Science

These vicuñas are awaiting a haircut at Pulario in Bolivia.

Poaching Upsurge Threatens South America’s Iconic Vicuña

Brought back from the brink of extinction, the llama-like animals have attracted the attention of poachers eager to turn a profit from their prized wool

A holiday postcard from 1908.

Your Thanksgiving Turkey Is a Quintessentially American Bird: An Immigrant

The turkeys common on U.S. tables descended from a Mexican species and were originally bred for Maya rituals

Say hello to the tardigrade, an extreme gene machine.

New Research

Water Bears Are the Master DNA Thieves of the Animal World

Foreign genes from bacteria, fungi and plants may have bestowed these animals with their ability to tolerate boiling, freezing and the vacuum of space

Army ants really know how to take the road less travelled.

New Research

Army Ants Act Like Algorithms to Make Deliveries More Efficient

The marauding ants know just where to place living bridges to create shortcuts without sacrificing their food-gathering prowess

"Baby Louie," formerly of the Indianapolis Children's Museum, is now back home, at the Henan Geological Museum.

Big Baby Dinosaur Finally Goes Home

An infant oviraptorosaur smuggled out of China decades ago comes back to Henan Province with new stories to tell

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Spectacular High Fashion Rises From a Landscape of Trash

Photographer Fabrice Monteiro conjures the specter of environmental ruin

Scientists reconfigured a magnetic resonance scanner to capture a woman and her baby.

Why I Captured This MRI of a Mother and Child

A venerable symbol of human love, as you've never seen it before

Ask Smithsonian 2017

When Did the Vice Presidency Stop Going to the 2nd Place Winner and More Questions From Our Readers

Also up for discussion—why are oceans seawater and not freshwater?

The pigeon will see you now.

New Research

Pigeons Can Spot Breast Cancer in Medical Images

After just a few weeks of training, the brainy birds rivaled human levels of accuracy in their diagnoses

A blue whale’s tale waits for student volunteers to begin cutting away blubber and flesh from the bones. The complete skeleton will eventually be displayed in Newport, Oregon.

What a Dead Blue Whale Can Teach Us About Life in the Ocean, and About Ourselves

Scientists and spectators gathered on an Oregon beach for the rare, messy, mesmerizing sight of a whale being carefully dismantled for museum display

In the movie The Martian, Matt Damon plays a stranded astronaut who has to grow his own food on the red planet. What he did in the film isn't so far off from how we could grow food in harsh environments on Earth.

Age of Humans

What Growing Potatoes on Mars Means for Earth's Farmers

Matt Damon made it look easy in the recent Hollywood blockbuster, but Mars and Earth aren't really all that different after all

Ask Smithsonian

Ask Smithsonian: What Is a Freckle?

Those adorable and charming spots splayed across the nose and cheeks might also be an indicator of sun damage

Activist Tristram Stuart adds to a collection of fruits during an event in Trafalgar Square designed to highlight food waste by feeding 5,000 people on rejected supermarket food.

Age of Humans

This Is How Much Water You Waste When You Throw Away Food

Tossing an apple is like pouring 25 gallons of water down the drain, and the average American does that 17 times a year

There's a dinosaur in every chicken.

New Research

Genetic Tweaks Are Revealing the Dinosaur Traits in Living Chickens

A Yale paleontologist is blending fossil studies and bird genes to trace the ways dinosaurs transformed into today's feathered flocks

The volcanic plume responsible for the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano in Iceland has also brought up bits of Earth's ancient mantle from deep inside the planet.

New Research

Earth’s Water May Be as Old as the Earth Itself

Ancient volcanic rocks may have preserved tiny samples of the planet’s original moisture

Bees are not so picky when they stop for a snack.

New Research

Ancient Bees Were Voracious Snackers on Their Pollen-Gathering Treks

Fossils from Germany could help researchers better understand modern bee eating habits and better protect the beloved pollinators

Left: Alan Stern holds a 2005 Hubble image of the Pluto system on January 19, 2006, two hours after the successful launch of the New Horizons probe. Right: A triumphant Stern holds a full-frame image of Pluto, taken just hours before the New Horizons probe reached its closest point to Pluto.

American Ingenuity Awards

How Alan Stern Brought Pluto to Earth

The scientist behind NASA's New Horizons mission gave cheering earthlings their first close-up view of the dwarf planet

American Ingenuity Awards

Smile, Frown, Grimace and Grin — Your Facial Expression Is the Next Frontier in Big Data

Engineer Rana el Kaliouby is set to change the way we interact with our devices—and each other

Doo Yeon Kim, left, and Rudolph Tanzi

American Ingenuity Awards

The Two Brains at the Forefront of the Fight Against Alzheimer's

Rudolph Tanzi and Doo Yeon Kim have invented a revolutionary new tool to study the mysteries of the disease and counter the coming epidemic of dementia

That cockroach has a nasty bite.

New Research

A Cockroach Can Bite With a Force 50 Times Its Body Weight

Adding to their supervillain-esque powers, roaches can gnaw through tough materials with surprisingly strong jaws

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