IFLScience - We Have Questions

New to anatomy? Locating your heart is a good start. Thing is, many people when asked will be pointing somewhere in the region of the left side of their body. It’s an easy mistake to make, not least because when we go to the doctor, that’s where they stick the stethoscope to have a listen. For the most part, it’s actually in the dead center, but with a lean. There are several good reasons for this...

Imagine having a job that’s dependent on sunny weather. As a resident of England, I'd be pretty much done for. There are, however, hard workers on this planet that rustle up energy for the rest of the food chain to enjoy day in, day out. Yes, I'm talking about plants.    A little thing called photosynthesis enables them to essentially “eat the Sun,” creating food from sunlight, come rain or shine,...

My name is Laura, and I have a confession to make: I cannot roll my Rs. Now, as a native speaker of English, you might not think this would majorly impact my life. But I’ve also been a student of Spanish since the age of 12, and the rolled R sound? Well, it comes up a lot. After all these years, I’d basically written off my chances of learning to produce this elusive sound, but a chance conversati...

Modern life is exhausting. If you’re not behind on your emails, then there’s the endless calls that could’ve been an email. Reminders that you haven’t reached this quota, or that element X of your job is slipping behind on its KPIs or rankings. It feels as if the ways we have to lose are endless in a world obsessed with metrics, and yet have you noticed that keeping score is so much fun in games?...

Imagine yourself in a restaurant like no other: at the table beside you, two owls are on a date. There’s an anteater dining solo over in the corner, and a family of leeches sitting around a table just behind you. There’s a lot on the menu, but some of the dining etiquette might just put you off your food.  This is the imaginary scenario we put to Chester Zoo’s Assistant Manager for Visitor Engagem...

IFLScience visited the Space: Could Life Exist Beyond Earth exhibition at the Natural History Museum, London, recently and we were curious to come across opportunities to take in the scents of asteroid Bennu, Mars, and even Saturn’s moon Titan. We understand that space smells, in an abstract way, we’ve even  covered it before , but being able to get an actual whiff sparked many questions. Who crea...

In 2022, a new world record was set in the waters off Grand Cayman in the western Caribbean Sea. I, a once avid collector of the Guinness World Records annual album, was most excited by the prospect, but ask environmentalist Oly Rush about it, and he’d sooner talk to you about plastic.  You see, this wasn’t just any swim. This was a 36-hour-and-59-minute test of endurance to raise awareness of one...

People were finding out they were pregnant via frogs until the 1960s. We all know that many of the tools in human life have been inspired by nature’s creations, but how often do you stop and really think about where these products come from? A new gallery at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London is encouraging visitors to think more about their impact on the planet, as well as showcasing the...

Is it possible to predict the future by slicing open a farm animal and peering inside its liver? Scientists of the 21st century would surely be skeptical about approaching this question, but for the curious minds of ancient times, it was a tried and tested method for looking ahead and foreseeing what the gods had in store for you, your family, or your world.   Known today as liver divination, this...

Polar Bears International (PBI) is serious about protecting bears, and in the pursuit of reliable data have gone to some extremes in the past. From burying scientists alive out in the snow to novel collar-camera setups that have enabled them to predict when polar bear moms and their new cubs are going to emerge from their dens. In an era of “ drill, baby, drill ,” now is a tougher time for polar b...

There’s a strange phenomenon reported among some recipients of organ transplants whereby people report altered memories, tastes, and personality changes. A particularly curious example included a woman who, having never much liked chicken nuggets, found herself compelled to eat them after receiving an organ from a man who had nuggets on his person when he died. Similarly perplexing changes in tast...

Humans smell, there’s no denying it, but are some of those smells sending out chemical signals we aren’t consciously aware of? Are we, like ants, giving off  pheromones ?    We spoke to  Dr Tristram Wyatt , Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford, to find out.  

