Sneezing with your eyes closed is a reflex you can consciously override.
Robert Kneschke/EyeEm via Getty Images
People sneeze for many reasons and in many ways. One of them is to protect your airways from irritants and infectious disease.
It can stretch your mind to ponder what’s really out there.
Stijn Dijkstra/EyeEm via Getty Images
Astronomers know a lot about what’s in outer space – and think it’s possible it never ends.
A bush viper slithering out of its skin.
Shutterstock
When the snake is ready to shed its skin, it rubs its body along rocks, plants and other rough things to peel the old layer of scales — often in a single, snaky piece.
A behavior from kittenhood persists in many adult cats.
Byron Chin/flickr
According to a veterinarian, the behavior some people call ‘kneading the dough’ or ‘making biscuits’ is a clue your cat feels comfortable around you.
Poisonous or edible?
Ekaterina Morozova/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Poison can be a deadly defense that helps a mushroom make sure its spores are spread to new places to grow into baby mushrooms.
The Conversation is proud to launch our new Curious Kids picture book, Why Do Tigers Have Whiskers?
Shutterstock
When a big old tree dies or is cut down, even if we plant a new one we might have to wait hundreds of years before it provides a good possum house.
from www.shutterstock.com
When the weather outside is very hot, it can make us feel really unhappy. Here’s why.
Scholars can be more reliable than search engines.
Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Unlike scholars, Google’s search engine can’t automatically decide which sources are the most important, most accurate or most significant.
Fire a set of high-power lasers at a tiny speck of hydrogen isotopes and you can initiate nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun.
National Ignition Facility
Scientists are working on ways to make lots of energy by converting matter into energy. The trick is keeping the process under control. One possibility is nuclear fusion – the Sun’s power source.
Although it appears that some dogs can catch COVID, you don’t have to worry!
(Shutterstock)
A curious kid asks: Can dogs catch COVID-19?
If you hear the sound of a colour or see a colour each time you feel a particular texture on your skin, that could be synaesthesia.
MI PHAM on Unsplash
If you can “hear” colours or “taste” words then your brain is being activated in unusual ways.
Shutterstock
To tell you the truth, nobody really knows. But it’s probably got to do with the fact that signals from your nose and your eyes arrive in the same area of your brain.
The need for shut-eye is universal.
Justin Lewis/Stone via Getty Images
Getting a good night’s sleep on a regular basis can help you do well in school or at work. It might even make you better-looking.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation
Human farts and sneezes can be big — so imagine the size if they came from the world’s biggest animals?
Confederate currency had images of enslaved people, historical figures and mythical deities.
elycefeliz/Flickr
Confederate paper money was a promise to exchange the bill for gold or silver, but only after the Confederacy won the war.
from www.shutterstock.com
Your eyebrows can tell a whole story without saying a word.
Future notebook paper?
Not4rthur/Flickr
People have painted on cave walls and written on clay and wax tablets, papyrus and paper made from wood. Could screens replace paper someday?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, standing at center and facing left just above the eagle, takes the presidential oath of office for the third time in 1941.
FDR Presidential Library and Museum via Flickr
Only one president has done so – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – but others considered it, and even tried.
The dreams of a person without sight since birth can be just as vivid and imaginative as those of someone with normal vision.
(Unsplash)
A curious kid asks: what do blind people experience in their dreams?