Kate Wong

These Birds Learned to Tweet Like R2-D2. Listen to the Uncanny Results The lovable Star Wars droid is helping to shed light on why some bird species are better at mimicking sounds than others

Please do yourselves a favor and listen to these birds mimic R2-D2. (And learn something about how some species are able to do it better than others!)

(by Kate Graham-Shaw for @sciam.bsky.social)

Man With Tick-Borne Meat Allergy Dies after Eating Burger Lone star tick bites are the most common cause of alpha-gal syndrome, which causes severe allergic reactions to red meat

True nightmare fuel: Scientists just confirmed the first known death from a severe meat allergy caused by a tick bite.

The man, who died in 2024 after eating a burger, had alpha-gal syndrome, a bizarre disease triggered by tick bites.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/man-...

🧪

ARFID Is More Than Picky Eating—And the Condition Is on the Rise Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, or ARFID, can cause malnutrition and weight loss in children and adults even when body image is not a factor

Clinicians are noticing a steady climb in diagnoses of ARFID, a type of eating disorder that presents as a food avoidance so persistent and pervasive it can cause severe malnutrition in kids and adults. More @sciam.bsky.social: www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...

Some Scientists See UFOs in Old Telescope Data. Others See a Teachable Moment New peer-reviewed research reporting strange lights in the pre-space-age sky is sparking curiosity and controversy

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: Did astronomers photograph UFOs orbiting Earth in the 1950s, years before human activity there? New peer-reviewed studies suggest the answer is “yes,” but skeptics say these conclusions are premature. By @astrojonny.bsky.social.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-...

These were the dinosaurs that faced the asteroid.

Some of the last survivors. They lived in New Mexico, 66 million years ago. Among them was Alamosaurus, the size of a jetplane.

We unveiled them, and their true age, today in a new paper in
@science.org !

Tiny bird with yellow and black markings perched on a branch and holding a small black and yellow insect in its beak

Please enjoy this female Golden-crowned Kinglet eating a hover fly(?). I saw her in Cape May, New Jersey, the other day. Kinglets are usually pretty frenetic. This one was so focused on holding onto her meal that she slowed down enough for a photo. Look at her cute orange feet! 🪶

Image: Kate Wong

These Enigmatic ‘Fossils’ Could Rewrite the History of Life on Earth Controversial evidence hints that complex life might have emerged hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought—and possibly more than once

When did big multicellular organisms evolve — and how many times did it happen? In my first big print feature for @sciam.bsky.social, I wrote about *extremely* controversial 2.1 billion year old specimens from the Francevillain, and the question of how to recognize life on a basically alien planet

Bird Migration Is One of Nature’s Greatest Spectacles. Paleontologists Just Found Clues to Its Origin Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

Proud to share a new piece in Scientific American co-authored with the brilliant @lnwilson.bsky.social , edited by @katewong.bsky.social, and featuring this spectacular depiction of the endless daylight of the Cretaceous summer in Alaska by Chase Stone!

www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S.
Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world.
www.nobelprize.org

Wow—thank you @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social for investigating this video. When I saw it a few weeks ago I wondered whether it was legit. It’s absolutely incredible!

I love this whole wonderfully evocative thread about Ötzi the Iceman and his final journey so much 😍😭🧪

Chimpanzee Consumption of Boozy Fruit May Illuminate Roots of Humanity’s Love of Alcohol Wild chimps ingest the equivalent of multiple alcoholic beverages a day

Chimpanzees get a surprising amount of alcohol from the fruit they eat. This discovery might bolster the "drunken monkey hypothesis" for humanity's love of liquor 🧪🍸

Meet the Oldest Dome-Headed Dinosaur Ever Found A newly discovered dinosaur species has been identified from a fossil unearthed in Mongolia that represents the most complete pachycephalosaur specimen yet found

New dome-headed dino just dropped. 🧪

(Very fun story by @jack-tamisiea.bsky.social)

Bird Migration Is One of Nature’s Greatest Spectacles. Paleontologists Just Found Clues to Its Origin Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

Right now, millions of birds are migrating south before the onset of the boreal winter. @ksepkalab.bsky.social and I explore the evolutionary origins of this amazing behavior in our article for @sciam.bsky.social!

www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

I loved talking with Marty Martin and Art Woods about how our understanding of human origins has evolved since 1845 for their excellent podcast, Big Biology 🧪

A Black Hole Collision Shows Einstein and Hawking Were Right Spacetime ripples from a black hole collision across the cosmos have confirmed weird aspects of black hole physics

The LIGO project is one of the coolest things going, and the Trump admin wants to effectively cancel it. Here's hoping it can keep on making amazing discoveries like this one 🧪

Behold the Gloriously Weird Spotted Ratfish. It Has Teeth on Its Forehead for Sex Researchers have finally traced the origin of the spotted ratfish’s bizarre forehead teeth, which are used for mating

You absolutely need to know about this fish that has Forehead Sex Teeth 🧪

Look, who are you to judge the spotted ratfish and it's personal kinks. It likes things a little spicy. So what?

Behold the gloriously weird Spotted Ratfish. It has teeth on its forehead for sex. The teeth line a cartilaginous appendage called a tenaculum that in males can be erected and used to grasp a female during mating 🧪

Katrina Helped Revolutionize Hurricane Forecasting. Budget Cuts May Set Us Back Hurricane forecasts have made huge leaps since Katrina hit 20 years ago, but that progress is threatened by Trump administration cuts to research

I wrote about how Hurricane Katrina helped spur pretty remarkable improvements in hurricane forecasts since 20 years ago and how current and planned budget cuts by the Trump administration to research could set us back.

Whales Mourn, Birds Show Self-Awareness, Plants Remember—Are Humans Really So Special? Other species exhibit capabilities that were once thought to be exclusive to Homo sapiens

It's Scientific American's 180th birthday! To celebrate we have stories on 180-degree turns in science--times when scientists did an about-face in light of new evidence. My essay looks at how the notion of human uniqueness has evolved. Turns out a lot of other species share our "special" abilities 🧪

Thank you, Cedric!

That's so nice to hear--thank you for reading!

Whales Mourn, Birds Show Self-Awareness, Plants Remember—Are Humans Really So Special? Other species exhibit capabilities that were once thought to be exclusive to Homo sapiens

It's Scientific American's 180th birthday! To celebrate we have stories on 180-degree turns in science--times when scientists did an about-face in light of new evidence. My essay looks at how the notion of human uniqueness has evolved. Turns out a lot of other species share our "special" abilities 🧪

Feast your eyes on this spectacularly spiky ankylosaur 😍 🧪

This Superpooper Seabird Is Amazing Scientists The first detailed observation of the bathroom habits of Streaked Shearwaters at sea leave scientists with a surprising load of questions

I have a real shitshow of a science story here for all my friends: 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/thes...

Meet the Newly Discovered Human Ancestor Identified Just by Its Teeth Ancient teeth found in Ethiopia belong to a never-before-seen species in the Australopithecus genus of human ancestors

Fossil teeth reveal a new species of human ancestor, one that co-existed with the earliest known members of our own genus. I love thinking about how, although Homo sapiens is the only human species around today, for most of human prehistory, multiple human species roamed the earth 🤯 🧪

A bee with blue fur

A bee with blue fur

A blue bee! This is the blue carpenter bee, Xylocopa tumida.

I was SO excited to find this animal just before dawn at Trus Madi Entomology Camp in Borneo.

So full of beauty.