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The 'Strawberry Moon Solstice' is A Big Misunderstanding
Overnight summer solstice festivities at Stonehenge. (Photo: Mike Norton/CC-BY-2.0)You may have noticed news outlets reporting that this year’s summer solstice is especially unique, hosting a rare...
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Why Humans and Insects Keep Holding Funerals for Insects
(Photo: SKphotographer/shutterstock.com) In April 2012, tiny memorials started appearing on the streets of Minneapolis. Bundles of flowers no bigger than matchsticks, teddy bears the size of peanuts...
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The Founder of the Boy Scouts Hid Maps in Insect Drawings
An illustration of a butterfly and a carefully hidden map. (Photo: Public Domain)This may look like an innocent drawing of a butterfly. But look closer. It's actually a map. In fact, the area around...
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Watch This Assassin Bug Take Down an Unsuspecting Caterpillar Twice its Size
It's not called an assassin bug for nothing.Take note of the cold-blooded killer in this video, which shows a wheel bug nymph using its razor-sharp mouth parts to bring down a much more massive...
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Ranking the Pain of Stinging Insects, From ‘Caustic’ to ‘Blinding'
(Graphic by Michelle Enemark)Trekking along a mountain in Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica, entomologist Justin Schmidt came across a nest of the tropical wasp species Polybia simillima, better known as...
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Japan’s Annual Spider Battle is the Arachnid Equivalent of WWE
A judge and announcer watch two Kogane spiders at Kajiki’s 2015 Spider Battle. (All Photos: Chad Cullen)Gauzy webs crowned with large, striped spiders are a familiar sight to anyone who has spent a...
View ArticleThis Canadian Bar's Tiger Pelt Was Stolen—Again
Victoria police searching for tiger skin stolen from Fairmont Empress Hotel bar https://t.co/W998AyPlk5pic.twitter.com/SeUwYVjuJu— Metro Vancouver (@vancouvermetro) June 17, 2016Who pinched the tiger...
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Found: Eyeless Catfish That Made It to the U.S. Through Secret Caves
Mexican blindcats. (Photo: Danté Fenolio)The Mexican blindcat has no eyes, and its skin is so translucent that its color, a light pink, comes from the blood coursing underneath. These catfish live...
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The Israeli Company Sending 500 Million Bees and Mites to Russia
Millions of mites and bumblebees will soon dominate Russian farms. (Photo: Darko Mareš/CC BY 2.0)Farms in Russia will soon be battlefields teeming with insects. The country is being sent 500 million...
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A Volcano in Iceland May be Close to Erupting
Hekla in the distance. (Photo: Hansueli Krapf/CC BY-SA 2.0)For years, Hekla, a volcano in southern Iceland, was active, erupting regularly—and sometimes with great force—over the past century. But it...
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Egypt's Biggest Pyramid Isn't Quite Square at Its Base
(Photo: Nina/CC BY-SA 3.0)The Great Pyramid of Giza, the largest of three pyramids built more than 4,000 years ago in Egypt, is 455 feet tall, and 756 feet wide at its base.But one scientist recently...
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The Strange History of Microfilm, Which Will Be With Us for Centuries
Using microfilm in the early 1980s. (Photo: University of Haifa Younes & Soraya Nazarian Library/CC BY-SA 3.0)A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that...
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How Big Can Bug Nests Actually Get?
A wasp's nest, up close. (Photo: Matt/CC BY-SA 2.0)The Vespula germanica species of wasps, one of the most common in the world, build nests that typically reach the size of a five-gallon bucket....
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Mystery Bugs Rain Down On Colorado Neighborhood
I feel itchy. Several viewers near Brighton reported these bugs 'falling from sky' after rain yest. WHAT ARE THEY? pic.twitter.com/Mt8wWQXJni— Kelly Jensen (@KellyJensenCO) June 14, 2016After heavy...
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How a Gift from Schoolchildren Let the Soviets Spy on the U.S. for 7 Years
The Great Seal that held a listening device. (Photo: NSA/Public Domain)In 1946, a group of Russian children from the Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organisation (sort of a Soviet scouting group)...
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How to Choose the Pet Bug That's Right for You
Entomologist Sammy Ramsey was initially scared of bugs as a kid, then read some books and became enthralled for life. (Photo: Julian Vankim)Sammy Ramsey, 27, an entomologist and Ph.D student at the...
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Found: Baby Planets
An illustration of K2-33b. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech)Of all the far-away exoplanets that NASA has been finding with the Kepler telescope, some of the most important and fascinating are young planets,...
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'No One’s Got A Crush On Peter' and More from the Forgotten Spider-Man Rock...
It's not easy being Spider-Man. (Photo: Joel Kramer/CC BY 2.0)Sure, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the 2011 Broadway musical, might seem like it was the strangest musical adventure involving Peter...
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Police Find Swarm of Bees Intentionally Placed in Car’s Trunk
Beekeepers and police don't normally collaborate, but on Monday, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, the two became teammates in a bizarre case of bug crime.The beekeepers, swaddled from head to toe in their...
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Some of History's Most Beautiful Combs Were Made for Lice Removal
A 19th-century de-lousing comb made in India. (Photo: Science Museum, London, Wellcome Images)Thirty years ago, parasitologist Kostas Mumcuoglu and anthropologist Joseph Zias were examining a...
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