WTTW | Chicago's PBS Station on Instagram: "A team of researchers has all but definitively answered one of the less pressing questions of our time: Was the famous “Chicago Rat Hole” really made by a rat? In short: No. Or probably not, with a 98.67% likelihood that the sidewalk impression — which became a viral sensation in 2024 — is that of a squirrel. The case of mistaken identity was revealed in a scientific paper published Wednesday in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. While the stud

WTTW | Chicago's PBS Station on Instagram: "Ever seen a tree that looks like its leaves have sprouted cat claws and witches’ warts? Those aren’t Halloween costumes. Welcome to the wild, wonderful world of galls. Galls are “plant oddities,” said Tom Tiddens, plant health care supervisor at Chicago Botanic Garden. “They’re really abnormal growths that happen on leaves, twigs or branches, but the majority of them do not cause harm to the plant that they’re on.” The plant tissue malformations come i