Some dogs are more adept at learning language than others. Researchers studying these special dogs discovered that, much like toddlers, these smart furry canine companions can pick up words just by eavesdropping on their owners' conversations.

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• Tracking space debris using seismometers
• Using nitrogen to boost trees
• How Mars shapes our climate
• Extracting ice age mammoth RNA and using lichens to find dino bones

We may share a common ancestor with chimpanzees, but somewhere along the evolutionary line to us, our brains took a major detour. New research suggests that chimpanzees can rationally weigh evidence, a trait that used to be thought as uniquely human.

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• Why penguin-eating pumas live closer together in Patagonia
• Ants sacrifice the strength of individual workers for quantity
• Mapping the landmass beneath Antarctica's massive ice sheet
• How deep sea ocean environments affect fish body shape

An unassuming fossilized slab in the basement of a museum in Brazil turned out to be 110-million-year-old dinosaur vomit, and inside that vomit were the bones of two strange, seagull-sized pterosaurs.

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• Loss of fresh groundwater is now the leading driver of sea level rise
• How doubting your self-doubt makes you doubt less
• A huge black hole in a peculiar galaxy may date from the universe’s earliest moments
• Shining a light on where viruses hide out in our bodies, and how they make us sick