It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Forgotten Monopoly rule changes the game completely
‘This makes the game 10 times better,’ one person tweeted
Board game fans have discovered a forgotten Monopoly rule which changes the whole game.
As families and friends gather for Christmas, Monopoly boards all across the world will be dusted off for after-dinner fun.
With arguments bound to start brewing from the first roll of the dice, it is best to be prepared with a solid understanding of the rules.
Most people know that when a player lands on a property they may buy the property from the bank. However, the rules also state that if the player chooses not to buy the property, it goes to auction and can be bought by the highest bidder.
Any player can bid on the property, and bidding can start at any price.
This rule was shared by @Dtrain22 onTwitter, who also posted a picture of where it states this in the rule book.
“Just found out I’ve played monopoly wrong my whole life. If you don’t buy a property you land on it goes to auction for everyone for any bid amount. Had no idea,” they said.
Many people replied to say they had also gone for some time without realising this was one of the rules.
This is not the first time the rule has come up. In 2017, Twitter user @rubenfandueltv responded to a tweet asking for the one trivial hill on which users are willing to die. They then named the Monopoly rule and wrote: “IT. IS. IN. THE. RULES.”
One person then responded: “Omg this makes the game like 10 times better.”
Another board game connoisseur said that they finally read the rule a few years ago and now their games go “much quicker” as a result.
Meanwhile, in 2019, Uno’s official Twitter page settled an ongoing dispute that many people have been having for years when playing the card game.
When it comes to the +4 card it said “you must draw 4 and your turn is skipped”.
“You can’t put down a +2 to make the next person Draw 6. We know you’ve tried it,” Uno tweeted.
When another player asked if you can place a +4 card on another +4 card, Uno replied: “No, you can’t stack any cards!”
NASA captures "snapshot in time" showing how a star is born
Li Cohen
Hidden in the Cosmic Cliffs behind clouds of dust lies a mysterious happening that has intrigued astronomers for years – a "hotbed for star formation." And now, thanks to NASA's James Webb Telescope, you too can see how a star is born.
The Cliffs, which NASA describes as an area of space located "at the edge of a gigantic, gaseous cavity" within the NGC 3324 star cluster, has been studied for years. But it wasn't until the Webb Telescope was able to observe it that astronomers found some of the more immaculate details.
With it, NASA scientists found 24 previously unknown outflows from baby stars, revealing a "gallery of objects ranging from small fountains to burbling behemoths that extend light-years from the forming stars."
And it's a gallery that is difficult to come by.
NASA said that the "very early" formation of every star is a "relatively fleeting event – just a few thousand to 10,000 years amid a multi-million-year process of star formation."
But Webb was able to capture a "snapshot in time," astronomer and leader of the study Megan Reiter said, "to see just how much star formation is going on in what may be a more typical corner of the universe that we haven't been able to see before."
A study on the findings was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society this month.
Dozens of previously hidden jets and outflows from young stars are revealed in this new image of the Cosmic Cliffs from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). / Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
Jets and outflows are essentially star excretions of space gas and dust left over during star formation. They can be seen by the presence of molecular hydrogen, an essential ingredient in the formation process. Previously, Hubble was only able to see these ejections of more evolved objects that were in the telescope's visual wavelengths, but Webb has an "unparalleled sensitivity," allowing scientists to witness younger star stages and get "an unprecedented view into environments that resemble the birthplace of our solar system."
"Jets like these are signposts for the most exciting part of the star formation process," study co-author Nathan Smith said. "We only see them during a brief window of time when the protostar is actively accreting."
For team member Jon Morse, "it's like finding buried treasure."
"In the image first released in July, you see hints of this activity, but these jets are only visible when you embark on that deep dive – dissecting data from each of the different filters and analyzing each area alone," he said.
Many of the stars observed in this study are expected to become low mass stars like our galaxy's sun. And according to Reiter, astronomers will now have a better idea of where in space they can observe just how "sun-like stars" come to fruition.
"It opens the door for what's going to be possible in terms of looking at these populations of newborn stars in fairly typical environments of the universe that have been invisible up until the James Webb Space Telescope," Reiter said.
