yönetim | Beauty of Planet Earth

Strange Sun Effects Have Been Detected by World’s Highest Weather Stations on Everest

Data from a network of newly installed weather stations atop Mount Everest shows that the mountain experiences some of the most intense sunlight on the planet. As alpine mountaineers are all too aware, the sun can be brutally fierce atop snow-capped peaks. Preliminary data from the weather stations on Mount Everest suggests this effect is amplified to an astounding degree at the top of the w

First-Ever Video of Its Kind Catches a Puffin Using a Tool – To Scratch an Itch

Five years ago, on a remote island in Wales, University of Oxford scientist Annette L. Fayet spied a puffin doing something she had never seen before. The bird, floating on the seawater beneath a cliff, held a stick in its beak. It began to scratch its back with the stick - the puffin, as Fayet watched, was using a tool. Fayet, a puffin expert who studies how the birds migrate and feed, wrot

There’s a ‘Desert’ in The Middle of The Pacific, And We Now Know What Lives There

In the centre of the South Pacific, there's a place as far away from land as anyone on Earth could ever hope to get. The ocean is different there. These distant waters lie at the heart of the South Pacific Gyre, the centre of which holds the 'oceanic pole of inaccessibility': the ocean's remotest extreme, aka Point Nemo (a name meaning 'no-one'), famous otherwise for being a spacecraft cemetery

This Ancient Tree Species Is Virtually Immortal, And We Finally Understand How

The passage of time holds few changes for the Ginkgo biloba tree, commonly known as the maidenhair. For tens of millions of years and through multiple mass extinctions, this "botanical oddity" has stood unwavering, an ever-fixed "living fossil", as the world ages around it. The species is practically immortal - and that's not an exaggeration. As it turns out, individual trees can live over 1,00

Hungry Cats Are Known to Sometimes Eat Human Bodies. A Grisly Experiment Reveals How

A decomposing body might gross people out, but for many creatures, it's a bounty, including smaller creatures not widely known for their human flesh-eating habits. Case in point: a new study details how feral cats were caught on camera at a decomposition research facility in Colorado, slipping over the fence to munch on human corpses. They seemed to have a preference. The two separate feral

Strange Tracks in Texas Indicate Giant Sauropods Walking on Their Front Feet Only

They were the largest animals to ever walk the Earth: sauropods, a dinosaur clade of such immense size and stature, they're sometimes dubbed 'thunder lizards'. These towering hulks – including Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodocus among others – needed four thick, powerful legs to support and transport their massive bodies. At least, most of the time. Perhaps. Some mysterious, anci

Cuttlefish Can Refrain From Eating if They Know a Better Meal Is on The Way

Cephalopods such as octopuses and squids may demonstrate some impressive smarts, but the latest research on cuttlefish may just blow your mind. Researchers have found that cuttlefish fed to a schedule will very quickly cut back on eating less enticing food, so they can gorge themselves on their favourite later on. This means that not only are cuttlefish seemingly able to memorise the feeding

Sand Dunes Interact And ‘Communicate’ With One Another, Physicists Say

Whether on land or underwater, sand dunes usually appear in large groups. But even when these natural formations are in close touch with their neighbours, they still need their personal space from time to time. When two identical dunes migrate over long distances, physicists have found these structures will unexpectedly change their pace so they end up evenly spread out, prompting speculation a

The World’s Only Venomous Primate Could Explain Why Humans Are Allergic to Cats

For those with a severe cat allergy, any location that harbours a pet feline can become a toxic no-go zone. Research on another tragically cute mammal now suggests this might be no accident of nature – cats really are trying to keep us away. A study on the world's only known example of a venomous primate has found a surprising similarity between a key protein in its armpit glands and the alle

Ancient Genes Reveal The Last Mammoths on Earth Were a Sickly Mess

Four thousand years ago, the last woolly mammoths quietly died on their final bastion - the isolated Wrangel Island, north of Russia in the frozen Arctic. Their demise was sudden, and strange; now, new evidence points to the mammoths themselves as partial agents of their own demise. Specifically, the mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) were afflicted by genetic diseases, likely brought about by a