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Cockatoos can not only use tools, they can carry whole toolkits to trickier jobs, study shows
(CNN)The ability to solve problems with multiple tools is a rare talent in the animal kingdom, but according to new research, cockatoos are the first birds on the block to carry and use a tool kit to suit their needs.

Using 10 Goffin’s cockatoos, researchers from read more

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You probably wouldn’t win a staring contest with it, though you’d be hard pressed to look away. Taller than a mailbox, with an eight-foot wingspan, the shoebill is quite a kick to observe! This hefty bird with its lesson-in-gray plumage is endemic to swamps and wetlands of Central and East Africa. Solitary in nature, even when paired with another, the birds like their space and will feed at opposite ends of their read more

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Meta Trained an AI on 48M Science Papers. It Was Shut Down After 2 Days
Galactica was supposed to help “organize science.” Instead, it spewed misinformation.

In the first year of the pandemic, science happened at light speed. More than 100,000 papers were published on COVID in those first 12 months — an unprecedented human effort read more

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Elon Musk has completed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.
The deal’s closing removes a cloud of uncertainty that has hung over Twitter’s business, employees and shareholders for much of the year. Musk appeared to acknowledge the takeover in a tweet Thursday night saying, “the bird is freed.”

Earlier this week, Musk visited Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters to meet with employees. read more

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Embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced she would step down from office Thursday after just 44 days in office
— making her the UK’s shortest-serving leader ever. The shunned leader has left office with a miserable 10% favorability rating among the British public, according to a recent YouGov poll.

Ricky read more

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Two surfers filmed whizzing along Venice’s busiest canal have evoked the wrath of the city’s mayor. Videos of the two people foil surfing between boats and water buses on the Grand Canal sparked outrage after being posted online. Surfing – along with sports such as paddle boarding and canoeing – is prohibited on Venice’s Grand Canal. In footage posted online, the two appear to be whizzing read more

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Italy’s rustic hut Rifugio Guide del Cervino is technically two-thirds Swiss due to glacier movement.
Swiss ski resort Zermatt and Italian resort Cervinia share a border and together form the interconnected ski area Matterhorn Ski Paradise. Year-round skiing happens on the shared Plateau Rosa glacier, currently one of the only European glaciers with lifts still turning this summer read more

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Iceland has trotted out a service that lets horses reply to work emails when you’re on vacation.
The world-first “OutHorse Your Email” service is designed to encourage travelers to take a break and have an uninterrupted trip to the countryside. Using a large keyboard mat, the gaited horses are able to walk, trot, canter, tölt, read more

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100 Mind-Blowing Facts
Scotland has more than 400 words for “snow.”
What better way to cope with the cold than by learning all 421 Scottish words for “snow.” This was discovered when academics at the University of Glasgow underwent a project to compile a Scots thesaurus, called the Historical Thesaurus of Scots. Some words include: “snaw” (snow), “sneesl” read more

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Magpies have outwitted scientists by helping each other remove tracking devices
When we attached tiny, backpack-like tracking devices to five Australian magpies for a pilot study, we didn’t expect to discover an entirely new social behaviour rarely seen in birds.

Our goal was to learn more about the movement and social dynamics of these read more

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grinning horse photo-bombs his laughing owners’ maternity snaps
…couple were saddled with Buckshot’s toothy grin after he trotted into shot

“We’ve been here for more than 30-years and they’ve been here for over 25-years and until this we’d never had any problems, we’d always get on.
…joked they’re “neighbours from hell” after 25 years: cut tree in half.

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Image courtesy SWNS and The Sun