We humans, generally speaking, are rather hardy creatures. We may not have the great bulk of the elephant, the tough skin of the crocodile, or the formidable exoskeleton of the diabolical ironclad beetle, but we're rather resilient as a species. Incidentally, the latter, according to UCI professor David Kisailus (via Phys.org), is "a terrestrial beetle ... a little tank ... It can't fly away, so it just stays put and lets its specially designed armor take the abuse until the predator gives up." That's very tough. We're just relatively tough. This means, unfortunately, that we can die in a wide variety of quite implausible, statistically very unlikely ways. Read More