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Climate change and urban sprawl are fueling a surge in venomous stings. The Brazilian yellow scorpion is the most dangerous scorpion in South America. On a muggy evening in a favela on the outskirts of São Paulo, a child screams. Her foot, moments ago tucked into a sandal, is now pulsing with pain. She's been stung. Again. And she's not alone. Across Brazil, scorpions are slipping into homes, hiding in shoes, lurking in drains — and stinging at an unprecedented rate. [...]

One of the most intriguing discoveries in entomology was just made — not in the field, but in a drawer. Anderson Lepeco, an entomologist at the Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo, had been combing through slabs of ancient rock in a collection from a little-known fossil site in northeastern Brazil when he saw something strange: a faint outline that reminded him of something. It wasn't a cockroach or a cricket, the usual fare in this collection. It was something [...]

Language is one of the biggest force multipliers in our species. It appeared earlier than expected. When did the first humans start speaking? Did we always have this ability, inherited from our immediate ancestors? These questions sound impossible to answer — but not quite so. A new study, drawing on a wealth of genetic data, suggests that the capacity for language was present at least 135,000 years ago in humans alive at the time. Unlike previous attempts to date the origins of [...]

Some ants are impressive farmers. You might have seen leaf-cutter ants carrying plant bits back to their colony — not for eating, but for farming. Ants use these plants to cultivate fungi, which produce food for the colony. This is a form of agriculture, and ants have even domesticated several fungi, plants, and even animals for their benefit. Ant agriculture is relatively recent discovery. Still, researchers previously determined that ants have done this for at least 50 million [...]

Researchers want to take cheese making to the next level — and they've got the biotech for it. The world of cheese-making is a surprising blend of tradition and innovation. Sure, on the one hand, you've got the same traditional ways of making cheese used for thousands of years. But, on the other hand, researchers are constantly innovating with new techniques and approaches. These new techniques often mean new bacteria. A recent study published in Current Microbiology [...]

The Braziliant researcher would have celebrated his 100th birthday today. César Lattes is not one of the most famous physicists in the world, but Google wants to change that. Today, Google has paid homage to Lattes with the “Doodle treatment”. Cesar Lattes was a pioneering Brazilian physicist renowned for his crucial role in the discovery of the pion, a subatomic particle that confirmed the theory of nuclear forces. A pion is composed of a quark and an antiquark. [...]

João Miguel Alves-Nunes stepped on snakes thousands of times to learn more about their bites. The jararaca is a venomous pit viper commonly found in South America. Its venom packs a deadly mix of toxins that causes excruciating pain, life-threatening bleeding, and kidney failure. What makes this snake particularly scary even among vipers is its particularly aggressive nature. This snake will bite first and ask questions later whenever it considers itself threatened. So, what is the [...]

Study suggests thousands of archaeological sites remain undiscovered The Amazon rainforest may contain between 10,000 and 24,000 ancient earthworks built before the arrival of Europeans, a new study suggests. A global team of 230 researchers from 156 institutions across 24 countries combined remote sensing technology, archaeological data, and statistical modeling to estimate the number and locations of these undiscovered sites. They concluded that the Amazon is probably riddled with [...]

Researchers have discovered a group of “rocks” made out of plastic on a remote island off the coast of Brazil. A similar finding had already been reported back in 2014 in Hawaii, as the melted plastic became intertwined with rocks. The researchers argue this is evidence of the human’s growing influence over the Earth’s geological cycles. Although mis-popularized as a new rock type, the “plastic rock” is not actually a rock. It’s formally called [...]