Curious what a zookeeper uses to keep naked mole rats, monkeys, and porcupines happy and healthy? Click through to the Washington Post for the answer.

I almost lost my entire blog last week. Something (I have theories about what) somehow managed to corrupt my WordPress database, erasing every entry since 2008. That’s pretty much all my clips and everything “important.” My webhost apparently makes automatic backups of the database but deletes them after only a few days. I didn’t notice [...]

While the snails are passing through the birds’ guts—a process that takes between 30 minutes and two hours—the snails may be inadvertently hitching a ride to new digs.

(Click this to hit up Washingtonpost.com for the full version.)

Engineers and evolutionary biologists in Scotland and France recorded the boatman—which is roughly the size of a grain of rice—”singing” in a tank. The aquatic insect’s songs peaked at 105 decibels, roughly equivalent to the volume of a pounding jackhammer within arm’s reach.

Andreas, an IT guy in Austria who didn’t want his last name used for this article, started out as a hobbyist. He customizes Lego ”minifigs” — the plastic characters that come with a Lego toy set — to create historically accurate dioramas, or three-dimensional models.

Lego had stopped making a specific hat that made his Napoleonic figures accurate. With no experience in product design and no access to a factory, he designed a new hat and had it 3-D printed.

When a city floods, humans stack sandbags and raise levees. When a fire ant colony floods, the ants link up to form a literal life raft, such as the one pictured. Now, new research shows exactly how the ants manage this feat. Engineering professor David Hu and graduate student Nathan J. Mlot at Georgia Institute [...]

You can save time, money and a bit of your sanity with these tech devices designed for entrepreneurs. #1: Square Businesses that accept plastic have an easier time getting customers to pay up — and pay on time. But many small businesses don’t have the infrastructure to take credit cards, which usually require signing up [...]

“These are not rich communities,” says Adam Warren, group manager for the deployment group of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). “It really put people in a bind. I think island leaders know if oil goes back up to $140 a barrel and they haven’t done anything, they’ll be held responsible.”

I can safely say that kites are way more awesome than you remember them after writing this article. Click through to Washingtonpost.com to see.