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Nature

2,233 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 23 of 38.

1321. Weather forecasters label giant blobs of air with a three-letter codeA blast of summer heat from the American desert is cT; a frigid slab from northern Siberia in winter is cA. Meteorologists sort air masses, bodies of air spanning hundreds or thou…
1322. Where mountain streams hit flat ground, they spread sediment into giant fansWhen a stream bursts from a narrow canyon onto open ground, it suddenly slows and dumps its load, building a cone of gravel and sand. These alluvial fans range from a few metres w…
1323. We have named 1.5 million animal species, and millions more may be waitingZoologists have formally described roughly 1.5 million kinds of animal, yet estimates suggest the true total could reach 8 million. The science of animals began with cave artists …
1324. Arctic ground squirrels hibernate with bellies colder than freezing waterA hibernating Arctic ground squirrel can hold its abdomen at minus 2.9 °C for more than three weeks. A Madagascan lemur hibernates through winters topping 30 °C. And bears, once d…
1325. By 2000, instinct had all but vanished from psychology textbooksKonrad Lorenz once had a gosling imprint on his boots, and it trailed whoever wore them. The bird learned who its mother was, yet following her was pure instinct. Psychologists ar…
1326. Mice and monkeys show a general intelligence factor much like human IQThe g factor, the statistical thread linking scores across different mental tests, was first found in people. It now turns up in other animals too, explaining about 47% of the var…
1327. By biologists' rules, a bird eating seeds counts as a predatorPredation sounds simple: one creature kills and eats another. But a mouse eating seeds is technically a predator, since each seed is a whole living organism, while a deer browsing…
1328. The word scavenger once meant a medieval customs inspectorScavenger comes from a Middle English word for a customs collector, a person who looked things over. Today it names the animals that clear away the dead, from vultures to hagfish.…
1329. Sleep may have begun hundreds of millions of years ago as brain housekeepingSleep is found so widely across animals that it probably dates back hundreds of millions of years, and one leading idea is that it began as a way for the brain to flush out waste,…
1330. Snapping shrimp live in colonies with a queen, much like beesEusociality, the peak of animal social life with queens, workers and shared nurseries, is best known in ants, bees and termites. But it also appears in a reef shrimp whose single …
1331. One naturalist insisted flamingos were pink to hide against the dawn skyAbbott Thayer correctly explained countershading, the pale belly and dark back that flatten an animal's shape. Then he overreached, claiming all animal colour was camouflage, even…
1332. A mantis shrimp escapes by somersaulting backwards like a wheelNannosquilla decemspinosa curls into a living wheel and rolls away at 72 rpm, covering more than 2 m. Animals also sail, kite on silk, skate on surface tension and hitch rides on …
1333. Desert locusts once flew 4,500 km across the Atlantic OceanIn October 1988, swarms of desert locusts rode tropical air currents 4,500 km west across the Atlantic. Arctic terns fly at least 19,000 km a year to enjoy two summers. Migration …
1334. The oldest known two-legged walker lived 290 million years agoLong before dinosaurs, a small reptile called Eudibamus ran on its hind legs. Walking upright has evolved again and again since, in birds, kangaroos, springhares, pangolins and hu…
1335. Proof that camouflage actually saves prey only arrived in 2016Naturalists have praised camouflage since Aristotle watched octopuses match the stones around them. Yet the first experiment showing it truly keeps prey alive came only in 2016, f…
1336. The giant panda belongs to Carnivora but eats almost nothing except plantsBeing a carnivoran and being a carnivore are different things. The giant panda sits in the order Carnivora yet lives almost entirely on plants, while whales eat nothing but animal…
1337. Why do animals eat? Niko Tinbergen insisted there are four right answersAsk why an animal eats and you could answer hunger, nutrition, childhood development or ancestry. Niko Tinbergen argued all four are needed at once. His framework, and the Nobel P…
1338. Oklahoma ranchers set a third of the prairie alight each year to mimic ancient bisonOn Oklahoma's Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, managers burn a third of the pasture each year and let bison crowd onto the fresh regrowth, leaving other patches to rest. The trick recr…
1339. Eating plants turned out to be harder to evolve than eating meatSwitching from insects to meat took early four-legged animals little effort. Living on tough, fibrous plants demanded a whole kit of new teeth, jaws and gut microbes. Fossils show…
