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What is nordic walking and is it good for you?

WILL MOON, VIA EMAIL Nordic walking is a type of low-impact exercise that uses specialised poles and striding technique to engage all the body’s major muscle groups. It originated in Finland in the 1930s, as a way for cross-country skiers to train during the summer months. Since then, it’s gained popularity around the world as […]

What’s the life cycle of a house spider?

LIBBY HAMILTON, KENT Stage 1: The egg sac In the spring, female spiders start to produce egg sacs. These silky, cocoon-like constructions can each contain up to 70 eggs, and a female spider can produce as many as 10 egg sacs over her lifetime. Stage 2: Spiderling Juvenile spiders, known as spiderlings, hatch from the […]

Nature’s weirdest creatures: Rainbow squirrel

NATURE’S WEIRDEST CREATURES Rainbow squirrel With its chestnut bonce and flamboyant, technicolour body suit, this glam-rock rodent is certainly channelling its inner Ziggy Stardust. The aptly named ‘rainbow squirrel’, or Malabar giant squirrel, adds a welcome touch of pizzazz to the upper canopies of the forests in central and southern India. Compared to the UK’s […]

What is toxic positivity?

IAN MCMAHON, SCUNTHORPE Toxic positivity comes from the belief that, despite an individual’s emotional pain or challenging situation, they should still adopt a positive outlook. It denies, invalidates and delegitimises emotions that aren’t ‘happy’ and includes phrases such as “turn that frown upside down”, “it could be worse” or, a social media favourite, “good vibes […]

What is hippopotomonst-rosesquippedaliophobia?

ADAM WORTHY, VIA EMAIL It’s the fear of long words. Sesqui is Latin for one and a half, and the phrase “sesquipedalia verba” was used as long ago as the first century BCE by the Roman poet Horace, to criticise writers who used words “a foot and a half long”. Converting this into a fear […]

How do we know how dinosaurs moved?

GARY, VIA EMAIL Tyrannosaurus rex lived 66 million years ago and no human has ever seen one alive. How do we know how it – or any other long-extinct dinosaur – moved? This is part of a larger question in palaeontology: how do we understand the behaviours of extinct species? In general, we rely on […]

The explainer: Dementia

THE EXPLAINER Dementia IT’S NOT AN INEVITABLE PART OF AGEING What is dementia? Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld novels, described his dementia as an “embuggerance”. “I’ve given up my driving licence because I didn’t feel confident driving,” he told the BBC in 2008, soon after he was diagnosed. “And if I’ve got something […]