NASA gets "unusually close" look at a black hole devouring a star
Li Cohen
What happens when a star gets too close to a black hole? "Unusually close" observations from NASA reveal just how complex and catastrophic it can be.
The agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Tuesday that multiple telescopes recently watched a massive black hole about 10 times the mass of our sun located about 250 million light-years away from Earth "tearing apart an unlucky star that wandered too close." It was the fifth-closest observation of such an occurrence, known as a tidal disruption event, and was first spotted on March 1, 2021.
So, what exactly happened when the star and the black hole crossed paths?
First of all, it's not something that happens in a single moment. According to NASA, it's a long process that can take weeks or months as the black hole's gravity slowly sucks in the star's being. In the most recent observation, it took place over the course of about five-and-a-half months.
"The side of the star nearest the black hole was pulled harder than the far side of the star, stretching the entire thing apart and leaving nothing but a long noodle of hot gas," NASA said.
The observations of the event, called AT2021ehb, were published in the Astrophysical Journal in September.
"Tidal disruption events are a sort of cosmic laboratory," study co-author Suvi Gezari said. "They're our window into the real-time feeding of a massive black hole lurking in the center of a galaxy."
The study said that the event also provided an "unprecedented view" of one element of the process – the formation of a corona. This happened as the star was being demolished and spawned a "dramatic rise" in high-energy X-ray light, NASA said. As that happened, the corona formed above the black hole.
But the creation of the corona – a cloud of hot plasma – in this particular event surprised astronomers. Coronae usually come with jets of gas flowing in opposite directions from the black hole, but in this case, there were no jets at all.
Yuhan Yao, a Caltech graduate student and lead author of the study, said this isn't just a rare occurrence – it's a totally new observation.
"We've never seen a tidal disruption event with X-ray emission like this without a jet present, and that's really spectacular because it means we can potentially disentangle what causes jets and what causes coronae," they said. "Our observations of AT2021ehb are in agreement with the idea that magnetic fields have something to do with how the corona forms, and we want to know what's causing that magnetic field to get so strong."
James Webb telescope: Amazing images show the Universe as never before
Jonathan Amos - BBC Science Correspondent Sat, December 24, 2022
The Tarantula Nebula: Only 161,000 light years from Earth, this is a place where thousands of stars were born
It was the $10bn gift to the world. A machine that would show us our place in the Universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope was launched exactly a year ago, on Christmas Day. It had taken three decades to plan, design and build.
Many wondered whether this successor to the famed Hubble Space Telescope could actually live up to expectations.
We had to wait a few months while its epic 6.5m primary mirror was unpacked and focused, and its other systems tested and calibrated.
But, yes, it was everything they said it would be. The American, European and Canadian space agencies held a party in July to release the first colour images. What you see on this page are some of the pictures subsequently published that you may have missed.
The first thing you have to remember about James Webb is that it is an infrared telescope. It sees the sky at wavelengths of light that are beyond what our eyes are able to discern.
Astronomers use its different cameras to explore regions of the cosmos, such as these great towers of gas and dust. The Pillars were a favourite target of Hubble. It would take you several years travelling at the speed of light to traverse this entire scene. Carina Nebula Carina Nebula
They call this scene the Cosmic Cliffs. It's the edge of a gigantic, gaseous cavity within another dusty, star-forming nebula, known as Carina.
The cavity has been sculpted by the intense ultraviolet radiation and winds from hot, young stars just out of shot.
From one side of this image to the other is a distance of roughly 15 light years. One light year is equal to about 9.46 trillion km (5.88 trillion miles). Cartwheel Galaxy Cartwheel Galaxy
This large galaxy to the right was discovered by the great Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky in the 1940s. Its intricate cartwheel structure is the result of a head-on collision with another galaxy. The diameter is about 145,000 light years. Planet Neptune Neptune
James Webb doesn't look into only the deep Universe. It probes objects in our own solar system, too. This jewel is the eighth planet from the Sun: Neptune, seen with its rings. The small white dots that surround it are moons, and so is the big "pointed star" above. That's Triton, Neptune's largest satellite. The spikes are an artefact of the way James Webb's mirror system is constructed.
