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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 12h

More than 200,000 deaths a year can be attributed to freshwater snails. The snails are hosts to deadly parasites, in particular parasitic flatworms known as flukes.

For reference, lions kill about 250 humans per year...which still feels like a lot?

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 15h

Endurance running may have enabled humans to hunt by exhausting their prey.

This would have allowed slower but persistent humans to capture quadrupedal mammals, which struggle to thermoregulate in hot weather and over long distances.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 15h

First proposed by paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman & biologist Dennis M. Bramble, their tests suggested that:

- reduced toe length relative to body mass in bipeds had increased the efficiency of locomotion
-lowered the metabolic costs of running

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 15h

It hypothesizes that several features that facilitate endurance running first appeared in H. habilis and H. erectus, including:

-Shortened toes and feet
-Lengthened legs
-Improved circulation and respiratory capacity

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 15h

Savannah to Couch to 5K??

The endurance-running hypothesis states that the ability of humans to run long distances is an adaptation that originated approximately two million years ago with the emergence of the genus Homo. 🧵⬇️

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 1d

New Jersey is the number one producer of eggplant in the United States.

It produces 26 million pounds of eggplant every year, and is sometimes called “the eggplant capital of the world.”

Don’t make us use the emoji.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 1d

Of the nearly 1.8 million animal species that have been described by science, about 84 percent are arthropods.

And we heard that if you say “arthropod” 3 times in a row, one of the 400,000 species of beetles will appear.

Chart showing approximately 1.19 million arthropod species, with insects making up 1 million, arachnids 100,000, crustaceans 68,000, and myriapods 18,000 species.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 2d

Jack Kerouac wrote “On the Road” during a 20-day marathon, typing it out on a single 120-foot-long scroll of paper.

The stream of consciousness in our Notes app doesn’t have quite the same gravitas.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 3d

There’s a lot going on, so here is a map of the world’s forests, divided by categories of wood.

Map labeled "Geographic Distribution of the World's Forests, Differentiated by Categories of Wood"

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 3d

.999… is a repeating decimal that is an alternative way of writing the number 1.

It’s not "almost 1," or "quite nearly 1."

It’s exactly 1.

Here's another way to look at it ⬇️

1/9 = 0.111
2/9 = 0.222
3/9 = 0.333
…
8/9 =0.888
9/9 =1

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 4d

Pill bugs, commonly called roly-polies, do not urinate. They rid themselves of ammonia by releasing it as gas through their shell.

Marvel Studios, we have found your next hero.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 4d

Keller published her first autobiography, using a Braille typewriter, in 1903.

In her dedication of the book, she wrote:

“To Alexander Graham Bell, who has taught the deaf to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies.”

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 4d

In 1893, Keller accompanied Bell to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Bell used finger spelling (which he had learned to communicate with his mother) to act as Keller’s personal guide, teaching her about modern science and technology.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 4d

Keller and Bell met in the late 1880s.

They connected quickly, and Bell referred the Keller family to the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston.

Through Perkins, Anne Sullivan was sent to Keller’s home to start working with her.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 4d

Controversially, Bell was a strong proponent of oralism—using lipreading and speech therapy rather than sign language.

Through his articles and speeches, Bell’s emphasis on oral education had a major impact on how deaf children were taught.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 4d

Bell’s mother was hard of hearing, and his father taught elocution to deaf people. Both experiences had a profound influence on Bell.

When he was 24 and living in Boston, he began teaching deaf children to speak using a set of symbols called “visible speech.”

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 4d

Alexander Graham Bell worked closely throughout his life with deaf people.

In fact, he described this work as “more pleasing to me than even recognition of my work with the telephone.”

One of the people he joined forces with? Helen Keller.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 7d

Fun fact: If you want to help out our flying friends (and their pituitary glands) on their journeys, reducing light pollution is an easy way to start.

Light pollution called “skyglow” can disrupt migration, causing many birds to become disoriented over urban and suburban areas.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica @britannica.com · 7d

Everyone who loves migrating birds, join us in thanking THE PITUITARY GLAND!

As the days get shorter, a bird’s pituitary gland responds by secreting hormones that affect metabolic processes, such as the accumulation of fat, which provides the necessary energy for migration.