Around 24,500 years ago, the body of a 4-year-old child was wrapped in an ochre-dyed shroud and lowered into a burial pit in the Lapedo Valley of central Portugal. Unlike any whippersnapper alive today, however, this extraordinary child exhibited a unique blend of modern human and Neanderthal features, disproving everything we thought we knew about the history of our species.Known as the Lapedo Child, the youngster’s complete skeleton was discovered in 1998. Until then, anthropologists had assumed that modern humans evolved in East Africa before spreading across Eurasia and replacing the more archaic hominids that lived there – including Neanderthals.This narrative supposed that we and our ancient relatives were completely separate species that could not interbreed, and that our expansion resulted in the extinction of our more primitive cousins. The Lapedo Child ripped up this script, prompting the discoverers to propose that modern humans did mate with Neanderthals, and that the genetic code of this extinct species persisted within the hybrid lineage that flowed from the loins of our cross-pollinating ancestors.Thought to have been a male, the child himself possessed the chin and inner ear of an anatomically modern human, along with the stocky frame and limbs of a Neanderthal. Such a finding initially sent shockwaves through the anthropological world, sparking fierce debate as to what this all meant for human history.In their original study on the skeleton, the authors note that the child lived several thousand years after Neanderthals had supposedly disappeared, suggesting that these ancestral traits must have been deeply ingrained within the human genome and that the young boy was therefore “the descendant of extensively admixed populations.” In other words, interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals didn’t just happen once or twice, but occurred on a population level, resulting in significant hybridization.This, in turn, implies that Neanderthals didn’t simply die out when modern humans came along, but repeatedly hooked up with their new neighbours to the extent that they partially merged with them.At the time of the discovery, this idea was seen as pretty radical and somewhat shocking, prompting some scholars to refute the original findings. One analysis, for instance, concluded that the Lapedo Child was not a hybrid after all but, was just an oddly-shaped modern human sprog.However, the admixture theory was finally proven in 2010 when researchers sequenced the Neanderthal genome. In doing so, they revealed that all modern non-African populations contain between 1 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA, thus confirming that our ancient ancestors did interbreed with these extinct hominids.Thankfully, our phenotypes have straightened out somewhat over the millennia and we no longer possess the Neanderthal physique. However, like the Lapedo Child, those of us who hail from outside of Africa are all modern human-Neanderthal hybrids.

Earth is the only planet we know of that has ever had a fire. While there may be volcanos pushing out hot magma on the surface of Venus, the hottest planet in the Solar System, there has never been a fire there. Nor on Mercury, nor Jupiter, nor any of the other planets surrounding our or any other star.In fact, for billions of years of the Earth's history, there wasn't any fire either. It took billions of years before the conditions for fire were possible, with the planet's first inhabitants living in a world without fire for longer than it's possible to imagine. While volcanos would have produced "fire fountains" like those likely produced on Io – and there may have been the odd flame from a gassy volcano belch – this is magma being forced up and sprayed out a vent, rather than actual fire.Around 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth's atmosphere was likely a thick haze of methane, the result of bacterial life emerging on the planet. Then the Great Oxidation Event happened, where ancient cyanobacteria began to produce energy from sunlight, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. Here, molecular oxygen began to accumulate in the atmosphere for the first time, though still not in enough concentration for combustion to take place. The Great Oxidation Event, sometimes known as the Oxygen Catastrophe, likely plunged the Earth into a worldwide deep freeze as this oxygen destabilized methane, clearing it and collapsing its greenhouse effect. The Earth became cold, as well as fireless.The first fossil record we have of fire comes from the Middle Ordovician period, billions of years later. In terms of fire, there is a sweet spot. Any lower than 13 percent oxygen, and plant matter will not combust. Any higher than 35 percent it will combust so well that forests would not be able to grow and sustain themselves.In the Ordovician period 470 million years ago, the first land plants – mosses and liverworts – produced more oxygen, eventually creating enough concentration of it to inflict fires upon themselves. Eventually, around 420 million years ago, we have the first fossil evidence of fire on Earth, charcoal found in rocks from this period. However, with oxygen levels still fluctuating wildly, the first extensive wildfires didn't take place until around 383 million years ago. And fires have been a real jerk ever since.An earlier version of this article was published in October 2023.

