Science

Snake venom is dangerous and should be treated with extreme caution and not ingested in any form. We have watched a Zambian snake expert, Major Alick Chanda, milk the venom from a live puff adder (Bitis arietans) into a wineglass and drink it, with no ill effects. Snake venom is a complex mixture of proteins, … Read more

Beer has had a reputation since antiquity as being a staple in the diet, often called “liquid bread.” In ancient Egypt, workers received beer as part of their salary, as did the ladies-in-waiting of Queen Elizabeth I of England. In 1492, one gallon of beer per day was the standard allocation for sailors in the … Read more

Some people have alopecia, so they don’t have eyebrows. In warm weather, sweat runs into their eyes and makes them sore; in wet weather they have to keep wiping the rain out of their eyes. Your eyebrows divert sweat droplets and raindrops from running directly into your eyes. You would be very uncomfortable without them. … Read more

The damage a bullet does to its target is measured in two ways: the depth of penetration and the amount of tissue damage per inch of penetration. These two figures are normally found by firing live rounds into blocks of a thick, viscous gel that is formulated to have the same physical properties, such as … Read more

A hard, mineralized exoskeleton and a marine lifestyle would have given you a better chance of being a fossil. But let’s start with what you have got: an internal skeleton and some soft outer bits. You can usually forget the soft bits. If you take up mountaineering or skiing and end up in a glacier … Read more

Running is a form of eccentric exercise, meaning that the muscle is forced to lengthen while trying to contract. Prolonged or unaccustomed eccentric exercise often leads to pain, tenderness, and stiffness in the muscles hours or even days later. This is known as delayed onset muscle soreness and is very common. The sensation of discomfort … Read more

As with all musical instruments, the quality of the human voice is largely determined by resonance. A great Italian tenor gave permission for his larynx to be studied after his death. Air blown through his isolated vocal cords produced the same noise, somewhere between blowing a raspberry and the sound of a whoopee cushion, as … Read more

A bruise occurs when small capillary blood vessels break under the skin. The hemoglobin in this leaked blood gives the bruise its classic red-purplish hue. The body then calls in white blood cells to repair the damage at the site of the injury, causing the red cells to break down. This causing produces the substances … Read more

A leaflet published by Health Scotland says the darker the color of the alcoholic drink, the worse the hangover would be. Most people consume alcoholic drinks for their ethanol content. However, many such drinks also contain amounts of other biologically active compounds known as congeners. Congeners include complex organic molecules such as polyphenols, other alcohols … Read more

Coincidence seems likely when there are more baby girls born than boys in any given family, and vice versa. Any fetus has approximately a 1-in-2 chance of being female; the chance of seven children all being girls is therefore 1 in 2 to the seventh power, or 1 in 128. These are not particularly long … Read more

Clear air turbulence, or CAT, is real and often quite scary. Pilots are unable to see CAT, and it can indeed cause an aircraft to crash, especially if encountered just after take-off or just before landing. Since 1981, there have been more than 350 reports of aircraft running into serious turbulence. It is also considered … Read more

An entry in the local school logbook for the village of Nash in north Buckinghamshire, dated November 9, 1917, states “Letter of thanks received from the Director of Propellant Supplies for chestnuts gathered for the making of munitions.” Chestnuts were used in the First World War for the production of acetone which, in turn, was … Read more

The story about an ornamental cactus releasing spiders is a popular myth. Such an event is particularly unlikely to involve tarantulas, which might possibly lay eggs or build webs on, but not in, a cactus plant. Tarantulas live in burrows in the ground, especially the female, which rarely moves around on the surface. Tarantulas take … Read more

There isn’t really a big difference between the ribs of men and women. The idea comes from the Old Testament account of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib. However, the main sex difference is that women’s ribs are a little smaller on average. The bones forensic anthropologists really look at, the most reliable ones, … Read more

