Soviet soldiers feed polar bears from a tank, 1950
This picture was taken in the Chukchi Peninsula. This Peninsula is west of Alaska and it is considered to be one of the hardest places to survive in the Russian federation (then Soviet Union).
Patrols in this area were routine, however the soldiers there often saw that even the wildlife there was struggling due to the extreme cold in the area, so they would feed cans of condensed milk to the polar bears. The second image shows a soldier kissing a cub.
The soldiers did not give meat to the bears, as it wouldn't be possible to take a large quantity of meat with them in a tank, however condensed milk was part of their army ration as a dessert.
These picture's are actually incredible, as polar bears are very protective of their cubs and will fight viciously to defend them. Polar bears are also thought to be the most aggressive type of bear towards humans.
The Chukchi Peninsula is inhabited by the Chukchi people, an indigenous group of people who may have been the first to ever live in the Eastern Russian Federation. There are about 15,000 Chukchi people alive today.
During the Vietnam War, the US Navy deployed some of the most unusual vessels ever used in combat: flamethrower boats. These modified patrol craft carried powerful flamethrowers capable of projecting streams of burning fuel hundreds of feet across all types of terrain.
A queen carpenter ant is removing her own wings after mating, a natural process called dealation.
Queen ants use their wings only once during the nuptial flight. After mating, they break them off and begin searching for a place to start a new colony.
Whatever is happening here, the snails seem very committed to it.
Many land snails have both male and female reproductive organs and mate by exchanging sperm with each other.
🇺🇸 A micro-preemie, born at just 23 weeks and weighing a mere 595 grams, had her very first skin-to-skin cuddle with her mother.
At 23 weeks, a baby’s skin is as thin as paper, and their lungs are incredibly fragile.
Japanese neuroscientists spent years working out how to put a crying baby to sleep. They wired 21 babies to heart monitors, tested different ways of being held, and landed on a 13-minute routine. The grandma in this video has been doing it for three generations.
Three labs working independently arrived at the same answer from different angles. The first piece came from a pediatrician named Harvey Karp who published it in 2002 after years of studying how parents around the world calm their babies. Babies are born with a built-in calming switch in their brain. The switch flips on whenever something mimics the womb: warmth, snug pressure, gentle movement, a steady whooshing sound. Once it flips, fussing stops and sleep takes over. Karp called it the calming reflex. Every parent has set it off dozens of times without knowing it has a name.
The second piece comes from a sleep lab in Geneva. In 2019, researchers there put adults on a bed that rocked gently, about one sway every four seconds, and watched their brains all night. People fell asleep faster. They also dropped into deeper sleep, the kind where the brain locks in memories from the day. The part of your inner ear that senses motion is wired directly into the parts of your brain that handle sleep. Rocking syncs your brain waves.
The third piece is the most direct. A 2022 study put tiny heart monitors on 28 babies at home and watched how their bodies reacted to different kinds of touch. Only four kinds of touch worked: rocking, patting, bouncing, and stroking. Each one triggered the calming response within seconds. Heart rate dropped. The body shifted into rest mode.
The 13 minutes came from a team at RIKEN, one of Japan's biggest research institutes. They tracked how different ways of holding babies affected their heart rates and figured out the exact recipe. Walk around with the baby in your arms for five minutes. Then sit, still holding them, for another five to eight minutes. Only then put them down. The wait was the surprise finding. Put the baby down too early and they wake up. Give them eight full minutes of held sleep first, and they stay asleep.
All of this lived inside grandmothers' arms for thousands of years before anyone hooked a baby up to a sensor. Passed quietly from mother to daughter to granddaughter. The neuroscience just caught up.
What you're watching is roughly the same protocol a Japanese lab might publish in 2026. Grandma already knew. The citations are optional.