All articles from Nautilus
The Magic of Herding
When Doyle Ivie, a 77-year-old farmer and sheepdog trainer in northern Georgia, received an email from Saad Bhamla and Tuhin Chakrabortty, two biophysicists from the Georgia Institute of Technology, he was intrigued. The researchers wanted to know if he would let them record the to-and-fro-ing of hi
A Brief History of mRNA Vaccines
Five years ago, a medical breakthrough saved an estimated 14 million to 20 million lives in just one year. At its core is a miniscule piece of harmless genetic code that can help train the body to fight off pathogens. And now the current United States Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. K
Propaganda Doesn’t Have to Be a Dirty Word
The term propaganda has long been associated with authoritarian regimes, lies, and manipulation. Nathan Crick, a professor of rhetoric and philosophy at Texas A&M University, wants us to see it in a different light. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Crick, who has be
A Glittering Cave Holds Ancient Stories
Deep within a limestone cave in the foothills of Australia’s Victorian Alps, the walls twinkle—and if you look closely, you can make out the movements of the ancestors of the Aboriginal GunaiKurnai people. Finger grooves on the walls of the cave, known to the GunaiKurnai Elders as Waribruk, allow us
Replacement Windows to the Soul
Four thousand years ago, a woman had a very fancy artificial eye that she probably wore while she was alive. It was possibly made of natural tar and animal fat or maybe bitumen paste; it had a gilded surface and a central circle where the iris would be, with lines radiating outward, sunlike. Gold wir
The Data in a Dino’s Smile
In life, a T. rex’s teeth were fearsome. Arguably the majestic carnivore’s most valuable weapon. But 66 million years after the king of dinosaurs exited the Mesozoic scene, its fossilized, banana-size flesh rippers are finding a new purpose. Fossilized T. rex teeth—along with gnashers from other din
The Philosophy of Tyranny
Few figures loom larger over Western culture than Plato, whose The Republic has profoundly shaped Western thinking for centuries and is among the most assigned texts at English-speaking universities. In it, Plato describes his vision for a perfect society ruled over by what would later be described
How to Count Butterflies
Hunting for butterflies need not go the way of other childhood summertime idyls. With the animals in decline due to a panoply of factors, keeping track of their populations has become increasingly urgent. We recently covered a report that tracked 4.3 million butterfly observations across 90,000 volu
Our Gut Feeling About Forests
I’ve long ached to greet the greenery around me by name—I don’t want to be surrounded by strangers while hiking in a dense forest, or wandering through a meadow bursting with wildflowers. Conveniently, I’m now dating a horticulturalist, who’s helping me achieve some familiarity with the native plant
What a Massive Butterfly Count Reveals
If you wandered through a Midwestern meadow in 1992 to look for butterflies, the odds are good you would have seen many more than if you returned to the same meadow today. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . It’s no secret of course that much of the order Lepidoptera—w
Paradise Lost
Washington State’s Mount Rainier is one of the snowiest mountains in the world. Over the years, all of that snow has birthed dozens of living glaciers, which flow across the landscape. One such resident, the Paradise Glacier, drapes onto one side of the mountain at more than 8,400 feet above sea lev
Botox and the Beast
Lithe necks, blown-out lips, eyelashes worthy of a cartoon princess. The camels that compete in Saudi Arabia’s annual King Abdulaziz Camel Festival are a striking bunch. Many contestants, who are mostly female, have undergone cosmetic enhancements, including Botox injections and surgical procedures
Spying the Medusa Slayer’s Meteor Shower
Keep an eye on the sky in the wee hours of August 13: We’re due for the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. In this annual spectacle, considered by space nerds to be the primo shooting star show, our planet whizzes into the dusty remnants left by the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Nautilus Members enjoy an
Mom on the Menu
The planet’s 3,000 or so known centipede species don’t initially seem like the nurturing type. Some are so big they prey on mice, bats, and songbirds, while others reportedly munch on human corpses. There are those that hiss like snakes, and those that are aquatic, swimming through tropical waters b