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Spider feeds its young with milk
Chinese scientists have found that a certain type of spider does something characteristically mammilian. The giant ant spider exhibits long-term “breast-feeding behavior”. The feeding of young with milk shocked the scientific community. The Chinese Academy of Sciences released a report by a team of researchers that included Quan Ruichang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in Yunnan province and his colleague Chen Zhanqi claiming to have found the first known case of nonmammals raising offspring, which opens up a new direction for the study of the evolution of mammalian behavior. The results were published in the academic journal Science on Friday.
Improve your listening skills with Podcasts
There are many ways in which one can improve English listening skills, such as watching TV series and films, finding a language exchange partner and listening to songs in English. But not many students realize how podcasts can be an effective way to hone their listening skills, and have fun at the same time. Bloomsbury International offers some tips to help you make full use of podcasts: Choose a podcast with a topic you’re interested in. Read the summary to understand whether it tickles your fancy. Predict 10 words and five expressions that you imagine might appear in the podcast. Listen and check whether you were correct.
Hanging from the hangglider
An online video shows a terrifying moment: a hang-gliding student desperately holding on for life after the instructor forgot to attach him properly. The heart-stopping footage shows tourist Chris Gurksy from the United States holding on desperately for more than two minutes as he dangles high above the ground. He posted the footage of his “near death experience” online after a trip to Switzerland that saw him take off from a 1,220-meterhigh mountain. At one point, he appears to be hanging on with just one hand as the hang glider soars in the air. But despite the terrifying experience, Gursky managed to joke that his left hand had left an “imprint in the metal bar” from gripping it so tightly.