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Category: Biology

Why mammalian brains are geared toward kindness

Why mammalian brains are geared toward kindness

Patricia Churchland writes: Three myths about morality remain alluring: only humans act on moral emotions, moral precepts are divine in origin, and learning to behave morally goes against our thoroughly selfish nature. Converging data from many sciences, including ethology, anthropology, genetics, and neuroscience, have challenged all three of these myths. First, self-sacrifice, given the pressing needs of close kin or conspecifics to whom they are attached, has been documented in many mammalian species—wolves, marmosets, dolphins, and even rodents. Birds display…

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What came first, cells or viruses?

What came first, cells or viruses?

Viviane Richter writes: Do humans really mark the pinnacle of evolution, or do viruses? While we’ve evolved along a pathway of ever-increasing complexity, viruses have streamlined, successfully jettisoning all but a handful of essential genes, research published in Science Advances in September [2015] suggests. Gustavo Caetano-Anolles and his colleagues at the University of Illinois reached this conclusion after pioneering a new way to map the microbial family tree. Viruses did not evolve first, they found. Instead, viruses and bacteria both…

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It’s wrong to blame bats for the coronavirus epidemic

It’s wrong to blame bats for the coronavirus epidemic

A small colony of Townsend’s big eared bats at Lava Beds National Monument, Calif. Shawn Thomas, NPS/Flickr By Peter Alagona, University of California, Santa Barbara Genomic research showing that the COVID-19 coronavirus likely originated in bats has produced heavy media coverage and widespread concern. There is now danger that frightened people and misguided officials will try to curb the epidemic by culling these remarkable creatures, even though this strategy has failed in the past. As an environmental historian focusing on…

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Billion-year-old algae and newer genes hint at origin of land plants

Billion-year-old algae and newer genes hint at origin of land plants

Dana Najjar writes: Around 500 million years ago — when the Earth was already a ripe 4 billion years old — the first green plants appeared on dry land. Precisely how this occurred is still one of the big mysteries of evolution. Before then, terrestrial land was home only to microbial life. The first green plants to find their way out of the water were not the soaring trees or even the little shrubs of our present world. They were…

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Humans (and most other animals) appear to be the descendants of tiny worms

Humans (and most other animals) appear to be the descendants of tiny worms

Reuters reports: A worm-like creature smaller than a grain of rice that burrowed on the sea floor in search of meals like dead organic matter about 555 million years ago may be the evolutionary forerunner of most animals living today – including people. Scientists on Monday announced the discovery in the Australian outback of fossils of this creature, named Ikaria wariootia, that represents one of the most important primordial animals ever found. It appears to be the earliest-known member of…

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Why the coronavirus has been so successful

Why the coronavirus has been so successful

Ed Yong writes: One of the few mercies during this crisis is that, by their nature, individual coronaviruses are easily destroyed. Each virus particle consists of a small set of genes, enclosed by a sphere of fatty lipid molecules, and because lipid shells are easily torn apart by soap, 20 seconds of thorough hand-washing can take one down. Lipid shells are also vulnerable to the elements; a recent study shows that the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, survives for no more than…

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Giraffes are in far greater danger than people might think

Giraffes are in far greater danger than people might think

Ed Yong writes: Until recently, giraffes have suffered from surprising scientific neglect. Few researchers have studied them in the wild, so even basic aspects of their lives remain mysterious. Perhaps that’s because giraffes live in what researchers suspect are protean societies lacking the cohesiveness of elephant herds or lion prides. Whatever the reason, one of the world’s most conspicuous creatures has somehow been overlooked. The same goes for its impending extinction. And without fanfare, many other major animal groups—insects, birds,…

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The unintended beauty of murmurations

The unintended beauty of murmurations

Mark MacNamara writes: Eugene Schieffelin was the eccentric ornithologist who in 1890 shipped 60 starlings from London to New York City and set them free in Central Park. The next year he released 40 more, and today there are maybe 200 million starlings in the United States and Southern Canada. As immigrants go, starlings are shrewd flyers, clever mimics, and often unwelcome. The truth is they’re no more than uptown blackbirds, stocky, three-ounce grifters with iridescent blue and green plumage,…

