Science News Roundup: Bon Voyage, Happy Feet, and Hello, Cyberbugs

Happy Feet is finally on his way home and DARPA’s latest initiative is straight out of a horror movie.

In which we visit Jamaica Pond

Signs posted around Jamaica Pond declare it to be part of Boston’s Emerald Necklace. For years, I had assumed from this that it was a man-made pond, dug under the direction of Frederick Law Olmsted. In fact, the 68-acre 53-foot deep kettle pond was carved out by glaciers millions of years before there was a Boston or a Frederick Law Olmsted to landscape it.

“Do bees have two pairs of wings?”

Science News Roundup: The Happy Feet Fan Club

The World’s Most Popular Penguin, math goes to war, a host of new NASA missions, and other news of the week.

“Why do goats have four stomachs?”

On a trip to Davis Farmland, my daughter and I were told that goats have four stomachs. That didn’t seem like it could possibly be true, so when we got home we decided to check the facts. Turns out “goats have four stomachs” is sloppy shorthand for “goats have one very large stomach split into four compartments.” In this post we look at what each of those compartments are used for, and how a goat’s stomach changes over time.

“Can I catch some hail?”

The evening in early June that my daughter and I spent huddled in our basement waiting for the tornado warning to expire is definitely in the running to be one of the formative experiences of my daughter’s childhood. Over a month later, she’s still busily processing it. Today she asked, “Can I catch some hail, Mommyo?”

“Why do tornadoes turn the sky green?”

Growing up in Texas, I was always told that tornadoes turn the sky green. Turns out it’s actually the water particles in the air turning the sky green, not the tornado.

“Why don’t fleas fly?”

This afternoon, after we had exhausted the topic of heartworm treatment in dogs (don’t ask), my daughter asked me about fleas.
Specifically, “Why don’t fleas fly?”