1340. Herds move as one, yet nobody is actually in chargeA herd sweeping across a plain looks organised, but no one is giving orders. Each animal simply copies its neighbours or reacts to the same danger. A few individuals get copied mo…
1341. China’s Long River runs 6,236 kilometres to the seaThe Yangtze—Chang Jiang, the Long River—is China’s longest and the world’s third-longest, rising at Jari Hill on the Tibetan Plateau’s Tanggula range. It empties into the East Chi…
1342. Loess turned China’s mother river dangerously yellowThe Yellow River, or Huang He, stretches about 5,464 kilometres—China’s second-longest, the world’s sixth—with a basin near 795,000 square kilometres. Fine loess mud dyed it yello…
1343. River silt paints a whole sea golden-yellowBetween China and Korea, the Yellow Sea—also called the North Sea in some local usage—is a shallow Western Pacific margin tinted by golden silt from great rivers. Excluding the Bo…
1344. America’s first national park sits on a supervolcanoYellowstone spans 3,468 square miles across Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho—famous for Old Faithful and wildlife. Signed into law by President Grant on 1 March 1872, it also cradles Y…
1345. Siberia's Yenisei was written down as 'Kem' in 7th-century Chinese annalsThe Yenisei is the biggest river system emptying into the Arctic Ocean, splitting the West Siberian Plain from the Central Siberian Plateau. Tang dynasty scribes recorded it more …
1346. Yosemite does not mean grizzly bear; it meant 'they are killers'Yosemite's name is often said to mean grizzly bear, a mistake popularised by the man who named the valley. In Miwok the word meant roughly 'they are killers', a label for the Ahwa…
1347. A ring of sinkholes in Yucatán traces the asteroid that ended the dinosaursAcross the flat limestone of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, a semicircle of cenotes marks a shock wave from the Chicxulub impact 66 million years ago. The land above that buried crat…
1348. Yukon Chinook salmon swim up to 2,000 miles without eating a biteChinook salmon entering the Yukon in early June face one of the longest runs on Earth, up to 2,000 miles upstream, living off stored fat the whole way. That is why their meat is s…
1349. China's rugged Yungui Plateau hosts the highest bridge in the worldIn southwest China, the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau is a maze of karst peaks and gorges so hard to cross that engineers have thrown the world's highest bridge over it. It splits Asia's…
1350. Arabia still crumples Iran into the Zagros foldsThe Zagros Mountains run about 1,600 kilometres across western Iran, southeastern Turkey, and northern Iraq. Miocene collision between the Arabian and Eurasian plates folded Paleo…
1351. A Zambian king moves house every flood season, and the Zambezi throws a festivalThe Zambezi, Africa's longest east-flowing river, swells each rainy season until its Barotse floodplain spreads 25 km wide. The Lozi king then leaves his lowland compound for high…
1352. Zanzibar's stone houses were a homegrown African invention, not an Arab importZanzibar's merchant houses of coral and lime are often credited to Arab or Persian settlers. Historians including Mark Horton argue they grew entirely out of local building tradit…
1353. Denmark’s biggest island holds two-fifths of its peopleZealand covers 7,031 square kilometres—the largest island in Denmark proper—and held about 2.32 million residents on 1 January 2020, some forty percent of the nation. Bridges tie …
1354. Timor's name simply means east, marking where the Lesser Sundas endTimor takes its name from Malay timur, east, because it caps the eastern end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, under 500 km from Australia. Prized for sandalwood since the 13th century…
1355. Timorese call the Timor Sea the male sea for its rough wavesIn Tetum the Timor Sea is tasi mane, the male sea, while the calmer, clearer strait off Timor's north coast is tasi feto, the female sea. Beneath the rougher water lie big oil and…
1356. Mites and springtails are the top predators of Antarctica's great rangeThe Transantarctic Mountains run about 3,500 km across the whole continent, dividing East from West Antarctica. On their rare ice-free ground, nematode worms graze on cyanobacteri…
1357. Brazil's Tumucumaque park protects more rainforest than all of BelgiumCovering more than 38,800 km² of Amazon forest, Tumucumaque Mountains National Park is the largest tropical forest national park in the world. Joined with French Guiana's neighbou…
1358. The Congo's biggest right-bank tributary may once have fed Lake ChadThe Ubangi runs about 1,060 km through Central Africa, marking borders between three countries on its way to the Congo. Geologists think its upper reaches once drained north towar…
1359. Most of Uluru’s sandstone bulk hides undergroundNear Australia’s centre, a sandstone monolith rises 348 metres yet keeps most of its mass buried. Sacred to Pitjantjatjara Aṉangu, dual-named Uluru / Ayers Rock, it flushes red at…