In the search for extraterrestrial civilizations, it's difficult to know what to look for. During the pursuit, we have tended to search for detectable signals and signs that we ourselves would emit (on purpose, or by accident) on the assumption that aliens will use similar technology, given that they have access to the same physics. It's perfectly logical to do so, but it's not altogether ideal. As we've seen over the last few hundred years on our own planet, intelligent civilizations can quickly abandon old detectable technology as their understanding of the universe increases. For obvious example, we have quickly moved from using analog signals to digital for communication. Though analog signals in the range we used for communication would be a fairly ineffective way of communicating with alien planets, it's possible that alien civilizations could go "radio quiet" in a cosmological half-blink of 100 or so years, just like we have, making detection all the more difficult.As such, scientists have speculated about what kind of signal a more advanced civilization might send, and what technology level would be needed to send them. While of course speculative, we do have some ideas of what kind of signal would make sense, as well as what the message should contain to make it clear it comes from an intelligent being. “In the 1960s, the idea was to focus on a region around a well-known frequency where neutral hydrogen emits radiation in interstellar space, 1.42 GHz," astronomy graduate student at Berkeley, Bryan Brzycki, explained to Universe Today. "Since this natural emission is prevalent throughout the galaxy, the idea is that any intelligent civilization would know about it, and potentially target this frequency for transmission to maximize the chance of detection. Since then, especially as technology has rapidly advanced, radio SETI has expanded along all axes of measurement."       Sending signals across the galaxy or universe, particularly continuous signals that would offer our best chance of detection, requires a lot of energy, far more than humans are capable of. In 1963, Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev attempted to calculate the kind of energy involved in sending such information-carrying signals, and the levels of advancement that civilizations would have to be at in order to send them.Kardashev divided these hypothetical civilizations into three types, based on how much energy they are able to harness from their surroundings.Type I civilizations are civilizations which are able to harness all the energy available to them on their planet (given at around 4 x 1019 erg per second) and use it for their own purposes. Type II civilizations are able to harness the energy of their star, e.g. by constructing a Dyson Sphere, theoretical megastructures constructed around stars built for this purpose. Type III civilizations, meanwhile, are alien civilizations capable of harnessing the energy of their whole galaxy. Though the energy productions of Type II and III civilizations are extremely high, based on an increase in energy production on Earth of 1 percent per year Kardashev calculated that humanity would reach those milestones in 3,200 and then 5,800 years. An extended scale, proposed in 2020, suggests a Type IV civilization which is able to harness the energy of their observable universe. According to this team, looking at our energy consumption, humans are currently a Type 0.72 civilization.Detecting Type I civilizations, with their puny output (though far in excess of our own) would be very unlikely, according to Kardashev. But signals sent by Type II and Type III civilizations could be detected (though not replied to) by a Type I civilization with conventional radio telescopes not too far in advance of our own. The assumption in the work is that alien civilizations would be broadcasting scientific information far in advance of our own, with the intent of being heard by less advanced civilizations, which may not be a great idea for any civilization with the goal of staying alive. However, the Kardashev scale gives us an idea of what kind of civilizations are capable of sending signals we may soon be able to detect. If such advanced civilizations exist (and given how vast the universe is, and how long it has dragged on for, it would be a reasonable assumption) it would also give us other things to look for, such as giant megastructures used for harnessing energy.

The centrifugal force is pretty cool. It could be used one day to create artificial gravity onboard space stations (saving sci-fi films a lot of budget in the process), sparing astronauts the strange effects of microgravity on their bodies. It is also responsible for the fact that the Earth bulges in the middle, and as a result, the fact that you weigh slightly less at the equator. But as any physics undergraduate will tell you, probably with quite a stressed-out look on their face, it isn't a real force.What do we mean by that? Well, say when you are on a roundabout spinning around, despite the fact that you feel yourself being "pushed" outwards, there is no external force pushing you off the play equipment. What you are actually feeling is the result of your own inertia, or the tendency for objects in motion to remain in motion in a straight line at the same velocity unless another force acts upon it.An easy way to see this intuitively is to send balls rotating around a circle, then quickly releasing them and watching what direction they travel in.From within your rotating frame of reference, it may feel like a real force, but outside of it, it is easier to see what is going on. As you swerve the wheels of your car, with the friction between your tires and the road creating an apparent "centripetal force", your body – happily moving forward in a state of inertia – continues to try to move forward. From inside, it feels like you are being pushed by a force, but you are actually trying to carry on a straightforward path while your car swings a big donut.All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.An earlier version of this article was published in December 2023.

