Paper, plastic, and… cigarette butts? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Urban birds scrounge up people’s trash to build their nests. No butts about it! Just like cigarettes aren’t good for you or me, they aren’t good for baby birds! But mama birds prefer them
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Busy airports… are for the birds! Unfortunately. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Birds can really be a nuisance. Especially around airports. These unwanted aviators cost domestic airlines billions of dollars in damages and delays. They’ve tried blasting recordings of hawks. They’ve tried air cannons.
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You’re a bird brain! Hey, that’s a compliment! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with The Loh Down on Science. Starting with a cupcake, could you figure out how to make another one? If you didn’t know anything about baking, probably not! Humans learn by watching others and imitating behaviors.. Is
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Does a sad emoji make you feel sad too? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with The Loh Down on Science. Good times, bad times – friends share it all! And sometimes, we unconsciously match the mood of those around us. This effect is called EMOTIONAL CONTAGION. Even our dogs seem
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It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s – uh oh – bye-bye birdy! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Aircraft strikes kill thousands of birds per year and cause more than one billion dollars in damage. Ugh. Researchers at the National Wildlife Research Center wondered:
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Want to drive the chicks wild? Shake a tail feather! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Nature is filled with mating dances. Peacocks shake their tails, spiders shimmy, and flamingos Flamenco. They all boogie to their own beat, but is the timing of their two-step
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Are the most popular kids also the most stressed out? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying: You’d be surprised what the little birds tell us! At Oxford and Saint Andrews universities, researchers investigated what factors make youngsters more social adults. The researchers turned to
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Hummingbirds: Cute little nectar sippers, or battle-hardened killers? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Hummingbirds are darling! But it’s a bird-eat-bird world –sometimes they have to fight to survive! At University of California, Berkeley, Alejandro Rico-Guevara studies the evolution of hummingbirds. He wondered: What can
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If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a…rocket scientist? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Conceptual thought has led to great achievements. Think Einstein’s theory of relativity or Shakespeare’s plays. Animals like dogs and monkeys can also think conceptually.
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There’s nothing like seabirds to. . . take a dive! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. It’s a beautiful sight: seabirds diving head first into the water to catch unsuspecting prey. A perfect ten! But the northern gannet (GA-nit) takes gold with its flawless, high-speed
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