Groucho Marx was fond of asking guests on his quiz show (1950-1959): "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?" The CORRECT answer is 'no-one' & that's because you don't bury people in a tomb. However, the former President & his wife Julia are ENTOMBED there in aboveground sarcophagi.

There are 76 cities in the UK, and we know the precise number (as opposed to the roughly 1,200 towns and 6,00 hamlets & villages) because each of them has a legal document granting them city status signed by the British Monarch. Until 1889, the prerequisite for a Royal letters patent...

All groundhogs are squirrels, and all squirrels are rodents. Let's unpack the surprising taxonomy & diversity of the squirrels (family Sciuridae). At the top level, you can break squirrels into FLYING, TREE and GROUND squirrels, but first some outlier groups like the "giant squirrels" of Asia...

It's so satisfying when something is named right. So you'll know how happy I am to say this is the GLORIOUS FLATWORM, Pseudobiceros gloriosus, native to the benthic zone of the Indo-Pacific. They lack internal organs: no heart or blood vessels, no gills. But /reproduction/ is where it gets WEIRD.

See, I would have called them VEW's: Vertically-Enhanced Wolves. Read the thread about this TALL PRINCE.

we missed peak culture

This is Rico, a Brazilian porcupine (Coendou prehensilis) & Animal Ambassador at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. Rico loves corn 🌽 in all its forms. He's not a quiet eater, either. But the question I want to ask & answer: How are baby porcupines born? (no birth scenes, I promise)

You experience the gravitational attraction between you & the Earth constantly. But how often do you think about the gravitational attraction between you & the ceiling, or you & your dog, or you & a pile of blueberry scones? Let's talk about when Henry Cavendish weighed the Earth, 1797.

'Stalk-eyed flies' are the masters of cheating off someone else's test. Lots of bugs have weird, long antler-like projections, but flies in family 'Diopsidae' take the bold choice of putting their eyes on the ends of those projections. Let's talk about what evolution is up to here. (📷: kietbull)

The golden snub-nosed monkey lives in a small mountainous area of southwestern China, generally above 2000 m elevation (~6500 ft). It's a harsh & cold landscape requiring special adaptations. And although this one is absolutely housing a carrot, most of their winter diet is LICHENS.

Like a bejeweled golden objet d'art, but designed by evolution to filter wastes from your blood so you can pee them out. Nature is weird.

In the United States, there are: 13,850 McDonald's locations 16,800 Starbucks locations 12,200 bookstores (3,200 of which are independent) but 17,600 public libraries. If you include school & university libraries, that climbs to 125,000 libraries. That's 9 libraries in the US for every McDonald's.

Some say Rodents Of Unusual Size (R.O.U.S.'s) don't exist in the Fire Swamps, but they certainly exist on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Let's meet the cloudwalkers, the shy tree-dwelling rats of Luzon & adjacent islands in the chain. (📷: St. Louis Zoo)

Every city's got an ominous megastructure. Austin, TX

I think of the 'keytar' as an iconic 80's instrument, possibly because of the rise of synthesizers around the same time. Some genius hit on the idea of putting a shoulder strap on a keyboard synthesizer, then added a guitar-like neck. KEYboard + guiTAR = KEYTAR! Let's talk about the history.

The ISS & Planet Earth have in common: - Floating in space. - Kind of smelly. - International soccer. - Excess production of carbon dioxide. What if one of the ISS solutions could work on Earth? We can't fix the smells, but maybe we could work on that CO2 problem? Let's talk about Sabatier.

What's your technique for getting ketchup out of a freshly opened bottle? Why do we NEED special techniques? Because ketchup is one of dozens of 'non-Newtonian fluids' we have in our kitchens or bathrooms. Let's talk about it. (Apologies in advance for any errors here, physicists.)

The primary organ of weight loss: your lungs. "To burn 10 kilograms (22 lbs.) of fat, a person needs to inhale 29 kg (64 lbs.) of oxygen. And the chemical process of burning that fat will produce 28 kg (62 lbs.) of carbon dioxide and 11 kg (24 lbs.) of water." www.bmj.com/content/349/...

Pico de gallo first appears in print in a German publication in 1893, referring to peppers & onions cut up finely. But in most of Mexico at the time, it meant a cut-up fruit salad, sometimes with jicama and often with a spicy pepper sauce or seasoning. The name is a bit of a mystery...

In 2011, Austin, TX experienced 90 days of high temps over 100° F (38° C). But I have nothing but sympathy for anyone trying to survive the heat, especially in areas without HVAC.

