Do you peel bananas from the top or bottom? One elephant goes with a third option. When handed a slightly browning banana, Pang Pha, an Asian elephant at Zoo Berlin,…
Category: Life
A massive cavern beneath a West Antarctic glacier is teeming with life
The coastal plain of the Kamb Ice Stream, a West Antarctic glacier, hardly seems like a coast at all. Stand in this place, 800 kilometers from the South Pole, and…
Does IVF increase the risk of breast or ovarian cancer by as much as 65%, as some studies claim?
Statistics related to medical risks and care can often unnecessarily frighten people, and questionable journalism doesn’t help. Take the case of the ongoing debate bout the alleged dangers of in…
Comb jellies have a bizarre nervous system unlike any other animal
Shimmering, gelatinous comb jellies wouldn’t appear to have much to hide. But their mostly see-through bodies cloak a nervous system unlike that of any other known animal, researchers report in…
Northern elephant seals sleep just two hours a day at sea
Northern elephant seals are the true masters of the power nap. On long trips out to sea, the seals snooze less than 20 minutes at a time, researchers report in…
Surprise! Rapid heritable adaptation can occur without initial standing genetic variation – Functional Ecologists
In this new post, Kimberley Lemmen—a post-doc working at the University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland—discusses her paper: Experimental evidence of rapid heritable adaptation in the absence of initial standing genetic…
Turning Gray: Stuck Stem Cells Turn Hair Gray
Summary: A new study sheds light on why we tend to go gray as we age. Researchers found melanocyte stem cells get stuck as we grow older, losing the ability…
Mapping the Psyche of Extreme Altruists
Summary: While more altruistic people can be distinguished from typical adults by their unselfish traits and actions, they are generally not different in other ways. Altruistic people are no more…
Urchins are dying off across the Caribbean. Scientists now know why
Since early 2022, sea urchins have been mysteriously dying off across the Caribbean. Now scientists say they have identified the main culprit: a type of relatively large, single-celled marine microorganism…
