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Category: Biology

Where did India’s people come from? Massive genetic study reveals surprises

Where did India’s people come from? Massive genetic study reveals surprises

Science reports: South Asia is home to one of the most diverse assemblages of people in the world. A mélange of different ethnic identities, languages, religions, castes, and customs makes up the 1.5 billion humans who live here. Now, scientists have revealed the most detailed look yet of how this population took shape. In the largest ever modern whole-genome analysis from South Asia—published as a preprint last month on bioRxiv—researchers reveal new details about the origin of India’s Iranian ancestry…

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If we can learn to speak the language of whales, what should we say?

If we can learn to speak the language of whales, what should we say?

Ross Andersen writes: One night last winter, over drinks in downtown Los Angeles, the biologist David Gruber told me that human beings might someday talk to sperm whales. In 2020, Gruber founded Project CETI with some of the world’s leading artificial-intelligence researchers, and they have so far raised $33 million for a high-tech effort to learn the whales’ language. Gruber said that they hope to record billions of the animals’ clicking sounds with floating hydrophones, and then to decipher the…

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These birds score as high as primates in a puzzling cognitive test

These birds score as high as primates in a puzzling cognitive test

Science Alert reports: Only some animals are known to fathom object permanence – the idea that something still exists even when it’s out of sight. Oriental pied hornbills (Anthracoceros albirostris) are one of the few with an advanced understanding, a new study confirms. It’s a clever skill that comes in handy when nesting females seal themselves out of sight in tree hollows, relying on their mate to bring them food. To lay and tend to their eggs in safety, female…

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The strange and turbulent global world of ant geopolitics

The strange and turbulent global world of ant geopolitics

John Whitfield writes: It is a familiar story: a small group of animals living in a wooded grassland begin, against all odds, to populate Earth. At first, they occupy a specific ecological place in the landscape, kept in check by other species. Then something changes. The animals find a way to travel to new places. They learn to cope with unpredictability. They adapt to new kinds of food and shelter. They are clever. And they are aggressive. In the new…

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Invasive ants disrupt lions’ hunting behavior in Kenya

Invasive ants disrupt lions’ hunting behavior in Kenya

GrrlScientist writes: In a remarkable, but accidental, real-life experiment demonstrating the ecological connections between all life regardless of how great or small, a study recently came out that documents how a tiny ant is affecting the mighty lion on the savannahs of Kenya. This ant is invasive and it’s far from home. It probably arrived from the island of Mauritius, located in the Indian Ocean, early during the last century, and began establishing itself in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in…

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What pigeons teach us about love

What pigeons teach us about love

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,…

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Humans are increasingly passing pathogens to animal populations

Humans are increasingly passing pathogens to animal populations

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,…

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Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

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…

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Sperm whales live in culturally distinct clans, research finds

Sperm whales live in culturally distinct clans, research finds

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…

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Gut microbes may play role in social anxiety disorder, say researchers

Gut microbes may play role in social anxiety disorder, say researchers

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…

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The most mysterious cells in our bodies don’t belong to us

The most mysterious cells in our bodies don’t belong to us

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…

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Intermittent fasting seems to result in dynamic changes to the human brain

Intermittent fasting seems to result in dynamic changes to the human brain

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…

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In the gut’s ‘second brain,’ key agents of health emerge

In the gut’s ‘second brain,’ key agents of health emerge

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….

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Consciousness science needs to study less complex organisms

Consciousness science needs to study less complex organisms

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 –…

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Bonobos, like humans, cooperate with unrelated members of other groups

Bonobos, like humans, cooperate with unrelated members of other groups

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…

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Rats have imagination, study suggests

Rats have imagination, study suggests

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…

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