Esther Inglis-Arkell

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​Here’s A Spider So Awful You’ll Wish It Would Only Bite You To Death

The hackled orb weaver has no fangs. If you’re its prey, that might sound like good news. It’s not. It means that it will kill you in an even more excruciating way than spiders normally do. The hackled orb weaver spider doesn’t actually have any penetrating teeth, apparently because that gets the delicious business of … Continued

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How Does Mumps Cause Sterility in Adults?

Mumps is a disease that gives children fevers and big, comical hamster-faces. In adults, it can cause sterility. How does a childhood disease render someone infertile? Mumps is rarely dangerous, provided the sufferer gets it at the right age. In elementary-school-age children, it usually causes nothing more than a mild swelling of the face and … Continued

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Scientists Recreate a Really Sad Greek Myth With Worms

This worm is in a Greek myth, and not the fun Greek myth where people get knocked up by rain. It’s in a depressing, ironic Greek myth that instructs people not to reach for the power of the gods. Ever heard of Tithonus? His story is one of the less popular Greek myths, and once … Continued

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The More Mass You Add To Black Holes, The Less Dense They Get

Black holes are what happens when matter is packed so densely that it compresses into a singularity… but some of them are still as insubstantial as air. If you think that’s weird, it gets weirder. You make can make these ultra-light black holes even less dense by adding mass. Black holes are so inescapably dense … Continued

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How To Write Perfect Sentences No One Understands

I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill him. Which one of these did I mean? This is a fallacy that goes all the way back to Aristotle. He came from a culture interested … Continued

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This Snail Makes A Venom So Toxic, It Disables Fish Swimming Near It

Cone snails are known for their venom. Upwards of fifteen people have died of it. One snail, Conus geographus, doesn’t even have to sting to kill its prey. And scientists have found out why. To fill someone with poison you’d need a claw, a fang, or stinger, right? Not if you’re Conus geographus, the geography … Continued

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Where Are Your Eyes Really Looking When You See This Cute Little Girl?

On the left you see an image of a cute kid, and on the right you see how people look at it, if given a few moments to stare. The squiggly lines are the work of a pioneer in vision research, and he had even more interesting squiggles to show us. Al’fred Luk’yanovich Yarbus is … Continued

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Watch Dye Avoid A Column That Isn’t There

No trick. Liquid dye in water lets us see a Taylor column, which is a physical column made of nothing. Dye creeps around it, or occasionally creates it. We’ll tell you how it works, and why it affects more than just an experiment in a fluid dynamics laboratory. In still air, or water, Taylor columns … Continued

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Here’s What Happened When A Rainmaker Ended Up In Court

Charles Hatfield was a celebrated rainmaker, but when one of his rainmaking schemes worked too well, he became a notorious rainmaker. Here’s how a flooded city refused to pay the man who claimed to have flooded it. Charles Hatfield, The Rainmaker San Diego created Charley Hatfield, and it had cause to regret doing so. Hatfield … Continued

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Scientists Have Provided Evidence for Optimism… By Shocking Dogs

Nearly every activity you fear can turn into something that brings you joy. Don’t believe it? There’s proof. And it involves that old scientific standby — applying electricity to animals. There’s nothing quite like a psychological theory based on something that was first proposed in 1878. Ewald Hering was a 19th century physiologist who was … Continued

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Why Grease Kills The Head On A Beer

A bit of grease from pizza residue or lipstick doesn’t do too much to eliminate soda bubbles, but if flattens the head on beer. Why? The bubbles at the top of a newly-poured glass of soda and the bubbles at the top of a newly-poured glass of beer look pretty much the same – at … Continued

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What Would Really Happen If You Put A Human In A Microwave?

The Skin Effect isn’t what it sounds like, but it can help us understand what happens to a human being when they’re exposed to different microwave frequencies. It also explains why your food comes out cold on the inside. Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Winai Tepsuttinun/Shutterstock The Skin Effect and Alternating Current Ever snipped … Continued

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Why Rescuers Die While Drowning Victims Survive

There are many terrible examples of a person coming to the rescue of a drowning victim only to drown themselves. It’s so common that there’s a name for it — aquatic victim instead of rescuer syndrome, or AVIR syndrome. But there are many reasons rescuers can drown while many of the people they rescue survive. … Continued

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Zero Stroke Was A Mental Illness That Affected An Entire Country

Have you spent a day busily procrastinating by playing tetris, gone to bed and dreamed of playing tetris? If so you might just have the faint echo of a mental affliction that German people suffered just after World War I. It’s called “zero stroke.” Imagine that you’re compelled to engage in a certain repetitive mental … Continued

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This Ancient Pigment Could Soon Be Used to See Through Your Skin

Egyptian blue was one of the famous pigments of the ancient world. Not only was it a scientific achievement, it has become an important historical signifier because it only came from contact with Egypt. It’s now being used in advanced technology that see right through your skin. Egyptian Blue in the Ancient World What do … Continued

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The Iron Maiden Was History’s Most Brutal Imaginary Torture Device

The iron maiden was a horrible medieval torture device, a casket with spikes on the inside which could be closed slowly, impaling the living person inside. It was awful. It was also not real. It was a fake concept popularized by two men in the 19th century, an era not known for impaling people to … Continued

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Why We Use Meaningless Expressions Like “Huh” And “Really?”

A “phatic expression” is a word or phrase that has no intrinsic meaning, but still conveys intent. It can be anything from the sympathetic grunts and “oh nos” that people let out, to whole phrases like, “I hear that.” They seem useless, but they actually serve an important function. Phatic expressions are often called “grooming … Continued

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A Family in Spain Displayed Three Generations of the “Habsburg Jaw”

The Habsburgs were a dynasty that brought suffering, and eventual ruin, on themselves through inbreeding. Their most famous feature was the “Habsburg Jaw.” In the 1980s, a family in Spain with similar facial features gave scientists a better look at a very old genetics puzzle. In the 1660s, the Habsburg family was immensely powerful. They … Continued

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Scientists Discover Two New Species of Lizard on the Black Market

A team of scientists has spent the last five years attempting to catalog the kinds of animals for sale on the black market in the Philippines. To their surprise, they couldn’t catalog two animals, because no researcher had ever seen them before. University of Kansas’ Biodiversity Institute has spent quite some time analyzing the genetics … Continued

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This Pig May Be A Baby-Killer

Here is a piggy. Isn’t it cute? It might not be when you learn that farmers have a major problem with pigs because they engage in a behavior called “savaging” — a gruesome act which involves female pigs attacking and killing their own piglets. Infanticide is well-documented in many animals, but for some reason, pigs … Continued