When is a goat not a goat?
When it can be spotted on a rail-thin rock crevasse at an altitude of 13,000 feet in the northwestern United States and Canada.
That animal, while seemingly possessing the stubbornness attributed to the goats found at petting zoos, is actually the biologically distinct mountain goat, the lone extant species of the genus Oreamnos.
Many experienced hikers are familiar with the phrase “leaves of three, let it be.”
That’s because poison ivy and oak can be identified by their three-leaf clusters.
The quintet of nations lacking their own airports: Vatican City, San Marino, Monaco, Liechtenstein, and Andorra.
They are all within Europe.
Although not the most glamorous of methods, sweating is a biologically ingenious way to keep cool.
Our sweat glands employ energy. In this case, heat to evaporate water off our skin, which in turn cools us down.
In early 1901, English inventor Hubert Cecil Booth traveled to Empire Music Hall in London to witness a strange invention.
That was a mechanical aspirator designed to blow pressurized air to clean rail cars.
Some 500 million years ago, an ancient fish-like creature produced at least one offspring with a curious mutation — twice the number of genes.
These excess genes began developing in new directions, eventually creating more and more complex brains.
It’s generally a good idea to keep your distance from lions, which is why it’s reassuring to know that hearing one doesn’t necessarily mean it’s nearby.
A lion’s roar is so loud, in fact, that it can be heard from more than 5 miles away.
Tiny, hidden survival tools packed into the waistband of your pants may sound like something fantastical from a spy movie.
But in the case of British wartime pilots, they were a reality.
After a woman has had a bun in the oven for nine months, presenting her with a bagel might seem like a strange choice.
But some of the earliest writings on bagels relate to the idea of giving them as gifts to women after labor.
Some species of trees that line city streets predate the dinosaurs by millions of years, but when it comes to the truly ancient, you need to look to the oceans.
Sea-dwelling creatures have a many-millions-of-years head start on any terrestrial life-forms.
Take, for instance, the shark. This apex predator of the sea has been stalking the world’s oceans for upwards of 450 million years.
A baby red kangaroo (Macropus rufus) is about the size of a jelly bean.
Born after about 34 days of gestation, it’s less than an inch long or 100,000 times smaller than its adult height (roughly 4 feet).
But the first universities predate those major periods in history, not by years but by centuries.
The most distinguishing feature about an octopus is its set of eight appendages — after all, they’re right there in the name.
But don’t confuse that tangle of limbs for tentacles, because octopuses don’t have those — they have arms.
Cats certainly aren’t unknown in the world of physics.
Isaac Newton had a cat named Spithead (and supposedly created a cat door for him), while Albert Einstein once said that only two things provided refuge from the misery of life: “music and cats.”
Compared to other members of the animal kingdom, humans are pretty good at tasting things.
Our primate biology gives us the ability to detect five basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (or savory).
If you’re planning to throw a party, you might need to rent extra tables or chairs, perhaps even a tent or a tux.
But in the 1700s, party hosts and guests looking to make a statement were in the rental market for an entirely different accessory: pineapples.
Manipulating fire is an ability unique to humans. Well, humans and “firehawks.”
In 2017, scientists from Penn State Altoona analyzed tales surrounding the fire-spreading habits of three Australian raptors: black kites (Milvus migrans), whistling kites (Haliastur sphenurus), and brown falcons (Falco berigora).
Egypt may be home to the world’s most famous mummies, but not the world’s oldest.
That distinction belongs to Chile, where mummified remains predate their Egyptian counterparts by more than 2,000 years.
One of the most complex parts of human anatomy is also one (or rather two) that we use hundreds of times per day yet often take for granted.
Human hands are the body’s multipurpose tools, equipped with 27 individual bones.
Seeing into the future is supposed to be impossible.
But if you travel to the Diomede Islands of the Bering Strait, the impossible becomes reality.
No two humans smell exactly alike, because odor is a complex medley of aromatic influences that come from our environment, genes, and various secretions.
All of these add up to what’s known as our volatile organic compound (VOC).
Gender can also be a differentiating factor, as a 2023 study from Florida International University discovered.
At first glance, Jackson, Mississippi, is like any other state capital, with its domed capitol building standing squarely in the heart of the city.
However, 2,900 feet below the surface lies a surprising secret — an ancient volcano.
At the start of the 20th century, before the Wright Brothers finally got their famous Flyer off the ground in 1903, airships were seen as the future of human flight.
From the automatic tasks of regulating breathing and blood pressure to the voluntary efforts needed for muscle movement, the central nervous system puts in a lot of work to maintain the complex mechanisms of the human body.
Pace is crucial to keep this system running smoothly which is why some signals from our body’s command centers can reach a speed of 268 miles per hour.
Spend enough time at Disneyland and you’ll see them.
Maybe you’ll spot one snoozing in the bushes near the Jungle Cruise or observing you warily as you ride the tram.
But one thing is certain: however many cats you see, there are more out of sight.
Pigeons tend to get a bad rap among urban dwellers, but the birds have a distinguished history of service.
Bred for their instinctive ability to find their way home from long distances, homing pigeons were trained as message-bearers as far back as in ancient Egypt.
Meknes is one of the four Imperial cities of Morocco.
It is located in northern central Morocco and the sixth largest city by population in the kingdom.
Bioluminescence, the strange biology that causes certain creatures to glow, is usually found at the darkest depths of the ocean where the sun’s light doesn’t reach.
While these light-emitting animals seem otherworldly, the trait is actually pretty common.
In fact, humans can glow.
The small, swallow-like bird found in Europe and Africa can remain in flight for 200 days.
During this time they are migrating. And during this time they eat insects, groom themselves, and even sleep while airborne.
Given that the United States was born amid an anti-monarchical fervor, it’s fitting that the sole royal palace within its confines is located more than 4,700 miles from the nation’s capital.
There, amid the high rises and palm trees of downtown Honolulu, stands Iolani Palace, the home of Hawaii’s 19th-century royal dynasty.
Today, cultures around the world have specific rules and phrases for the common toast.
In South Korea, one accepts a drink with two hands, and in Italy, locking eyes is absolutely essential.
But how exactly does the word “toast,” as in dry bread, figure into all of this?
It is generally understood that ocean water gets colder the farther one gets from the warming rays of the sun, but there’s an exception.
Hydrothermal vents can pump out fluids at temperatures above 700 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead.
People breathe primarily out of one nostril at a time.
The human nose is a biological wonder.
It can smell up to 1 trillion odors, trap harmful debris in the air before it enters your lungs, and affect your sex life.
But arguably its most important job is to condition the air you breathe before that air enters your respiratory tract.
There are more people on Earth today than ever before, nearly 8 billion, to be exact.
This represents a full 7% of all 117 billion people estimated to have ever lived throughout the course of human history.
Climate change isn’t just raising the temperature of the world’s oceans. It is also changing their color.
As the oceans absorb the excess heat generated by greenhouse gases, that heat is altering the aquatic life in their waters.
If you want to see the 19th-century version of London Bridge, don’t travel to London or even England, for that matter.
Instead, head to Lake Havasu, Arizona, where a U.S. businessman by the name of Robert McCulloch moved the bridge after buying it in 1968.