Orion is one of the most familiar regions of the sky. It's a star-forming region, or nebula, about 1,350 light years from Earth. Here, Webb pictures a feature called the Orion Bar, which is a wall of dense gas and dust. Dimorphos Dimorphos
In one of the big space stories of the year, Nasa ran a spacecraft into an asteroid, called Dimorphos, to see whether it was possible to deflect the path of the 160m-wide rock. It was a test of a strategy to defend the Earth from threatening asteroids. James Webb caught the shower of 1,000 tonnes of debris kicked up on impact.
This was one of the most intriguing Webb images of the year. The "WR" refers to Wolf-Rayet. It's a type of star, a big one that's reaching the end of its life. Wolf-Rayets billow huge gaseous winds into space. An unseen companion star in this image is compressing those winds to form dust. The dusty shells you see extend outwards over 10 trillion km. That's 70,000 times the distance between Earth and our Sun.
M74, nicknamed the Phantom Galaxy, is known for its ostentatious spiral arms. It's about 32 million light years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces, and lies almost face-on to us, giving Webb the perfect view of those arms and their structure. The telescope's detectors are particularly good at picking out all the fine filaments of gas and dust. Artwork of James Webb in space: The telescope should give 20 years' good service
NASA Reveals New Pictures From the James Webb Space Telescope
Melissa T. Miller
The James Webb Space Telescope continues to deliver awe-inspiring images and insights into the universe. Its mirror is six times the size of the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been taking stellar pictures since 1990. But it’s not just about size. The new telescope records infrared wavelengths rather than visible light so it can see farther and more clearly. Older stars appear as bright eight-pointed spikes in the Webb telescope pictures below due to the way the images are taken. But it also adds to the ethereal nature of each image as we peer farther and farther into infinity.
A Holiday Galaxy
The James Webb Space Telescope shared this festive image just in time for the holiday season. Galaxy NGC 7469‘s spiral looks like a wreath, complete with glowing lights. The large red starburst is actually made up of spikes from the telescope’s hexagonal mirrors caused by the light from the galaxy’s center. The gas and dust shines brightly as it falls into a black hole, but doesn’t it look lovely? Scientists are excited about the star-forming regions they can now see thanks to the telescope’s infrared cameras. But it’s also the perfect image for this year’s holiday card.
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. S. Evans
An Illuminating Protostar
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale, A. Pagan, and A. Koekemoer (STScI)
A new star, “only” about 100,000 years old, is forming in the neck of this cosmic hourglass. The protostar L1527 itself is hidden in this view, but the light it creates illuminates clouds of gas and dust that are being sucked inwards. The vivid pinks, oranges, and blues are only visible in the infrared light of the James Webb Space Telescope. As the star ages, it gathers these nearby materials into its accretion disk, gaining mass and eventually reaching the size and stability of a full star.
The James Webb Space Telescope Captures the Pillars of Creation
The first image of the Pillars of Creation from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 is one of the most widely seen space photos. Now the James Webb Space Telescope adds its remarkable abilities to share even more of the wonder that is the Pillars of Creation with the world.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
The near-infrared view of this cosmic nursery 6,500 light years away reveals many new details. The red dots seen on the edges of the top pillar are young stars, only a few hundred thousand years old. The red lava-like areas in the other pillars are ejections of hydrogen molecules from still-forming stars. The entire image is eight light years across but represents only a small area of the Eagle Nebula. This image from the James Webb Space Telescope is truly astounding.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
In addition, we also got to see a slightly more creepy version of the Pillars of Creation courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope. This rendition was taken with the telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The first image, meanwhile, was taken with the telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). This second view allows researchers to see concentrations of gas and dust. But it also makes for another amazing, slightly horror-movie-inspired image from the James Webb Telescope.
Dust Rings Around Binary Stars
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JPL-Caltech
The James Webb Space Telescope imaged a system with two enormous stars, each 25-30 times more massive than our Sun. Called Wolf-Rayet 140, their orbits bring them close together about every eight years. The gravitational forces push out a huge dust cloud when that happens. Previous images from ground-based telescopes could see two dust rings, but the new image from JWST shows at least 17. Check out this video from JPL for a visualization of the two stars orbiting each other and a comparison to the older images.