For the first time, a fighter jet controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been pitted against a human-controlled jet in a practice dogfight scenario.The boundary-breaking test flight took place in September 2023, but footage of the feat was released by DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution program last month. The video shows the two aircraft – one human-controlled, one AI-controlled – flying with each other at speeds of 1,931 kilometers (1,200 miles) an hour, completing several “dynamic combat maneuvers” including nose-to-nose dogfighting positions. The AI-guided plane is a one-of-a-kind model developed by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in collaboration with Calspan Corporation for the US Air Force Test Pilot School. Known as the X-62A, or VISTA (Variable In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft), the project was first developed as a simulator program to train pilots. The initial software involved AI technology, although it was limited to the virtual world – effectively like a super-realistic video game.                That changed in December 2022 when the AI agents were put in charge of a physical plane in the real world, allowing it to autonomously cruise along a flight path. Since then, it has carried out hours of real-world test flights and many simulated flights, preparing it for its ultimate task: within-visual-range combat scenarios (aka “dogfighting”).“When DARPA went to explore this problem, it looked as it does for the hardest kind of challenge it can find, and dogfighting is a perfect case for the application of machine learning. Dogfighting is extremely dangerous, so if machine learning can operate effectively in an environment as dangerous as air-to-air combat it has great potential to earn the trust of humans as we look to applications that are less dangerous, but equally complex,” Colonel James Valpiani, Air Force Test Pilot School commandant, said in the video. In another flex of the program’s progress, US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall flew onboard the X-62A jet on an AI-guided flight on May 2, 2024. “It’s a security risk not to have it. At this point, we have to have it,” Kendall told the Associated Press upon landing.AI-assisted weapons have the potential to be more accurate than human-guided ones, potentially reducing collateral damage, civilian casualties, and friendly fire. However, this uncharted territory also raises a bunch of humanitarian, legal, ethical, and security issues. One of the main concerns is whether it is safe or appropriate to put life-and-death decisions in the hands of sensors and software – effectively killer robots – with little human oversight. Furthermore, can AI systems be held accountable if something were to go wrong?Questions like this remain unanswered and there have been calls to strongly regulate militarized AI before the genie is let out of the bottle. However, some believe that the AI arms race is already upon us – with little sign of slowing down.

The world’s tallest wooden wind turbine started turning last year near the town of Skara, not far from the city of Gothenburg in Sweden – a nation renowned for its flatpack wood furniture.With a total height of 150 meters (492 feet) including the blades, the turbine features a 105-meter (345-foot) tower constructed out of wood, according to the company behind the feat, Modvion.As reported by BBC News, the tower’s 2-megawatt generator started swirling and began supplying electricity to the local electricity grid late last year, providing power for approximately 400 homes.Wind power is one of the lowest-priced energy sources available today and one of the more sustainable options. However, it comes at a price. Most turbines are constructed out of steel, a sturdy metal with a heavy carbon footprint. More powerful turbines require bigger towers, thereby increasing the demand for this burdensome metal.In a push to overcome this problem, Modvion developed the so-called “Wind Of Change,” the first commercial wooden wind turbine tower. Modvion's “Wind Of Change” under assembly in their Swedish factory.Image credit: ModvionThe structure can be built on-site in seven sections with a total of 28 modules. This modularity makes the tower easier to transport via roads and sea, unlike conventional steel towers which can be hefty and awkward to move. The turbine tower’s walls are made with 144 layers of 3-millimeter-thick (0.1 inch) laminated veneer lumber that have been glued and compressed together. The wood came from about 200 spruces, the same species used for Christmas trees, all of which were sustainably farmed. "It's our secret recipe," David Olivegren, co-founder of Modvion, former architect, and boat builder, told the BBC."Wood and glue is the perfect combination, we've known that for hundreds of years. And because using wood is lighter [than steel] you can build taller turbines with less material," he added.Standing alone in the Swedish countryside, the single and relatively small wooden wind tower won’t make a significant dent in the global climate crisis.Nevertheless, Modvion believes this proof-of-concept has a great amount of potential and has dreams of going even bolder with their plans in the future. By 2027, the company wants to create 100 wooden towers each year, perhaps on a much larger scale than present. “The potential height of a wooden tower is 1,500 meters [4,921 feet]. 150 [meters / 492 feet] seems like a good place to start,” Modvion says on its website.An earlier version of this article was published in December 2023.

