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Have you ever shared a cute photo of an animal with a friend? In a new study, scientists looked at why people love to exchange images of adorable creatures. They found that when it comes to cute animals, sharing is caring.

Scientists from Concordia University and ESSEC Business School interviewed animal content creators—people who post and share photos of animals online—and asked them why they posted the photos. The scientists also interviewed people who love to look at these photos. This group was asked what kind of animal images they liked, how the images made them feel, and whether they shared the images with other people.

The scientists found that people share animal photos with friends and loved ones because they think the pictures are cute or funny. But that’s not all. It turns out that sharing photos is a way to bond with, or feel closer to, other people.

The scientists say cute photos make us feel positive emotions we hope our friends will feel when we share the photos with them. In other words, we want to make our friends feel good.

The scientists also discovered that people put a lot of thought into which photos they share, and who they share them with. Sharing a certain photo with a particular friend means you’re thinking of what that friend would like and showing how well you know and care about that friend. It’s as if you’ve picked out the perfect gift.

Photos are also shared to remind the other person of shared experiences or emotions. For example, someone might send a photo of two jumping dogs with the message, “Remember when we went to the trampoline park?” 

In many ways, sharing cute animal photos is a great way to say you care. It’s also a lot of fun.

Eight planets orbit the Sun, but how many planets are orbiting other stars? The U.S. space agency NASA recently announced that 6,000 planets have been identified outside our solar system, with many more discoveries on the horizon.

Scientists first identified an exoplanet (a planet outside our solar system) in 1995—just 30 years ago. Since then, improved technology has enabled them to find planets faster than ever. In fact, just three years ago, the total number of confirmed exoplanets was 5,000. Today, scientists are studying 8,000 more space objects that they believe to be exoplanets. And the hunt for planets is far from over. NASA says it’s likely there are billions of planets in our galaxy alone!

A railway station in the United Kingdom has some new security experts, and they couldn’t be cuter. 

Three kittens named Titch, Clinker, and Ash live and work as shed cats at Grosmont Station in Grosmont, North Yorkshire, England. Their main task, as “night patrol officers,” is to keep the rodent population under control. But it’s in the other part of their job, making people smile, that they really excel.

“They’re gorgeous kittens,” Simon Wall told the BBC. Wall works at the station. “We’ve always had shed cats, for many, many years, and they all do a great job for us, looking after the rodent population and being lovely for the public.”

Two dogs named Kip and Moss are trained to help scientists by using their senses of smell to track wildlife. Now the dogs are getting some on-the-job training by learning how to paddleboard. Scientists hope the “paddle pups” will help them learn more about a mysterious species called the platypus.

Found only in eastern Australia, the platypus lives in and around waterways where it feeds on insects, worms, and shellfish. Although it’s a mammal, the platypus has three duck-like features: It has a bill for a mouth, its feet are webbed, and it lays eggs instead of giving birth to live young. 

Scientists say there’s still a lot to learn about the platypus. For example, they’ve never even seen one lay an egg in the wild, according to Jessica Thomas, a platypus specialist at Healesville Sanctuary, a zoo near Melbourne, Australia. 

“[Platypuses] spend their time underwater and underground and they’re also nocturnal, so they’re quite challenging just to observe,” Thomas told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Did dinosaurs hang out with other dinosaurs? It looks that way! Based on recently found dinosaur footprints, a team of British and Canadian scientists think some dinosaurs may have traveled together in a group called a herd. What’s more, there may have been more than one type of dinosaur in the herd!

The footprints, which were discovered in 2024 at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Canada, travel in one direction as if made by a group of dinosaurs walking together. But they were not all made by the same type of dinosaur. 

Thirteen of the footprints were made by up to five ceratopsians. A ceratopsian is a type of herbivorous (plant-eating) dinosaur. The name may sound familiar to anyone who has ever heard of Triceratops, probably the most famous type of ceratopsian.

Has an adult ever asked you to help pull some weeds from a garden? Chores like this may sound boring, but what if weeding meant helping tiny penguins? On a small island off the coast of Australia, a weeding project has given these adorable birds a brighter future. 

At only a foot tall (30 centimeters), blue penguins are the smallest of all the penguin species. They get their name from their blue-gray feathers.

Blue penguins live along the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. They like to make burrows on coastlines and islands, where they raise their chicks. Scientists realized a colony of blue penguins was in trouble when tall grasses took over a popular penguin island. These grasses were too tall for the small penguins to walk through. Since the penguins couldn’t reach their burrows, they could not have chicks.

Who has climbed Mount Everest more times than anyone else? Which team has the most NBA Championship titles? Guinness World Records has kept track of accomplishments like these for 70 years! To celebrate, Guinness is inviting people of all ages to try to set their own records.

Guinness published its first book of records in 1955 and has done so every year since. From the beginning, the records included not only people but animals and objects, too. Readers could learn about the world records for “biggest baby,” “tallest building,” and “longest beard,” to name just a few.

Today, the list of records is much longer than it was in 1955. Here are some of the amazing records you can find on the Guinness World Records website:

• Fastest man (Usain Bolt)
• Slowest mammal (the three-toed sloth)
• Most valuable necklace (worth $55 million)
• Longest hair (8 feet 5.3 inches or 257.33 centimeters)

Guinness doesn’t just want people to look at its records. It wants them to participate, too.

“I am completely of the opinion that we’re all amazing in our own way. It’s just discovering what that thing is and celebrating it,” Guinness World Records Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday told the Associated Press. “I want to see kids in the same book as Usain Bolt.”