Whirlpools that swallow ships don’t occur in the ocean. However, eddies, or strong currents, can be one hundred miles across in certain parts of the ocean. They do not suck anything down or push anything up at a speed that you would notice, and while they could overturn a small boat, they could not swallow … Read more

A curve ball travels in a sideways arc, a very small segment of a very large circle, as Dr. Lyman J. Briggs found in a historic study in 1959. Then eighty-four, a retired head of the National Bureau of Standards, he settled the question and explained the mechanism, using an overhead camera to show the … Read more

Pinching the bridge of the nose and putting ice on the back of the neck to stop a nosebleed is an old wives’ tale. The pressure is a good idea, and in fact continuous direct pressure at the bleeding site is the only infallible remedy, but there is no use pinching the bridge of the … Read more

Dew is more likely to form if the sky is clear and in a similar folk rhyme: When the dew is on the grass, Rain will never come to pass; When grass is dry at morning light, Look for rain before the night. The effect is linked to the absence or presence of clouds. For … Read more

It is possible to make an egg stand on its end during the Equinox. But anyone who can stand an egg on end at that time can probably do it at any other time as well. The theory is that it is possible to stand an egg on its end during the vernal and autumnal … Read more

Modern medicine may have sent the death rattle the way of milk fever, the vapors, consumption and other layman’s terms for the ills of our ancestors. Many pulmonary diseases that can cause noisy labored breathing before death are not the major killers they were before antibiotics. And the kind of breathing distress that would cause … Read more

The moon is not actually larger when it is on the horizon, but seems larger because of an optical illusion. When the moon is on the horizon, it is seen next to buildings or trees, terrestrial items you are familiar with, and the juxtaposition of the two images changes depth cues. You know the building … Read more

No you can’t see stars in daylight from the bottom of a deep well, but you might be able to see some planets if you know where to look. One might think, using superficial common sense, that by excluding as much daylight as possible, one should be able to see stars in the daytime, but … Read more

There are no snakes in Ireland now, and no fossil records of snakes are known. This does not prove that there were never any snakes, because there is also no fossil record of the common lizard, which does occur in Ireland. But herpetologists presume that if there ever were any snakes, they were exterminated by … Read more

Blood doesn’t thicken in winter, even though it may sometimes feel like it. In fact, it might tend to be thicker in summer, when the body loses water through sweating and people need to drink more to remain hydrated. Temperature is not the chief regulator of the thickness of blood. It depends on the kidneys, … Read more

The Lion’s mane jellyfish, also known as Cyanea capillata, has long golden-yellow streamers of poison cells. The cold-water jellyfish might resemble a huge lion’s mane, just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described it in “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane”. Its poison acts like a neurotoxin, and the effect is paralysis. The average swimmer need … Read more

There should be no difference if you play the same numbers each week or if you change the numbers every week. If you are flipping a coin or throwing dice, the outcome should be totally independent each time. This, of course, depends on the randomness of the numbers. There might be some oversight in the … Read more

There is very little information on the transmission of infectious diseases after death. But there is probably little or no danger that most disease organisms would survive even a few weeks in the inhospitable environment of the average grave. For survival, a certain organism needs a certain temperature, a certain level of acidity or lack … Read more

Depending on what kind of snow it is, we may be able to smell the wind that heralded it. One kind of snow results from warm, moist air gliding over cold air near the ground, and that kind is typically accompanied by southerly winds. Such storms are big snow producers, and depending on geography, these … Read more

The moon sometimes does turn red when it sets, and for the same reason the sun does. The light sent to earthly eyes, in the case of the moon, reflected sunlight, is seen filtered through a layer of polluted air, and the path through the dirty air is longest when the heavenly body is at … Read more

It’s not true that an hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours of sleep after midnight. Sleep needs are much more complicated than that. The hour of rising is probably much more important in keeping sleep cycles normal. Individuals go through a series of periods of rapid-eye-movement, or REM, sleep, and non-REM sleep, … Read more

