Otters are now the subject of scientists’ curiosity. Scientists are trying to find out why these cute creatures love to juggle pebbles. Researchers at the University of Exeter studied 48 otters across three wildlife parks and zoos. It seems that the answer to the scientists’ question will continue to evade them, as Mental Floss details: 

The otters were observed lazing around on their backs, tossing pebbles around. (For an otter, “juggling” means moving a stone around their chest, hands, and mouth.) While clearly adorable, the question for scientists was whether this was a form of play or a behavior tied to something else.

It could be an expression of hunger, as the otters tended to juggle more when they hadn’t eaten for two or more hours—the otter version of banging silverware on the table. It’s also possible the otters were playing with the rocks because it mimics the effort of foraging. The Asian small-clawed otter uses dexterity to find shellfish, while the smooth-coated otter eats fish. Both were observed to juggle, however. And after being given food in containers that needed to be tampered with, it didn’t appear that the otters were using the same skills exhibited in the rock-tossing.

image via Mental Floss

Mimi and Brownie served as Army nurses during World War II. They became best friends during their time in the army, and until now they managed to keep the friendship strong. Even now that they’re both 100 years old, they still manage to communicate with each other every day. It’s amazing that they maintained their friendship for seventy-four years! 

Toronto Zoo is now offering a new experience to its visitors: drive-thru zoo visits. The zoo has developed an “innovative new interim plan” to offer a safe drive-thru experience that meets the province’s reopening requirements. CTV News has more details: 

“The pre-booked driving route would allow guests to see the Zoo’s animals from the comfort and safety of their own vehicle along a 3.4 kilometres route,” the zoo said in a statement.

The public will be able to pre-purchase tickets online once it gets approval to reopen, the zoo said.

The zoo, located near Meadowvale Road and Old Finch Avenue, north of Sheppard Avenue East, has been closed since March 14 due to the COVID-19 crisis.

It has taken a financial hit due to the closure. In April, the zoo laid off 118 non-permanent employees and paused summer hiring.

image via Toronto Zoo

Looking for more choices for your beverage? If you’re a minor, stick with non-alcoholic beverages, please. But for those who are of legal age and love a good drink to pair with their choice of snack, Uproxx consulted their favorite bartenders on the best whiskeys to pair with any snack: 

Peter Ruppert, beverage director at Short Stories in New York City

As far as just having something to accompany snack food, Red Breast Irish Whiskey is a complex but still down to earth whiskey that just sort of fits itself into any occasion.

Piero Procida, bartender at The London West Hollywood in Los Angeles

I’ll try not to do anything too over-complicated here. In other words, if you are being simple then stay simple — go with something like a blended Scotch, not only because it’s typically cheaper but also because there’s such a wide array of flavors in these whiskies. My personal favorite is Johnnie Walker Black. It’s not too expensive and it’s still a good quality scotch to enjoy with something like snacks. Blended scotches are slowly making a comeback and this one is incredibly versatile.

image screenshot via Uproxx

Monopoly is a classic board game known for destroying relationships. A lot of people play it for the thrill of acquiring wealth and property. The bad side of the game is some players would be driven to insanity by the high rental rates by the winning player(s). The core aspect of Monopoly is something we shouldn’t teach to kids. Alicia Clifton  believes that the game isn’t something we shouldn’t let kids play: 

Nonetheless, I nagged my parents to play Monopoly with me and I remember their faces hardening like concrete as they’d succumb to my request. They truly detested playing Monopoly with me — as an adult I now know why.

Some will argue that Monopoly provides children with valuable life skills, like being astute with money and making good investment decisions. Suggesting parents should play with their children to teach them about the real value of money and to learn how to be ‘good losers’.

This may be somewhat true. However, taking a closer look at what Monopoly represents, its origins and the franchise more broadly, it’s emphatically obvious the game underscores what is so very wrong with society. Even though my children are yet to be conceived, I know they deserve to be enlightened to make their future world a place that is fair and habitable.

Clifton lists the reasons why we shouldn’t let our kids play the board game on Medium. 

image via wikimedia commons

We’ve seen our fair share of enemy bases in different tv shows and films. Here’s a question: out of all the structures in the world, what do you think would be an evil villain’s secret lair? Tumblr user evilbuildingsblog thinks it’s Taipei 101. While the structure does look dark and avant-garde, there’s a reason behind its odd architectural feature. Well, I’m not gonna deny that it does look like someone’s evil lair. 

image via evilbuildingsblog

The periodic table of elements hosts so many elements that it’s difficult for some to memorize all the elements by name alone. Even though that seems like a lot, we are actually running out of elements. Each element added in the periodic table was from technological efforts. Some elements cannot be man-made, so researchers are looking for places where they can mine the materials we need, as Discover Magazine details:  

Europium and indium are crucial for televisions and touch screens. Rhenium is necessary in fighter jet engines. And to avoid some of the effects of climate change, we need lithium and cobalt for electric vehicle batteries, tellurium for solar panels and dysprosium for wind turbines. 

Yet we cannot make these elements — they formed, along with Earth, billions of years ago. To replenish our dwindling stores and keep up with a growing, modernizing world, we must mine for more. 

hey’re looking for natural ores in places once considered too remote to mine, before the materials’ demand justified the costs and arduous journeys: the Arctic, the deep sea and even the asteroids nearest Earth. 

