When people visit their local family-owned pumpkin patch around Halloween, they aren’t usually looking for dinner. The majority of the nearly 2 billion pounds of pumpkins grown in the US each year are carved（雕刻）up instead of being eaten, making them a unique part of the agriculture industry. For people who prefer seasonal recipes to decorations, that may raise a few questions: Are the pumpkins sold for jack-o’-lanterns different from pumpkins sold as food? And are Halloween pumpkins any good to eat?

Carving pumpkins, often with a round shape and deep orange color, don’t taste very good, because they are bred to be decorations first. They have walls that are thin enough to stick a knife through and a texture (质地) that’s unappealing compared to the ones consumers are used to eating. “Uncut carving pumpkins are safe to eat; however, it’s not the best type to use for cooking,” Daria McKelvey, a supervisor for the Kemper Center for Home Gardening at the Missouri Botanical Garden, tells Mental Floss. Unlike decorative pumpkins, cooking pumpkins are small and dense (紧实的). This is one reason they taste better. McKelvey says. “Cooking pumpkins are smaller, sweeter, and have fewer fibers, making them easier to cook with—but not so good for carving.” These pumpkins can be added into soup, or simply roasted.

If you do want to get some use out of your carving pumpkins this Halloween, turn the flesh of your Halloween pumpkin into purée. Adding sugar and spices and baking it into a dessert can do a lot to mask the fruit’s underwhelming flavor(味道). Whatever you do, make sure your pumpkin isn’t carved up already when you decide to cook with it. Never use one that’s been carved into a jack-o’-lantern, otherwise you could be dealing with bacteria, dirt and dust.

Auke-Florian Hiemstra is a Dutch scientist who studies how wild animals use materials made by humans. “Almost anything can become part of a bird nest,” he says. But he was surprised when someone at a hospital in Antwerp, Belgium sent him a picture of a magpie (喜鹊) nest. The top of the nest had thin metal spikes (刺) pointing out all over. The metal spikes were “anti-bird spikes”, which are usually placed on buildings to prevent birds from landing. But this time, the birds used the spikes to make a nest.

In time, the researchers learned about several other nests in Europe that also used anti-bird spikes. Some were magpie nests; others were made by crows (乌鸦). “These are the craziest bird nests I’ve ever seen,” says Mr. Hiemstra. Magpies and crows are known for being clever. The two kinds of birds are related, and are famous for being able to solve challenging problems.

But the birds didn’t use the spikes in exactly the same ways. The crows used the spikes on the inside of their nests to help make the nests more stable. Magpies have to worry about other birds, including crows, stealing their eggs. Normally, they use thorny (多刺的) branches to build a spiky rounded cover over their nests. But in this case, they appeared to use the spikes like humans do—putting them on top of their nests to keep other birds from landing. Mr. Hiemstra says the magpie nest found in Antwerp had about 1, 500 spikes in it.

It’s common for birds to use all kinds of man-made materials in their nests, which can both help and hurt the birds. For example, chemicals from cigarette butts can keep insect pests away, but they can also poison the birds. Bits of string may help birds build nests, but baby birds can get trapped in them. It’s not clear if spikes in nests cause any problems for the birds. But it’s probably more common than we know.

A herd of 15 Asian elephants has been making its way North across China since March 2020, and nobody is quite sure why.

The herd has covered more than 500 kilometers since they wandered out of their home in the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, located in southwestern China along its border with Laos and Myanmar. Authorities in China have tried to keep the animals away from populated areas with piles of fruit and vegetables and physical barriers. The herd was spotted last week on the outskirts (郊区) of Kunming.

“One potential explanation for the elephant migration is overcrowding in the nature reserve these animals once called home,” says George, an elephant specialist at Colorado State University. Asian elephants are endangered, only around 300 surviving in China, but the population living in the reserves of the Xishuangbanna region has been growing in recent years. George says this wayward (任性的) group might have set out to find a new home with less competition for resources.

“We’ve seen elephants expanding their range for decades now, as their populations increase, and they search for more food for the growing herd,” says Becky Chen, a conservation scientist at the Zoological Society of London who has studied elephant-human interactions. Other experts wonder if this is an example of a herd being misled by an inexperienced leader, or if the decision to roam was an almost random choice.

Authorities have instructed residents along the route to stay inside if the elephants are nearby and avoid disturbing the herd. If the animals can’t be turned back to their former forested home, scientists and land managers may need to make provisions (准备) for the elephants to live permanently in Kunming.

Chen says she hopes the situation will raise awareness of human-elephant conflict and elephant conservation. “What we have to learn is not how to solve the problem, but how to increase tolerance,” she says. “How can we use this event to let everybody pay attention to coexistence between people and animals?”