There is some truth to the rhyme “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning, red sky at night, sailors’ delight”. The trick is to look at the part of the sky where the sun isn’t, not into the sunset but to the east. Both sunrise and sunset are reddish, as a rule, because of what … Read more

There is just a grain of truth in the idea, as green plants do absorb some oxygen for use in respiration, the mirror image of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis can occur only when there is light, so at night plants are absorbers of oxygen, on balance. However, true danger would result only from an extremely large body … Read more

Hair can’t turn gray overnight, but a head of hair can go gray very quickly when a person has a lot of gray already and loses all the dark hair. Hair is made of dead cells, and you can’t change the color in a dead structure unless you dye it. However, if a person is … Read more

Everyone has heard the rumor, but probably only dogs, or passing wolves, ever enjoyed a modern feast of preserved mammoth meat. Mammoth meat looks like horse meat but quickly rots when it thaws. Several mammoths were found in permafrost, preserved since the last glacial period. The most famous was found in 1901 near the banks … Read more

Modern science offers little support for the ancient belief in lunacy, or moon-engendered madness during a full moon. Despite anecdotal reports, epidemiological studies find no consistent correlation between any phase of the moon and any aberrant activity. Moreover, because of the distance of the moon, not to mention other heavenly bodies, and the infinitesimally small … Read more

Itching, which doctors call pruritic, can have many causes, and the exact mechanism is still a matter of controversy. Most researchers believe the common itch starts with the release of a substance called histamine, and possibly other chemicals, from special cells called mast cells in the skin. The release can be triggered by allergies, contact … Read more

A trace of mosquito saliva is injected when the mosquito bites. The saliva contains an enzyme that prevents the victim’s blood from clotting while the mosquito feeds. In humans, the enzyme prompts an immune reaction that brings mast cells to the wound. The mast cells release histamine, which produces the itching and red rash. There … Read more

Depending on variables like the size of the troop and the type of terrain, the Indians may have been able to hear the troops from quite a distance. There are many factors involved in the seismology of such a phenomenon, and only individual experiments would determine how much energy would be coupled into the ground … Read more

The heart health benefits of aspirin are unique to the drug, and is often recommended to help prevent heart attacks. Aspirin may have multiple effects, but it is likely that its impact in cutting the stickiness of blood platelets is its major role in preventing heart attacks. Acetaminophen had no effect on the stickiness of … Read more

Cyanide kills by asphyxiating the cells of the body. Cyanide competes with oxygen in the body’s cells. The enzyme responsible for using oxygen has more affinity for cyanide than it does for oxygen, so the presence of cyanide starves a cell for oxygen. Cells’ respiratory pathways use the oxygen in a complex process to break … Read more

There are two basic kinds of reaction to a bee sting, one requiring immediate care in the emergency room and the other less serious. In the less serious local reaction, the chemicals in bee venom cause an immediate redness and swelling near the site of the sting and perhaps a fat, red, warm arm that … Read more

The risk associated with smoking three or four cigarettes a day is less than for someone who smokes forty cigarettes a day. But for a particular person, it can be very hazardous indeed, a bigger environmental hazard than almost anything you can name. Even one cigarette a day raises the risk of cardiovascular disease and … Read more

According to exercise physiologists, there are ways to accelerate elimination of the lactic acid that builds up in muscles. Lactic acid is removed most effectively from muscle by having an active recovery period, like walking after running, rather than a passive recovery, like lying down after the end of exercise. Lactic acid is a product … Read more

Depending on the severity of the allergy and the willingness of owner and cat to carry out elaborate hygiene routines, it may be possible to keep both pet and spouse. In fact, most veterinarians the cat’s own hygienic standards are a big part of the problem. A specific protein in its saliva and skin glands … Read more

In a car crash, it makes no difference whether you are relaxed or tense. In fact, drunken drivers have a greater chance of being injured or killed. Checking the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration accident files, researchers compared survival rates and serious injury rates in serious crashes for drinkers and nondrinkers and found that the … Read more