Cetaceans have long been famous for their communication abilities. From the impressive clicks and whistles of dolphins to the magical sound of humpback whale song. Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) have been known to communicate too, and new research has made a big leap forward in understanding the structure of their vocalizations. Sperm whales are highly social, living in pods of around 15-20 animals. They communicate with one another through a series of clicks called codas. While it was previously known that some of these clicks told other whales which whale was "talking" and that different clans had different dialects, very little else has been known about their communication.Now, scientists focussed on understanding variations in the structure of these codas and found that the codas could be combined in different ways, with the musical concepts of rubato and ornamentation, as well as rhythm and tempo. These four classifications were seen to be combined in a multitude of different ways, making many distinguishable codas from the whale vocalizations. This helped them develop what they have dubbed a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet”.               “Investigating a dataset collected across over a decade of nearly 9,000 codas from the sperm whale families of the Eastern Caribbean clan, our results show that these whales have a more complex combinatorial communication system that demonstrates rubato and ornamentation, in which whales make sub-second adjustments to match one another as they converse and add extra clicks to known coda types depending on the context within their conversations," said Dr Shane Gero, Biology Lead of Project CETI and co-founder of the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, in statement sent to IFLScience. While we don't know the function or meaning of these new features, it opens up the possibility that we might start to find structures and features that were once thought to only belong to humans.Dr Shane GeroCodas are either generated in a turn-taking communication style or produced nearly simultaneously with many clicks overlapping. The team found that variation in coda length is not random, but modulated by the whales; they could add extra clicks (ornamentation) or smoothly change the duration (rubato). Data from the Dominica Sperm Whale Project suggests that the whale communication system is vastly more complicated than previously thought because of the combinatorial nature of these features and has a much greater information-carrying capacity based on the combinations of these four terms. Codas are the series of clicks generated by whales that can be classified into recognizable patterns.Image Credit: © Alex Boersma Project CETI“This study defines previously unknown structures in their coda exchanges. It greatly expands the potential ‘encoding space’ or ‘expressivity’ within their coda exchanges. While we don't know the function or meaning of these new features, it opens up the possibility that we might start to find structures and features that were once thought to only belong to humans,” Gero told IFLScience. The dataset is largely focused on data from around 60 whales in the Eastern Caribbean clan, so the team does not know yet if the vocalization structure observed here is repeated across other clans of sperm whales. “We have not yet looked for these features in other clan’s coda exchanges. However, what we have documented here appear to be structures that are likely to be a part of the communication system for all sperm whales," Gero said. "It may be that one clan makes more dramatic rubato, or perhaps only rarely uses ornaments compared to other clans; but we don't yet know."While understanding the structure of the vocalizations is a big step, the team is already planning a follow-up study to link features of the coda communication to a behavioral context. “Understanding structure is the first step, the next would be to combine this with an understanding of context, both behavior (what they are doing when we find ornaments, for example) and social context (who they are with when rubato varies the most? Is it with mom-calf, or two sisters, or correlated with kin relatedness, for example),” Gero told IFLScience. We suggest that this combinatorial system in sperm whales opens up the possibility that sperm whale communication might provide our first example of duality of patterning in another species outside of humans.Dr Shane GeroWhile the team has yet to be able to assign meaning to the codas, they do suggest that the seemingly meaningless sounds in each coda combined in different ways to create lots of options is a similar pattern to human speech, the presence of a combinatorial coding system for the sperm whale sounds could be a starting point for the duality of patterning not seen outside of human language before. “We do suggest that this combinatorial system we document in sperm whales opens up the possibility that sperm whale communication might provide our first example of duality of patterning in another species outside of humans. The phenomenon that small meaningless parts can be combined into meaningful wholes, which could then be combined into meaningful utterances like sentences,” he said. This research highlights the previously unknown complex structure of sperm whale vocalizations and how different features of the vocalizations can be combined in terms of rhythm, tempo, rubato, and ornamentation. These features greatly expand the potential information-carrying capacity of these codas, a phenomenon that is extremely rare in nature. The study is published in Nature Communications.

