Science Articles about Animals | Popular Science https://www.popsci.com/category/animals/ Awe-inspiring science reporting, technology news, and DIY projects. Skunks to space robots, primates to climates. That's Popular Science, 145 years strong. Thu, 01 Jun 2023 19:00:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 https://www.popsci.com/uploads/2021/04/28/cropped-PSC3.png?auto=webp&width=32&height=32 Science Articles about Animals | Popular Science https://www.popsci.com/category/animals/ 32 32 Chilly climates may have forged stronger social bonds in some primates https://www.popsci.com/environment/cold-climates-social-evolution-primates/ Thu, 01 Jun 2023 19:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=545169
A mother and baby golden snub nosed monkey. These primates live in mountainous regions of southwestern China. Longer periods of maternal care may have helped them form more complex societies.
Golden snub nosed monkeys live in mountainous regions of southwestern China. Longer periods of maternal care may have helped them form more complex societies. Guanlai Ouyang

Adapting to the cold may have opened up opportunities for larger, more friendly squads of monkeys.

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A mother and baby golden snub nosed monkey. These primates live in mountainous regions of southwestern China. Longer periods of maternal care may have helped them form more complex societies.
Golden snub nosed monkeys live in mountainous regions of southwestern China. Longer periods of maternal care may have helped them form more complex societies. Guanlai Ouyang

Cold weather is prime time for humans to stay inside and snuggle up with loved ones. For our primate cousins, cuddling may even keep them healthy, as frosty temps and social bonds seem to go together like hot chocolate and marshmallows. Chilly temperature behavior, as it turns out, may also alter the course of evolution.

A study published June 1 in the journal Science found that a species’ long-term adaptation to life in extremely cold climates led to the evolution of successful social behaviors. Asian colobines living in colder regions saw genetic changes and adaptations to their social behaviors including extended care by mothers, which increased infant survival and the primates’ ability to live in the large complex multilevel societies we see today.

[Related: These primate ancestors were totally chill with a colder climate.]

An international team of researchers from the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and Australia studied how langurs and odd-nosed monkeys adapted over time. These members of the colobine family are leaf-eating monkeys that have been on Earth for about 10 million years. Their ancient ancestors dispersed across the planet’s continents and learned to live in tropical, temperate, and colder climates. 

“Virtually all primates are social and live in social groups,” study co-author and  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign anthropologist Paul A. Garber said in a statement. “But the groups differ in size and cohesiveness. There are those that live in units of two or three individuals and others living in communities of up to 1,000 individuals.”

According to Garber, genomic studies suggest that the harem unit of organization—one male with two or more females and their offspring—was the ancestral norm for Asian colobines. Males are intolerant of other rival males and will fight to protect their turf. In some species, the females will stay with their natal group, while in others, both sexes leave to join or form new harems.

More complex societies formed over time. Some odd-nosed monkeys still form harems, but aren’t territorial. “This means their group territories can overlap and there are times they may come together to forage, rest and travel,” said Garber. 

A group of golden snub nosed monkeys consisting of three larger monkeys and one baby.
A group of golden snub nosed monkeys. CREDIT: Guanlai Ouyang.

Snub-nosed monkeys form a multilevel or modular society where multiple harems remain together throughout the year and create a large, cohesive breeding band. The team on this study recorded a society of about 400 individuals and breeding between individuals from different harems was common in golden snub-nosed monkeys. This inter-harem breeding happened roughly 50 percent of the time.

The study used ecological, geological, fossil, behavioral, and genomic analyses, and found that the colobine primates that lived in colder places tended to live in larger and more complex social groups. The glacial periods over the past six million years likely promoted the selection of genes that are involved in cold-related energy metabolism and hormonal regulation in the nervous system.

[Related: Baboons can recover from childhood trauma with a little help from their friends.]

Black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys in some parts of China live in low-oxygen elevations up to about 13,500 feet where night time temperatures can drop below zero on the coldest evenings. The Odd-nosed monkeys living in extremely cold locations developed more efficient pathways for dopamine and oxytocin. Oxytocin particularly is an important neurohormone for social bonding and this hormonal efficiency may lengthen the time a mother monkey takes care of her baby. This led to longer periods of breast-feeding and increase in infant survival.  

These adaptive changes appear to have further strengthened the relationships between individual monkeys, increased tolerance between males, and encouraged the evolution of more complex and larger multi level societies that go a long way. Strong social bonds can even help gut bacteria health in some monkeys.

In future studies, the team is interested in studying how changes in mating and social behavior may be the result of genetic changes from past environments and other social factors from the past. 

“With climate change becoming an hugely important environmental pressure on animals, it is hoped that this study will raise awareness for the need to investigate what course social evolution will take as the prevailing climate changes,” study co-author and University fo Western Australia biological anthropologist Cyril Grueter said in a statement. “Our finding that complex multilevel societies have roots stretching back to climatic events in the distant evolutionary past also has implications for a reconstruction of the human social system which is decidedly multilevel.”

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A robot inspired by centipedes has no trouble finding its footing https://www.popsci.com/technology/centipede-robot-japan/ Thu, 01 Jun 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=545090
Macro closeup of orange and black millipede on green leaf
Centipedes' undulating movements can sometimes improve robot mobility. Deposit Photos

Researchers at Osaka University designed a 'myriapod' bot that uses less energy and computational power than other walking machines.

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Macro closeup of orange and black millipede on green leaf
Centipedes' undulating movements can sometimes improve robot mobility. Deposit Photos

Last month, engineers at Georgia Institute of Technology unveiled a creepy, crawly centipede-inspired robot sporting a plethora of tiny legs. The multitude of extra limbs wasn’t simply meant to pay homage to the arthropods, but rather to improve the robot’s maneuverability across difficult terrains while simultaneously reducing the number of complicated sensor systems. Not to be outdone, a separate team of researchers at Japan just showed off their own biomimetic “myriapod” robot which leverages natural environmental instabilities to move in curved motions, thus reducing its computational and energy requirements.

[Related: To build a better crawly robot, add legs—lots of legs.]

As detailed in an article published in Soft Robotics, a team at Osaka University’s Mechanical Science and Bioengineering department recently created a 53-inch-long robot composed of six segments, each sporting two legs alongside agile joints. In a statement released earlier this week, study co-author Shinya Aoi explained their team was inspired by certain “extremely agile” insects able to utilize their own dynamic instability to quickly change movement and direction. To mimic its natural counterparts, the robot included tiny motors that controlled an adjustable screw to increase or decrease each segment’s flexibility while in motion. This leads to what’s known as “pitchfork bifurcation.” Basically, the forward-moving centipede robot becomes unstable.

But instead of tipping over or stopping, the robot can employ that bifurcation to begin moving in curved patterns to the left or right, depending on the circumstances. Taking advantage of this momentum allowed the team to control their robot extremely efficiently, and with much less computational complexity than other walking bots.

As impressive as many bipedal robots now are, their two legs can often prove extremely fragile and susceptible to failure. What’s more, losing control of one of those limbs can easily render the machine inoperable. Increasing the number of limbs a lá a centipede robot, creates system redundancies that also expand the terrains it can handle. “We can foresee applications in a wide variety of scenarios, such as search and rescue, working in hazardous environments or exploration on other planets,” explained Mau Adachi, one of the paper’s other co-authors.

[Related: NASA hopes its snake robot can search for alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.]

Such serpentine robots are attracting the attention of numerous researchers across the world. Last month, NASA announced the latest advancements on its Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS), a snake-bot intended to potentially one day search Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus for signs of extraterrestrial life. Although EELS utilizes a slithering movement via “rotating propulsion units,” it’s not hard to envision it doing so alongside a “myriapod” partner—an image that’s as cute as it is exciting.

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This fake beach is a magnet for tourists—and peaceful endangered sharks https://www.popsci.com/environment/fake-beach-shark-conservation/ Thu, 01 Jun 2023 01:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=544666
Angelsharks are masters of disguise, so spotting them is a challenge.
Angelsharks are masters of disguise, so spotting them is a challenge. Photo by Mike Sealey

In the Canary Islands, endangered angelsharks and European tourists are attracted to the same habitat which, for once, isn’t bad for the wildlife.

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Angelsharks are masters of disguise, so spotting them is a challenge.
Angelsharks are masters of disguise, so spotting them is a challenge. Photo by Mike Sealey

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Out in the Atlantic Ocean, roughly 100 kilometers off the northwest coast of Africa, lies an archipelago known as the Canary Islands, created millions of years ago by intense volcanic activity. The biggest and most populated island, Tenerife, rises from the deep-ocean floor to a series of peaks, one of which is the third-largest volcano in the world. Tenerife’s interior highlands are a moonscape, while its coastline of lava rock and sheer cliffs is pounded by surf. In contrast to most of the island’s stark geology, north of the island’s capital, Santa Cruz, is a long crescent-shaped beach of soft yellow sand, with groves of palm trees and a calm bay created by a long breakwater. This is Playa de las Teresitas, a magnet for northern European tourists craving winter sun.

But most of the people sunbathing on Teresitas are likely unaware of what lurks in the shallow waters lapping the shoreline. The bay—engineered and less than 10 kilometers from the Canaries’ second-largest city—is a surprising haven for pups of one of the world’s most critically endangered fish: the angelshark.


When the Spanish took control of the Canaries in the 1400s, they began cultivating cash crops: cochineal and sugar cane in the beginning, and later adding bananas, tomatoes, and other valuable commodities. For centuries, the islands’ economy thrived, but it was a fragile wealth. Over the years, livelihoods were threatened by cycles of crop disease, competition from cheaper markets, and lava flows that wiped out harvests and turned good agricultural land into barren terrain. In the 1950s, the boom in package tourism showed promise as a new cash crop. But while the islands had the sunshine, warm climate, and ease of access from Europe needed for this new industry, they were missing a vital element: picture-postcard sandy beaches.

