We fear piranhas and make jokes about them, but they have their place in the ecosystem. National Geographic sets us straight with some facts about the fish.
They’re good parents—at least initially. A mom may lay 600 eggs at once, dad promptly fertilizes them, and both parents guard the brood once it hatches.
Archaeologists have unearthed the largest species of rat ever discovered, which lived on East Timor until about 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. The new species was three times heavier -- about six kilograms (13 pounds) -- than the biggest rats known to exist today, which are found in the tropical forests of the Philippines and New Guinea.
That wonderful monster of the deep, dear Neatoramanauts, is the Venus flytrap sea anemone (Actinoscyphia sp.) from the Gulf of Mexico. Its name is derived from two land plants (the carnivorous venus fly trap and the flower anemone), but it’s actually a type of polyp, related to corals and jellyfish.
In 1850, the HMS Investigator sailed into the Canadian Arctic in search for the fabled Northwest Passage. Captain Robert McClure and his crew, after getting trapped in ice in 1853, abandoned the ship. But a team of archaeologists recently found the ship, which is in remarkably good condition. Canadian parks official Marc-Andre Bernier said
Cumberland Island lies off the coast of Georgia and is the largest of the State’s barrier islands at just under 18 miles in length. Virtually no one lives on the island all year round these days but at the southern end of the island you will find Dungeness, once owned by the famously rich Carnegie family. The house is now in ruins but perhaps if you listen closely you might hear the strains of a ghostly Charlston.
To the untrained eye, University of Colorado at Boulder Research Associate Craig Lee's recent discovery of a 10,000-year-old wooden hunting weapon might look like a small branch that blew off a tree in a windstorm.
After being buried for tens of thousands of years in the Siberian permafrost, a baby woolly mammoth named Khroma is going on display in Musee Crozatier in Puy-en-Velay, France. The good news is that scientists are pretty sure that it’s free of the anthrax bacteria that killed it:
It's one of the things about the "Mona Lisa" that's long baffled art historians and viewers alike -- how Leonardo da Vinci used rudimentary pigments in the year 1503 to create such subtle shadows and light on the mysterious woman's face. And it's taken scientists more than 400 years to come up with technology to figure out how.
What did you do when you "became a man"? - No, I don't mean losing your virginity, though in many cultures, coming of age is intricately linked to sexual maturity. Did you celebrate by buying a Lotto ticket? Drink a yard glass full of beer? Become a Bar Mitsvah? Well, weaklings, be thankful that you didn't grow up as an aborigine in Australia, in the Satere Mawé tribe in the Amazon, or in the Sepik River tribe of Papua New Guinea. As you can see below, some cultures take the rites of manhood very, very seriously.
NEW YORK--If you want to know what the very latest tech toys are, don't go to Best Buy or an Apple Store. Go to the lost-and-found department at Grand Central Terminal. That's because in a train terminal that services 700,000 people a day, and more than 2,000 lost items a month, those with the latest cell phones, laptops, or other tech gear are bound to lose them while at Grand Central. And there's a really good chance those people will be reunited with their hot new items.
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