BIOLOGY

Snakes: Ian Macdonald / Art: Rebecca O'Connell

This Snake’s Venomous Powers Morph as It Grows Up

The venom of the baby brown snake is neurotoxic, while the adult snake’s venom causes internal bleeding and strokes.

Scientists Grow Blood Stem Cells in the Lab for the First Time

A single cell can be used to restore an entire mammal circulatory system.

How Far You Have to Go Back to Find Everyone’s Common Ancestor

The human family is closer than you may think.

12 Facts About the Liver

It runs a whole lot of functions on your behalf to keep you healthy.

10 Stinging Facts About Scorpions

Love them or hate them, there’s no denying that the creepy crawlies are an amazingly successful bunch, with over 1500 known species lurking about.

10 Facts About the Lungs

Taking in oxygen to power your whole body is just one part of your lung function. Altogether, your lungs are a highly efficient machine—and they do a lot more than you might think.

These Algae Live Inside Growing Baby Salamanders

A new paper sheds light on what researchers call a "strange arrangement."

10 Flexible Facts About the Tongue

Your tongue isn't just important for tasting. Here are a few underappreciated facts about the most flexible muscle in your body.

Worms Benefit Immediately From Exercise, Too

<em>C. elegans</em> nemotodes respond to exercise in very similar ways to humans.

Scientists Record an Extremely Intimate Look at How Dolphins Get It On

Researchers used a CT scanner to watch how dolphins' oddly shaped junk fits together during sex.

A Common Steroid May Have the Potential to Treat PTSD

The drug manipulates the expression of a specific gene associated with the disease.

Frank Fo via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0

Tardigrades Produce Glass Shields to Survive Extreme Conditions

These microscopic monsters just get weirder and weirder.

We're Not Alone: Itching is Contagious for Mice Too

How do sensations like feeling itchy spread among social animals? Researchers at the Center for the Study of the Itch are looking into it.

7 Amazing Facts About the Amygdala

We're still learning about one of the most important structures of the brain.

5 Muscles You Might Be Missing

You're probably aware of some vestigial body parts, like wisdom teeth, that the human body doesn't really need. But did you know there are several muscles in that category as well?

How To See Colors That Don’t Exist

Turns out there are six of them.

Laurinemily via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.5

How Our Eyes See Everything Upside Down

So why doesn’t the world look that way?

Xavax via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 4.0

Scientists Use Stem Cells to Regenerate Layers of a Human Heart

A recent study from Penn State details how researchers coaxed ordinary skin cells to grow into heart cells.

Sergio Carvalho via Flickr // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

5 Strange Microbes (and 1 Bonus Organism)

The world is teeming with life, and we're always discovering new species—including some that stretch the limits of how we view and classify biological life forms. Here are a few that clearly don't play by the rules.

8 Facts About the Ankle

8. You might want to rethink an ankle tattoo.

How the Global Bird-Poop Trade Created a Traveling Mummy Craze

Bird poop has been a favored fertilizer for centuries—and, it turns out, is an excellent preserver of human flesh.

Can Mental Disorders Predict Physical Illnesses?

"The most substantial associations with physical diseases preceding mental disorders included those between heart diseases and anxiety disorders, epilepsy and eating disorders, and heart diseases and any mental disorder."

Scientists Have Found a Possible Cause of Severe PMS

Dysfunctional gene expression may make some people hypersensitive to sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone.

15 of the World’s Funkiest Fungi

There's a big wide world beyond common molds and mushrooms—and some of it is very strange.

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