A new study has suggested that a gene variant thought only to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease could actually be one genetic cause of the condition.The gene is called APOE, and the specific variant in question is called APOE4. The gene, present on chromosome 19, codes for a protein called apolipoprotein E that pairs up with fats like cholesterol and transports them through the bloodstream.Professor Jonathan Schott, Chief Medical Officer at Alzheimer’s Research UK (who was not directly involved in the new work), told the Science Media Centre (SMC) that “inheriting certain genes can increase an individual’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s. The best known of these is a gene called APOE. There are three different versions of this gene, APOE2, APOE3, and APOE4. Each of us carries two copies of APOE, one inherited from each parent – and this means there are different combinations people can carry. APOE2 decreases and APOE4 increases risk for Alzheimer’s disease.” The seemingly neutral and most common form is APOE3.There is a difference between genes in which a mutation directly causes Alzheimer’s disease and those that affect the risk of developing it. The genes APP, PSEN1, and PSEN2 have been placed in the first category, whereas APOE4 has been placed in the second – but this new research indicates that it could be in the first category instead, being a causal factor rather than a risk factor.“About 1 in 50 people carry two copies of APOE4, and we have known for some time that these individuals have substantially increased risk,” Schott said. However, it’s not exactly clear why those who carry APOE4 appear to be at a higher risk of Alzheimer’s. One 2021 study in yeast and human cells pointed towards a potential role in how the gene affects lipid metabolism.“In this [new] large well-conducted study, researchers showed that people who inherited two copies of APOE4 almost all developed Alzheimer changes in the brain by their mid 60’s. These individuals were more likely to develop dementia and tended to do so at a younger age than those with different APOE combinations,” Schott continued.Study author Dr Reisa Sperling told the Associated Press that “this data for me says wow, what an important group to be able to go after before they become symptomatic,” but stressed, “It’s important not to scare everyone who has a family history,” clarifying, “It’s not quite destiny.”The authors of the study examined how having two copies of the gene affected Alzheimer’s pathology and biomarkers. The team used data from 3,297 brain donors – 273 of which had two copies of APOE4 – from the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC), and 10,039 individuals from five multi-center clinical cohorts, 519 of which had two copies of the gene variant.The researchers found that, at the age of 55, those with two APOE4 copies had higher levels of biomarkers amyloid and tau compared to those with two APOE3 copies. By the age of 65, almost all subjects with two APOE4 copies had abnormal amyloid-β levels in their cerebrospinal fluid, and 75 percent had positive amyloid scans (although the hypothesis that amyloid-β is the major driver of Alzheimer’s has been called into question). However, during the dementia phase, there appeared to be no difference in amyloid-β or tau accumulation.Those with two APOE4 copies also started experiencing Alzheimer’s symptoms at an average (mean) age of 65.6 years old, which the researchers say is “approximately 7–10 years earlier” than those with two APOE3 copies.The researchers also propose that the number of copies of the gene variant has an effect, with subjects with one each of APOE3 and APOE4 showing “intermediate phenotypes” between those with two copies of the same variant.“This study adds compelling data to suggest that people with two copies of this gene are almost guaranteed to develop Alzheimer’s if they live long enough and that they will develop Alzheimer’s earlier than people without this gene,” Professor Tara Spires-Jones, President of the British Neuroscience Association and Group Leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh, told the SMC. “The increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease with inheriting the APOE4 gene has been known for over 30 years.”“This study has shown us that this particular gene might play an important role in Alzheimer’s disease development, suggesting its presence is not only a risk factor, but could also indicate a new form of Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr Richard Oakley, Alzheimer’s Society’s Associate Director of Research and Innovation, told the SMC. “The insights from the study suggest that in the future it could be important to take into account a person’s genetics when planning how to reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, or when considering their treatment if they already have the disease.”However, not everyone is convinced. “I do not see anything in this paper to justify the claim that carrying two copies of APOE4 represents some ‘distinct genetic form’ of Alzheimer’s disease,” Professor David Curtis, Honorary Professor in the UCL Genetics Institute, told the SMC. “It has been known for decades that APOE4 is a strong risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, that people carrying two copies are at high risk and that people carrying two copies are at substantially higher risk than those carrying one. No matter how many alleles of APOE4 one carries the underlying disease processes seem similar across cases of Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting that any effective treatment and prevention strategies, which have yet to be developed, would have broad applicability.”The researchers propose “a reconceptualization” of how we see the genetics behind Alzheimer’s, which they say will come with “profound consequences.” These include "the need for individualized prevention strategies, clinical trials and treatments", as well as counseling and screening those with cognitive complaints for APOE4. However, Schott said that genetic testing for APOE4 is not currently advised outside of research.