Just to brighten the last day of April, a few science stories I’ve been following over the last week that have nothing to do with “you-know-what.”

• Ten amazing stories about trees, compiled by JSTOR Daily: https://daily.jstor.org/ten-stories-about-trees-for-arbor-day/
• This tiny animal has toughness beyond its size thanks to a unique anatomical adaptation: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hero-shrew-sturdy-spine-mammal
• Also from JSTOR Daily—all the animal cuteness you can handle: https://daily.jstor.org/we-have-all-the-cute-animal-posts/
• Rai Weiss started his search for gravitational waves in earnest the year I was born. In 2015, his work paid off with the first gravitational wave detection. The New York Times presents a fabulous, 13-minute presentation of the story of LIGO: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000006819172/the-sound-of-gravity.html
• And finally, yet another way we thought humans and animals are different has come crashing down. Insects have been farming for millions of years, while we only achieved farmer status about 12,000 years ago! https://www.sciencenews.org/article/insects-ants-extreme-farming-methods-offer-good-bad-lessons