Indholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2024 i Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children

Bicycle Roots is a full-service bike shop. It’s in the heart of Brooklyn, New York. Joe Lawler is the co-owner and service manager. Perhaps more important, he’s “dad” to the shop’s most popular employee. That’s Steven J. Lawler. Steven J. is a brown Rex rabbit. He’s six years old. Or maybe seven. He rides to and from work in a backpack Joe carries on his bike. At the shop, his responsibilities include shredding cardboard and helping sell new bikes. Joe keeps a hutch, or cage, for Steven J. on the counter in the service area. From there, Steven can watch all the action. Wild rabbits spend a good portion of their days in underground burrows. Pet rabbits have the same need to feel safe and secure. Steven roams free in…

Hands-On HAVE YOU EVER noticed that your cat sniffs to recognize you, instead of looking at your face? Or that sometimes your dog doesn’t notice a toy that’s right beside him on the lawn? Yet, by night, that same cat can navigate rooms that look totally dark to you. And your dog somehow always knows when a family member is arriving home. How do they do that? Pets live with us, in our world. But they experience that world very differently than we do. One reason is that these animals’ senses are so different from our own. If you could see, hear, and smell the world the way your dog or cat does, you’d understand more about why they act as they do. So, let’s give that a try—by taking…

>> TECH DESK Para Athlete Uses Exoskeleton Suit to Carry the Olympic Torch In July, a 36-year-old French tennis para athlete, Kevin Piette, got a chance to participate in this summer’s Olympic torch relay without using a wheelchair. He stood up and walked with the aid of an exoskeleton suit, a new wearable, self-stabilizing device that allows for hands-free locomotion. Holding up the torch as he walked, Piette beamed while onlookers cheered him on. A motorcycle accident in 2013 left Piette paraplegic, or unable to move his lower body. He has used a wheelchair to get around (a device that many disabled people, including Piette, say they are grateful for). A few years ago, he became one of the first testers of the exoskeleton suit, contributing to its development by…

In ordinary neighborhoods across the United States, people share their homes with wildlife kept as pets. The laws around privately owning wild animals vary by state, with essentially no restrictions in some places. So while you need a license to own a dog, you may be allowed to bring home a monkey, a tiger, or a boa constrictor and keep it as a pet. When people buy exotic pets, they’re keeping a global trade in wildlife going. This trade makes some people a lot of money. It can also harm the environment, the animals themselves, and the people who care for them. Removing animals from the wild may disrupt ecosystems and drive species toward extinction. Wild animals, whether captured from their natural habitat or bred in captivity, sometimes suffer greatly…

Q : What would happen if meteors hit Earth? —Lizzie M., age 11, Pennsylvania A : You may have seen meteors fly into Earth’s atmosphere, in the form of shooting stars. Meteors are usually less than a few inches across, and the light you see is them burning up as they hit the resistance of the atmosphere. Less often, larger rocks called asteroids will fall toward Earth, but most of them break up and burn before landing, too. (If any pieces hit the ground, those rocks are called meteorites.) For an asteroid to make it all the way to the ground in one piece, it would have to be roughly 100 feet (30 meters) across or larger, says Paul Chodas. At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, he monitors the…

Dog lovers agree. Dogs make loyal, loving pets. They rush to greet you and offer comfort on hard days. Cats, on the other hand, don’t care about your bad day. If they come running, it is so you can feed or entertain them. As the saying goes, “Dogs have owners, cats have employees.” So, who exactly signs up to work for a cat? Pet Personalities Cat people have reputations for being quirky and independent. Dog people for being friendly and laid back. People even rate strangers photographed with dogs as more likable than people pictured with cats. Do these stereotypes have any basis in reality? Psychologist Sam Gosling of the University of Texas has explored this question. While he was studying animal personality, he kept getting questions about cat people…

“What kind of dog is that?” It’s a question every mixed-breed dog owner gets. And many are happy to answer, whether it’s to say, “Pomeranian-schnauzer-rottweiler” or “bulldog-Lab,” or even just their best guess. Research out of Arizona State University (ASU) a few years ago, though, shows humans are really bad at guessing the breed makeup of our beloved mutts. What’s more, doing so may actually hurt some shelter dogs’ chances to get adopted. “Shelter dogs are a lot more interesting and unique than we’ve ever given them credit for,” says Lisa Gunter. She’s a professor of animal sciences at Virginia Tech and conducted this research while a doctoral student at ASU. Along with Clive Wynne, she has studied dog breed labeling from different angles. Their research shows that rushing to…

In 1983, archaeologists working on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea found something rather unusual. Buried in the remains of an ancient settlement, they uncovered the skeleton of a human being. This, of course, wasn’t all that odd. But what they found buried alongside these old bones made headlines: the jawbone of a small cat. In 2004, archaeologists discovered another human and cat buried together on the same island. The archaeologists dated these bones to around 9,500 years ago. This remarkable discovery became the oldest known example of a pet cat. So, was that the first pet cat ever? Probably not. Although the Cyprus cat provided another piece of the puzzle, scientists still don’t know exactly when cats were turned into pets, or domesticated. The origins of the…