Quirks and Quarks

Gold miners working in the Yukon regularly find ancient ground squirrel burrows throughout the permafrost, many containing fossilized feces. Researchers analyzing these well-preserved poop piles found they contain some of the oldest DNA ever recovered, dating from 30,000 to 700,000 years ago. Tucked inside were traces of a wide range of ancient animals, including woolly mammoths, grasshoppers, steppe bison, ancient horses, American cheetahs, as well as hundreds of plant species.

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‘Super-good, ice-making microbes’ may trigger snow and rain, or help freeze food
We’re a hotbed of mutations, and scientists are leveraging that for our health
Going out on a limb. Animals regrow body parts, maybe we can too
From the archives: Isaac Asimov on human creativity and robots

150 years ago, Charles Darwin noticed that birds and humans were both drawn to bright plumage and elaborate display. He called this interspecies esthetic appreciation a “shared taste for the beautiful.” Now, in a recent study, an interdisciplinary team of scientists built an online game exploring the mating calls of 16 different species and discovered, to their surprise, that humans and animals agree on which sounds are more attractive.

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How the brain can learn to truly multitask
From the archives: The Russian space mirror that flashed across Canadian skies
The Matrix is real: birds, dragonflies and dogs see the world in slow motion
Could the next giant particle collider unlock the mysteries of the universe?

The newly described Tylosaurus rex was a violent bus-sized Komodo dragon-like creature with serrated teeth. Dubbed the ‘T. rex of the sea,’ it would have occupied the top of the food chain in the marine ecosystem over 80 million years ago.

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Pigeons use their livers to find their way home
From the archives: How Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars
Scientists discover an underground network of lakes hidden under Arctic ice
New book explores the million year history of how we sleep — and why we’re doing it wrong today

Scientists recorded audio and video of 8 different kinds of rockfish living in the wild near British Columbia, and were surprised they could tell the species apart through their various grunts, pops and knocks, even though the fish are closely related.

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DNA identifies four Franklin Expedition sailors — and solves a 160-year-old mystery
Immune cells that fight infection get a boost from food
Radio waves let us see the unseeable: black holes, pulsars and volcanoes on Venus
From the archives: What will the Earth look like in 2050?
Quirks Question: If chicken and fish blood is red, why are they white meats?

In a study inspired by a field of dandelions, researchers wanted to know why, when you blow on a dandelion seed head, only the seeds closest to you take flight. They found that a dimple in the seed heads where the seed attaches is larger on one side than the other, and that the seeds consistently broke off from the smaller side of that dimple. Once they take flight, each dandelion seed uses its unique shape to catch a ride on the wind.

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Infrasound, not ghosts, may be why old buildings give us the heebie-jeebies
These arms are made for lovin'. How male octopuses find their mates
From the archives: Donald Johanson on the discovery of 'Lucy,' our missing link
Virtual hearts help doctors fix patients’ life-threatening irregular heart beats
Quirks Question: What’s the benefit for trees being evergreen?