Becca Cudmore

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    Angry Apes “Flick” Each Other Off. Is That Where We Got Our Gesture?

    One evening last spring, I sat down at the American Museum of Natural History’s 85th annual James Arthur lecture, in New York, on the evolution of the brain. This year’s speaker was Richard Byrne, who studies the evolution of cognitive and social behavior, particularly gestural communication in the great apes, at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews. He […]

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    The Case For Leaving City Rats Alone

    A Vancouver rat study is showing us how pest control can backfire.

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    Being (Almost) Eaten Alive Can Make You a Diehard Environmentalist

    In his Oscar acceptance speech, Leonardo DiCaprio said, “Making The Revenant was about man’s relationship to the natural world.” Perhaps the film’s most gripping illustration of this was when a grizzly bear nearly mauls DiCaprio’s character, an American fur trapper, to death. To be eaten by a predator, after all, may be the most apt […]

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    Before We Painted Like Picasso, We Had to Share Like Gandhi

    A comparison of the facial features of ancient modern humans (left) to more recent modern humans (right). Modern specimens have a less prominent brow ridge and a shorted upper face. Researchers suspect these changes were caused by a decrease of testosterone.Robert Cieri   Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . […]

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    The Mystery of the Missing Frost

    On some clear winter mornings, we are treated to one of the highlights of the season: a thin layer of white frost delicately coating surfaces like individual grass blades. But even when a veneer of ice crystals encrusts much of the outdoor landscape, you may notice it missing from certain sites—the grass beneath a pine […]

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    Art Can Show Us What’s Wrong With Our Planet

    An ice book destined to melt into the Great Miami River in Dayton, Ohio (2012).Basia Irland Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction—the first in 66 million years, and it’s caused primarily by human activity. Scientists first detected this epochal event by calculating diversity in our forests and taking the temperature of our atmosphere, and they now outline steps […]

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    Can a Card Game Stealthily Teach People Genetics?

     High school biology class. You’re sitting in the back of the room. A ladder-like strip is drawn sideways across the whiteboard. There’s a strange blob seemingly tearing up the ladder from within and a comb-shaped strand sticking out beneath the blob. While looking at your phone and flicking from one social media channel to the […]

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    Five Ways to Lie with Charts

    Want to spin your data? Here’s how.

  • Cudmore_HERO

    Five Ways to Lie with Charts

    Want to spin your data? Here’s how.

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    The Eerie Lawn Pest That Comes From Our Obsession With Lawns

    Fairy Ring #3Collage by Amy Ross (with permission) The front lawn is an American symbol of middle-class status and respectability. We trim ours with ride-on mowers, condition them with nitrogen, and hydrate them with elaborate sprinklers, largely because they represent us to everyone driving by. Ironically, it’s due to this energetic maintenance that one pest […]