Night terrors are sudden feelings of terror, for no particular reason, that strike during sleep, with no dream or frightening scene recalled. They are most common in children three to eight years old, and it is estimated that about 1 to 4 percent of the entire population has had an attack. During and after a … Read more

The dream about an exam echoes the first time such an anxiety emerged in your thinking, many psychologists and psychoanalysts believe. This is a dream that everyone has at some time in some form. Both Freud and Adler talked about the examination dream, and though they had different interpretations, they recognized it as one of … Read more

Lots of people outgrow their food allergies. Many people avoid foods to which their allergies are long gone, experts say, and many allergies disappear by the age of four. The reason is not known, but many immune conditions are outgrown with time, possibly because the immune system needs time to mature. Actually, only a minority … Read more

A condition doctors call vasomotor rhinitis produces a runny, stuffy, sneezy nose even when no true allergy or infection is present. Many people are sensitive to things like perfume or dust, but a very common factor is cold, dry air. Although the exact cause of vasomotor rhinitis is not known, doctors suspect it is chiefly … Read more

In general, just putting your hand on or touching lead won’t hurt you. There are exceptions, like some cosmetics used in the Middle East that are absorbed through the skin, but mere skin contact is generally not a danger, unless you put your hands in your mouth or unless the lead touches something else and … Read more

Blood released from capillaries and trapped under the skin and breakdown products of hemoglobin in the blood are chiefly responsible for the coloration of black eyes and other bruises. In the case of black eyes, old blood is never really black, but dark purple and green. The color of the pooled blood is magnified by … Read more

The way a person feels when waking up from sleep, day or night, depends largely on the sleep stage the person was in just before waking up. This “sleep inertia” affects how someone feels for a little while after waking. Waking from what is called slow-wave sleep, a deep sleep without rapid eye movement, a … Read more

The presence of nipples and other breast tissue in men exemplifies the fact that the basic body plan of men and women is similar. There are exaggerations in each sex based on early development and later hormonal influence. The nipple happens to be one of the features whose full development has been restricted in the … Read more

You don’t lose fat cells when you lose weight, the fat cells simply become smaller. In people who have an excess number of fat cells, the fat cells may be even smaller than normal when they get down to a normal weight. That may be one reason it is so easy to regain weight. The … Read more

A hiccup involves the diaphragm, the sheet of muscles in the chest that controls breathing and separates the chest from the abdomen, and the vocal cords in the voice box. When a sudden involuntary contraction of the diaphragm is accompanied by a quick closure of the vocal cords, the “hiccup” sound occurs. The phrenic nerves, … Read more

A vast majority of snorers are in fact men, and may be waking up hundreds of times a night without remembering it in the morning. Snoring in its worst form is a symptom of obstructive sleep apnea, in which a person’s breathing passage is blocked in the relaxation of sleep, so that he cannot breathe … Read more

The heart muscle is a special hardworking kind found nowhere else in the body, though it can get very tired when deprived of oxygen in a heart attack and can get stronger through exercise. The other types of muscle are skeletal or striated muscle, the kind that lets the body move voluntarily, and smooth muscle, … Read more

It is true that men don’t have as much of the hormone estrogen as women. But the male hormone androgen, which normal men have in considerable supply, appears to exert similar protective effects on the skeleton. Men who have an insufficient supply of androgen do get osteoporosis, the loss of bone mass that often occurs … Read more

Tears contain a variety of different salts, most of which probably come from the blood and, ultimately, from the diet. Salt in food is absorbed by the intestines and enters the bloodstream. The salt probably enters tears as blood flows through the lachrymal glands, where tears are formed. The first known chemical analysis of tears, … Read more

Fingernail growth averages out to about a tenth of a millimeter a day. Toenails are about a half to a third slower, and drugs or disease can change the growth rate. There are differences from finger to finger. The middle and fourth finger tend to grow a little faster than the fifth and the thumb. … Read more

