge the use of textbooks and instructional materials they find objectionable via an independent hearing.

New Florida Law Lets Residents Challenge School Textbooks

Jul 31, 2017
The new bill was pushed by a conservative group critical of the way evolution, climate change and government were being taught in Florida schools.
NPR
13.7: Cosmos And Culture

In Public Understanding Of Science, Alternative Facts Are The Norm

May 29, 2017
If we are committed to combatting "alternate facts" in science — as we should be — then we must also combat the alternative theories that license them, says guest blogger Andrew Shtulman.
NPR
13.7: Cosmos And Culture

Has Modern Experience Changed The Human Brain?

May 19, 2017
The brain evolved over evolutionary time scales of millions of years. So what's the likelihood that modern experience could have had an impact? Alva Noë says a new study might give the topic light.
NPR
The Salt
From left to right: lemur, vervet monkey, gibbon, baboon, chimpanzee, human (excluded in this study).

What Gave Some Primates Bigger Brains? A Fruit-Filled Diet

Mar 27, 2017
A new study suggests that diet had a big influence in driving the evolution of brain size in primates. Monkeys who thrive on fruit have bigger brains than their plant eating neighbors.
NPR
The Salt
A 'field' of <em>Squamellaria</em> plants in a Macaranga tree farmed by a colony of <em>Philidris nagasau </em>ants. The tree overlooks the Fijian archipelago at sunset on Taveuni island.

Who Invented Agriculture First? It Sure Wasn't Humans

Nov 25, 2016
Ants in Fiji farm plants and fertilize them with their poop. And they've been doing this for 3 million years, much longer than humans, who began experimenting with farming about 12,000 years ago.
NPR
Shots - Health News
Dogs were trained to lie motionless inside a scanner and listen carefully to human speech.

Their Masters' Voices: Dogs Understand Tone And Meaning Of Words

Aug 30, 2016
When humans talk to dogs, the canine brains seem to separate the meaning of the words from the intonation used and to analyze each aspect independently.
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NPR
The Two-Way
This aerial image taken in October 2015 shows the Mata Menge site on Flores where bones dating back 700,000 years were found.

Fossils Suggest That Island Life Shrank Our 'Hobbit' Relatives

Jun 08, 2016
Scientists say tiny bones dating back 700,000 years on the Indonesian island of Flores shine new light on how these mysterious, 3-foot-tall creatures got that way.
NPR
Shots - Health News
"Discovering species where males have this very female-like reproductive strategy of producing very few high-investment gametes, or sperm, was a thrilling moment," says Scott Pitnick.

For Female Fruit Flies, Mr. Right Has The Biggest Sperm

May 25, 2016
It's not unusual for males to try to impress females with big body parts. Consider antlers on deer, or elaborate tails on peacocks. Some male fruit flies take a different approach: giant sperm.
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NPR
Shots - Health News
The harmless mite <em>Demodex folliculorum</em>, seen here in an electron microscope image, lives in the follicles of eyelashes.

Our Parasites And Vermin Reveal Secrets Of Human History

Dec 24, 2015
The mites that live on our faces may help reveal where our ancestors came from. It wouldn't be the first time that creepy crawlies have revealed something more than skin deep about the human past.
NPR
Shots - Health News

Be Kind, Unwind: How Helping Others Can Help Keep Stress In Check

Dec 17, 2015
If the holidays have you stressed out, an act of kindness could help. Researchers tracked people and found that stress levels dropped when they went out of their way to help others.
NPR
Shots - Health News

Loneliness May Warp Our Genes, And Our Immune Systems

Nov 29, 2015
Loneliness takes a toll on many aspects of health, in part because it activates a fight -or-flight immune response. That may have helped ancestors survive lonely exile, but can slowly kill us today.
NPR
Shots - Health News
If humans went up against the rest of the animal kingdom in most physical challenges, they wouldn't do that well.

Here's How You Can Outrun A Horse

Oct 20, 2015
Humans are pathetic at athletic feats compared to animals. We get outrun by ostriches and outswum by penguins. But human physiology makes us aces at one sport: endurance running. Sorry, horse.
NPR
Science
<em>Josephoartigasia </em>was a cow-size rodent that lived 3 million years ago.

12 Ancient Giants: An Ode To The Enormous And Extinct

Aug 12, 2015
A dragonfly with a 2-foot wingspan? A sloth the size of an elephant? Skunk Bear's latest video introduces the enormous, ancient relatives of modern animals — all in rhyming verse. Of course.
NPR
Shots - Health News
An Akhal-Teke horse, from Turkmenistan, has horizontal slits for pupils, while the Mediterranean house gecko has vertical slits that look like a series of pinholes.

Eye Shapes Of The Animal World Hint At Differences In Our Lifestyles

Aug 07, 2015
Tigers have round pupils, but domestic cats have vertical slits in the center of their eyes. What gives? A census of the shapes of animals' pupils suggests size and way of life each play a big role.
NPR
The Salt
A cabbage butterfly caterpillar. For tens of millions of years, these critters have been in an evolutionary arms race with plants they munch on. The end result: "mustard oil bombs" that also explode with flavor when we humans harness them to make condime

Why You Should Thank A Caterpillar For Your Mustard And Wasabi

Jun 29, 2015
Eons ago, cabbage butterfly larvae and the plants they eat began an evolutionary arms race. The result: "mustard oil bombs" that give the plants, and condiments we make from them, distinctive flavors.
NPR
The Salt
Before he ate them, Kanzi cooked the vegetables in a pan on his own.

Chimps Are No Chumps: Give Them An Oven, They'll Learn To Cook

Jun 03, 2015
That's what researchers found when they gave chimps a device that appeared to work like an oven. The findings add to the argument that our ancestors began cooking soon after learning to control fire.
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