Brandon Keim writes: Last spring I came to know a pair of pigeons. I’d been putting out neighborly sunflower seeds for them and my local Brooklyn house sparrows; typically I left them undisturbed while feeding, but every so often I’d want to water my plants or lie in the sun. This would scatter the flock—all, that is, except for these two. One, presumably male, was a strapping specimen of pigeonhood, big and crisp-feathered in an amiably martial way. The other,…
Nature reports: There was something wrong with the chimpanzees. For weeks, a community of 205 animals in Uganda’s Kibale National Park had been coughing, sneezing and looking generally miserable. But no one could say for sure what ailed them, even as the animals began to die. Necropsies can help to identify a cause of death, but normally, the bodies of chimps that succumb to disease are found long after decomposition has set in, if at all. So when Tony Goldberg,…
Viviane Callier writes: Aging can seem like an unregulated process: As time marches along, our cells and bodies inevitably accumulate dings and dents that cause dysfunctions, failures and ultimately death. However, in 1993 a discovery upended that interpretation of events. Researchers found a mutation in a single gene that doubled a worm’s life span; subsequent work showed that related genes, all involved in the response to insulin, are key regulators of aging in a host of animals, from worms and…
The Guardian reports: Sperm whales live in clans with distinctive cultures, much like those of humans, a study has found. Using underwater microphones and drone surveys, Hal Whitehead, a sperm whale scientist at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Canada, examined the sounds the animals made and their feeding habits and found they organised themselves into groups of up to around 20,000. The paper, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal, said the clans were defined by variations in their vocalisations…
The Guardian reports: While some people might relish the prospect of a new year party, for others socialising can trigger feelings of fear, anxiety and distress. Now researchers say microbes in the gut may play a role in causing social anxiety disorder, opening up fresh possibilities for therapies. Scientists have previously found the gut microbiome – the collection of bacteria and other organisms that live in the gastrointestinal system – differs for people who have social anxiety disorder (SAD) compared…
Katherine J. Wu writes: Some 24 years ago, Diana Bianchi peered into a microscope at a piece of human thyroid and saw something that instantly gave her goosebumps. The sample had come from a woman who was chromosomally XX. But through the lens, Bianchi saw the unmistakable glimmer of Y chromosomes—dozens and dozens of them. “Clearly,” Bianchi told me, “part of her thyroid was entirely male.” The reason, Bianchi suspected, was pregnancy. Years ago, the patient had carried a male…
Science Alert reports: Scientists looking to tackle our ongoing obesity crisis have made an important discovery: Intermittent fasting leads to significant changes both in the gut and the brain, which may open up new options for maintaining a healthy weight. Researchers from China studied 25 volunteers classed as obese over a period of 62 days, during which they took part in an intermittent energy restriction (IER) program – a regime that involves careful control of calorie intake and fasting on…
Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: From the moment you swallow a bite of food to the moment it exits your body, the gut is toiling to process this strange outside material. It has to break chunks down into small bits. It must distinguish healthy nutrients from toxins or pathogens and absorb only what is beneficial. And it does all this while moving the partially processed food one way through different factories of digestion — mouth, esophagus, stomach, through the intestines and out….
Kristin Andrews writes: Twenty-five years ago, the burgeoning science of consciousness studies was rife with promise. With cutting-edge neuroimaging tools leading to new research programmes, the neuroscientist Christof Koch was so optimistic, he bet a case of wine that we’d uncover its secrets by now. The philosopher David Chalmers had serious doubts, because consciousness research is, to put it mildly, difficult. Even what Chalmers called the easy problem of consciousness is hard, and that’s what the bet was about –…
Science News reports: Humans regularly cooperate and share resources with other, unrelated humans in different social groups, often without any immediate, reciprocated benefits. The phenomenon has been considered unique to our species. But some bonobos appear to share this social trait, a study finds. This type of cooperation is thought to underpin human civilization. So bonobos’ ability to bond and cooperate with groups of nonrelatives across group boundaries, even when there’s no immediate payoff, may provide some insight into the…
Science reports: Close your eyes and picture yourself running an errand across town. You can probably imagine the turns you’d need to take and the landmarks you’d encounter. This ability to conjure such scenarios in our minds is thought to be crucial to humans’ capacity to plan ahead. But it may not be uniquely human: Rats also seem to be able to “imagine” moving through mental environments, researchers report today in Science. Rodents trained to navigate within a virtual arena…
Jake Buheler writes: A fruit bat hanging in the corner of a cave stirs; it is ready to move. It scans the space to look for a free perch and then takes flight, adjusting its membranous wings to angle an approach to a spot next to one of its fuzzy fellows. As it does so, neurological data lifted from its brain is broadcast to sensors installed in the cave’s walls. This is no balmy cave along the Mediterranean Sea. The…
Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: A tree has something in common with the weeds and mushrooms growing around its roots, the squirrels scurrying up its trunk, the birds perched on its branches, and the photographer taking pictures of the scene. They all have genomes and cellular machinery neatly packed into membrane-bound compartments, an organizational system that places them in an immensely successful group of life forms called eukaryotes. The early history of eukaryotes has long fascinated scientists who yearn to understand when…
The Washington Post reports: It sounds like fiction from “The Lord of the Rings.” An enemy begins attacking a tree. The tree fends it off and sends out a warning message. Nearby trees set up their own defenses. The forest is saved. But you don’t need a magical Ent from J.R.R. Tolkien’s world to conjure this scene. Real trees on our Earth can communicate and warn each other of danger — and a new study explains how. Injured plants emit…
Viviane Callier writes: More than 1.5 billion years ago, a momentous thing happened: Two small, primitive cells became one. Perhaps more than any event — barring the origin of life itself — this merger radically changed the course of evolution on our planet. One cell ended up inside the other and evolved into a structure that schoolkids learn to refer to as the “powerhouse of the cell”: the mitochondrion. This new structure provided a tremendous energetic advantage to its host…
Max Planck Society reports: Parrots are exceptional talkers. They can learn new sounds during their entire lives, amassing an almost unlimited vocal repertoire. At the same time, parrots produce calls so they can be individually recognized by members of their flock—raising the question of how their calls can be very variable while also uniquely identifiable. A study on monk parakeets conducted by the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona might have the answer:…