This horned “rook” may be the world’s oldest-known chess piece. In the game of chess, a rook can move as many spaces as it can in one direction. Or, it can sit stone-still and guard the pieces around it, potentially…
The reptile’s long tail is visible, but most of the crocodile’s body is hidden under the bulk of the elephant that crushed it to death. A recent confrontation between an elephant and a crocodile ended in a surprising twist that…
Aye-ayes possess small “pseudothumbs” — complete with their own fingerprints — that may help them grip objects and branches as they move through trees. There’s a little extra thumb-thing on the hand of the aye-aye, a strange-looking nocturnal lemur native…
On Sept. 15, a group of journalists visited the control room of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s reactor 4. Tourists can now visit the control room of Chernobyl’s Reactor 4, the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster. But the…
Unlike the Dutch penguins who absconded with another penguin’s egg, two male king penguins in Zoo Berlin named Skip and Ping adopted an abandoned egg in August. They had previously tried to hatch stones in their enclosure. A pair of…
When your dog’s big, pleading eyes look up at you, is it with old-age wisdom or teenage naiveté? Researchers came up with a new equation to calculate your dog’s age in human years. And the math isn’t as simple as…