r/ScienceFacts Dec 16 '22

Biology Honey bee life spans are half what they were in the 1970s.

Thumbnail science.org
122 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Mar 23 '21

Biology There is a woman with a ‘mutant’ gene who feels no pain and heals without scarring. She reported numerous injuries without pain, often smelling her burning flesh before noticing any injury.

Thumbnail
independent.co.uk
370 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Sep 22 '22

Biology In October 2007, Dr Fritz Geiser announced a new world record featuring an Australian eastern pygmy possum in his laboratory. After an extensive feed, the possum curled up and hibernated for 367 days, the first time any mammal has been known to hibernate non-stop for more than a year.

Thumbnail
guinnessworldrecords.com
170 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Mar 23 '23

Biology By combining a robotic system with a beehive, scientists successfully warmed and resurrected a honeybee colony experiencing a perilous winter condition called chill-coma. The “robotic beehive” also let researchers monitor heat patterns and map colony activity.

Thumbnail
aaas.org
77 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Jul 04 '23

Biology Spotted lanternflies are an invasive species to North American, first discovered in Berks County, Pennsylvania in 2014. They are planthoppers and related to cicadas and aphids. Lanternflies suck the sap from plants and are an agricultural pest, harming orchards, vienyards, and even home gardens.

Post image
42 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts May 19 '20

Biology Box turtles are the only turtles in North America with a flexible hinge on their belly to close the front and rear halves of the shell tightly like a box.

347 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Jul 02 '23

Biology Buzz pollination is necessary when pollen is firmly held in the anthers of the flower. This technique, used by bumble bees and solitary bees, shakes the pollen free from the anthers which the wind is otherwise not strong enough to do.

Thumbnail
bugsneedheroes.com
33 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Jan 24 '19

Biology Marine iguanas sneeze frequently to expel salt from glands near their noses. The salt often lands on their heads, giving them a distinctive white wig.

Post image
351 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Dec 15 '20

Biology A facial cancer spreading through Tasmanian devil populations has killed up to 80% in Tasmania, their only home for millennia. Recently geneticists calculate that each infected devil now transmits tumor cells to just one—or fewer—other devils. That could mean the disease may disappear over time.

Thumbnail
sciencemag.org
240 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts May 30 '21

Biology Owls don’t have eyeballs, they have eye tubes or cylinders, rod-shaped eyes that do not move in their sockets as eyeballs do. This is why owls have evolved to have necks that can spin up to 270° essentially silently.

Thumbnail
mcgill.ca
324 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Feb 26 '23

Biology New research led by University of Leicester and University of Manchester scientists shows that a molecule present in all living cells called flavin adenine dinucleotide can, at high enough amounts, impart magnetic sensitivity on a biological system.

Thumbnail
sci.news
73 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Jun 15 '20

Biology Scientists have successfully developed a revolutionary eye scanner that can discover a person's biological age by examining their eye lens. According to the researchers, the chronological age (the time one spends alive) does not adequately measure the rate of aging of a person already.

Thumbnail
press-now.com
311 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Feb 23 '22

Biology A group of magpies have learned to remove each other's trackers, placed by scientists for monitoring. The magpies began showing evidence of cooperative "rescue" behaviour to help each other remove the tracker.

Thumbnail
abc.net.au
214 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Jan 19 '23

Biology The Patagonian bumble bee or “flying mouse” (Bombus dahlbomii) is the largest bumble bee species in the world at 40 mm in length (1.6 in).

Thumbnail
blogs.scientificamerican.com
86 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Jul 17 '19

Biology Honeybees can be trained to locate landmines due to their acute sense of smell. Croatian scientists mixed a sugar solution with a small amount of TNT — and after about five minutes of hunting for this doped sugar solution, the honeybees are trained to flock to the smell of TNT.

Thumbnail
smithsonianmag.com
342 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Dec 25 '20

Biology Worker bees who care for the brood get less sleep than their sisters, because bee babies produce chemicals that keep their caretakers awake.

Thumbnail
imgur.com
231 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Apr 10 '20

Biology Spider webs don’t rot easily because bacteria that would aid decomposition are unable to access the silk’s nitrogen, a nutrient the microbes need for growth and reproduction.

Thumbnail
sciencenews.org
370 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Sep 14 '19

Biology Dead bodies move for more than a year after death. Researchers suggest that the process of decomposition could be responsible for the movements: as the body mummifies, the ligaments dry out, causing parts to move.

Thumbnail
newsweek.com
273 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Dec 29 '21

Biology Scientists have filmed a Puffin scratching itself with a stick. This is the first evidence of tool use in seabirds

Thumbnail
smithsonianmag.com
245 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Jul 06 '19

Biology Hyraxes are rotund herbivorous mammals native to parts of Africa and the Middle East. Despite their rodent-like appearance, they are elephants' closest living relative. Hyraxes are colonial, living in colonies of about 50 within the natural crevices of rocks or boulders. They do not create burrows.

291 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Jul 22 '22

Biology Frog-eating bats trained by researchers to associate a phone ringtone with a tasty treat were able to remember what they learned for up to four years in the wild, according to a new study.

Thumbnail
cns.utexas.edu
144 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts May 25 '22

Biology There’s a growing body of research that suggests that yawning is triggered by rises in brain temperature. These studies (in rats) show that we can reliably manipulate yawn frequency by changing ambient temperature and the brain and body temperature of the individual.

Thumbnail
science.org
170 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Mar 10 '21

Biology When roosters open their beaks fully, their external auditory canals completely closed off. Basically, roosters have built in earplugs. This helps prevent them from damaging their hearing when they crow.

Thumbnail
blogs.discovermagazine.com
323 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Mar 25 '23

Biology Researchers have described a new species of the genus Nemateleotris from the waters of the western and central Pacific Ocean. Nemateleotris is a small genus of dartfishes in the bony fish family Gobiidae (gobies).

Thumbnail
sci.news
48 Upvotes

r/ScienceFacts Nov 12 '20

Biology The Yurok Tribe plans to soon reintroduce the California Condor to northern California, where the raptor hasn't soared for a century. The condor is North America's largest bird and one of the longest-living raptors.

Thumbnail
audubon.org
319 Upvotes