Cue planners on Tenerife, who concocted an audacious plan to make over one of the island’s exposed lava-rock beaches. They chose a stretch of coastline close to Santa Cruz and expropriated the avocado farms and other smallholdings. Earthmovers leveled the foreshore and intertidal zone, and they constructed a breakwater over a kilometer long. And then, from the Western Sahara on Africa’s northwest coast, they shipped in the pièce de résistance: 240,000 tonnes of sand.

By 1973, this gargantuan project, environmentally questionable from today’s viewpoint, was complete. As anticipated, tourists arrived. Unanticipated was what their presence gave to one of the world’s most endangered fish species—visibility. Maybe angelsharks always gathered here, but until recently, no one really knew.

Endangered Species photo
To entice tourists, developers on Tenerife in the Canary Islands created Playa de Las Teresitas, a popular beach for tourists, locals, and in the shallow waters, angelsharks. Photo by Mike Workman/Shutterstock

Along Playa de las Teresitas, rows and rows of tourists lounge on beach chairs under umbrellas or pad across soft sand to cool down in the water. The breeze creates tiny sapphire-tipped waves on the water’s surface, a magical cover for what lies beneath—an angelshark nursery.

Female angelsharks regularly migrate to these ideally sheltered waters to give birth to anywhere between eight and 25 live pups, who remain in the shallows for about a year. Feeding on cuttlefish and other small prey, they grow to around 50 centimeters, about the same length as a newborn baby. Then they disappear for years until they are mature. Where they go is a mystery.For centuries, angelsharks had been common along the Atlantic coast of North Africa and Europe, as well as the Mediterranean. The ancient Greeks fished them; Pliny the Elder described the use of their skin to polish wood and ivory. On the British Isles, they were called monkfish for their resemblance to a monk’s hooded robes. With the advent of industrial bottom trawling in the late 1800s, they were easily caught and became a common food fish. By the 1960s, aggressive fishing of angelsharks, coupled with their extremely low reproductive rate, led to a dramatic decline in their populations. Targeting them eventually became commercially unviable and the name monkfish was relegated to another species, the anglerfish.

But angelsharks were still by-catch in other fisheries, and by the early 1970s, as developers barged Saharan sand to Tenerife, the fish were pushed close to extinction in most parts of the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Endangered Species photo
Biologists on the Canary Islands only became aware of the islands’ robust population of angelsharks about a decade ago. Photo by Mike Sealey

In the European Union and the United Kingdom, it has become illegal to fish or retain angelsharks. If one is accidentally caught, fishers must return it alive to the sea. But the main threat to angelsharks remains the powerful bottom-trawling industry, which accounts for over 30 percent of fish landed in the European Union.

The story in the Canary Islands is slightly different. Michael Sealey, a marine biologist with the Angel Shark Project (ASP) in Tenerife, says that bottom trawling has never been as viable in the Canaries as in most of Europe and the Mediterranean. The seabed is mostly too deep, he explains, the underwater topography laced with jagged seamounts and reefs where fishing gear can get hung up. On top of that, the European Commission has halted all trawling in the Canaries since 2005.

But biologists only became aware about a decade ago that the Canaries host an angelshark population. Subsequently, in 2014, the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Museum Koenig Bonn, and Zoological Society of London collaborated to establish ASP. The project’s goal: to gather data on critical habitats, movement patterns, and reproductive biology of angelsharks, and work with local communities and officials to protect the fish. Life history information is crucial for developing effective conservation strategies and protecting valuable, if improbable, habitat—like Playa de las Teresitas.

But angelsharks are not the easiest of research subjects. They are masters of disguise, so spotting them is a challenge. They have a peculiar flattened shape and spend most of their time lying on the ocean bottom partially covered by sand. Their coloring—reddish- or greenish-brown scattered with small white spots—helps them blend into the seabed.

Endangered Species photo
Angelsharks mostly stay out of the way of swimmers at busy beaches, such as Playa de las Teresitas. Photo by Mike Sealey

Gathering data on such elusive animals, with low population densities spread over a huge area, is labor intensive. Help has come in the form of citizen science: everywhere in the Canary Islands, recreational divers and fishers are invited to make online reports of any sightings or accidental catches of angelsharks. Through an ASP initiative, dive operators conduct friendly competitions to see which company can record the most sightings, thereby increasing data collection, particularly from citizen scientists.

Rubén Martinez, a dive instructor in Lanzarote, the easternmost island of the Canaries, is a keen advocate of angelsharks and regularly volunteers for ASP surveys. He helps with procedures such as tagging the fish with either spaghetti tags—an easily attached plastic loop—or acoustic tags. Both are done on the spot without having to catch the fish or lift it out of the water. “We work in a team and practice beforehand,” Martinez says. After an angelshark has been spotted in the sand, the team places a mesh attached to a sturdy frame over the animal. They take a small sample of fin for DNA analysis and attach a tag to the base of the dorsal fin. The whole procedure, when done properly, takes less than a minute.

Endangered Species photo
A tagging program initiated by the Angel Shark Program in the Canary Islands has led to a wealth of data. Photo by Mike Sealey

Surveys have shown that other beaches in the Canary Islands are also potential nursery sites. Interestingly, most of them have been altered, like Teresitas, to make them more attractive to people. On Lanzarote, Playa Chica boasts another long sweep of imported sand. It’s a magnet for divers—as well as a spectacular and easily accessible site—so the number of sightings of mature angelsharks off this shoreline is one of highest in the whole archipelago. How do the sharks react to these shoals of wetsuited humans? Alba Esteban Pacheco, a biologist and former dive instructor with Euro Divers Lanzarote, admits that while there have been instances of divers getting too close to the sharks, most dive companies are sensitive in this regard and brief their clients well. They have little choice: in 2019, Spain introduced legislation in the Canaries that made disturbing the sharks or harming their habitat and breeding grounds a criminal act subject to large fines.

Pacheco is very clear that she keeps her dive clients at least the recommended one meter distance from any angelsharks they find hiding in the sand. “Also,” she says, “these days, with everyone videoing everything and posting it on social media, it’s hard for divers to step out of line.”

But is this enough? Eva Meyers, a cofounder of ASP, acknowledges that the diving community plays a crucial role in conservation of the species. But she adds that much more needs to be done to ensure the long-term survival of angelsharks in areas like Playa Chica.

Endangered Species photo
Angelsharks have become a magnet for recreational divers from around the world. Photo by Frank Schneider/imageBROKER/Alamy Stock Photo

A recovery plan ASP developed with local authorities is in the final stages. It will include measures such as signage along sensitive coastlines and establishing a code of conduct for divers throughout the Canaries.

Among international dive communities, the word is out about the chance to see mature angelsharks in the Canaries, and this is a growing part of the tourism sector. Indeed, shark diving all over the world is a boon to economies. It generates over US $24-million yearly in the Canaries. Globally, shark-diving tourism generates over $300-million yearly, and local communities benefit much more from shark diving than from shark fishing. In some cases, this has led to the creation of marine reserves, such as in Fiji, which help other marine species as well.

Many divers may now be cognizant of the fragility of the angelshark population, but what about all those people splashing about and swimming in the all-important nursery areas just off the beaches? Sealey thinks that human activity in the shallow nursery areas influences angelshark behavior. On busy beaches like Teresitas, juveniles normally retreat to deeper water during the day when lots of people are around. During the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions kept people off the beach. After almost two years of peace, angelsharks seemed unprepared for the people wading back into the water, as swimmers reported an unusual number of bites soon after restrictions lifted. The fish rely on their camouflage for protection, but when stepped on, they might lunge up from their hiding place and bite, though they usually swim away. Known locally as “gummings,” the bites are not serious and rarely draw blood. But the increase in gummings was an indication that the juveniles had adapted to remaining hidden in the shallows 24/7 to conserve energy. Post-pandemic, angelsharks have adapted again, by heading into deeper water earlier in the day and avoiding interactions with humans, as do many other urban wildlife species.

Back in the 1970s, did angelsharks also adapt to the Canaries’ headlong efforts to redesign itself for tourists? It’s intriguing to think that the massive, environmentally disruptive projects to remake beaches could have accidentally enhanced the habitat for one of the world’s rare fish species. But what’s clear is that after the breakwater was built and the sand arrived, people followed, and in the calm, shallow waters they began to see baby angelsharks. And unlike how many an association between humans and wildlife ends—in conflict and dead animals—this time it led to conservation.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Don’t feed ducks bread. Here’s what to give them instead. https://www.popsci.com/animals/what-to-feed-ducks/ Thu, 15 Jul 2021 01:03:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=380041
A male and a female mallard duck in some green grass by some bushes.
They look hungry. Nikolay Tchaouchev / Unsplash

Don't give crackers to the quackers.

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A male and a female mallard duck in some green grass by some bushes.
They look hungry. Nikolay Tchaouchev / Unsplash

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Countless movies, TV shows, and even comics depict the age-old tradition of feeding bread products to ducks at the park. But don’t be fooled: this stereotype is actually an unhealthy practice that could lead to malnourishment and other health problems for these epicurean waterfowl.

But if you’re an animal lover determined to feed your local park’s residents, there are several healthy alternatives. Before you go stock up on snacks, though, always make sure you’re allowed to feed the critters in question—some areas’ rules are more lenient than others.

What to feed ducks (and other waterfowl)

The best advice we can give about feeding ducks (or other types of park fowl like swans and geese) is to imitate the types of food they naturally eat in the ponds and fields they call home. This means vegetables and nutritious grains work well, while processed “human” foods do not. Even though bread is typically made from grains, the breadmaking process renders it very filling with a relatively low amount of nutrients, two factors that can lead to malnourished ducks. Instead, try to stick with snacks that haven’t been highly processed.

