Did you know that honeybees can tell a Monet from a Picasso? Have you met the dancing polar bear who thinks he’s John Travolta? Were you aware that a Playboy pic was shrunk to human hair size? All this and more happened in 2012.

The list is in no particular order of precedence:

Honeybees can tell Monet from Picasso paintings
Honeybees have a highly developed capacity for processing complex visual information, and can distinguish landscape scenes, types of flowers, and even human faces, a new study has claimed.

Meet the dancing polar bear who thinks he’s John Travolta
In a series of astonishing photographs, a one-year-old bear is seen swinging his hips and striking poses uncannily reminiscent of John Travolta in the classic 1977 disco film ‘Saturday Night Fever’.

New fish found with male reproductive organ on its head
A new species of fish where the males have their reproductive organs on their head has been discovered in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. The Phallostethus cuulong is just 2 centimetres long, and is...

Playboy pic shrunk to human hair size by new device
A team of scientists from Singapore have developed a device that shrunk an image of a Playboy centrefold to the width of human hair. The photograph is a crop of the portrait of a Swedish model...

Bulb in Britain glowing for 100 years
Defying the 1,000-hour life expectancy of a light-bulb, the one shining in a Briton's porch is believed to have been glowing for last 100 years.

Cosmic radio waves mimic chirping of 'alien birds'
Twin spacecraft have captured the clearest sounds yet from Earth's radiation belts and they mimic the chirping of birds. NASA's Van Allen Probes have been exploring the hostile radiation belts surrounding Earth for three months.

The penguin couple that was together for 16 yrs
A new study has revealed Magellanic penguins as among the most faithful lovers in the animal kingdom. Researchers, who followed the birds for 30 years using satellite-tracking system, found that a Magellanic penguin couple remained loyal to each other over a 16-year period...

Extinct lizard species named after Obama
An extinct species of lizard has been named after US President Barack Obama by a team of scientists at Yale and Harvard

Soon, super soldiers that won't need food or sleep
Military researchers in America are working on projects involving gene manipulation, that will enable soldiers to live without food and sleep and allow those wounded in battle to heal quickly and even regrow limbs.

Deadliest snake's venom better pain-killer than morphine
Venom from the world’s deadliest snake – the black mamba, which can kill a person within half an hour, could actually be a painkiller at par with morphine, researchers say.