Adam Cole

Lonesome George was a celebrity tortoise. Millions of humans made the pilgrimage to see him while he lived, and his death was international news.

Why?

He wasn't particularly large for a Galapagos giant tortoise — just 5 feet long with his neck stretched out, and only 200 pounds. He ...

When half a million songbirds didn't show up at their usual roosting spot this summer, I went looking for them. My search took me to the back roads of South Carolina, where I saw firsthand evidence of Shakespeare's influence on American ecology, met a society of strangely enthusiastic landlords, and ...

Decorative gourd season has arrived, and we decided to celebrate by investigating the science and history of pumpkins.

Do you know what happens when you feed ostriches pumpkin seeds? Or when the first pumpkin beer was brewed? Or what to call a zucchini-pumpkin hybrid? Watch our new video to find ...

Beer is a collaboration between two species — a multicellular animal called a human and a single-celled fungus called yeast. Both descended from the same single-celled organism.

It took time for each of them to evolve — more than a billion years — but once they did, it wasn't long ...

Meet two animals. Both are teeny. Both live in water. Both mature extra fast. But while one dies in about a week, the other — well, prepare to be amazed.

A puzzlement.

Why, I wonder, are both these things true? There is an animal, a wee little thing, the size of a poppy seed, that lives in lakes and rivers and eats whatever flows through it; it's called a gastrotrich. It has an extremely short life.

Hello, Goodbye, I'm ...

In late July and August, something remarkable happens in the air above Lake Murray in South Carolina. Around sunset, hundreds of thousands of purple martins come streaming toward the center of the lake from every direction, swirling together in a massive flock that darkens the sky. After an hour ...

Artist Willie Baronet is on a 24-city, 31-day trek across the country this month, buying handmade signs from homeless people. He says the project has changed the way he views homelessness.

Standing in the middle of a swarm of bees might not be your idea of stress relief, but it works for Ray Von Culin. He's a beekeeper in Washington, D.C., and he says caring for bees is one of the most relaxing things in his life.

We ran into ...

When light passes between areas of different air density, it bends. You've probably noticed the way distant pavement seems to shimmer on a hot day, or the way stars appear to twinkle. You're seeing light that has been distorted as it passes through varying air densities, which are in turn ...

This winter's unexpected arctic bird invasion has given owl researchers a rare opportunity. They're fitting a few of the errant owls with GPS backpacks to track their return to the Arctic.

Long before it fueled moviegoers, popcorn helped lay the foundation for the Aztec empire. In our video, we look at popcorn under a microscope, where the rock-hard kernel's fluffy secret is revealed.

This week, we're launching Skunk Bear, our new science tumblr.

What will I find on this tumblr?

Cool things! Cool science things!! Stuff we make or discover on the Internet that makes us laugh, or think, or turn to each other and say, "Hey, look at this cool thing!"

...

There are lots of creative Christmas tree recycling programs around the country, and in keeping with the holiday spirit, here are a few of them — set to verse.

It's the week after Christmas, and in every town
You'll see Christmas trees dying — their needles turned brown.
30 million ...

Stargazers are in for a treat if they're willing to wake up really early Saturday morning.

The annual Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight, potentially serving up more than a hundred shooting stars per hour. The meteors will appear to emanate from the constellation Gemini (thus the name), but that's just ...

Nine months ago a 12,000-ton meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, a Russian city with 1.1 million residents. Hundreds of personal videos captured the fireball's flight — and that means you can watch the spectacle from almost any vantage point on YouTube.

Now, in large part by poring over these videos, ...

Dave Vesely is busy training his dog, Sharpy. She isn't learning to sit or fetch or even herd sheep; Sharpy is learning to find the nests of western pond turtles.

These turtles are sneaky. After laying their eggs in a small hole, they knead together dirt, leaves and their ...

What a makes a good clock? Andrew Ludlow, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, says one of the most important criteria is stability.

"If you could imagine a grandfather clock and see the pendulum swinging back and forth, ideally that pendulum would swing back and ...

This story comes to us from our friends at the science desk. They produced the 7-minute video documentary you see above.

"Modern-day rappers — all they talk about is money, and all these unnecessary and irrelevant topics," says Victoria Richardson, a freshman at Bronx Compass High School. Richardson's rhymes tackle ...

There was great fanfare when the Mars Science Laboratory launched in November 2011, and again when its precious cargo — NASA's Mars rover Curiosity — touched down on the red planet in August 2012.

The eight months in between had drama of their own. Curiosity was constantly bombarded with ...