For vegetables, the most important consideration is making sure that the bits and pieces you offer are small enough for waterfowl to handle. Ducks and their relatives aren’t great at chewing—while their bills help break down food, they don’t have teeth, at least in the traditional sense. Cut salad greens, vegetable peels, nuts, grapes, and other produce into small pieces before you toss them to these birds.

[Related: Why do ducks have orange feet?]

A bag of frozen mixed peas, corn niblets, and carrot pieces is one of the best options for waterfowl: these veggies are nutritious, affordable, and small enough for ducks to eat whole. Grains like oats, rice, and seeds make good waterfowl chow for the same reason. Even better, many of these little morsels will float on your local pond, keeping them easily accessible to ducks. Big chunks of food that sink to the bottom aren’t as useful.

If you’re looking to get fancy, you can also drop a couple more dollars on a bag of specially formulated waterfowl food. These pellets, available online or at your local pet store, are typically fed to pet birds and farm animals. These bite-size bits may not float on water, though, so test a few handfuls near the water’s edge before you start a feeding frenzy. This designer food may be best served up on the banks.

Other tips for feeding ducks

No matter how eager they are for a human-provided snack, your local park’s resident fowl are almost certainly not going to go hungry without you. Most ducks are perfectly capable of foraging for insects, plant life, and other nutrition sources on their own. That means you don’t need to feel bad if some of them miss out on the feast. In fact, overfeeding waterfowl can cause a host of problems, from teaching them to rely on human handouts to throwing off their natural nutritional balance. When in doubt, it’s better to stop feeding the birds sooner than you’d like than it is to feed them too much.

If you suspect a particular duck, goose, or swan may be unable to feed itself after you leave, it’s time to call in professional help. Waterfowl that live in parks are susceptible to a host of dangers from the human world, ranging from vehicle strikes to lead poisoning. Feeding them may be a temporary kindness, but it’s not a sustainable solution. If you see a bird having difficulty moving around or visibly in distress, contact your local wildlife specialists right away.

What to leave at home

If you grew up feeding bread to ducks at the park, don’t worry—it didn’t kill them. Bread is a lot like candy: it tastes good and provides some short-term energy, but it doesn’t contain many nutrients and too much of it can lead to poor health. It’s best to avoid these other food groups, too, as some are not safe to feed ducks and other waterfowl:

  • Bread products like stale donuts, crackers, and breadcrumbs—these simply aren’t healthy.
  • Any dairy products like cheese cubes or ice cream—ducks cannot digest these properly.
  • Any plants or foods from the nightshade family—this includes eggplants, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and some types of flowers and foliage. Parts of these plants can be highly toxic to ducks.
  • Salty or sugary snacks—stay away from all junk food and highly processed foods.
  • Citrus fruits or spinach—these foods can hinder calcium absorption in ducks and may affect the health of their eggs.
  • Any spoiled foods—mold can be poisonous and may also damage the surrounding environment.
  • Any food packaging or non-edible items—litter not only ruins the appearance of your park, but it can also harm the animals who call it home. Be sure to properly dispose of everything you bring with you to keep your feathered friends safe and happy.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on July 14, 2021.

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This 500-pound Australian marsupial had feet made for walkin’ https://www.popsci.com/environment/marsupial-australia-foot-skeleton/ Wed, 31 May 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=544472
Reassembled partial skeleton Ambulator keanei with silhouette demonstrating advanced adaptations for quadrupedal, graviportal walking.
Reassembled partial skeleton Ambulator keanei with silhouette demonstrating advanced adaptations for quadrupedal, graviportal walking. Flinders University

There's nothing quite like the distant wombat relative on the planet today.

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Reassembled partial skeleton Ambulator keanei with silhouette demonstrating advanced adaptations for quadrupedal, graviportal walking.
Reassembled partial skeleton Ambulator keanei with silhouette demonstrating advanced adaptations for quadrupedal, graviportal walking. Flinders University

Over three million years ago, a 500-plus pound marsupial roamed Australia, winning the prize of the continent’s first long-distance walking champion. In a study published May 31 in the Journal of Royal Society Open Science, a team of scientists described the discovery of this new genus using advanced 3D scans and the partial remains of a 3.5 million year old specimen. 

Most earlier studies on this group have focused on its skull since other skeletal remains are rare in Australia’s fossil record. The skeleton described in this new study, found at Kalamurina Station in southern Australia in 2017, is special since it is the first that was found with associated soft tissue structures. The authors used 3D-scanning to compare the partial skeleton with other diprotodontid material housed in collections all over the world. A hard concretion that formed shortly after the animal died encased its foot, and CT scans revealed the soft tissue impressions on the outline of its footpad.

[Related: Giant wombats the size of small cars once roamed Australia.]

The new genus Ambulator, meaning “walker” or “wanderer,” had four giant legs which would have helped it roam long distances in search of food and water compared to its earlier relatives. It belongs to the Diprotodontidae family, an extinct family of big, four-legged, herbivorous marsupials that lived in New Guinea and Australia. The largest species was Diprotodon optatum, which was about the size of a car and weighed almost 6,000 pounds. Diprotodontids were an integral part of the region’s ecosystem before going extinct about 40,000 years ago. 

“Diprotodontids are distantly related to wombats – the same distance as kangaroos are to possums – so unfortunately there is nothing quite like them today. As a result, paleontologists have had a hard time reconstructing their biology,” study author and Flinders University PhD student Jacob van Zoelen said in a statement

Ambulator keanei lived during the Pliocene era when Australia saw an increase in grasslands and open habitats become more dry. To have enough to eat and drink, diprotodontids likely had to travel great distances. 

“We don’t often think of walking as a special skill but when you’re big any movement can be energetically costly so efficiency is key,” said van Zoelen. “Most large herbivores today such as elephants and rhinoceroses are digitigrade, meaning they walk on the tips of their toes with their heel not touching the ground.  “

Diprotodontids are plantigrade animals, which means that their heel-bone makes contact with the ground as they walk. This is similar to the way humans walk and helps distribute the weight while walking, but does use more energy when running. According to van Zoelen, diprotodontids also have extreme plantigrady in their hands. The bone of the wrist is modified into a secondary heel and this “heeled hand” may have made early reconstructions of the animal look a little bit bizarre.

“Development of the wrist and ankle for weight-bearing meant that the digits became essentially functionless and likely did not make contact with the ground while walking.” said van Zoelen. “This may be why no finger or toe impressions are observed in the trackways of diprotodontids.”

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Why it’s time to stop naming new species after people https://www.popsci.com/environment/naming-new-species-historical-figures/ Wed, 31 May 2023 01:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=544341
Anophthalmus hitleri, a cave beetle named after Adolf Hitler, has become a target for some collectors.
Anophthalmus hitleri, a cave beetle named after Adolf Hitler, has become a target for some collectors. London's Natural History Museum/Flickr

An international team of scientists wants to stop using eponyms. But the naming authorities won’t budge.

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Anophthalmus hitleri, a cave beetle named after Adolf Hitler, has become a target for some collectors.
Anophthalmus hitleri, a cave beetle named after Adolf Hitler, has become a target for some collectors. London's Natural History Museum/Flickr

This article was originally published on Undark.

George Washington’s palm tree. Thomas Jefferson’s sloth. Edward Harris’s hawk. Quite a few species come with a person’s name attached to them. Sometimes these names — formally known as eponyms — memorialize the original collector. Sometimes it’s a scientist’s family member, a benefactor or government leader, a colleague, or even a celebrity. According to one official estimate, eponyms make up around 20 percent of all animal names in use.

Many species got their eponyms during the early days of scientific collecting, which was partially fueled by the broader colonization programs of European powers throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Over the past few years, however, that history has come under increased scrutiny. In 2020, for instance, amid the protests over the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the push to remove Confederate monuments, some ornithologists began questioning whether birds named for Confederates and slaveholders should be retitled.

Now, an international group of researchers argues that it’s time to move away from eponyms entirely. “In short, we believe that naming species in honour of real people is unnecessary and objectively difficult to justify,” the authors wrote in a recent paper in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. “The Earth’s biodiversity is part of a global heritage that should not be trivialized by association with any single human individual, whatever their perceived worth.”

The authors of the paper are wading into an ongoing and contentious debate — and the scientific institutions responsible for approving new species names aren’t budging.

The goal of naming species — or nomenclature — is to make sure scientific names are uniform across different fields and research labs, said Luis Ceríaco, a commissioner with the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, which controls the naming of animal species. “It’s a space to promote stability and promote universality on the use of names,” Ceríaco added. “What we want is to have a set of rules that allow people to really know what they are talking about when referring to species.”

For this reason, the ICZN and its partner organization, The International Association of Plant Taxonomy, follow established codes that prioritize older names, and only alter them for reasons of science and stability.

Proposals to rename species due to social or political concerns have attracted both criticism and support. In February 2023, a group of ICZN commissioners — including Ceríaco — put out a paper against renaming species on ethical grounds. Deciding which eponyms should be replaced due to “perceived offensiveness” isn’t in the code’s remit, they wrote. “Owing to the inherently subjective nature of making such assessments, it would be inappropriate for the Commission to assert judgments on such matters of morality, because there are no specific parameters to determine thresholds for offensiveness of a scientific name to a given community or individual, either in the present day or in the future.”

Other scientists, however, have been happy to step into the gap.


The push to reassess problematic species names isn’t new. Consider the case of Anophthalmus hitleri, a cave beetle named after Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, the eponym of which — in addition to honoring a historical genocidaire — has made the insect a target for some collectors. Yet despite calls to drop the eponym, the species has not been renamed by the ICZN. “The logic to date in preserving ‘hitleri’ is that the name per se is not offensive,” entomologist May Berenbaum noted in a 2010 issue of American Entomologist. “Frankly, though, a scientific name that sentences a species to extinction at the hands of fanatical Fascist memorabilia collectors causes considerable offense, at least to me.”

