This wasp will happily take on creatures much larger than itself. After injecting the brains of their prey (猎物) with numbing poison, they bury it alive and lay their eggs in the tomb after the prey dies completely. The young wasps will then feed on the creature until they are fully grown.

A geologist of the animal kingdom, the star-nosed mole can detect earthquake waves with 25,000 sensory receptors that make up the fleshy tentacles (触手) around its nose. This strange animal may also be able to detect weak electrical signals from the prey living in water. It can also smell underwater by blowing air bubbles and sucking them back into its nose.

When a newly hatched baby ghost shark was found by scientists off the coast of New Zealand’s South Island in February 2022, it quickly became popular for its strange looks. These creatures are rarely sighted and very little is known about them. Despite the name, ghost sharks are not actually part of the shark family. They are a species of fish and have a skeleton (骨骼) made from cartilage (软骨), instead of bones. Having a skeleton like cartilage is important for life at depth, as it won’t be damaged under increased pressure.

A master of hiding itself, the great potoo is a meat-eating bird that lives mostly in tropical America. Remaining completely still, the great potoo mixes with its surroundings by copying a tree branch as it patiently waits for unsuspecting prey. And, it doesn’t even give itself away by opening its eyes. Thanks to tiny openings below their eyelids, the birds can see even when their eyes are closed, helping them spot even the smallest amount of movement.

Kenny Lake School in Copper Center, Alaska, is small, with about 60 students from kindergarten to high school seniors. It’s even smaller in winter when some parents home-school their children because of the long drives and slippery roads.

Jennifer Hodges is a third, fourth and fifth grade teacher. She says her three-grade class sits only at desks for 20 minutes a day. They do a lot of hands-on learning, such as raising Coho salmon (大马哈鱼) from eggs to fry (鱼苗) and then releasing them into a lake.

Coho salmon lay eggs in the fall, when many schools start. The eggs remain in the classroom about six months before they are released into lakes. After that, they live for two to four years before they lay eggs and then die shortly afterwards.

Every day, about a third of Hodges’ students travel 45 minutes by bus from the Native Village of Chitina. Many students already have the experience of fishing salmon, which is the main food in Native Alaskan communities.

“It’s really a delicate balance because we are dealing with traditions and culture of the native people,” Hodges says. “This is their land, and this is their salmon. And so we have to really be part of that.”

Students like to calculate when the salmon will turn from eggs to fry based on the temperature of the tank. To them, it’s not practicing math problems; it’s predicting the future.

“We always take a guess at when they will hatch from their eggs first,” says Liam, a student. “It takes math because you have to keep track of their temperature. I’m good at math, so I usually get it right.”

Since Hodges and her students live in such a rural area, there aren’t many field trips. But each year in May, she takes her students on the Salmon Field Trip, where they get to release the salmon they’ve raised in class. They will name the fish, then release them into the wild and never see them again. But it’s not sad; it’s the highlight of the year.

You may have already seen robot waiters in restaurants: waist-high machines that can greet guests, lead them to their tables, deliver food and drinks and carry dirty dishes to the kitchen. But are they the future?

Many think they are the solution to the industry’s labor shortages. Sales of them have been growing rapidly in recent years, with tens of thousands now working in dining rooms. But others say they have a long way to go before they can replace humans. They can’t take orders, and many restaurants have steps and other physical challenges they can’t adapt to.

Still, the robots are increasing. Redwood City, Califomia-based Bear Robotics, introduced its service robot in 2021 and expects to have 10,000 used by the end of this year worldwide. The lack of labor sped up the adoption of robots globally. In the US, the restaurant industry employed 15 million people in 2022, but that was still 400,000 fewer than before the pandemic. In a recent survey, 62% of restaurant operators told the National Restaurant Association they don’t have enough employees to meet customer demand.

Public recognition of robot servers is already high in Asia. The US was slower to adopt robots, but some chains are now testing them. But not all chains have had success with robots. Chili’s introduced a robot server named Rita in 2020 and expanded the test to 61 US restaurants before abruptly stopping it last August. The chain found that Rita moved too slowly and got in the way of human servers. And 58% of guests surveyed said Rita didn’t improve their overall experience.

It’s expected that about 30% of restaurants will continue to have human servers and be considered more luxurious (豪华的), while the rest will rely on robots in the kitchen and in dining rooms. Economics are on the side of robots; the cost of human labor will continue to rise, but technology costs will fall. But that’s not a future everyone wants to see. “Humans don’t go to a full-service restaurant to be served by technology,” said Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage. “They go for the experience of themselves and the people they care about being served by a human.”

When most of us read the words “plant-based diet”, we tend to think of foods such as salads and grain. But there is another option — the newest super-food: seaweed. The brownish-green oceanic plant like matter that washes up on beaches is in fact edible. Nori, the papery sheets used to wrap sushi rolls, is likely the most well-known and enjoyed seaweed, but these large leafy algae (海藻) come in hundreds of colorful varieties. Seaweed helps to support other life in the ocean and to clean the water surrounding it. When out of the water, seaweed can bring more nutrition and minerals to our diets.

“Even though we try to eat healthily, we’re relying on land-based and soil-based agriculture for the most part,” said Sarah Redmond, founder and owner of Springtide Seaweed in Gouldsboro, Maine. “Seaweed is a really interesting alternative because it provides the nutrients that are really hard to find in other land plants.”

For humans, seaweed is a one-stop shop for our necessary nutrient needs. “Seaweed is an excellent source of dietary fiber and minerals,” said Mary Ellen Camire, professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Maine.

Though nutrition varies slightly between green, brown and red varieties, across the board seaweed contains a number of vitamins, including B,C,E and K, omega-3 fatty acids, protein and 10 times more minerals than land-based plants, according to a recent study.

However, you don’t need to pile your plate high with seaweed. “Some brown seaweed is very high in iodine (碘),” Camire said. “It has so much iodine that consumers are advised to eat it no more than three times per week.”

Seaweed is just as beneficial to the planet as it is to our personal health. Seaweed pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and uses it to make more carbohydrates (碳水化合物). “We are not sure how much seaweed farming it would take to have a significant effect on global warming, but it helps,” Camire said.

Seaweed also consumes elements that can harm the ocean. It can also provide a place for smaller sea creatures to hide from their enemies, establishing environments that can help restore diverse ocean life in over-fished habitats.