The notion of ambidexterity is valid, and some people do show equal proficiency in various manual skills with both hands. However, hand-use preferences are on a continuum, and a mere three categories of left-handed, right-handed and ambidextrous are artificial divisions. One researcher calls ambidextrous people ambilateral, and further divides them into the ambidextral, those with … Read more

About 10 percent of identical twins have different dominant hands. Nobody knows the causes of handedness. Left-handedness tends to run in families, but because many identical twins have different handedness, we know that is not the whole story. Other factors are presumed to be involved, such as perhaps position in the womb, but there are … Read more

There is no relationship between breast size and volume of milk. The female breast contains fifteen to twenty lobes of milk-secreting glands embedded in various amounts of fatty tissue, which is not involved in milk production. Instead, it is controlled by hormones produced during and after pregnancy that stimulate the milk-secreting glands, and the nursing … Read more

Blood inside the body is either bright red or dark red, depending on whether it is arterial blood or venous blood. Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the tissues, where the oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide. Each red blood cell is packed with hemoglobin, a protein that contains iron. Hemoglobin combines … Read more

The larynx, like many other body parts, is under hormonal control during development. Male hormones encourage the growth of the larynx, and the Adam’s apple is the prominence made by the cartilage that creates the housing for the larynx. The larger male larynx, the longer vocal cords and the bigger box that resonates when the … Read more

The body may sweat during swimming, with the moisture dissipating unnoticed in the water. You do not necessarily sweat when you swim, but if you swim long enough and hard enough so that the exercise raises the internal body temperature, then you will sweat. This can be proven by measuring body weights before and after … Read more

People are indeed top-heavy, and balance, the ability to stand upright and move around without falling over, is not as simple as it feels. It requires constant tiny adjustment of muscles as the weight shifts on the feet, much as a juggler maneuvers to balance a plate on a stick. The adjustments become unconscious and … Read more

It is a complex question, made even more complex by factors like the prior activity of each individual and how long each has been in the room. Assuming that both people have become acclimatized to the room and that neither is running a fever, there are two important factors. One is the percentage of body … Read more

Human eyes do grow, but most of the growth takes place early in life. For the retina, a vast majority of growth takes place before the age of two. For the eyeball, most growth occurs before the age of six, and there is supposedly no growth at all after puberty. Nearsightedness, which is tied to … Read more

A pregnant woman can pass on some kinds of immunity to the baby, whether she has been immunized or not. These maternal antibodies are very powerful, and babies are protected for several months. That is why the measles vaccine is delayed until the age of nine to fifteen months. At earlier ages, the antibodies interfere … Read more

On average, a healthy young person can hold his breath about three minutes. With training, that might be extended some, but beyond that, a person might start to lose consciousness, because the body does not store a lot of oxygen. What triggers breathing is not a lack of oxygen, but a buildup of carbon dioxide … Read more

One reason babies sleep so much is that human growth factor, made by the pituitary gland, is secreted during sleep in higher concentrations than when the baby is awake. How the body and brain coordinate the process is not fully known, but for the first few months of life, a baby sleeps most of the … Read more

Just as an animal’s fur stands on end when cold, hair stands on end as a response to threatening noises or sights. This bristling is thought to occur to make the animal look larger, and therefore more formidable, to an opponent. Bristling fur as a response to cold keeps the animal warmer by increasing the … Read more

Squinting your eyes often makes objects appear sharper, even more so if you’re shortsighted. It’s because the rays are focused on the retina more than a change in the shape of the eyeball. Ideally, the eye receives rays of light and bends them so that an image is resolved on a small point of the … Read more

Humidity can make it seem like hair has a mind of its own, by affecting its natural curl pattern. Any change in relative humidity can make the hair fiber assume or exaggerate its natural state. As each hair fiber is formed in the follicle, the sac it grows from, it emerges with a distinct curl … Read more