More recently, in 2015, the Rhodes Must Fall movement — a reference to Cecil Rhodes, the former prime minister of British colonial South Africa — launched discussions in the botanical sciences about replacing “culturally offensive and inappropriate names,” which grew alongside similar debates in ornithology around the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

For some people, the stakes of such decisions can feel high. “Naming and language have power. The way that you use language tells people whether they belong or not,” Earyn McGee, a conservation biologist and organizer of Black Birders Week, told Undark in 2020. The refusal to change species names, she said, “tells Black people and other people of color that they don’t matter, that they’re not important.”

Such movements have, in turn, led some taxonomists to argue that renaming species injects political considerations into taxonomy, opening up thorny questions. After all, where should scientists draw lines between good actors and bad ones? (Should species named after Queen Victoria be replaced? What about plant names commemorating American slaveholders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?)

“We have a code of ethics,” Ceríaco said, “and the ethics part says that no one should erect a new name knowingly that’s going to cause offense.” However, he added, the ICZN emphasizes the freedom of authors to name species as they see fit, so they also don’t revise names that break their ethics code. “It’s always on the responsibility of the author. We strongly suggest for people to be sure that what they’re going to erect is not going to cause offense to anyone.”

The alternative, Ceríaco said, would be for the ICZN to have to adjudicate which names are acceptable, opening “a pandora’s box.” Allowing such revisions at all would affect the work of global researchers, conservationists, and others who depend on a stable taxonomic framework. “We’re not being dismissive toward the arguments that the names are offensive,” he said. But, he added, the consequences of changing the names would be trickier than keeping them.

Not all researchers were convinced by the ICZN’s argument. Some of them, like Patrícia Guedes — a biologist with the CIBIO Research Center in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources — banded together to in March 2023, pointing out that eponyms were effectively more trouble than they were worth. Part of the issue with eponyms, they noted, was that the practice is inextricably bound up with science’s colonial history: Many past researchers came from colonizing European nations, and as a result many species ended up named after White, male, upper-class Europeans. In Africa alone, the researchers found, 1,565 species of birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals — a quarter of the continent’s native vertebrates — are eponyms, the majority of which honored “colonizers or people of colonial descent.”

“A name that is considered innocuous by some may be perceived as offensive by others, and names that were once considered inoffensive are not necessarily viewed in the same way in a post-colonial world,” the authors wrote. Overturning all prior eponyms would be ethically sound but practically unfeasible, they conceded. Still, the authors argued that the ICZN could put taxonomists of the species’ native region in charge of renaming proposals.

Guedes told Undark that it would be neater — and easier — to tighten the ICZN code’s rules to restrict eponyms going forward. As long as organisms are named after people, she said, such arguments about which names are appropriate will continue: “I’m sure there are other ways of honoring people who’ve contributed to science that’s not attaching their name to another living being.”


Guedes and her colleagues face an uphill battle: Many taxonomists like eponyms. “I think it’s positive in many, many cases,” Ceríaco said. He himself has described around 40 species, some of them eponyms, including a species of viper named after James Hetfield from Metallica. (This is a bit of tradition in taxonomy: Consider Taylor Swift’s millipede, or Leonardo DiCaprio’s snake.) Such names are a chance to get communities that generally don’t pay attention to such discoveries involved, he said. Eponyms also give researchers the chance to name species after scientists from the countries in which they were found, he added, such as an Angolan gecko that honors local scientist Francisco M. P. Gonçalves.

“There are certainly unfortunate eponyms out there,” Stephen Heard, an ecologist and author of “Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider,” a book about eponyms, wrote to Undark in a Twitter message. “There are also wonderful ones that bring attention to underrecognized figures in science, including Indigenous people, women, and more.”

It’s an honor for a researcher to have a species named after them, said Brian Sidlauskas, an ichthyologist at Oregon State University. (He would know: There’s an Amazonian fish with his name on it.) But while he’s not interested in barring their use, he does think the ICZN could create a process for ditching problematic names — perhaps through a panel of experts tasked with weighing in on proposed name changes. “There really are some names in history that genuinely are really offensive, so having some mechanism for changing those is a good idea,” he said — a position other researchers have staked out as well.

In addition, the ICZN’s stance against making changes for ethical reasons is a “classic slippery slope argument,” Sidlauskas said. “It’s clear that they don’t want to the responsibility for doing so. But if not them, then who has the responsibility and ability?”

Others argue that naming practices should change on a community level, regardless of what the ICZN does. “Going forward I think that White Europeans should not be naming species from countries that are not their own after other White Europeans,” said Laura Jennings, a botanist at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. While she doesn’t feel it’s for her to tell colleagues how to name species in their own country, she’d decline her own eponym. “My preference is to name species after a characteristic of the plant, a place name, or a name in a local language,” she added. “Something that links the plant to its native habitat.”

The broader community discussion isn’t going anywhere. The ICZN is currently working on the 5th edition of its formal code, Ceríaco said, which will be delivered for comment and debate by the community before it’s ratified in the next year or two. That’s part of the reason he and his colleagues made their position clear earlier this year, he said — to foster debate.

It’s a goal that Guedes’ team shares. “I don’t think the real change is going to happen anytime soon. But what we wanted to do was create a space for discussion,” she said.

“And I think we’re achieving that,” she added.


Asher Elbein is a writer based in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in The Oxford American, the Texas Observer, and The Bitter Southerner.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Wildlife photo

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Google engineers used real dogs to develop an agility course for robots https://www.popsci.com/technology/google-barkour-robot-dog-agility/ Tue, 30 May 2023 23:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=544460
Beagle flying over an obstacle hurdle
A robot dog 'Barkour' course may provide a new industry standard for four-legged machines. Deposit Photos

Researchers hope the 'Barkour' challenge can become an industry benchmark.

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Beagle flying over an obstacle hurdle
A robot dog 'Barkour' course may provide a new industry standard for four-legged machines. Deposit Photos

It feels like nearly every week or so, someone’s quadrupedal robot gains yet another impressive (occasionally terrifying) ability or trick. But as cool as a Boston Dynamics Spot bot’s new capability may be, it’s hard to reliably compare newly developed talents to others when there still aren’t any industry standard metrics. 

Knowing this, a team of research scientists at Google are aiming to streamline evaluations through their new system that’s as ingenious as it is obvious: robot obstacle courses akin to dog agility competitions. It’s time to stretch those robotic limbs and ready the next generation of four-legged machines for Barkour.

[Related: This robot dog learned a new trick—balancing like a cat.]

“[W]hile researchers have enabled robots to hike or jump over some obstacles, there is still no generally accepted benchmark that comprehensively measures robot agility or mobility,” the team explained in a blog post published last week. “In contrast, benchmarks are driving forces behind the development of machine learning, such as ImageNet for computer vision, and OpenAI Gym for reinforcement learning (RL).” As such, “Barkour: Benchmarking Animal-level Agility with Quadruped Robots” aims to rectify that missing piece of research.

Illustrated side-by-side of concept and real robot agility course.
Actual dogs can complete the Barkour course in about 10 seconds, but robots need about double that. CREDIT: Google Research

In simple terms, the Barkour agility course is nearly identical to many dog courses, albeit much more compact at 5-by-5 meters to allow for easy setup in labs. The current standard version includes four unique obstacles—a line of poles to weave between, an A-frame structure to climb up and down, a 0.5m broad jump, and finally, a step up onto an end table.

To make sure the Barkour setup was fair to robots mimicking dogs, the team first offered up the space to actual canines—in this case, a small group of “dooglers,” aka Google employees’ own four-legged friends. According to the team, small dogs managed to complete the course in around 10 seconds, while robots usually take about double that time.

[Related: Dogs can understand more complex words than we thought.]

Scoring occurs between 0 and 1 for each obstacle, and is based on target times set for small dogs in novice agility competitions (around 1.7m/s). In all, each quadrupedal robot must complete all five challenges, but is given penalties for failing, skipping stations, or maneuvering too slowly through the course.

“We believe that developing a benchmark for legged robotics is an important first step in quantifying progress toward animal-level agility,” explained the team, adding that, moving forward, the Barkour system potentially offers industry researchers an “easily customizable” benchmark.

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Snorkeler pries crocodile’s jaws off his head to survive attack https://www.popsci.com/environment/australia-crocodile-attack-jaws/ Tue, 30 May 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=544388
A saltwater crocodile with its mouth wide open.
"Salties" can grow up to 19 feet long and weigh up to 2,000 pounds. Deposit Photos

Surfer and diver Marcus McGowan said he was 'simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time.'

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A saltwater crocodile with its mouth wide open.
"Salties" can grow up to 19 feet long and weigh up to 2,000 pounds. Deposit Photos

On May 27, an Australian man snorkeling off of the coast of North Queensland survived an attack from a saltwater crocodile—by prying the reptile’s jaws off of its head. Australia’s reptilian saltwater giants have the highest bite force of any animal on Earth at 3,700 pounds.

McGowan was snorkeling with his wife and some friends near the Charles Hardy Islands, about 25 miles off the coast of Cape York on the day of the attack.

[Related: Saltwater crocodiles are eating a lot of feral hogs in Australia.]

“I was attacked from behind by a saltwater crocodile which got its jaws around my head. I thought it was a shark but when I reached up I realized it was a crocodile. I was able to lever its jaws open just far enough to get my head out,” McGowan said in a statement released by the Queensland Government’s hospital service.

According to McGowan, the crocodile attempted to attack a second time, but he managed to push it away with his right hand that had already been bitten by the reptile. McGowan was transported to Haggerstone Island about 45 minutes away, before going to Cairns Hospital. He suffered cuts and puncture wounds to his head and hands and is currently recovering from his injuries.

