Table of contents for November 2025 in What on Earth! Magazine

DARIÉN GAP Not all of the Pan-American Highway is paved, and it’s actually impossible to travel it entirely by car because of a 150 km stretch called the Darién Gap. This section, between Panama and Colombia, is covered by dense rainforest and is usually crossed by boat. It’s also possible to cross the Gap on foot, although hiking it can be difficult because of the jungle and swamps. And that’s not the only challenge along the way – another epic feature of the Highway is the 3,450m-high peak of Cerro de la Muerte in Costa Rica. THE LONGEST ROAD The Pan-American Highway is recognised as being the longest road in the world, stretching nearly 19,000 kilometres. It crosses two continents and 14 countries on its winding way from Alaska to…

WHO WAS ADOLPHE SAX? Adolphe Sax was a musician as well as an inventor of musical instruments. The most famous of the instruments he made is the saxophone, which you’ve probably heard of! WHEN AND WHERE DID ADOLPHE SAX LIVE? Sax was born in 1814 in Dinant in what is now Belgium. Although his birth name was Antoine-Joseph, his family called him Adolphe from childhood. He moved to Paris, France when he was in his twenties and lived there for the rest of his life. HOW DID HE THINK DIFFERENTLY? Sax’s parents were both designers of musical instruments. They notably made design changes to the French horn. Adolphe began making his own musical instruments when he was a child, even entering his designs for the flute and the clarinet into…

The Scoville scale is a way of measuring how spicy or ‘hot’ chilli peppers taste when you eat them. It is named after Wilbur Scoville, the American pharmacist who invented the scale in 1912. The higher the number on the scale, the spicier the chilli pepper. The numbers here are the highest ratings currently known to be possible for each type of pepper. Carolina Reaper* 2.2 million** Trinidad Moruga Scorpion 2 million 7 Pot Douglah 1.9 million 7 Pot Primo 1.5 million Trinidad Scorpion Butch T 1.5 million Naga Viper 1.4 million Infinity 1.2 million Ghost pepper 1 million Habanero 350,000 Bird’s eye 225,000 Cayenne 125,000 Chiltepin 100,000 Hungarian Wax 15,000 Jalapeño 10,000 Piment d’Espelette 4,000 Poblano 2,000 Sweet paprika 500 Bell pepper*** 0 *The Carolina Reaper is officially the…

An important part of some languages that we don’t often think about in our daily lives is stress patterns. This means where you place emphasis within a word or group of words, usually using pitch, volume or duration (how long you stretch out the sounds). For example, you probably read the word ‘example’ as ‘exAMple’ because in English that’s how that word is pronounced. Saying ‘EXample’ or ‘examPLE’ would be confusing, and other people might not understand what you mean. You may not have realised it, but in English there are also words whose meaning changes from a verb (a word that refers to an action) to a noun (a word that refers to a person, place, thing or idea) when the stressed syllable moves to the beginning of the…

ANIMALS 1 Mudskippers are the only type of fish that can do which of the following things? Poo Chirp Blink Fly 2 Insects make up what percentage of all known animal species on Earth? 25% 50% 80% 99% 3 Which of these animals is thought to have inspired myths about mermaids? Manatee Dolphin Whale Seal 4 What small primate has eyes that are bigger in size than its brain? Okapi Lemur Chimpanzee Tarsier LINK WORDS A link word is a word that can be added to the end of one word and the start of another word to create two new words. For example, the word FRIEND can be added to the end of GIRL to create GIRLFRIEND, and also added to the start of SHIP to create FRIENDSHIP. Can…

51,200 The age in years of a cave painting of three human-like figures and a Sulawesi warty pig found in Leang Karampuang cave, Indonesia. This ancient painting is the world’s oldest known example of humans telling stories through art. 8,867 The number of balloons American artist Jeremy Telford used to build the world’s largest balloon dog sculpture. Scan the QR code to see it for yourself! 8.7 million The number of people who visited the Louvre in Paris, France in 2024, making it the world’s most visited art museum.*** 50,000 The estimated number of artworks Spanish artist Pablo Picasso created during his 91-year lifetime.** £450.3 million The record price paid for a single painting at auction – Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in 2017. 12 The number of pigments –…

Ebbinghaus Illusion Look at the two red circles in the centre of the two patterns shown above. Which circle do you think is bigger? If you think the red circle on the right is larger, prepare to be amazed – because both red circles are in fact exactly the same size. This mind-bending illusion happens because your brain likes to estimate the size of things by comparing them with other nearby objects. So when a red circle sits among larger blue circles, it looks smaller. When the red circle is surrounded by smaller blue circles, it seems bigger. This fascinating optical trick is named after Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), a German psychologist who studied how humans perceive the world. You can see the same effect in everyday life. For example, a…

SENSES The five basic human senses – and five others you might not realise you have. Information about the world outside and the workings of the body is collected and transmitted to the brain through the senses. You may have learned in school that humans have five basic senses, but there are actually many more that we don’t often learn about. Scientists think that humans may have more than 20 different senses! These are some of the most important: 1 Touch Touch is thought to be the first sense a human develops, after just eight weeks in the womb. The areas of your body that are most sensitive to touch include your lips, tongue and fingers. 2 Sight The human eye contains more than 100 million light-sensitive cells and can tell the…

When owls and badgers come out to play… Do you love animals and the natural world? Well, avid What on Earth! reader Jess is clearly an animal-lover too. Not only is Jess the proud owner of her family’s cat Malcolm, pictured below, but Jess was also inspired to write and send in a fantastic poem about what happens at night when most of us humans are asleep and nocturnal animals like badgers and owls come out to play. It’s such a great poem we thought you would enjoy reading it, too. Well done Jess! Are you a puzzles addict or animal impersonator?! One of our favourite things about receiving letters and photos from readers, is discovering which parts of What on Earth! Magazine you love the most. As you can…