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Gordon Scammell / Loop / Universal / Getty Hedges Do Way More Than Block Your View
They also link ecosystems together, supporting thousands of species.
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Julio Bonfante / Getty Spiders Play All Sorts of Mind Games
Arachnids are proof that animals don't need big brains to be brilliant.
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vexedart / Alamy The Animal Kingdom Is Full of Genetic Screwballs
All sorts of creatures jettison parts of their own DNA, and scientists have no idea why.
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Sarah Andrews / AP In Some Places, People Talk in Whistles Louder Than Car Horns
More than 80 communities around the world have turned entire languages into whistles as a way to communicate over long distances.
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Tom Brakefield / Getty Near-Death Experiences Can Scar Animals for Life
Humans may not be the only creatures who get PTSD.
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Enver-Hirsch / Wien Museum How Do We Know What Ancient People Ate? Their Dirty Dishes.
New scientific techniques have turned ancient food into less of a mystery.
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Tony Karumba / AFP /Getty And You Thought Your Blood Pressure Was High?
Giraffes’ blood pressure is double that of most humans, but it doesn’t seem to faze them at all.
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Taro Yamasaki / The LIFE Images Collection / … How Bowhead Whales Live for 200 Years
Size isn’t everything.
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NASA So Much Hinges on the Existence of Ancient Black Holes
If real, these massive, invisible objects could help unravel the mystery of dark matter.
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JEAN-BAPTISTE LECA So What’s the Point of Playtime?
Scientists think it’s valuable, but they’re not quite sure why.
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H. Armstrong Roberts / ClassicStock / Getty You’ve Been Lied to About Lying
The conventional wisdom about how to spot a liar is all wrong.
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Johannes Eisele / AFP / Getty Traffic Noise Is a Silent Killer
The ruckus of cars and planes can damage not just your ears, but also your heart.
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David Maurice Smith / Oculi / Redux The Good Kind of Brain Drain
Some concussions may linger for months or even years because of damage to vessels that clear waste from the brain.
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Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Where Will the Next Big Flood Hit?
An army of volunteers is helping forecasters predict disasters before they strike.
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Jimin Lai / AFP / Getty A Plan to Save Wildlife May Have Done More Harm Than Good
Banning the trade of vulnerable species sometimes makes them more vulnerable.
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Xia Yuan / Getty The Cerebellum Isn’t What We Thought
Scientists long believed its function was simply to coordinate movements. Now they suspect it could do much more.
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Michael Grant / Alamy The Plant Pandemics Just Keep on Coming
How the world’s trees got so sick
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An ‘Absolute Explosion’ of Stuttering Breakthroughs
Researchers are getting closer to unraveling some of the deepest mysteries about the condition.
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Tim Peake / ESA/NASA / Getty Earth Was a Very Different Place Before Mud
A great mud boom 400 million years ago changed features such as the shape of rivers and the planet’s biodiversity.
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Kaveh Kazemi / Getty ‘Contact Languages’ Don’t Get the Respect They Deserve
They’re dying out at an astonishing rate, and saving them is no easy task.