The area surrounding Haggerstone Island is known as “croc country,” according to the Queensland’s Department of Environment and Science. The department urges visitors to practice “crocwise behavior,” such as staying away from the water’s edge, properly disposing food, and keeping pets on a leash. The department warned that crocodiles could be in all of the waterways in the region and that people  in smaller vessels like kayaks, standing close to the water’s edge, or  wading while fishing are at a greater risk of a croc attack. Queensland’s science department is investigating this most recent incident, stressing the importance of reporting crocodile sightings and incidents in a timely manner.

There have been at least 44 occasions of crocodile attacks on humans in the area since 1985. In February, a non-fatal attack occurred off the Cape York Peninsula, where another man was able to free himself from the jaws of a crocodile. 

[Related: This small crocodile’s giant ancestors likely preyed on early humans.]

Billy Collett, the operations manager at Australia Reptile Park told The Guardian that those who escape crocodile attacks usually frighten the reptiles away. “Crocodiles are the hardest-biting animal on the planet. But when people do fight back, they seem to let go,” he said. “[McGowan] probably scared the croc which realized it grabbed something too big to handle.”

According to the Australia Zoo, the home of famed crocodile advocate Steve Irwin, saltwater crocodiles can grow up to 19 feet long and weigh up to 2,000 pounds. They can swim up over 500 miles per day, which can make them difficult to track. Locals affectionately call the reptiles “salties” and they are more commonly found in Australia’s warmer northern regions. Australia’s federal government estimates that there are about 100,000 saltwater crocodiles in the northern parts of the country.

“I live on the Gold Coast and am a keen surfer and diver, and understand that when you enter the marine environment, you are entering territory that belongs to potentially dangerous animals, such as sharks and crocodiles,” McGowan said in his statement.“I was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time.” 

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5 ways to ensure your cat actually likes playtime https://www.popsci.com/diy/cat-play-tips/ Tue, 30 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=544187
Tabby cat on hardwood floors playing with a fabric toy resembling a mouse
Good kitties deserve some prey at the end of every play session. cottonbro studio / Pexels

These science tips can help you find and make toys your furry friend will enjoy.

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Tabby cat on hardwood floors playing with a fabric toy resembling a mouse
Good kitties deserve some prey at the end of every play session. cottonbro studio / Pexels

Play is crucial for the social, physical, and cognitive development of many species, and even though cats are largely solitary creatures, they still need plenty of it. But people who are new to felines might not know what playtime actually looks like for these furry fellows.

Learning how to keep your cat properly stimulated is an essential part of sharing your home with them, and science can provide a couple of clues on where to start. Everyone in your household will benefit from it.

Your cat is a natural-born killer

“​​Let’s keep in mind one thing: playing for cats is very similar to predation,” says Carlo Siracusa, cat owner and associate professor of clinical behavioral medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. 

[Related: Outdoor cats are deadly—and not just for birds and squirrels]

He explains that despite their size and cuteness, cats are deadly hunters who would naturally kill 15 to 20 prey in a day. That’s why it’s important to stimulate them with activities that mimic predation.

Use toys like a string wand with a fake mouse three to four times a day in brief intervals, Siracusa says, and make sure to end every play session by letting your cat put something in their mouth. It will be a satisfying outcome for all their efforts. 

Offer predatory puzzles 

An important lesson all predators learn is figuring out how to get prey out of their burrows. This process, just like putting a puzzle together, stimulates your cat’s brain and keeps them happy and healthy. Siracusa recommends toys like these mice-shaped treat dispensers you can hide around the house. 

You can achieve a similar puzzle-solving effect by cutting out holes in an old plastic container, or a shoe or cardboard box, and filling it with toys. Cats can then reach in and figure out how to get their treats out through the openings. 

Watch TV and play videogames with your cat

Your cat also likes their screen time, so make sure you give it to them. It doesn’t need to be special-made cat TV: online videos showing birds flying around a forest can prove quite entertaining. 

If you have a tablet, there are apps specially designed for cats that you can download in lieu of a physical toy. For example, Cat Fishing 2 (available for Android and iOS) will turn the screen on your device into a pond with one, two or three fish that will disappear as your cat taps them with their paws. There are many apps out there that do the same with mice and birds if the fish aren’t alluring enough.

Trying and failing to catch intangible prey, like fish in a digital pond or a bright red dot on the wall, can be furr-straiting for your kitten, so be sure to reward them with a few treats or some wet food on a spoon.

Give your cat some safe space to climb on

Cats sometimes jump up on the counter, knocking off potentially delicate items as they do so. But try not to be mad—it’s their natural instinct. 

“Cats tend to go high because they are prey, and observing the world from a vantage point makes them feel safer,” Siracusa explains. The floor of a busy household also brings with it the possibility of being stepped on, so allowing cats some height can be comforting. A cat tree, a cheap bookshelf, or a similarly safe place to perch will do the job. 

And if even after getting them their own observation deck your chronic climber keeps breaking your expensive porcelain collectibles, don’t punish them. It sure must be annoying to say goodbye to every fragile belonging you own, but Siracusa warns against disciplining your cat for something that’s natural to them—it can lead to aggressive behavior toward you.

You have a cat toy store right at home

Experienced cat owners know that nearly anything can be a toy for their fur babies. From cardboard boxes or crumpled papers, felines can find fun in the most mundane objects. So before you spend your paycheck at the pet store, here are some items that your cat will love and you probably already have at home. 

Toilet paper rolls

Before throwing them into the recycling bin, let your cat play with your old used-up toilet paper rolls. You can decorate them with large pom poms to make them interesting, but make sure they’re big enough so that your feline friend can’t swallow them.

Knotted up t-shirts

Cut up an old t-shirt into squares and tie a knot in the middle of each one to make them look like bowties. Throw them around and watch your cat chase them, or hide them in a box with holes so they can try to get them out. To make things more interesting, you can also pack the fabric with some catnip before knotting it.

Crumpled paper and ping-pong balls

Place crumpled paper or ping-pong balls in a shoebox with holes to make a puzzle toy. If you want, you can also throw them around the house and let your cat chase them down.

Think like a cat

To understand how to best interact with your cat, remember that they have a unique personality, and like to socialize on their own terms. 

“​​I would remind people that cats are what we call a ‘non-obligate’ social species,” says Siracusa. This means they can have a social life and share it with humans and other animals, but they’ve only evolved to learn how to do so recently. Their ancestors were solitary creatures, he explains. 

[Related: We’re surprisingly bad at reading cats’ facial expressions]

For a cat, an ideal environment is one where there’s always the option to engage socially and playfully, but where they can also abstain if they want to. Attempting to force a cat to play or preventing this type of activity when needed, may lead to adverse behavior, such as seclusion and aggression.

Keep you and your cat safe

Just as you would do with dogs and babies, don’t give your cats anything they could choke on. Swallowing something they shouldn’t could lead them to unnecessary surgery or even death. 

“If your cat has the tendency to chew on fabric or any other type of fiber or strings, then keep this stuff out of sight,” Siracusa says. That means behind closed doors. Remember—cats can jump. 

Contrary to popular belief, loose strings and yarn can also be dangerous to cats, especially kittens: they can get caught in it or potentially ingest it and asphyxiate. Keep yarn wrapped up tightly when using it as a cat toy, and if your furry buddy is on the younger side, always keep an eye on them during playtime.

But your cat is not the only one you should be careful with. Don’t use your body as a toy when playing with cats. It goes without saying that their sharp claws and teeth can scratch your skin, and those cuts mixed with cat saliva can lead to infection. 

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Termite mounds may one day inspire ‘living, breathing’ architecture https://www.popsci.com/technology/termites-green-architecture/ Mon, 29 May 2023 19:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=544116
Large termite mound in the African Savannah
Termites could soon help build buildings instead of destroy them. Deposit Photos

Termites can be a nuisance to humans, but their homes may teach us a thing or two about sustainability.

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Large termite mound in the African Savannah
Termites could soon help build buildings instead of destroy them. Deposit Photos

Termites are often thought to be structural pests, but two researchers have taken a slightly contrarian viewpoint. As detailed in a new paper recently published in Frontiers in Materials, David Andréen of Lund University and Rupert Soar of Nottingham Trent University studied termites’ tens of millions of years of architectural experience exhibited within their massive mounds. According to the duo’s findings, the insects’ abilities could inspire a new generation of green, energy efficient architecture.

Termites are responsible for building the tallest biological structures in the world, with the biggest mound ever recorded measuring an astounding 42-feet-high. These insects aren’t randomly building out their homes, however—in fact, the structures are meticulously designed to make the most of the environment around them. Termite mounds in Namibia, for example, rely on intricate, interconnected tunnels known as an “egress complex.” As explained in Frontiers’ announcement, these mounds’ complexes grow northward during the November-to-April rainy season in order to be directly exposed to the midday sun. Throughout the rest of the year, however, termites block these egress tunnels, thus regulating ventilation and moisture levels depending on the season.

To better study the architectural intricacies, Andréen and Soar created a 3D-printed copy of an egress complex fragment. They then used a speaker to simulate winds by sending oscillating amounts of CO2-air mixture through the model while tracking mass transference rates. Turbulence within the mound depended on the frequency of oscillation, which subsequently moved excess moisture and respiratory gasses away from the inner mound.

[Related: Termites work through wood faster when it’s hotter out.]

From there, the team created a series of 2D models of the egress complex. After driving an oscillating amount of water through these lattice-like tunnels via an electromotor, Andréen and Soar found that the machine only needed to move air a few millimeters back-and-forth to force the water throughout the entire model. The researchers discovered termites only need small amounts of wind power to ventilate their mounds’ egress complex.

The researchers believe integrating the egress complex design into future buildings’ walls could create promising green architecture threaded with tiny air passageways. This could hypothetically be accomplished via technology such as powder bed printers alongside low-energy sensors and actuators to move air throughout the structures.