The bones and the series of ligaments that form the knuckles and many other joints have a little elasticity. In cracking a joint, what basically happens is that you separate the two bones by pulling or bending. This abruptly creates a space between the bones, a vacuum. Then the fluids normally present in the surrounding … Read more

It is believed the watering of the eyes when you yawn may result from pressure on the main tear glands. These gland are at the outer margins of the eye sockets, and may produce tears because of the facial contortions involved in yawning. The involuntary act of yawning usually includes opening the mouth very wide … Read more

The brain’s activities do expend energy, and fuel is burned, but in very small amounts. In the sense of actually breaking down fatty tissue so that one might lose weight, thinking would play a very minor role. Extensive studies of brain function have been made and the varying levels of energy use at different levels … Read more

Whether humans are getting taller or not depends on what people you’re talking about. In a given population, physical anthropologists and public health experts believe, the trend could go either way. Physical anthropologists point to a trend toward increasing height over time, which they call the “secular trend.” The trend is borne out by measurements … Read more

New research has shown that there is a significant reduction in stomach capacity when someone reduces food intake. However, stomach capacity can also be increased by someone who eats more, which has implications for someone facing a big Thanksgiving dinner. The research involved obese people on a formula diet of six hundred calories a day, … Read more

“Sand” and scratchy eyes are not cause and effect but are both the result of irritation. The so-called sand, or “sleep” that builds up at the corners of the eyes is actually dried mucus. If the eyes are irritated for any reason, pollution or dryness, for example, more mucus is secreted, and the longer the … Read more

People stop growing at many different ages, but for most people the age limit is about eighteen or nineteen. Thus, a person who continued to grow right after high school would be well within the normal range. In some unusual cases, people can continue to grow until about the age of twenty, and in people … Read more

Most wild tomatoes are relatively small and are found close to the equator. The tomato is a New World plant, but comes from South America and Mexico, not North America. There are thousands of varieties, and new wild varieties are still being sought out in South America to enrich the limited genetic pool of the … Read more

Butter spoils less quickly than milk because of the amount of free water or available water in the food. The microbes involved in spoilage require water to live and multiply. Milk has a huge amount of available water, 93 or 94 percent, and butter has much less, so bacteria, yeast and molds are less able … Read more

Some members of the deadly nightshade family, Solanaceae, produce chemicals called glycoalkaloids, which are toxins. Normal amounts of the parts of these plants that are normally consumed are not ordinarily toxic to human beings, though the potato plant itself is very toxic, as is the tomato plant. Consuming very large quantities of potato skins, 2.4 … Read more

The modern commercial pineapple is seedless, thanks to English greenhouse breeders of the early 1700s who turned a small, seedy tropical fruit into a large, fleshy object. Over generations of breeding, most of the reproductive organs of the pineapple’s tight cluster of flowers were persuaded to clump into one sterile mass called a syncarp. It … Read more

Compounds containing cyanide can be found in some fruit pit kernels and some other foods as well. Even cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower contain cyanide compounds, but not enough to make them unsafe. Too many fruit pits can add up to a real risk, however. Apricot pits, for example, contain a compound called amygdalin, the supposedly … Read more

The mold that normally produces blue cheese produces traces of toxic substances, but not enough to hurt a human being in the quantities normally consumed. Almost all blue cheeses are ripened by the mold Penicillium roqueforti, which does make about six alkaloid toxins, called mycotoxins. However, two of the six, the most potentially harmful, are … Read more

The chemicals in hot peppers that cause the burning sensation may protect them from animals so they get eaten by birds. Any plant, whether it is a shrub like a pepper, a tree or an herb, that has bright red or orange fruit with a number of small seeds in it, and in which the … Read more

There is not a perfect correlation between the amount of hot foods eaten and the warmth of the climate. In Honduras, for example, hot pepper is not a major part of the cuisine, as it is in nearby Mexico and Thailand. A regional fondness for pepper may simply arise because meat and other foods tend … Read more