“Moving forward, this study and others highlight the importance of more fundamental research into understanding how genes change the susceptibility of our brains to Alzheimer’s disease as we age,” said Spires-Jones.The study is published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Cometary globules have nothing to do with comets. They are nebulae with long tails of gas and dust being shaped and stripped by the hot ionized material around them – and the Dark Energy Camera has found a spectacular example of one.Located in the constellation of Puppis – translating in Latin to "poop deck" – the cometary globule has been given the name CG 4. It extends for about eight light-years and its head is 1.5 light-years across – we are saying "head" because we are seeing a resemblance to Shai-Hulud, the giant worms from Dune, but the astronomers in the team are calling this formation God’s Hand.Cometary globules are a special type of Bok Globules that have been known since 1976. But even after 50 years, they remain extremely difficult to observe. The reason for this is that the gas and dust are very dark. Your standard telescope gets these dark nebulae confused with the darkness of the universe – but a filter can reveal it.The Dark Energy Camera has a Hydrogen-alpha filter which picks the faint glow of ionized hydrogen. This emission is the red glow surrounding the cometary globule, the more distant background field, and the main nebula from which the globule is extending. Hydrogen atoms get excited by the energetic light of a hot massive star or stellar object. This energy can make them glow with the emission of a specific lightThe light of those stars is not only ionizing the hydrogen, but it is also sculpting the cometary globule. In particular, it is destroying the head/hand portion of it. There is enough material in the head to form several new Sun-sized stars, but it is a race against time as to whether that many will form before the head is destroyed as the head is being destroyed and heated but to make new stars you need a cool stable cloud.The cometary globules are found throughout the Milky Way, but this special region known as the Gum Nebula has 32 cometary globules. This is believed to be the expanding remains of a supernova explosion that took place about a million years ago. And it is a famous one: the Vela pulsar. All the cometary globules appear to have tails pointing away from it, probably sculpted by its intense radiation.Near the mouth of the giant worm, there is a distant galaxy that looks like it is about to be eaten. In reality, ESO 257-19 (PGC 21338) is more than 100 million light-years away from CG 4. The gum nebula is 1,470 light-years away.

Goliath beetles are among the heaviest beetles in the natural world and one of the strongest bugs on the planet.Where does the Goliath beetle live?Native to the many forests of Africa, Goliath beetles belong to a genus called Goliathus that includes at least five different species: G. goliatus, G. regius, G. cacicus, G. orientalis, and G. albosignatus. They are part of the wider scarab beetle family, which includes 30,000 species of beetle. One of the largest species of Goliath beetle is G. regius, aka the Royal Goliath, notable for its striking black-and-white appearance that’s reminiscent of a Rorschach test. Growing up to 10 centimeters (just under 4 inches) in length, they live in parts of West Africa, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. G. goliatus can grow to similar sizes but are located further south in western and eastern equatorial Africa around Cameroon, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzanian, and Uganda. Goliathus regius on display at the Milan Natural History Museum.Image credit: Hectonichus/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)How much does the Goliath beetle weigh?There’s some dispute over how heavy they can grow. Some authorities have cited that some Goliath beetles can weigh up to 70 to 100 grams (2.5 to 3.5 ounces), although this is thought to refer to their sausage-sized grubs. As per Guinness World Records, adult Goliath beetles typically weigh between 40 to 50 grams (1.4–1.7 ounces).What do Goliath beetles eat?As you can tell by their size, Goliath beetles are big eaters. They live on an omnivorous diet that includes everything from tree sap and fruit – rich in sugars – to the remains of decaying animals – high in protein. How much can a Goliath beetle lift?Growing to the size of a modest avocado, these biblically big beetles can lift weights around 850 times heavier than their own body weight – that’s the equivalent of an average human lifting two sperm whales. What about Hercules?In the extremely diverse world of beetles, there’s stiff competition for record-holders. Actaeon beetle (Megasoma actaeon), elephant beetle (Megasoma elephas), and titan beetle (Titanus giganteus) can all grow to similar weights as Goliath beetles and there’s no consensus on who takes the crown. When it comes to length, the Hercules beetle is significantly bigger than the Goliath beetle thanks to its lengthy thoracic horn that allows it to reach lengths of up to 17.3 centimeters (7 inches). This species is, surprisingly, still capable of flying despite its colossal size. Some sources also suggest it can rival the Goliath in weight, although that is likely to refer to its larvae, which are also very, very large. You’re not going to see a Hercules beetle go head-to-head with a Goliath beetle, however. Hercules beetles fill a different ecological niche halfway across the globe in the Americas, inhabiting pockets of rainforest across southern Mexico, Central America, and South America.