It’s perhaps one of the greatest injustices of human bodily functions that the yawn has become so stigmatized in social settings. Crack one out and you’ll likely receive accusations of being bored or rude. It seems ironic, really, because the science of yawning tells us that, if anything, it’s a sign you’re trying harder to pay attention. That’s what we discovered when we sat down with Dr Andrew G...

When we talk about death, we often say things along the lines of “it's a fact of life,” but the view can be very different when you’re facing the real and imminent prospect of no longer existing. Given the chance, can we be so sure that we wouldn’t try anything for a little more time? According to neuroscientist  Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston , most of the general public would like 10 years more li...

Snow is beautiful, but also powerful and destructive – and, if we’re honest, a bit confusing. For something made entirely of water, it can come in many forms: light and fluffy, sticky and heavy, shaped like a perfect snowflake , or falling in needle-like flecks. Its consistency changes a lot, but so does its color, which got us wondering: why does snow sometimes look blue? To find out, we reached...

Wake up? Brush your teeth. Going to bed? Brush your teeth. The dental routine of being a human can be a bit monotonous, but it’s an important step towards maintaining a happy mouth. It can be slightly baffling, then, to spot a photo of a bonobo with a seemingly perfect grin. How are wild animals getting away with it as we dutifully march off to our next dental hygienist appointment? Why don’t anim...

The mummification process is perhaps one of the most talked about aspects of Ancient Egyptian life. It highlights the morbid curiosity shared by those of us alive at a time when funerary practices have gone in a different direction. It’s also a skewed view, offering us insights into the death rituals of only the ancient very rich. The complex process of mummification is one we’re still trying to u...

DNA analysis confirmed in 2023 that a trapdoor spider lost to science had been rediscovered in the Portuguese village it was named after following a 92-year disappearance. Fagilde’s trapdoor spider (Nemesia berlandi) was first described in 1931 before apparently dropping out of existence – but all that changed when an expedition team happened to look under just the right rock.  It marked the 12th...

Stick two humans in an enclosed space with nothing to do, and before long, someone is likely to suggest a game of I Spy. Kids are so hot for smartphone games that it inspired its own meme format , and while certain generations might like to tell you this compulsion is a new thing – the fact is, humans have been playing games for thousands of years. It’s believed that gaming actually predates langu...

From the brain-exploding Martians of Mars Attacks! to the wonderful diversity of Men In Black’s extraterrestrial entourage, the possibility of alien life is a concept that has captured the imagination of our entire planet. Most of us only get to explore it at the movies – but for some scientists, the search for alien earths is at the core of their career.  One such scientist is Professor Lisa Kalt...

Point Nemo is the most remote place on Earth, the coordinates where – most of the time – the nearest humans are those occasionally whizzing overhead on the International Space Station. They sail by at a lofty 408 kilometers (253 miles) above the water’s surface, but recently a father-son explorer duo went splashing through the waters of Point Nemo.  Chris Brown is on a mission to become the first...

Geese are famously aggressive animals whose sassy attitude appears to be crucial to their social rank. Large in size with peculiar " geese teeth ", they can be scary, and yet despite this, 45 percent of Britons reckon they could take on a goose. It’s a curious question that got two naturalists wondering: isn’t it time someone did a podcast on how many animals you could take in a fight?  That’s jus...

Sometimes surgeons need to remove parts of our bodies to make them healthy, but where do those sections of human go? They can be destroyed, but other times – with the patient’s consent – they are handed over to scientists to see what we can learn from diseased tissues. Those scientists work in what we call tissue banks, or biobanks, and they are a curious place indeed. As a technician, you never q...

Submerged settlements, also known as sunken cities, might sound mythical but they are very real, and while their migration underwater makes them harder to find, it can also preserve them far better than they would have fared surface-side. Marine archaeologist Professor Jon Henderson knows this all too well. As Head of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, his studies have taken him from the...

Join IFLScience as we explore the questions nobody thought to ask but everyone wants the answers to. Get the behind-the-scenes conversations from CURIOUS magazine’s We Have Questions interviews, as we hunt down the experts to answer some of science’s stranger questions.