“When ventilating a building, you want to preserve the delicate balance of temperature and humidity created inside, without impeding the movement of stale air outwards and fresh air inwards,” explained Soar, adding the egress complex is “an example of a complicated structure that could solve multiple problems simultaneously: keeping comfort inside our homes, while regulating the flow of respiratory gasses and moisture through the building envelope,” with minimal to no A/C necessary. Once realized, the team believes society may soon see the introduction of “true living, breathing” buildings.

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Sloth schedules are surprisingly flexible https://www.popsci.com/environment/sloth-environment-ecology-behavior/ Mon, 29 May 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=543546
A sloth hangs in a tree in Costa Rica. The mammals have the slowest digestive system of any animal on Earth. It can take sloths two weeks to digest an entire meal, and they sleep about 20 hours a day to conserve energy.
Sloths the slowest digestive system of any animal on Earth. It can take the mammals two weeks to digest an entire meal, and they sleep about 20 hours a day to conserve energy. Deposit Photos

These cryptic critters use lack of activity to their advantage.

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A sloth hangs in a tree in Costa Rica. The mammals have the slowest digestive system of any animal on Earth. It can take sloths two weeks to digest an entire meal, and they sleep about 20 hours a day to conserve energy.
Sloths the slowest digestive system of any animal on Earth. It can take the mammals two weeks to digest an entire meal, and they sleep about 20 hours a day to conserve energy. Deposit Photos

As they creep through tropical environments appearing not to have a care in the world, sloths give off some of the chillest vibes in the animal kingdom. This relaxed and elusive nature does make studying sloths a bit difficult, but a study published May 29 in the journal PeerJ Life & Environment is shedding some new light on activity patterns and behaviors adaptations of two sloth species.

[Related: Sloths aren’t the picky eaters we thought they were.]

The team looked at Bradypus variegatus and Choloepus hoffmanni, two sloth species that live in the lowland rainforests of Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. Costa Rica is home to six species of sloths, who have the slowest digestive system of any animal on Earth. It can take the mammals two weeks to digest an entire meal, and they sleep about 20 hours a day to conserve energy. 

Using micro data loggers, the team continuously monitored the behavior of both three-toed sloths (Bradypus) and two-toed sloths (Choloepus) for periods ranging from days to weeks. These recordings enabled the team to explore how fluctuating environmental influences sloth activity and how that correlates with their uniquely chill and low-energy lifestyle. 

A sloth from the study wearing a micro data logger
A sloth from the study wearing a micro data logger. CREDIT: The Sloth Conservation Foundation.

Choloepus sloths are cathemeral, meaning that they have irregular variable periods of activity throughout a 24-hour cycle. Cathemeral behavior allows them to take advantage of better environmental conditions while minimizing the risk of predation. 

The study also observed a large amount of variability in activity levels between the animals and also within individual sloths. This flexibility suggests that the animals have developed diverse strategies to adapt to their surroundings, which enhances their chances of survival when the environment fluctuates. 

The team initially expected that daily temperatures, which can hit the mid-90s, would influence sloth activity, but their observations did not support that initial hypothesis. However, Bradypus sloths did increase their night time activity on colder nights and the nights that followed colder days. The authors believe that this indicates a potential correlation between sloth behavior and temperature variations.

[Related: Our bravest ancestors may have hunted giant sloths.]

While this study adds more understanding to sloth ecology, it also highlights the importance of preserving and protecting tropical rainforests and their unique inhabitants. According to Global Forest Watch, Costa Rica lost about 2.4 percent of its forest cover between 2000 and 2020, but the country has gained international recognition for its efforts to mitigate climate change and promote animal welfare.

“Understanding the drivers of sloth activity and their ability to withstand environmental fluctuations is of growing importance for the development of effective conservation measures, particularly when we consider the vulnerability of tropical ecosystems to climate change and the escalating impacts of anthropogenic activities in South and Central America,” the team wrote in the paper.

As these tropical ecosystems become more vulnerable due to human-made climate change, understanding wildlife patterns are crucial for conservation methods. While long-term observational research is a challenge, this study could pave the way for more studies on this cryptic and elusive species. 

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Zoo’s bird-feeder-like device encourages gorillas to forage for snacks https://www.popsci.com/technology/forage-feeder-gorillas/ Fri, 26 May 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=544042
Young gorilla eating plant leaves in tree
Recreating gorillas' naturally foraging environments could improve their mental wellbeing and diet. Adam Thompson/Zoo ATL

An affordable, open-source device spreads the apes' meals across their enclosure to promote a more natural foraging environment.

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Young gorilla eating plant leaves in tree
Recreating gorillas' naturally foraging environments could improve their mental wellbeing and diet. Adam Thompson/Zoo ATL

Apart from being naturally cliquey, gorillas are born foragers. In the wild, the great apes are regularly on the move in search of fruits, vegetables, and bamboo shoots; a habit that can become difficult to recreate when living within a zoo setting. At Zoo Atlanta, for example, human workers generally provided gorillas with their meals at certain scheduled times and locations.  But an affordable new device could provide a much more naturalistic feeding regime for the apes—once they get used to it.

[Related: Gorillas can be cliquey, too. Here’s what that says about our own social lives.]

Recently, a team of mechanical engineering students and alumni at Georgia Tech began developing and testing ForageFeeder, a $400 machine partly inspired by deer feeders that can disperse gorillas’ their meals at random intervals and locations throughout the day. Suspended about 15 feet above the ground, ForageFeeder drops food such as carrots, sweet potatoes, and turnips from a bucket into a tray, after which time a rotor shoots the snacks in a circular motion as far as 30 feet away from the machine.

Recreating animals’ natural habitats and environments are crucial to ensuring zoo residents’ psychological and physical wellbeing, while also encouraging exercise and mental stimulation. Much like modern humans, zoo animals frequently deal with obesity due to a lack of activity. Tools and techniques such as the ForageFeeder not only promote Zoo Atlanta gorillas’ movement, but better simulate their natural foraging world.

Zookeepers at Zoo Atlanta have utilized the ForageFeeder on-and-off in their gorilla enclosure since last August. Although the primates are now largely used to its appearance, it wasn’t always the case. A video showcasing the gorillas’ first encounter with ForageFeeder depicts pretty much what one might expect—that is to say, some extremely befuddled apes. Over time, however, Zoo Atlanta’s residents have grown more used to the device.

“I’m confident we’re going to see statistical data that confirms what we’re already seeing: more foraging behavior,” Josh Meyerchick, senior keeper of primates at Zoo Atlanta and one of the research paper’s co-authors, said earlier this month.

[Related: Zoo animals are getting COVID vaccines made specially for them.]

That said, the team behind ForageFeeder aren’t waiting for gorillas to get with the program. Plans for the machine are currently open source online, and easily modifiable to adapt for countless other animal species’ diets, feeding times, and other particularities. ForageFeeder’s makers have already even modified their creation to serve Zoo Atlanta’s Angolan colobus monkey population.

“I find the zoo projects very interesting because your intended audience can’t provide any feedback,” says Magie Zhang, a project collaborator and recent mechanical engineering graduate. “If the device stops working, the animal doesn’t tell you. If they rip it apart, you can’t tell them to stop. It’s good to anticipate the problems of a design and figure out its solutions before it’s sent into the real world.”

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Move over, bees: The lowly weevil is a power pollinator https://www.popsci.com/environment/weevil-beetle-pollination/ Fri, 26 May 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=543960
The weevil Anchylorhynchus trapezicollis is the main pollinator of South American palm Syagrus coronata. Here, the weevil is seen on a female flower, touching the receptive parts and leaving pollen grains in the process.
The weevil Anchylorhynchus trapezicollis is the main pollinator of South American palm Syagrus coronata. Here, the weevil is seen on a female flower, touching the receptive parts and leaving pollen grains in the process. Bruno de Medeiros

The long-snouted beetle deserves more buzz for their pollination skills.

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The weevil Anchylorhynchus trapezicollis is the main pollinator of South American palm Syagrus coronata. Here, the weevil is seen on a female flower, touching the receptive parts and leaving pollen grains in the process.
The weevil Anchylorhynchus trapezicollis is the main pollinator of South American palm Syagrus coronata. Here, the weevil is seen on a female flower, touching the receptive parts and leaving pollen grains in the process. Bruno de Medeiros

When it comes to the critical process of pollination, butterflies and especially bees are typically the most lauded participants. These pollinators fly from flower to flower to feed and fertilize plants by spreading pollen around. But, these fluttery creatures are far from the only species that help flowers reproduce and bloom. It turns out that some of nature’s most unsung and diverse pollinators are a type of long-snouted beetles called weevils.

[Related: Build a garden that’ll have pollinators buzzin’.]

A study published May 25 in the journal Peer Community in Ecology wiggles into the world of weevils, including some who spend their entire lifecycle in tandem with a specific plant they help pollinate. 

“Even people who work on pollination don’t usually consider weevils as one of the main pollinators, and people who work on weevils don’t usually consider pollination as something relevant to the group,” study co-author and assistant curator of insects at the Field Museum in Chicago said in a statement. “There are lots of important things that people are missing because of preconceptions.”

The quarter-of-an-inch long  weevils can be considered pests, especially when found munching on pasta and flour in pantries. Weevils used to find their way into the biscuits on Nineteenth Century ships that even highly ranked officers ate, as depicted in the 2003 seafaring film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. They can be so destructive that from 1829 to 1920, boll weevils completely disrupted the cotton economy in the South as they fed on cotton buds. 

Despite this less than stellar reputation, the insects are still beneficial to many of the world’s plant species. 

Scientists have identified roughly 400,000 species of beetles, making them one of the largest groups of animals in the world. Among this already big bunch of bugs, weevils are the largest group. “There are 60,000 species of weevils that we know about, which is about the same as the number of all vertebrate animals put together,” said de Medeiros.

