Biology

Stories filed under Biology in the Weird Science History archive — 56 stories from the strange edge of science.

• From a Polar Bear Fishing in the Thames to the 'World Herd': A Short History of the Zoo
• From a Sticky Weed Named for a Critic to a Beetle Named for Kate Winslet: A Short History of Naming Species
• From Aristotle's Mud to Freud's 400 Eels: A Short History of the Eel Question
• The Astronomer Whose Escaped Caterpillars Are Still Eating America
• The Ball-Game Chant That Named the Fly Swatter
• The 'World's Most Venomous Spider' That Couldn't Bite You — So a MythBuster Let It Try
• The Doctor Who Prescribed 30 Leeches for Everything — and the Paris Dresses Embroidered in His Honor
• The Head Cold That Showed Alexander Fleming Your Tears Kill Germs — and the Lab Staff Paid Threepence to Cry
• The Jellyfish Extract Tossed Down a Lab Sink That Flashed Blue — and Lit Up Biology
• The Naturalist Who Rode a Caiman — Then Went Home and Built the World's First Nature Reserve
• The Pigeons a Pharmacist Fitted With Tiny Cameras — and the Patent Office Said It Was Impossible
• The Rose-Colored Glasses Farmers Bought by the Million — for Their Chickens
• The Sea-Monkeys That Hatched a Day Before You 'Brought Them to Life'
• The Tin of Meat That Spoiled After a Dose of Radiation Meant to Kill Everything
• The Zoologist Who Said Cotton Was Poisoning You — and Dressed George Bernard Shaw in Wool Down to the Bedsheets
• The Baby Raised With a Chimpanzee Who Learned to Bark for Oranges
• The Scientists Who Sat in a Room Hot Enough to Cook a Steak — and Walked Out Fine
• The Dogs That Drooled Too Soon — and the Bell Pavlov Didn't Ring
• The Mongooses Hired to Hunt Rats — Who Worked the Day Shift
• The Pudding Recipe That Gave Microbiology Its Favorite Jelly
• The Priest Who Put Tiny Taffeta Pants on Frogs to Find Out Where Babies Come From
• The Wombat That Proved You Can Fit a Square Peg Through a Round Hole
• From a Dinner Party Inside an Iguanodon to Feathered Raptors: A Short History of Picturing Dinosaurs
• The Germ-Fighting Paper Cup Named After the Doll Company Next Door
• The 8,510 Cows Scientists Counted on Google Earth to See If They Point North
• The Frog in the Hospital Basement That Told You If You Were Pregnant
• The Platypus Pelt a Museum Keeper Cut Open With Scissors, Hunting for the Stitches
• The Rats That Learned to Drive Tiny Cars — and Revved the Engine Before the Ride
• The Scientist Who Faced a Charging Bull With a Cape in One Hand and a Radio Transmitter in the Other
• The Starlings America Blamed on Shakespeare — and the One Sentence That Invented the Story
• The Chicken That Lived 18 Months After Losing His Head
• The Fish Extinct for 66 Million Years That Rode to the Museum in a Taxi
• The Goat-Gland Surgery That Ended Up Rewriting American Radio Law
• The Recipe for Making Mice Out of a Sweaty Shirt and a Jar of Wheat
• The 23 Cats the RAF Parachuted Into Borneo to Fight a Rat Plague
• The Stork That Came Home With an African Spear Through Its Neck
• The Time Australia Sent Machine Guns After 20,000 Emus
• Acoustic Kitty: The CIA Wired a Live Cat for Sound to Spy on the Soviets
• The Geologist Who Tried to Eat His Way Through the Entire Animal Kingdom
• Biosphere 2: The Sealed World Where the Oxygen Mysteriously Vanished
• Clever Hans: The Horse That Could 'Do Math'
• From Mendel's Peas to CRISPR: A Short History of Genetics
• The 100-Hour X-Ray Photograph That Revealed the Shape of DNA
• The Blind Bats That Flew Perfectly in the Dark
• The Baby-Blue Blood of the Horseshoe Crab That Keeps Every Vaccine Safe
• The Corn Geneticist Who Saw Genes Jump — And Waited 32 Years to Be Believed
• The Jellyfish That Can Reverse Its Own Aging
• The Lemmings That Never Jumped Off the Cliff
• The Mouse Utopia With Endless Food That Went Extinct Anyway
• The Naked Mole-Rat: The Cold-Blooded Mammal That Lives Like an Ant and Won't Age on Schedule
• The Parrot That Asked What Color Am I
• The Seesaw That Was Built to Raise the Dead
• The Slice of Cork That Named the Cell
• The Myth That You Only Use 10% of Your Brain
• The Toad Australia Released to Fight a Pest — and Turned Into a Bigger One
• The Water Bears That Survived Naked in Open Space

Other categories: Archaeology · Chemistry · Engineering · Medicine · Physics · Space