Neptune’s Rings in Focus Courtesy of the JWST
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured the clearest view of Neptune’s ring in more than 30 years. We see the rings and the planet’s fainter dust bands. Neptune system expert and interdisciplinary scientist Heidi Webb said, “It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared.”
Tarantula Nebula
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team
The image above of the Tarantula Nebula is 340 light years across. It introduces us to tens of thousands of stars never seen before because they were lost in the dust of Hubble’s view. The region forms news stars, which appear pale blue. And in case you’re trying to find the eight-legged creature the nebula is named for, apparently it looks like a tarantula’s burrow with silk around the entry, rather than the spider itself. The video below also shows the mid-infrared image from the Webb Telescope. Gases and cosmic dust glow turquoise and purple. It’s beautiful to us casual observers, but adds even more data for astronomers.
The James Webb Space Telescope Reveals the Phantom Galaxy
Also known as M74, the Phantom Galaxy is 32 million light years away in the constellation Pisces. When compared to pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, the image from the James Webb Space Telescope cuts through the gas and dust to show off the star clusters at the galaxy’s core. Stars and other distant objects are also visible through patches in the arms of the spiral. Combining the images from the two space telescopes gives astronomers the best of both worlds. The visible and infrared light spectrums provide complementary insights into the mesmerizing center of the Phantom Galaxy.
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team
Exoplanet HIP 65426 b
Images of this faraway planet are the first of one outside of our Solar System. Different cameras and filters on the James Webb Space Telescope provide multiple views and insights to astronomers. HIP 65426 b is a gas giant nine times the mass of Jupiter, but we don’t know much more about it yet. Scientists are analyzing all the new data from the Webb Telescope. They removed the light from the planet’s sun using a coronagraph. Once the much brighter star was masked, the faint planet could finally be photographed.
First Images from the JWST
NASA,/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb ERO Production Team
Keep up with the telescope’s Twitter account to see the newest images and research. These include tests taken right here in our own Solar System. Like stunning views of Jupiter, including aurora and some of its many moons. And plenty of distant targets, like the Cartwheel Galaxy and its swirling dust clouds. And of course the first images, including a deep field view that included the oldest and farthest away objects ever photographed.
NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt
Melissa is Nerdist’s science & technology staff writer. She also moderates “science of” panels at conventions and co-hosts Star Warsologies, a podcast about science and Star Wars. Follow her on Twitter @melissatruth.
The best nature photos of 2022 include giraffes fighting by 'necking,' neon green mushrooms, and a baby elephant rescue
Morgan McFall-Johnsen Thu, December 22, 2022 Anup Shah/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
The Nature Conservancy's photo contest recognizes stunning portraits of animals, landscapes, and plants.
This year's winners include sparring giraffes, a black sand beach, and neon mushrooms.
The photos showcase the colorful diversity of life and landscapes on Earth.
The Nature Conservancy announced the winners of its annual photo contest on September 29. Baiju Patil/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
This year's winning photos showcase the vast diversity of life and landscapes on Earth. Panos Laskarakis/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Photographer Li Ping won the Grand Prize, using a drone to capture this photo of a highway cutting across tree-shaped gullies in Tibet. Li Ping/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Other photos capture animals in the wild — like this pair of lions rubbing heads. The one on the right is clearly older than the left lion. Anup Shah/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
These giraffes look like they're being friendly or romantic, but necking, or swinging their heads and necks into each other, is actually how they fight.