Bruno de Medeiros climbing the palm tree Oenocarpus mapora in Panama to study their pollinators.
Bruno de Medeiros climbing the palm tree Oenocarpus mapora in Panama to study their pollinators. CREDIT: Tauana Cunha.

The authors looked at 600 species of weevil, reviewing hundreds of previously published data on how weevils and plants interact to get a better sense of their role as prime pollinators. It focused on brood-site pollinators—insects that use the same plants that they pollinate as the breeding sites for their larvae. It is similar to the relationship between Monarch butterflies and milkweed, which is the only plant that Monarch caterpillars can eat. 

“It is a special kind of pollination interaction because it is usually associated with high specialization: because the insects spend their whole life cycle in the plant, they often only pollinate that plant,” said de Medeiros.  And because the plants have very reliable pollinators, they mostly use those pollinators.” 

[Related: This lawn-mowing robot can save part of your yard for pollinators.]

Unlike Monarchs, brood-site pollinators take the relationship with the plant a step further. They rely on only one plant partner as a source for both food and egg laying, unlike adult Monarchs who will eat the nectar of many different types of flowers

“This kind of pollination interaction is generally thought to be rare or unusual,” said de Medeiros. “In this study, we show that there are hundreds of weevil species and plants for which this has been documented already, and many, many more yet to be discovered.”

The relationship like the one between weevils and their plants means that they both need each other to flourish. Some industries, like palm oil,  have already hurt forests, therefore disturbing the animal species that rely on them. 

Oil palm, which is used to make peanut butter and Nutella, was not a viable industry until someone figured out that the weevils found with them were their pollinators. And because people had an incorrect preconception that weevils were not pollinators, it took much, much longer than it could have taken,” said de Medeiros.

Misconceptions about weevils were one of this team’s motivations for the study. The team hopes that by summarizing what is known about the pollinators, more scientists and the general public appreciate the role of weevils as pollinators, particularly in the tropics. 

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A deep sea mining zone in the remote Pacific is also a goldmine of unique species https://www.popsci.com/environment/clarion-clipperton-zone-mining-wildlife-biodiversity/ Thu, 25 May 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=543474
The sun over the ocean. Over 5,000 species could be at risk if deep sea mining begins in the Pacific Ocean's Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
Over 5,000 species could be at risk if deep sea mining begins in the Pacific Ocean's Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Deposit Photos

Up to 92 percent of the species in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone aren’t found anywhere else on Earth.

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The sun over the ocean. Over 5,000 species could be at risk if deep sea mining begins in the Pacific Ocean's Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
Over 5,000 species could be at risk if deep sea mining begins in the Pacific Ocean's Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Deposit Photos

Industrial mining of the deep ends of the ocean for valuable minerals is becoming more of a possibility as companies search for new sources of needed minerals, such as cobalt and lithium. The devastating impacts that this noisy and extractive process could have on the ocean’s numerous species is front of mind for scientists around the world, particularly in the mineral-rich Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean. Now, experts are attaching some numbers to the concerns.

[Related: Deep-sea mining has murky aftereffects.]

A study published May 25 in the journal Current Biology found 5,578 different species in the CCZ, and roughly 88 to 92 percent of these species are entirely new to science. The authors compiled a CCZ checklist of all the species and records to better understand what may be at risk when mining begins. 

“We share this planet with all this amazing biodiversity, and we have a responsibility to understand it and protect it,” co-author and Natural History Museum London deep-sea ecologist Muriel Rabone said in a statement

Spanning six million square kilometers from Hawaii to Mexico, the CCZ is one of the most pristine wilderness regions in the world. According to NOAA, it is also home to polymetallic nodules that are a potential source of copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, manganese, and rare earth elements. These materials are becoming increasingly important for modern life, since they are used in making a range of electronics. Polymetallic nodules are also found in deeper regions of the Indian Ocean.

Ocean photo
A selection of deep-sea specimens from the museum’s collection. CREDIT: Trustees of the Natural History Museum London.

To study the CCZ, researchers travel throughout the Pacific Ocean using techniques such as using remote-controlled vehicles to travel the ocean. They also use simple box core sampling, where a study box is placed on the bottom of the ocean floor to collect samples.  

“It’s a big boat, but it feels tiny in the middle of the ocean. You could see storms rolling in; it’s very dramatic,” said Rabone. “And it was amazing—in every single box core sample, we would see new species.”

In the study, the team sifted through over 100,000 records of the creatures found in the CCZ taken during these expeditions. They found that only six of the new species found in the CCZ—including a carnivorous sponge, a nematode, and a sea cucumber—have been seen in other regions of the world. The most common type of animals in the CCZ are arthropods, worms, sponges, and echinoderms like sea urchins.

[Related: Even mining in shallow waters is bad news for the environment.]

“There’s some just remarkable species down there. Some of the sponges look like classic bath sponges, and some look like vases. They’re just beautiful,” said Rabone. “One of my favorites is the glass sponges. They have these little spines, and under the microscope, they look like tiny chandeliers or little sculptures.”

In the future, the team emphasizes the importance of increasing research efforts in the CCZ that are collaborative, cohesive, and multidisciplinary so that scientists and business alike can gain a deeper grasp of the region’s vast biodiversity. They also stress the importance of learning more about these new species, how they are connected to the greater environment around them, and the biogeography of the area to understand why some species cluster in specific regions more than others.   

“There are so many wonderful species in the CCZ,” said Rabone, “and with the possibility of mining looming, it’s doubly important that we know more about these really understudied habitats.”

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Andean long-tailed chinchillas are mysteriously thriving on Chile’s coast https://www.popsci.com/environment/new-chile-chinchilla-species/ Thu, 25 May 2023 01:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=543101
Camera trap footage captured a coastal long-tailed chinchilla moving about during the daytime—an exceedingly rare activity—near Antofagasta, Chile.
Camera trap footage captured a coastal long-tailed chinchilla moving about during the daytime—an exceedingly rare activity—near Antofagasta, Chile. Photo by Alejandro Peñaloza

Whether a new subspecies, a species, or just a new population, these coastal chinchillas act in ways scientists have never seen before.

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Camera trap footage captured a coastal long-tailed chinchilla moving about during the daytime—an exceedingly rare activity—near Antofagasta, Chile.
Camera trap footage captured a coastal long-tailed chinchilla moving about during the daytime—an exceedingly rare activity—near Antofagasta, Chile. Photo by Alejandro Peñaloza

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

In 2020, on a rocky hillside overlooking the vast swell of the Pacific Ocean near the Chilean port city of Antofagasta, a local man out walking his dog stumbled upon the sun-bleached skull of a small mammal. Curious, he pocketed it and brought it to the attention of researchers Alejandro Peñaloza and Jaime Jiménez. The scientists were shocked. The skull belonged to a long-tailed chinchilla, a species typically found deep within the Chilean Andes Mountains. As far as scientists knew, chinchillas had never inhabited the coast.

“I couldn’t believe it at first,” says Jiménez, a researcher at the University of North Texas who has studied chinchilla ecology for over 30 years. “There were no past records of chinchillas in the area, and never on the coast, so it just didn’t make any sense.”

The excited researchers dug into the mystery. They quickly discovered a plethora of pint-sized paw prints in the sand and rodent scat strewn among the boulders, but what they really wanted was photographic evidence. The researchers baited camera traps with apple slices and, to their delight, captured dozens of images of the rodents. It was only when the scientists checked the cameras that they realized just how close they’d come to seeing the chinchillas—one image was snapped just 11 minutes after they’d left.

The footage shows that the coastal chinchillas are strikingly different from their Andean counterparts. As the scientists detail in a recent report, while the mountain chinchillas are larger with thick fur and rounded ears, the coastal chinchillas have smaller bodies, sleeker fur, and unusually elongated rabbit-like ears. Aside from their peculiar looks, the coastal chinchillas were also captured moving about in the daytime—a behavior never before seen in wild chinchillas.

“These animals are usually completely nocturnal, so it may be a sign of fewer predators or an adaptation to their environment,” says Jiménez.

The revelation that long-tailed chinchillas are inhabiting the coast is challenging scientists’ long-held assumptions about how these animals live. For one thing, says Fabian Jaksik, a member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences who was not directly involved in the research, the find “is significant because it’s the northernmost record of the long-tailed chinchilla in Chile ever, even historically speaking.”

Wildlife photo
The skull that led to the discovery of a coastal chinchilla population in Chile. Photo by Alejandro Peñaloza

The environment where the coastal chinchillas reside is also a world apart from the harsh and frigid deserts of the Andes. Sandwiched between the Atacama Desert and the Pacific Ocean, life flourishes along the coastal margin thanks to the proximity of the sea and its moderating effect on daily temperatures. A thick fog known as the camanchaca frequently rolls in on morning easterly winds and nourishes the region’s plants.

For researchers striving to learn more about these novel animals, however, even their palate is puzzling.

While the Andean chinchillas mainly eat grass, scientists aren’t quite sure what the coastal chinchillas eat. The hillsides they inhabit are absent of grasses but rich in flora that is either highly toxic or studded with spines and thorns. “It could be that they are eating something completely new or nibbling on a bit of everything and somehow digesting and surviving the toxins,” says Jiménez. “But this is just a hypothesis.”

With so many differences in appearance, behavior, and ecology, scientists aren’t quite sure what to make of these chinchillas. “The coastal chinchillas might be a subspecies or maybe even a new species,” says Jiménez. “We’ll only be able to answer these questions after we’ve understood these animals and their lives better.”

Beyond their enigmatic ecology, the coastal chinchillas are raising wider questions about the species’ future.

