Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...
Synanthropes are creatures that live and thrive close to humans but aren’t pets — animals such as pigeons, raccoons, and rats. Synanthrope comes from Greek words that mean “with” and “human,” and has been around since the 1940s. The Synanthrope...
Pax, by Sara Pennypacker, follows a boy who raises a fox from the time it’s very young and then has to release it. Pennypacker spent time observing fox behavior and speaking with biologists about how foxes communicate, research that shapes the...
What do you call it when your dog or cat suddenly turns into a blur of fur, racing through the house? Trainers and behaviorists call those frenetic random activity periods or FRAPs. Other people just call them zoomies. This is part of a complete...
In China, dogs say wang wang instead of woof woof. Wikipedia has a great list of such cross-linguistic onomatopoeias. Of course, we all know what the fox says. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The Dog Says “Wang-Wang”” Hello, you...
Brady evidence n.— «In a criminal context, the Governor is being denied what is called “Brady evidence”—evidence that could tend to prove he isn’t guilty. Since this is not yet the criminal trial, Fitzgerald doesn’t have to show that it exists...