Torie Hilley/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
These eagles were fighting, too — over a piece of salmon, according to the photographer. Rick Dowling/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
This elephant seal had to fight off a striated caracara that was trying to attack her calf. Fabio Saltarelli/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Another photo shows workers at Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy rushing to treat a wounded elephant calf, while sedating its mother so they can do so safely. Marvin Mwarangu/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Animals aren't the only ones who can be dramatic. Lightning struck this mountain at just the right moment. Hendy Wicaksono/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
A layer of fog gave an eerie glow to this mangrove tree in Lamongan, East Java. Waluya Priya Atmaja/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Fog also made this scene look peaceful, as the mist thinned above a glassy lake and distant snowy trees. Effy Varley/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Snowy mountains stand in stark contrast against a black sand beach in Iceland. Ivan Pedretti/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Fireflies in Japan create contrast, standing out as circles of bright yellow light against the dark forest. Masahiro Hiroike/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Another bright pop of color, in another forest, comes from bioluminescent Omphalotus Nidiformis, nicknamed 'ghost mushrooms.' Callie Chee/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Other photos capture humans' impact on nature, like this factory built on the edge of a beach in Greece. Janusz Jurek/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Humans have also changed the landscape with wastewater ponds like these. Jassen Todorov/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
A more colorful sign of human presence is these pink lagoons near a salt mine. Nick Leopold Sordo/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
A burn scar, filled with charred trees, lies in the wake of the Dixie Fire — California's largest single wildfire. Jassen Todorov/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
Further north, along the Oregon coast, fog pours into a natural hole in the rock, known as the Drainpipe of the Pacific. Tom Fenske/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
These dragon blood trees only grow in the high plateaus of Socotra Island, in the Indian Ocean. Cristiano Xavier/Courtesy TNC Photo Contest 2022
IMMORTAL & INDESTRUCTIBLE
5 of the wildest experiments tardigrades have survived in the name of science
Paola Rosa-Aquino Thu, December 22, 2022 Colored scanning electron micrograph, or SEM, of a tardigrade.
STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Tardigrades are hardy microscopic creatures known for their ability to withstand extreme conditions.
Water bears can go years without food or water and endure extreme radiation and temperatures.
From blasting off to space to being fired from a gun, they've served science in explosive ways.
Tiny, weirdly adorable creatures called tardigrades are one of the toughest organisms on Earth.
Tardigrades, which are perhaps better known as water bears because of their plump bodies, belong to an extremely resilient group of microorganisms that can thrive in harsh environments ill-suited for life. In order to survive, they squeeze water from their bodies and roll into dehydrated balls known as tuns.
While in this form, tardigrades can withstand the most extreme environments — even the vacuum of space. As a tun, these microscopic critters can go years without food or water and endure extreme radiation and temperatures.
That hardy nature makes them the perfect test subjects in experiments about the tenacity of life. From being shot out of a gun to crash-landing on the moon, these are five notable times tardigrades proved their mettle in the name of science.
SEM of water bear.Cultura RM Exclusive/Gregory S. Paulson
1. Water-dwelling tardigrades became space-faring test subjects
Scientists hope to find out what makes these little creatures nearly indestructible. They really are small — they range from 100 to 1,000 microns in size, as small as the height of a sheet of paper.
In 2021, NASA sent 5,000 tardigrades into space in a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. "We want to see what 'tricks' they use to survive when they arrive in space, and, over time, what tricks their offspring are using," Thomas Boothby, principal investigator of the experiment, said in a NASA statement.
In 2007, a European team of researchers sent 3,000 tardigrades to orbit the earth on the outside of a spacecraft for 12 days. When the water bears returned to Earth, the scientists discovered that 68% survived.
"Our principle finding is that the space vacuum, which entails extreme dehydration and cosmic radiation, were not a problem for water bears," Ingemar Jönsson, the project leader for the European experiment, said in a statement.
Many speculated the water bears might have survived the crash. "We believe the chance of survival for the tardigrades are extremely high," Nova Spivack, co-founder of the organization that put the tardigrades in space, told BBC News.
According to Wired, any tardigrade found in the future would have to be brought back to Earth to be rehydrated on a planet with an atmosphere.
SEM image of a tardigrade, taken on November 16, 2012.Schokraie E, Warnken U, Hotz-Wagenblatt A, Grohme MA, Hengherr S, et al. (2012)
3. A thawed tardigrade survived being frozen for 3 decades
In 2016, scientists at Japan's National Institute of Polar Research examined tardigrades retrieved from a frozen moss sample collected in Antarctica in 1983.
After rehydrating them, researchers successfully revived a tardigrade that had been frozen for more than 30 years. What's more, researchers found tardigrades can successfully reproduce after decades in frigid conditions.
