What’s the weirdest factor you discovered this week? Effectively, no matter it’s, we promise you’ll have an excellent weirder reply for those who hearken to PopSci’s hit podcast.
The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and all over the place else you hearken to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favourite supply for the strangest science-adjacent info, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Widespread Science can muster. For those who just like the tales on this put up, we assure you’ll love the present.
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FACT: Historical past is filled with folks with pointy heads (on objective)
Whereas analyzing stays discovered on the Baltic island of Gotland, which was as soon as house to many rich viking settlements, researchers discovered an uncommon occasion of physique modification: three women from 1,000 years ago with elongated, cone-shaped skulls. However this discover wasn’t uncommon for the explanations you could be considering.
The practice of artificial cranial deformation has really proven up a great deal of occasions all through historical past, in numerous totally different components of the world—on most continents, in fact. However on Gotland, it appears to have been a pattern that stayed remoted to those three girls (or perhaps even simply two—the paper notes that one of many skulls might fairly be an instance of a naturally kind-of-pointy head).
That is the primary time vikings have been seen with purposefully elongated heads. The closest people who had been broadly doing this on the time had been over by the Black Sea, which could simply be a hop skip and a leap at the moment, however was too far for informal cultural crossover. Some graves from a number of hundred years earlier in Bavaria yielded 13 women with elongated skulls, however they had been reportedly genetically distinct from their neighbors, and may need come from Romania or someplace close by, the place cranial manipulation was common thanks to the Huns.
The most important thriller isn’t how these girls ended up with elongated skulls—we are able to’t know for certain, however there are many causes a viking lady could be born or spend some childhood elsewhere, what with vikings being vikings and all that. However what’s intriguing is that these three our bodies, which come from the identical time interval, are alone of their cranium manipulation—it didn’t catch on.
Take heed to this week’s episode to be taught extra about the history—and future—of cranial manipulation. As a result of sure, we still do it. We simply favor rounder heads now.
(Additionally: No, they’re not aliens.)
FACT: It’s higher to be apocalypse in style than highschool in style.
By Laura Baisas
The world feels a bit scary proper now, between one other summer season of doubtless record-breaking temperatures and hurricanes, hen flu, wars, and an upcoming election. In A Field Guide to the Apocalypse: A Mostly Serious Guide to Surviving Our Wild Times, Athena Aktipis, a cooperation theorist on the College of Arizona and co-director of The Human Generosity Project, exhibits how one can change your mindset to higher take care of all of this mayhem. On this week’s episode of The Weirdest Factor I Realized This Week, I share a few of my favourite—and most useful—takeaways from her new ebook. Let’s get apocalypse-ready!
If you wish to discover out extra about Athena’s work, you’ll be able to take a look at our earlier profile of her right here. You too can hearken to her recent appearance on Rachel’s other podcast, Science Quickly.
FACT: Termites poop out good little hexagons
Termites eat cellulose, however depend on the endosymbionts of their hindgut to digest it. After passing by means of their hind intestine, their excrement exits their physique previous their rectal pads—which compress the frass, AKA poop, into hexagonal prisms!
Listed here are another enjoyable insect poop info: Bugs that feed on liquid are inclined to have liquid poop. Dragonfly nymphs have inside rectal gills that they will calm down to deliver water into their bum, after which they squirt it out rapidly as a method of jet propulsion to flee predators—or simply to maneuver quick.
For extra improbable bug info, take a look at my show Insectarium on PBS.
