Animals Doing Human Things
Crows that make tools, fish that farm, monkeys that floss.
37 sentences
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Crows that make tools, fish that farm, monkeys that floss.
37 sentences
1Ants farm fungus, herd aphids and wage wars between colonies that can stretch along whole coasts.
32 sentences
1Bats that see with sound, drink nectar and catch moths in midair.
31 sentences
1The strange bargains people have struck with bees, from honey hunts to old swarm laws.
32 sentences
Worshipped in Egypt, feared in Europe: the strange story of cats and people.
30 sentences
1A Nile crocodile called Gustave was blamed for so many attacks it became a legend.
30 sentences
1A solar storm in 1859 lit skies so bright that gold miners got up to make breakfast.
31 sentences
1Socrates died from a cup of hemlock, and he was not the last famous victim of a plant.
30 sentences
1After the 1755 quake, Lisbon tested its new buildings by marching soldiers round them.
31 sentences
1A single eruption in 1815 left Europe and America without a summer the following year.
33 sentences
1The legends, thefts and fakes behind the world's most famous stones.
32 sentences
1Rivers of ice that carve valleys, calve icebergs and creep downhill a few metres a day.
30 sentences
1A black hole began as a guess by an English clergyman in 1783.
31 sentences
1The rockets, astronauts and robots that went to the Moon, and what they found there.
33 sentences
1A Mars rover built for 90 days kept driving for almost fifteen years.
31 sentences
1Long before rockets, people saw rabbits, gods and omens in the Moon.
30 sentences
1On one distant planet it may rain molten glass, sideways.
32 sentences
1A chemist dreamed of a snake biting its tail and found the shape of benzene.
30 sentences
1The patients whose unusual brains revealed how the mind really works.
30 sentences
1A dress photo split the internet over whether it was blue and black or white and gold.
32 sentences
1Some frigate birds stay aloft for weeks, catching sleep in short naps on the wing.
32 sentences
1Your memory rewrites itself, and your brain fills a blind spot you never notice.
35 sentences
1Trillions of microbes live on you, and you never once asked them to.
32 sentences
1Radar, penicillin and the jeep: wartime needs that outlived the wars that made them.
30 sentences
1Some bridges swayed themselves apart; others were built wrong, and taught us why.
30 sentences
1A clock in Prague has shown the sky and a parade of apostles for six centuries.
30 sentences
1A decoded telegram helped pull the United States into the First World War.
32 sentences
1The dictionary took seventy years, and the cathedral is still going up.
32 sentences
1The daring, the odd and the ancient: how the world's boldest bridges came to stand.
33 sentences
1Bread prices helped start revolutions, and Roman bakers stamped their loaves.
34 sentences
1Mould, caves and rind fights: the cheeses that became famous by refusing to be rushed.
34 sentences
1Rulers banned it, and the coffeehouses that sold it became where newspapers were born.
30 sentences
1Families fold a coin into one New Year dumpling, and whoever bites it gets the luck.
32 sentences
1Once you could buy a turkey hen with 100 cacao beans, and the bar came much later.
31 sentences
1A drink born in Taiwanese tea shops now has its own museum and national day.
30 sentences
1Every frame of some classic anime was drawn and painted by hand, one cel at a time.
33 sentences
1Blood made of chocolate syrup, and a steamship hauled over a hill.
53 sentences
1Chess is far stranger than it looks, and its cheats and odd games prove it.
30 sentences
1Fried chicken for dinner in Japan, a log that poops presents in Catalonia.
65 sentences
1Some of the world's best-known murals were painted overnight, without permission.
33 sentences
1Panic, echo and Achilles' heel all come from stories told three thousand years ago.
31 sentences
1Rules that let a batter be out by a ball hitting a pad, and a bat once legally too wide.
35 sentences
1Medals once handed out for painting, tug of war and a standing long jump.
39 sentences
1Why a golf ball has dimples, and how a wooden club gave way to steel.
30 sentences
1Derby crowds, a bet placed on a horse's name, and races run in the dark of winter.
35 sentences
1Salt thrown before every bout, and a ring that has barely changed in centuries.
42 sentences
1A trophy stolen before the tournament, and kits that were nearly impossible to tell apart.
48 sentences
1Names that lie, and what each thing really is.
44 sentences
1Famous lines their supposed authors never said, and where they really came from.
32 sentences
1The character for 'good' is a woman beside a child.
33 sentences
1Why sandwiches, denim, teddy bears, and jeans carry the names they do.
31 sentences
1Words that came to mean the opposite of what they once did.
33 sentences
1Roman baths, hot springs and hammams: how people got clean before the shower.
30 sentences
1Missing days, a February 30th, and why a week has seven days.
31 sentences
1Workers paid in beer and the first recorded strike: everyday life along the Nile.
32 sentences
1A Swedish warship sank on its first voyage, a mile from where it was launched.
30 sentences
1Ships, black flags, pirate codes, and true stories from piracy's golden age.
35 sentences
1A crown flattened with a mallet, a stolen World Cup found by a dog.
49 sentences
1A novel about a sinking ship named Titan appeared fourteen years before the Titanic.
31 sentences
1Everyday myths about space, animals, food, history, and the body — corrected in one clear line.
31 sentences
1The mistakes, spills and lucky slips that gave us dry ice, rayon, penicillin and other everyday wonders.
31 sentences
1The little details you see every day without noticing, and what they are for.
32 sentences
1Everyday things that started somewhere unexpected: peach baskets, pie tins, a booklet given away at a shop.
31 sentences
1The habits, holidays and treats that began as somebody's sales pitch.
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