IFLScience

It could be said that Humboldt penguins' love language is pebbles, but during nesting season competition can lead to some pretty controversial behavior. Oreo – a seven-year-old penguin at @newquayzoo – was recently caught red-winged stealing pebbles from a neighboring nest. A valiant pursuit to impress his girlfriend, Humbug, but his crime is far from perfect. Video credit: Newquay Zoo

Researchers at the University of Alberta, Canada, wanted to investigate whether male zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) would show a stronger preference for a nest building material of a certain color, and whether they would choose to stick to that color when subjected to peer pressure, or switch to go with the group's majority. Link in bio to learn more 🔗 Credit: Animal Cognition Research Group

In a rare but memorable day at an outpatient clinic, doctors discovered that earwigs can crawl inside the human ear canal. Their common name stems from an ancient superstition that earwigs would crawl inside sleeping people’s ears to eat their brains. While most of that is untrue, the case study of one unfortunate patient proved that earwigs do sometimes go in ears, causing severe discomfort. Fortunately, the unwelcome hitchhiker was extracted without any significant damage to the patient’s ear canal. The status of the earwig is unknown. Link in bio 🔗 Video credit: H Jeong et al Cureus 2021, CC BY 4.0

We promise this is not AI, it is actually this adorable. Link in bio to read more 🔗 Credit: WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society).

Woman finds 'ancient' shark tooth on Florida Beach. Have you ever found anything like this?!

Can Swearing Improve Our Performance? When faced with a physical challenge, studies have found, swearing improves performance. New research offers an explanation of the mechanism, and why in a crisis swearing might be exactly what is necessary. Does this mean the s&#^heads who made IFLScience change our name from I F£@$%ng Love Science were undermining us all? #sciencetok #learnontiktok #fyp #didyouknow #sciencefacts

Scientists say THIS could happen to the universe 🤯🤯🤯

When faced with a physical challenge, studies have found, swearing improves performance. New research offers an explanation of the mechanism, and why in a crisis swearing might be exactly what is necessary. Link in the bio to watch the full video 🔗

Watch as researchers drop a camera into a deep borehole within West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, one of the most volatile and significant ice masses on Earth. Link in the bio to read more 🔗 Credit: British Antarctic Survey

Watching hours of YouTube videos isn’t usually considered the most prestigious form of education, but it might be a surprisingly effective tool for robots learning to communicate like humans. Researchers at Columbia Engineering have created EMO, a robot capable of learning to lip sync to speech, mimicking the complex and nuanced movements of the human mouth. Tap the image via the link in the bio to read more 🔗 Credit: Columbia Engineering

Capybara, capybara, capybara, capybara, capybara, capybara....

It’s no secret that polar bears in the Arctic are vulnerable to sea ice loss, but a curious finding has emerged from a new log-term study of bears in Svalbard. It found that adult polar bears have largely maintained good body condition from 1995 to 2019 despite this being a period of rapid and significant sea ice loss. What feels like a rare bit of good news for polar bears is a more complex picture, however. The behavioral plasticity that’s enabled them to continue to chunk up will only get them so far, and if sea ice loss reaches a critical point, the world will no longer have polar bears. Tap the link in bio to find out more. 🔗 Video credits: Adam Steer / Amanda Keck / Ann Kristin Balto / Ann Kristin Balto / Jon Aars / Norwegian Polar Institute

The second mission in the Artemis program will see four astronauts fly around the Moon. Due to the route and the timing, this journey is expected to take humans farther into deep space than ever before – and faster. It will also allow some of the first direct views by humans of parts of the far side of the Moon. Tap the link in bio to find out more. 🔗

The human hand is often hailed as the “pinnacle of dexterity”, but there’s always room for improvement. In a new study, scientists have developed a nimble-fingered robotic device that puts our fleshy meat pincers to shame. Credit: Gao et al., Nature Communications (2026) Tap the link in bio to find out more. 🔗