1360. Russia’s stone belt drew the line between Europe and AsiaFrom the Arctic coast down toward the Caspian, the Urals run mostly through Russia as a long north–south spine. Geographers still use them as part of the conventional Europe–Asia …
1361. Europe and Asia meet along a sturgeon riverThe Ural—once called the Yaik—runs from the southern Urals through Russia and Kazakhstan into the Caspian Sea. Most authorities treat its entire length as the Europe–Asia boundary…
1362. A drowned Ice Age canyon hides under the UruguaySouth America’s Uruguay River runs about 1,838 kilometres from Brazil’s Serra do Mar to the Río de la Plata, drawing borders with Argentina and Uruguay. Beneath today’s channel li…
1363. Europe’s third-largest lake drains west to the seaVänern blankets 5,655 square kilometres of Sweden—largest lake in the country and the European Union, third in Europe after Ladoga and Onega. Alone among Sweden’s top ten lakes it…
1364. The Zambezi falls as the world’s widest water sheetOn the Zambia–Zimbabwe border the Zambezi tips into a basalt fracture 1,708 metres across and 108 metres down—the largest curtain of falling water on Earth by combined width and h…
1365. Antarctica's highest mountain went unseen by anyone until a 1958 flightMount Vinson, at 4,892 metres the top of Antarctica, was only suspected until US Navy aircraft spotted it in January 1958. Its first measured height overshot by nearly 250 metres,…
1366. Nobody knows where the name Visayas comes from, despite many colourful theoriesThe Visayas, the middle third of the Philippines, may have been named in Chinese records as early as the 12th century, when islanders raided Fujian with roped iron javelins. Spani…
1367. Poland’s national river named a whole ice ageAt 1,047 kilometres the Vistula is Poland’s longest river and the longest draining to the Baltic. It threads Kraków and Warsaw, and geologists borrowed its German name Weichsel fo…
1368. Europe’s longest river never reaches the open oceanThe Volga runs 3,531 kilometres through Russia into the Caspian Sea—the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic river on Earth. Five of Russia’s ten largest cities, incl…
1369. Shackleton’s graveyard sea still makes deep ocean waterThe Weddell Sea, a Southern Ocean embayment between Coats Land and the Antarctic Peninsula, spans roughly 2.8 million square kilometres. Sailors long called it treacherous; it als…
1370. Hangzhou’s West Lake was engineered out of a bayWest Lake covers only 6.39 square kilometres west of Hangzhou’s old walls, yet Tang and Song poets made it a national template for beauty. Dredging kept a former shallow bay from …
1371. Fifty metres of sea would drown West Siberia’s heartBetween the Urals and the Yenisei lies the West Siberian Plain—often called Earth’s largest unbroken lowland. So flat are its Cenozoic sediments that a fifty-metre sea-level rise …
1372. India’s western wall wrings monsoon rain from the seaThe Western Ghats, or Sahyadri, run about 1,600 kilometres along India’s Arabian Sea coast, covering some 160,000 square kilometres. Averaging around 1,200 metres high, they force…
1373. The White Nile changes its name five times before it even becomes itselfThe White Nile is the longer but weaker of the Nile's two great branches, named for the pale clay clouding its water. Leaving Lake Victoria it is called the Victoria, Kyoga, Alber…
1374. Russia’s colour-named sea freezes half the yearThe White Sea is a Barents inlet on northwest Russia, ringed by Karelia, the Kola Peninsula, and Kanin. Arkhangelsk made it the country’s historic oceanic door for Pomor traders; …
1375. Nubian temples rescued from a dam created UNESCO’s listUNESCO World Heritage Sites are places a global treaty flags for outstanding cultural or natural value. The idea accelerated after Egypt’s Aswan High Dam threatened Nubian monumen…
1376. A 22 km stretch through Delhi causes most of the Yamuna's pollutionThe Yamuna, a goddess to Hindus and the water supply for some 57 million people, runs clean for hundreds of kilometres from its Himalayan glacier. Then it reaches Delhi, where a 2…
1377. Yemen’s alien island keeps a third of its plants found nowhere elseSocotra sits between the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, a Yemeni island geologically tied to Africa’s Somali plate. Roughly a third of its plants grow nowhere else on Earth, an…
1378. New Zealand’s larger island holds just a quarter of the peopleTe Waipounamu—the South Island—covers 150,437 square kilometres, the world’s twelfth-largest island and 56% of New Zealand’s land. Yet only about 1.26 million people live there, r…
1379. New Zealand’s spine holds seventeen peaks above three thousand metresThe Southern Alps stretch about 500 kilometres along New Zealand’s South Island. Aoraki / Mount Cook tops the chain at 3,724 metres, and sixteen other summits clear 3,000 metres—a…
1380. The ocean that maps forgot still rings Antarctica in ice-cold waterSouth of 60°S, about 21.96 million square kilometres of sea encircle Antarctica—the Southern Ocean, second-smallest of the five principal oceans. In February 2019 the Five Deeps E…

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