Based on laboratory experiments, tardigrades even survive at -458 degrees Fahrenheit. That's more than twice as cold as the coldest temperature that was ever observed on Earth's surface, according to NASA.
4. The creatures endured scorching temperatures
Tardigrades can survive in extremely hot temperatures, and you'll find them in some of Earth's most extreme environments like deep sea vents, hot springs, and mud volcanoes.
Still, in a 2020 study, researchers found that long-term exposure to high temperatures, even in their hibernated state, can kill tardigrades in only a day. In the study, after being exposed to water temperatures of about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, half of the tardigrades in the research sample died.
"We had found their Achilles' heel," Ricardo Neves, lead researcher of the study, told Newsweek.
Microscopic image of a water bear.Philippe Garcelon
5. Tardigrades survived being shot out of a high-speed gun
Some scientists believe that tardigrades may be capable of spreading life to different planets.
They wanted to test if a tardigrade could survive a cosmic impact, such as a meteorite landing on Earth, since it would give credence to the idea that life might be able to hitchhike its way across the cosmos.
"If they could do it and they're the hardest thing we know, right? Maybe other things can," said Mark Burchell, supervisor on the experiment, said in a press release. "[B]ut if they can't do it, and they're the hardest thing we know, then maybe nothing else can either."
Tons of other animals have clitorises — and they can teach us more about human sexuality
Paola Rosa-Aquino
A common death adder hiding in leaf litter.Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Many animals have clitorises, a female sex organ, but experts say they're understudied.
Scientists recently discovered that female snakes have a two-part clitoris.
Learning about sex organs in the animal kingdom could teach us more about human anatomy.
Scientists know a lot about animals' male reproductive organs. But compared to the penis, the clitoris has been shrouded in mystery.
Both the penis and the clitoris develop from the same tissue, so they share many similarities. Understanding these structures in depth doesn't only reveal the biology and evolution of sexual organs in the animal kingdom — it can teach us about our own sexuality.
"In biology, we have for many, many decades — even centuries — taken the male body as the norm. Female is like the weird deviation," Patricia Brennan, a genital morphologist at Mount Holyoke College, told Insider."For many years, I've been trying to fill out those unknown areas of female reproductive biology."
She said she's seen more interest in this field in recent years, mostly from young female researchers. "I think they're going to be the ones who are going to be able to answer a lot of questions in upcoming years."
Brennan said the clitoris is found in all terrestrial vertebrates — including lizards, snakes, crocodiles, turtles, and mammals. The only known exception is birds.
From snakes to bottlenose dolphins, here are some of the most impressive and interesting clitorises in the animal kingdom.
Also, in case you were wondering (we were), the plural form of "clitoris" is "clitorises." "Clitorides" is also acceptable if you want to be more technical.
Scientists found clitorises in female snakes
Image of a horizontal slice of a snake’s abdomen, showing its hemiclitoris, labeled HC.Megan Folwell
In December, researchers provided the first major description of the female snake clitoris.
In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists looked at nine species of snakes from different areas of the world, including Australia, Central America, and South America.
They found that all female snakes studied have a pair of clitorises — or hemiclitores, a two-part clitoris.
"We found them in all the species we looked at," Brennan, a co-author of the study, said. "It is in fact, the first morphological description of a snake having a clitoris."
Using modern anatomical tools, researchers closely studied the cellular makeup of the clitoris in the Australian death adders, a venomous snake species. They found it was composed of erectile tissue and bundles of nerves.
Moreover, the hyena's clitoris also has a birth canal, which is only an inch in diameter, Insider previously reported. Consequently, pushing a cub through this canal can often be fatal.
Bottlenose dolphins have clitorises that might be for sexual pleasure
A bottlenose dolphin pictured in the Moray Firth, Scotland. Researchers believe the dolphin's clitoris provides pleasure during sex.Getty Images
Female bottlenose dolphins have clitorises similar to humans.
In a January 2022 study, Brennan and other researchers analyzed clitorises from 11 female bottlenosed dolphins that died of natural causes.
Their findings suggest that, like those in human females, the dolphin's clitoris provides pleasure during sex.
