Fact-based Nature Did It First
A Moth's Eye Taught Screens and Solar Panels to Stop Reflecting
The eyes of a moth are covered in bumps far too small to see, and copying them helps screens, lenses and solar panels shake off their glare.
Animals
The animal world is full of behaviour that sounds invented and is not. This is where the fact-based animal articles gather: creatures that see, taste, grip, swim and remember in ways very different from ours, and a few that turn out to be closer to us than you might think.
Animal News, the invented reports from ponds and gardens, is kept separately, so everything on this page describes real animals.
Articles
Fact-based Weird Facts
Chameleons Change Colour to Send Messages, Not Just to Hide
A chameleon is not a living copy machine for whatever it sits on: its most dazzling colour changes are messages to other chameleons, made with tiny crystals in its skin.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
A Desert Beetle Taught Engineers How to Drink From Fog
In the Namib Desert a small black beetle stands on its head at dawn to catch fog on its back, and engineers have been borrowing its trick ever since.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Honeybees Give Each Other Directions by Dancing
A bee that finds good flowers flies home and dances a figure of eight in the dark hive, and the dance tells her sisters which way to fly and how far to go.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
A Termite Mound Taught a Building in Zimbabwe to Cool Itself
In the middle of Harare stands a big office and shopping centre with no ordinary air conditioning, designed after a long look at the tall earth towers that termites build.
Fact-based Odd Places
After the Rain, Bolivia Gets the World's Biggest Mirror
The Salar de Uyuni is so flat that a thin film of rain turns it into a mirror 129 kilometres across, and when it dries, satellites use it to check their eyesight.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
A Kingfisher Taught Japan's Bullet Train to Be Quiet
Japan's fast trains made a loud bang every time they left a tunnel, until engineers gave one a long nose shaped like the beak of a diving kingfisher.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Hippos Make Their Own Sunscreen
A hippo climbing out of a river shines orange-red in the sun, and that glossy coat is a sunscreen it makes in its own skin, one that keeps germs away as well.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Goldfish Do Not Have a Three-Second Memory
The famously forgetful goldfish can remember things for months, learn to press a lever for food, work out what time dinner is served and tell its owner apart from other people.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Flamingos Are Not Born Pink
A baby flamingo hatches fluffy and pale grey, and it only turns that famous pink because of what it eats, a colour its parents can lose again while feeding it.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
A Gecko's Toes Showed Scientists How to Stick Without Glue
A gecko can hang from a glass ceiling on perfectly dry feet, and once scientists looked at the whole foot rather than just its tiny hairs, they built a pad that grips like one.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Tardigrades Spent Ten Days in Open Space and Lived
Three thousand microscopic animals were bolted to the outside of a spacecraft, the lids were opened, and most of them came back perfectly fine.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Sloths Are Secretly Excellent Swimmers
Slow on the ground, sloths float thanks to gas from digesting leaves, keep their noses up like a snorkel and swim about three times faster than they walk.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Koalas Have Fingerprints Almost Identical to Ours
Under a microscope a koala's fingertip carries the same loops and whorls a human one does, close enough that specialists have struggled to tell the two apart.
Fact-based Weird Facts
The Shrimp Whose Punch Boils the Water
The mantis shrimp swings its club so fast that the water in front of it boils into bubbles, and their collapse adds extra damage and tiny flashes of light.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Where Does a Lap Go When You Stand Up?
A cat can find one instantly, it holds a plate perfectly well, and the moment you get out of the chair it is simply not anywhere.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Cats Cannot Taste Sweetness
A gene cats need to build a sweet taste receptor is broken, so the cake your cat is sniffing does not taste sweet to it at all.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
Do Fish Know When It Is Raining?
Rain fills the water with sound, but much of that sound is pitched far higher than many fish can hear, so the answer is less obvious than it seems.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Cows Have Best Friends
Cows build preferred relationships, groom the herd-mates who groomed them, and calves raised with a companion do better at learning.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Butterflies Taste With Their Feet
A butterfly landing on a leaf is not resting — it is drumming the surface with its front legs to find out what the leaf is, because it has taste receptors in its feet.
Fact-based Weird Facts
The Real Nemo's Dad Would Have Become His Mom
Every clownfish starts adult life as a male, and when the female who rules an anemone disappears, her partner turns into a female and takes her place, so in a real reef Marlin would have become Nemo's mum.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Sharks Are Older Than Trees
Shark-like scales go back about 450 million years. The oldest known forest grew about 385 million years ago.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Polar Bears Are Not Actually White — They're Transparent
Polar bear fur has no white pigment at all: the guard hairs are transparent and hollow, the white comes from scattered light, and the skin underneath is black.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Octopuses Have Three Hearts and Blue Blood
Two hearts serve the gills, one serves the body, and that one stops when the octopus jets away.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Why Honey Keeps Almost Forever
Honey is too dry, too acidic and too sugary for most microbes to survive in, which is why a jar at the back of the cupboard is almost always still good.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Crows Hold Grudges and Never Forget Your Face
In a study that began in 2006, Seattle crows learned one masked face and kept scolding it for up to 17 years.