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The consciousness of rats has ethical implications for humans

The consciousness of rats has ethical implications for humans

Kristin Andrews and Susana Monsó write: In the late 1990s, Jaak Panksepp, the father of affective neuroscience, discovered that rats laugh. This fact had remained hidden because rats laugh in ultrasonic chirps that we can’t hear. It was only when Brian Knutson, a member of Panksepp’s lab, started to monitor their vocalisations during social play that he realised there was something that appeared unexpectedly similar to human laughter. Panksepp and his team began to systematically study this phenomenon by tickling…

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The strange influence the sun has on whales

The strange influence the sun has on whales

Ed Yong writes: The first clear evidence that some animals have a magnetic sense came from a simple-enough experiment—put an animal in a box, change the magnetic fields around it, and see where it heads. German scientists first tried this in the 1960s, with captive robins. When it came time to migrate, the birds would hop in a particular direction, as if they innately knew the way to fly. But when the team altered the magnetic fields around the robins’…

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How trees find their form

How trees find their form

By Rachel Ehrenberg, January 31, 2020 There’s a place in West Virginia where trees grow upside-down. Branches sprout from their trunks in the ordinary fashion, but then they do an about-face, curving toward the soil. On a chilly December day, the confused trees’ bare branches bob and weave in the breeze like slender snakes straining to touch the ground. “It’s really kind of mind-boggling,” says plant molecular biologist Chris Dardick, waving toward the bizarro plum trees. “They’re completely messed up.”…

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How do bats live with so many viruses?

How do bats live with so many viruses?

James Gorman writes: If previous outbreaks of coronavirus are any indication, the Wuhan strain that is now spreading may eventually be traced back to bats. Dr. Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, who has been working in China for 15 years studying diseases that jump from animals to people, said, “We don’t know the source yet, but there’s pretty strong evidence that this is a bat origin coronavirus.” He said, “It’s probably going to be the Chinese horseshoe bat,” a…

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A universal law may govern all living beings

A universal law may govern all living beings

Michel Loreau writes: The diversity of life is awe-inspiring. However, while biologists tend to focus on the multitude of species and how they live, what unites them may at times be more interesting than what sets them apart. In the era of “big data” and its deluge of information, this diversity can now begin to be perceived as a whole, discerning universal properties common to all creatures large and small. It was already known that there exist simple mathematical laws…

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Ageing: How our ‘epigenetic clocks’ slow down as we get older

Ageing: How our ‘epigenetic clocks’ slow down as we get older

Monkey Business Images By Leonard Schalkwyk, University of Essex and Jonathan Mill, University of Exeter From the tap dancing 90-year-old to the 40-year-old who struggles to run a mile, we all know people who seem surprisingly young or old for their age. Scientists believe that it may be possible to distinguish between two types of age: biological age, a measure of how well the body functions, and chronological age, your age in years. Epigenetics, the science of how environmental factors…

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In untold numbers, animals are suffering and dying, and we are either partly or wholly responsible

In untold numbers, animals are suffering and dying, and we are either partly or wholly responsible

Jeff Sebo writes: At the time of writing, Australia is on fire. The fires have killed at least 25 humans and more than a billion animals. Animals such as koalas are especially at risk, since their normal response to threats – climbing to the tops of trees – leaves them vulnerable in the case of fire. As a result, an estimated 25,000 koalas have died and many more will die in the coming weeks. In 2018, Hurricane Florence swept through…

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How viruses secretly control the planet

How viruses secretly control the planet

Nala Rogers writes: Viruses control their hosts like puppets — and in the process, they may play important roles in Earth’s climate. The hosts in this case aren’t people or animals: They are bacteria. A growing body of research is revealing how viruses manipulate what bacteria eat and how they guide the chemical reactions that sustain life. When those changes happen to a lot of bacteria, the cumulative effects could potentially shape the composition and behavior of Earth’s oceans, soil…

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