Science & Nature
Puff Adder
Puff Adder, a thick-bodied African viper blamed for more snakebite deaths than any other snake on the continent, stays still rather than fleeing danger.
Birds That Start With B
Some of the birds whose names begin with B include the bald eagle, the barn owl, the blue jay, the bowerbird, the budgerigar, the booby, the bustard, the buzzard and the bittern.
What Is The Most Volcanic World In The Solar System?
Io has at least 400 active volcanoes, throwing lava fountains dozens of miles high. The cause is not tectonics but Jupiter's gravity.
10 of the Fastest Snakes in the World
These ten snakes are some of the fastest in the world, using unique slithering and movement methods to hunt prey and get away from predators.
Javan Rhino
Javan Rhino is widely regarded as the rarest large mammal on Earth. About 50 survive, all inside one Indonesian national park and none in captivity.
What Is The Largest Object In The Solar System After The Sun?
Jupiter isn't just the biggest planet; it's the largest object in our Solar System after the Sun, 11 times wider than Earth.
Which Moon Is The Largest?
Ganymede outsizes the planet Mercury and hides an ocean that may hold more water than all the seas on Earth's surface.
White Rhino
White Rhino is the largest rhino and, after the elephant, among the heaviest land animals, a grey grazer split between a recovery and a near extinction.
Which Planet Is The Least Dense?
Lighter than water despite its size, Saturn measures a mere 0.69 g/cm3. Here is why the solar system heavyweight is really its lowest-density world.
Which Animals Can Live Without Water For Years?
Learn about the special adaptations of six unique animals that can live for years at a time, some their whole lives, without drinking any water.
What if Earth Stopped Spinning?
See what would happen if Earth stopped spinning, from catastrophic winds and ocean surges to year-long days and a transformed climate.
What Animals Live In The Taiga?
The harsh environment of the taiga regions of the world limit the biodiversity in such places to species that can successfully adapt to the extreme environment.
Pallas Cat
Pallas Cat, or manul, wears the thickest fur of any wild cat, a house-cat-sized ambush hunter of Central Asia's frigid, wind-scoured high steppes.
Striped Hyena
Striped Hyena is the only hyena found outside sub-Saharan Africa, a shaggy, bone-cracking scavenger of dry country now thinning toward Near Threatened.
What Happens If GPS Goes Down
Pretty much everything we do with a phone today incorporates GPS at some point. If we were to suddenly lose our skyward helper, it would cause many issues.
The Fastest Birds In The World
The White-throated Needletail is the fastest in horizontal flight at 170 km/h, while the Peregrine Falcon reaches 389 km/h in dives.
South China Tiger
South China Tiger is the only tiger subspecies extinct in the wild yet still alive in captivity, with no confirmed sighting in about half a century.
What Animals Live in the Atlantic Ocean?
The Atlantic Ocean makes up about 29% of the total world ocean waters. It is home to a wide variety of aquatic plant life and marine animals.
Dingo
Dingo is Australia's largest land predator, a sandy wild canid that howls instead of barks and keeps feral cats, foxes, and rabbits in check nationwide.
Why Uranus Spins Sideways
Uranus is the butt of countless childish jokes, but there are truly interesting qualities to it. Here's why Uranus spins sideways.
Animals With More Than One Heart
Various animals have different heart structures; some, like octopuses and earthworms, have multiple hearts, while others use alternative systems.
Asian Black Bear
Asian Black Bear, or moon bear, is the most tree-climbing of all bears, marked by a pale crescent chest and now Vulnerable to logging and the bile trade.
Black Panther
Black Panther is not a species but a melanistic leopard or jaguar, its rosettes still faintly visible as ghost markings beneath the all-black coat.
Which Planet Is The Smallest?
Although the context can change the answer to this question, Mercury is the smallest planet, circling closest to the Sun.
How Long Would It Take To Travel To Each Planet?
Moving at a speed of 50,000-miles per hour, it would take 32-days to reach Venus, the closest planet, and 2,250-days to reach Neptune, the furthest planet.
Speed Of Sound VS Speed Of Light
Light is about 880,000 times faster than sound, but the real differences are stranger: what each needs to travel through, and what slows them down.
The 10 US Cities With the Longest Summers
Some US cities barely see winter at all. Ranked by NOAA normals, here are the ten with the longest thermal summers, from Honolulu to Fort Lauderdale.
Banded Sea Krait
Banded Sea Krait is a venomous Indo-Pacific sea snake that hunts eels across the reef yet returns to land to rest, mate, and lay its eggs on shore.
Indian Python
Indian Python is a heavy-bodied, nonvenomous constrictor of the Indian subcontinent, a patient rodent hunter now listed as Near Threatened in the wild.
Which Planet Has The Longest Year?
As the rhyme goes, Mercury is the one, closest to the shining sun. But which planet is furthest, and which has the longest year?
Green Tree Python
The green tree python is a nonvenomous, tree-dwelling constrictor of New Guinea and far northern Australia, famous for its tidy looped resting coil.
Bull Snake
Bull Snake is harmless, yet it hisses, coils, and buzzes its tail like a rattlesnake. The bluff fools coyotes and hawks, and gets the snake killed by people.
Which Planet Has The Deepest Canyon?
The deepest canyon in our galaxy is found on Mars, known as Valles Marineris, which plunges nearly seven miles deep and is 2,400 miles long.
Eastern Brown Snake
Eastern Brown Snake (Pseudonaja textilis) is the world's second-most venomous land snake and the leading cause of snakebite deaths in Australia.