The St. Louis Zoo has a dedicated penguin elevator for transporting their Formal Chickens™ to behind-the-scenes areas where they can get medical checkups, enrichment activities. Kicking myself for becoming a LAB biologist when I could have been a Penguin Elevator operator. (📷: St. Louis Zoo)

Bats covered in pollen make tequila possible www.popsci.com/environment/...

Euplotes gigatrox are protists that eat bacteria in the waters of the Caribbean, but if food runs scarce, they transform into CANNIBAL GIANTS that lose the ability to swim, so they crawl around eating their kin. "Don't make me hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry."

I sometimes forget that Elvis Presley was entirely self-taught, couldn't read or write music, and although he had some "co-writing" credits, they were the result of manipulative negotiations by his manager. Elvis was a singer, not a songwriter. He recorded 600 songs in his lifetime.

If you're "hobnobbing with snobs", you're drinking with a cobbler (the kind that make shoes, not the kind made with peaches). Hobnobbing is from Old English: habbe ("to have") & nabbe ("to not have") It can describe the tradition of taking turns providing rounds/drinks with friends.

For the first time on record, solar generated more electricity than coal across the entire U.S. - despite active federal policy pushing the other direction. Read more at the link below!

The Magna Carta, written 1215, was made possible by WASPS. Although they weren't consulted on the content of the founding document for universal legal rights, it was the wasps that made the ink used for writing & signing. Let's talk about oak gall ink.

Dunk and spin, Dragonfly style.

This is more money than was spent on cancer research at the National Cancer Institute since 2014.

This owl is doing something most birds cannot: it's blinking with its upper eyelid. Birds (collectively) are capable of three kinds of blinking, but not all of them use all three. Owls, parrots and pigeons (and a few others) use the human-like upper-lid blink.

These wading birds are what you would get if Jim Henson was tapped to direct Jurassic Park.

OK, people. It takes 2 minutes to write a letter to Congress, a few extra if you personalize it. Russ Vought's attempt to take over ALL federal grant funding is anti-democratic and dangerous. We need MORE letters. Let's tip it over 2000 today. actionnetwork.org/letters/oppo...

Pierre Lorquin sent a specimen of this butterfly to entomologist Jean Baptiste Boisduval, who named it, presumably for a personal acquaintance: Anthocharis sara, "Beautiful-flower Sara". But there's also a Julie in the mix!

These Florida Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia floridana) are dancing along with Kool & the Gang, but they're also demonstrating "motion parallax." Because owls have fixed tubular eyes that can't rotate, the bobbing & head-swaying help them judge distance. (📷: Thomas Brittain via IG)

The ISS has hosted 6 Italian astronauts since 2001 when Umberto Guidoni became one of the 1st Europeans to visit. But as far as "planting the flag", it was Samantha Cristoforetti who made it a proper destination for ESA's Italian astronauts with the launch of the 'ISSpresso machine'.

We've all been there: you're 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth, traveling at 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 km/h), and you are in DESPERATE need of a MANI-PEDI. ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet how you handle it: clippers held just above an active air intake with a handy vacuum line nearby.

10 US Presidents have left no direct-line descendants. No-one alive today is the direct descendant of George Washington, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Chester A. Arthur or William McKinley.

Googly-Eyed Reptile.

Good morning! 🪶

a blue jewel beetle from brazil

My nine year old asked for a Rosetta Stone cake for his birthday

Dad Joke of the Day: The Viking who believed in reincarnation didn't go to Valhalla; instead, he was Björn again. #DJotD

Musical Dad Joke of the Day: 🎵Take me down to Paraphrase City where it's nice.🎶 #DJotD

Bonus Dad Joke of the Day: I told my cat that I'm going to teach him to speak English. He looked at me and said, "Me? How?" #DJotD

Dad Joke of the Day: Hey, thanks for watching my video, "How to become a werewolf". Remember to Lycan subscribe. #DJoTD

Dad Joke of the Day: I work on a production line that makes Dracula action figures. There's only two of us, so I have to make every second Count. #DJotD

Dad Joke of the Day: Penguins secrete an oil that coats their feathers and aids heat retention, proving the old adage that the oily bird gets the warm. #DJotD 🐧

Elrond couldn't believe that Frodo, a mere hobbit, had successfully carried the One Ring as far as Rivendell. In other words: The elf checkout encountered an unexpected item in the Baggins area.

Dad Joke of the Day: If pronouncing my 'b's as 'v's makes me sound Russian, then soviet. #DJotD

Dad Joke of the Day: I used to eat pillow stuffing, but I had to stop. I was getting down in the dumps. #DJotD