Your Top Science Stories for this Week
| | Voracious, venomous and hella leggy, house centipedes are masterful predators with a knack for fancy footwork. But not all their legs are made for walking. They put some to work in other surprising ways.
The house centipede's legs get progressively longer toward the rear, which creates its characteristic outline and keeps them from getting tangled when they are running fast. And they can run fast -- about 16 inches a second, which is pound for pound about the same as a human running 42 mph.
If 30 legs sound like more than one critter really needs -- perhaps it is. Over the last 450 million years or so, when centipedes split off from other arthropods, evolution has turned some of those walking limbs into other useful and versatile tools. | | |
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| | | One climate reporter said Brown's executive order calling for the state's net release of greenhouse gases was 'surprising, strange and stunning.' But is it doable? | | |
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| | | Small critters and plants could take a big hit from a changing climate, according to a new study. The researchers say abiding by the Paris climate agreement could curtail some of the more extreme effects. | | |
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| | | One day in a lab, scientists gave MDMA to four octopuses. Do not try this at home. | | |
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| | | The new Calaveras dam, located along the Alameda-Santa Clara boundary, gets an earthquake upgrade that should last another century. | | |
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