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Scientists have been giving octopuses the love drug MDMA and observing the results to better understand how the drug works and how it can be used in human therapy treatments. MDMA, the active psychoactive ingredient in the drug Ecstasy, sometimes known as Molly, is known to induce positive social bonding in humans but neuroscientist Gül Dölen,
Optical illusions are designed to deliberately mess with our minds. Optical illusions are defined as visual images that differ from reality – the eyes & brain ‘see’ something that doesn’t match the physical measurement of the image. Here are 5 of the best examples of optical illusions. Illusion 1# A Bend in the Road
This is likely to blow your mind – but colour doesn’t really exist. Glenn Barden, one of the “brains”, excuse the pun, behind the PBS/BBC series The Brain with David Eagleman, explains. We all think we know what reality is – it’s the rich textured world that’s all around us. But what if I
After over 4 years of trying, scientists recently created a human-pig hybrid. And not just one but over 100 of them. An international team of scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California recently announced their breakthrough in the Science journal Cell. Their human-pig chimera (the scientific name for a creature
A team of Canadian students have managed to recycle human waste into bioplastics that can be 3D printed, in a major breakthrough which, if the technology can be scaled up, will be massively beneficial to any long term space travel. The team from University of Calgary used genetically engineered E. coli bacteria to transform human
Ever wondered why your farts smell? Well when a child asked this question, The Freaky felt compelled to investigate and discovered its all to do with your mother. Your mother is responsible for the smell of your farts. Honestly. Like a signature or a fingerprint, the smell of your emissions is unique to you. And
Crabs on Prozac are becoming aggressive, engaging in fights, and even killing each other while on the drug, scientists have discovered. Prozac is a pharmaceutical drug used to treat depression, and other mental health related conditions, in humans. To be clear, depressed crabs are not being prescribed Prozac by doctors (although the image of a
Seaweed cow farts could be the key to saving the planet according to new research. A staggering 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from cows and other farm livestock such as sheep – most of it in the form of methane emitted as they burp and fart. Now researchers in Australia believe they can
Weird science news: Scientists have discovered that trees sleep at night. In a beautiful experiment that helps us appreciate how all life moves to the same 24hour beat, researchers in Europe laser scanned two birch trees – one in Finland and one in Austria – on a windless night and discovered that the trees “drooped”
News from the frontiers of weird science: Scientists have managed to print mouse ovaries using 3D print technology implant them into infertile mice so they can have little mice babies. This is big news in the fertility world as it opens up the door for infertile women in the future to receive 3D printed ovaries.
A new milestone in the evolution of weaponry has been reached with the invention of self-steering, self-guided bullets. Watch this incredible, freaky and scary video of a bullet tracking and then hitting a moving target. The bullet, fired from a .50 calibre gun, actually changes direction mid flight to hit the target. The video
Check out this weird video of a strange dancing alien-like substance.. This is corn starch placed on a speaker cone. It moves in this weird way due to a peculiar property it possesses – known as non-Newtonian. In simple terms it means that it becomes thicker, more viscous, when it is disturbed. So, as
This is one of the freakiest and most beautiful reactions in chemistry. It’s known as the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. And it shows chemicals left in a petri dish forming beautiful and ever-changing patterns seemingly out of nowhere. This is really happening – there is no special effects or camera trickery. This incredible property of
Anybody who says chemistry is boring needs to think again as this amazing video captures the beauty of chemical reactions. The video is a collaboration between the University of Science and Technology of China and Tsinghua University Press and captures in outstanding detail what happens to plants when they are dropped in acid.
They might look like antique egg whisks but these kitchen implements are in fact vibrators -designed to enhance female pleasure. It was the Victorians who invented the modern vibrator. Doctors in the late 19th century believed that women suffering from “hysteria” could be cured by administering “pelvic massages”. But with so many women needing these
Sometimes something simple can make us gasp at how freaky and amazing the world around us is. Like this simple experiment with arrows and a glass of water. It looks like sorcery or a magic. But it’s not. It’s an optical illusion. When the arrow is moved to a particular distance behind the glass, it
This amazing video is of a human heart beating. This portable perfusion and monitoring system is made by TransMedics® and was designed as an alternative to the cold storage human heart preservation method. Warm, oxygenated, nutrient enriched blood permeates the heart muscle keeping the heart beating while a surgeon prepares for a donor heart transplant operation.
A frog levitating thanks to the power of molecular magnetism. This frog is hovering inside a magnet (not on board a spacecraft). This is the first observation of magnetic levitation of living organisms as well as the first images of diamagnetics levitated in a normal, room-temperature environment. In fact, it is possible to levitate magnetically
Three biologists have come up with a radical idea to light our city streets – use glow-in-the-dark trees! Antony Evans and his colleagues Omri Amirav-Drory and Kyle Taylor, from San Francisco, want to create trees that shine at night. They have posted a video to Kickstarter, explaining how they plan to use genetic engineering to
This is one of the freakiest science experiments ever. Watch as powdered Mercury(II) thiocyanate is set on fire and turns into a bizarre alien snake like substance. This bizarre chemical reaction, also known as “Pharaoh Snakes” was used by Victorians to dazzle guests at dinner parties and became known as “indoor fireworks”, but the reaction is
Thai women have a unique way of reacting to cheating husbands – they cut off their penises and feed them to ducks. So popular is this form of revenge that academic researchers have been investigating the phenomenon for over 30 years. Penile amputations first became popular in Thailand in the 1970s. Traditionally, houses in Thailand
Japanese scientists have produced a genetically-engineered mouse that tweets like a bird, it was revealed today. The ‘tweeting’ mouse, that sings like a bird, was created as part of the University of Osaka’s ‘Evolved Mouse Project. Scientists there are breeding genetically modified mice together to deliberately get genetic mutations. ‘Mutations are the driving force of
Is this Croatian six-year-old boy a real life Magneto? When Ivan Stoiljkovic takes off his shirt the youngster is able to stick metallic objects such as spoons, mobile phones and even frying pans to his body. In total, his family says, he can carry up to 25kg of metal stuck to his torso. Watch the magnetic
Scientists in America have taken the DNA of a spider and implanted it into a goat to produce large quantities of a spider silk that is among the strongest substances known to man. The scientists genetically modified the goats by implanting spiders’ silk-spinning genes into them, allowing them to harvest the silk protein from the goats’ milk
Super-ants with huge heads and jaws have been created by Canadian genetic scientists. These freaky ‘supersoldier’ ants are man-made, and were created in the laboratory by activating ancient genes in the ants. Scientists say they can create the supersoldiers at will by dabbing normal ant larvae with a special hormone – the larvae then develop into supersoldiers