But after a century of heavy industrial activity, we also have a wealth of human waste 

Head on to their website to see the list of locations where researchers are looking for elements! 

image via Discover Magazine

The photos from space are more than just representations of scientific data. They are more than pictures that explain the vast universe beyond our planet. The photos are comparable to western paintings, according to Elizabeth Kessler, a Stanford University lecturer. The Hubble space photos transcend their scientific purpose. The Hubble Telescope photos, just like landscape paintings from Thomas Moran, evoke a powerful aesthetic response, as Atlas Obscura details: 

“[Hubble’s] views of ethereal nebulae and glittering galaxies and star fields—they’re not just compelling visualizations of scientific data,” Kessler said during a recent online lecture for the American Institute of Physics. “Like the 19th-century paintings, they evoke a powerful aesthetic response. They encourage us to see the universe as sublime.”

The Hubble Heritage Project, formed in 1998 by a small group of astronomers and image processors at the Space Telescope Science Institute, regularly invoked landscape tropes when releasing new images and descriptions of celestial phenomena. For the “Pillars of Creation,” for instance—an astonishing image showing those massive plumes of gas in a region of the Eagle Nebula—the star-formation process was compared to the forces that shape the buttes of the American Southwest, notes Kessler.

The aim of the project, like those 19th-century Western landscape painters, was to create aesthetically rich images of exploratory observations. Today, astronomers and astrophotographers work closely together on the cosmic images that have revolutionized the way we perceive the universe.

image via Atlas Obscura

People call Debra Dawson a crazy cat lady. Dawson lives in a ghost town in New Mexico with her kittens. The 65-year-old woman is the only resident who lives among the town’s (named Yeso) crumbling structures. Yeso was long deserted before Dawson moved in with her husband, as Outside detailed: 

She is one of just a handful of people known to permanently live in the ruins of the many ghost towns sprinkled across the West’s high plains.

“Hard to imagine 300 families here,” Dawson says, walking through one of Yeso’s collapsing adobe neighborhoods, shadowed by her dogs, Duchess and Missy. Dawson has bright blue eyes and shoulder-length blond hair that she wears tied back. She is sporting an Army green jacket that conceals a well-used Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon hoodie. It’s an unseasonably cold day in October, and a fog has settled on the landscape, coating the mesquite, sagebrush cacti, and grasses in dew. As the weather grows colder, the air freezes, leaving the plants covered in tiny icicles that reflect the afternoon sun and vibrate in the steady wind. “If it’s windy anywhere in New Mexico, it’s windy here,” says Dawson. “But it sure is pretty.”

image via Outside

We’ve heard of scientists creating human hybrids in fiction. Hybrid creation also exists in real life, as scientists attempt to create hybrids for medical research. A team of scientists have created the most thoroughly-integrated mouse-human hybrid yet. The doctors hope that their hybrid could serve as accurate models for medical research, as Futurism details: 

The human cells spread out and wove themselves into organs like the heart and liver, while most ended up as red blood cells.

None of the human cells, however, seemed likely to become sperm or egg cells, Science News reports. That means that had the mice been brought to term — the embryos were terminated after 17 days — their offspring would have been perfectly normal mice.

image via wikimedia commons

Researchers discovered that dogs appear to have a difficult teenage period. Dogs are also frustrated with their owners and trainers when they reach five months old. In an experiment with Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers, and their cross breeds, the researchers found out that dogs at eight months old were more reluctant to respond to a command given by their caregiver. ScienceAlert has the details: 

"This is a very important time in a dog's life," says animal behaviour researcher Lucy Asher, from Newcastle University in the UK. "This is when dogs are often rehomed because they are no longer a cute little puppy and suddenly, their owners find they are more challenging and they can no longer control them or train them."

"But as with human teenage children, owners need to be aware that their dog is going through a phase and it will pass."

The researchers found further evidence of this effect in survey data gathered on 285 Labradors, golden retrievers, German shepherds and their cross breeds. Dog owners and trainers less familiar with the dogs were asked to evaluate the animals' 'trainability' by answering questions on obedience and how quickly commands were responded to.

image via wikimedia commons

The color blue cannot be found in nature very often. There are only a few animals that are naturally blue in color. There are a lot of reasons as to why blue animals are so rare in nature. The colors of some animals depend on what they eat. The pigments on their skin, fur, or feathers depend on what they consume. Check out the full list of reasons on Brightside.

image via Brightside

Who knew that an automated rice cooker can be used to cook anything besides rice? Most cooks already use their automated rice cooker to cook sushi rice and porridge. Did you know that you can also use the rice cooker to steam, poach, and bake? Check out The Japan Times’ recipe for chocolate cake here.

image via The Japan Times

This video of a helicopter flying will make you question if that’s possible. Or maybe I’m not knowledgeable about helicopters and their flight patterns. Well, it’s a funny video nonetheless! Who knew helicopters can fly that vertically! 

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😳😳Wow!! Thanks for sharing your video @dprada86

A post shared by COMBAT LEARJET (@combat_learjet) on May 14, 2020 at 11:43am PDT

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Edvard Munch’s The Scream has been rarely exhibited and instead placed in storage to preserve the famed painting. Over the years, the painting has been slowly degrading, the yellow pigments in the painting turning off-white and some parts of the painting are flaking. Thanks to new research, the painting can be restored and conserved. The study, published in Science Advances discovered that the culprit for the painting’s slow decay is moisture. With the cause known, threat conservationists at the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, can do their best to preserve the painting.

image via CNN