While Andean long-tailed chinchillas are still recovering from centuries of overhunting and face ongoing threats from habitat destruction for mining, the coastal chinchillas seem to be thriving. If they are the same species, the new population suggests long-tailed chinchillas are more abundant than previously thought, offering hope for their survival in the wild.

“This is probably a population that escaped overhunting due to its isolation,” says Peñaloza. “So there may be lots more out there waiting to be found.”

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African spiny mouse joins a small but mighty group of bony plated mammals https://www.popsci.com/environment/african-spiny-mouse-bony-plated-mammal/ Wed, 24 May 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=543081
A spiny mouse standing on a rock. Spiny mice can regenerate skin, muscle, nerves, spinal cord, and possibly cardiac tissue.
Spiny mice can regenerate skin, muscle, nerves, spinal cord, and possibly cardiac tissue. Deposit Photos

The small to medium sized produce spiny structures under their skin of their tails—and can even regrow them.

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A spiny mouse standing on a rock. Spiny mice can regenerate skin, muscle, nerves, spinal cord, and possibly cardiac tissue.
Spiny mice can regenerate skin, muscle, nerves, spinal cord, and possibly cardiac tissue. Deposit Photos

The armadillo is beloved for its ability to scrunch itself up in a ball with their protective flexible shells. They’ve long been considered the only living mammals with these reptilian and fish-like suits of bony or scaly armor instead of hairy mammalian skin. However, a study published May 24 in the journal iScience, shows that African spiny mice actually produce the same spiny structures beneath the skin of their tails, which has gone largely undetected by scientists.

[Related: How science came to rely on the humble lab rat.]

African spiny mice are small to medium sized rodents with spiny hairs on their upper body, large eyes and ears, and scaly tails. Some species are found in Egypt, other parts of eastern Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan and while others are native to South Africa.  

A team of scientists made this spiny discovery while conducting routine CT scanning of museum specimens for the openVertebrate program

“I was scanning a mouse specimen from the Yale Peabody Museum, and the tails looked abnormally dark,” co-author and director of Florida Museum of Natural History’s digital imaging laboratory Edward Stanley said in a statement

Stanley initially assumed the discoloration was caused by an imperfection that was introduced when the specimen was preserved, but analysis of the X-Rays revealed an unmistakable feature that he was intimately familiar with.

“My entire PhD was focused on osteoderm development in lizards,” he said. “Once the specimen scans had been processed, the tail was very clearly covered in osteoderms.”

Osteoderms are the bony deposits that form scales or plates on the skin. They are also distinct from the scales of pangolins or the quills of hedgehogs and porcupines. These parts are composed of keratin, the same tissue that makes up hair, skin, and nails.

A CT scan image of a spiny mouse. Spiny mice produce bony plates called osteoderms just beneath the skin of their tails, which detaches when the animal is attacked, affording them a quick getaway.
Spiny mice produce bony plates called osteoderms just beneath the skin of their tails, which detaches when the animal is attacked, affording them a quick getaway. CREDIT: Edward Stanley

Osteoderms on spiny mice have been observed since the mid-1970s. A 2012 study demonstrated spiny mice can regenerate injured tissue without scarring. This ability is very common among reptiles and invertebrates, but was previously unknown in mammals. While mammalian skin is particularly fragile, spiny mice can heal twice as fast as their rodent relatives.

Spiny mice belong to four genera in the subfamily Deomyinae, but other than similarities in their DNA and possibly the shape of their teeth, scientists have been unable to find a single shared feature among the species of this group that distinguishes them from other rodents.

[Related: This newly discovered gecko can literally squirm right out of its skin.]

The team scanned additional museum specimens from all four genera and found that the spiny mice tails were covered in the same sheather of bone. Gerbils are the closest relatives of Deomyinae and they do not have osteoderms, which means that this trait likely evolved only once in the ancestor of spiny mice. 

“Spiny mice can regenerate skin, muscle, nerves, spinal cord and perhaps even cardiac tissue, so we maintain a colony of these rare creatures for research,” co-author and University of Florida biologist Malcolm Maden said in a statement

Maden and his team are mapping the genetic pathways that give spiny mice these healing powers to hopefully find a model for human tissue regeneration. The team further analyzed the development of spiny mice osteoderms and confirmed that they were similar to those of armadillos, but likely evolved independently. 

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The Montreal Protocol had a dramatic ice-saving side effect https://www.popsci.com/environment/montreal-protocol-arctic-ice-melt/ Tue, 23 May 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=542915
A polar bear stands on sea ice.
Rapid melting of sea ice in the Arctic is the largest and most clear sign of human-made climate change. Deposit Photos

The United Nations treaty on CFCs is likely delaying the first ice-free Arctic summer by as much as 15 years.

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A polar bear stands on sea ice.
Rapid melting of sea ice in the Arctic is the largest and most clear sign of human-made climate change. Deposit Photos

The decades-old international treaty that banned ozone-depleting substances has successfully averted huge amounts of sea ice loss—delaying the first ice-free Arctic summer by as much as 15 years, according to a new study. The study published May 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that regulating these harmful substances helped delay further globalc heating.

[Related: Fixing the ozone hole was a bigger deal than anyone realized.]

In 1985, scientists first discovered a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica on the Earth’s south pole. Representatives from countries around the world gathered to craft a treaty to protect the ozone layer, which shields the planet from harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun. The resulting Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 and went into effect in 1989 with the purpose of reducing atmospheric concentrations of ozone-depleting substances (OSDs) that were commonly used in refrigerators, air conditioners, fire extinguishers, and aerosols. It remains the only United Nations treaty ratified by every country in the world

This new study demonstrates that the treaty’s impact depends on future emissions and the impact goes as far north as the Arctic. 

“The first ice-free Arctic summer–with the Arctic Ocean practically free of sea ice–will be a major milestone in the process of climate change, and our findings were a surprise to us,” study co-author and Columbia University geophysicist Lorenzo Polvani said in a statement. “Our results show that the climate benefits from the Montreal Protocol are not in some faraway future: the Protocol is delaying the melting of Arctic sea ice at this very moment. That’s what a successful climate treaty does: it yields measurable results within a few decades of its implementation.”

According to Polvani and other climate scientists, the rapid melting of sea ice in the Arctic is the largest and most clear sign of human-made climate change. The first completely ice-free Arctic summer will likely occur by 2050, largely due to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Other powerful greenhouse gasses like ODS’ also contributed to this warming, but their concentrations in the atmosphere began to decline in the mid-1990s

In this new study, the two authors analyzed new climate model simulations and found that the changes implemented by the Montreal Protocol is delaying the first appearance of an ice-free Arctic summer by up to 15 years, depending on future carbon dioxide emissions. They compared the estimated warming from ODS’ with and without the Montreal Protocol under two scenarios of future carbon dioxide emissions from 1985 to 2050. If the Montreal Protocol had not been enacted, the estimated global mean surface temperature would be about 0.9°F warmer and the Arctic polar cap would be almost 1.8°F warmer in 2050, according to their results.

[Related: Fixing the ozone hole was a bigger deal than anyone realized.]

“This important climate mitigation stems entirely from the reduced greenhouse gas warming from the regulated ODSs, with the avoided stratospheric ozone losses playing no role,” co-author and University of Exeter applied mathematician and atmospheric scientist Mark England said in a statement. “While ODSs aren’t as abundant as other greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, they can have a real impact on global warming. ODSs have particularly powerful effects in the Arctic, and they were an important driver of Arctic climate change in the second half of the 20th Century. While stopping these effects was not the primary goal of the Montreal Protocol, it has been a fantastic by-product.” 

Both authors stressed the importance of remaining vigilant to atmospheric concentrations as the ozone layer is healing, especially due to a slight rise in ODS concentrations from 2010 to 2020.  In 2016, an amendment to the Montreal Protocol (called the Kigali Amendment) that required the phase out of the production and consumption of some hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) was added. While HFCs do not directly deplete ozone, they are powerful climate change-inducing gasses which can accelerate warming. An uptick in CFC use was detected in 2018 and tracked to China, but that was quickly fixed. Scientists say that the Kigali Amendment is estimated to avoid 0.5–0.9°F of warming by 2100, not including contributions from HFC-23 emissions.

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How a sniff test could make sexing chicks more humane https://www.popsci.com/environment/chicken-sexing-air-sniffing/ Tue, 23 May 2023 15:30:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=542858
A group of yellow and fuzzy baby chicks.
Demand has grown for technologies that can tell the sex of a chicken before it hatches. Deposit Photos

The recently developed technique can help farmers tell the sex of a chick without cracking an egg.

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A group of yellow and fuzzy baby chicks.
Demand has grown for technologies that can tell the sex of a chicken before it hatches. Deposit Photos

One large part of managing egg-laying hens is a process called sexing, or determining the sex of a baby chick after it hatches. A study published May 22 in the journal PLOS ONE finds that fertilized chicken eggs can be sexed by “sniffing” the volatile chemicals that are emitted through the chicken’s shell.

About a day after hatching, chicks are sorted by sex. Male chicks are killed almost  immediately, a process that kills an estimated 6.5 billion male chicks per year. Sexing is largely used due to both economics and biology—male chickens are of little use to the egg and meat industry since they do not lay eggs and do not fatten up quickly enough to be sold as meat. The practice costs egg producers about $500 million annually, but some European countries including Germany and France have already banned culling of male chicks or plan to phase it out. 

[Release: 6 things to know before deciding to raise backyard chickens.]

If hatcheries could identify the sex of an egg earlier in incubation, billions of male eggs could be humanely killed before the chick can feel pain, as well as reducing waste and environmental impact. The technology that is already on the market for this process called in-ovo sexing depends on either imaging through the shell or sampling the shell through a tiny hole. 

In this new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis and a startup company at the university called Sensit Ventures Inc., it is possible to sniff out the egg’s volatile organic chemicals and determine the egg’s sex. 

The team first had to find out if the chemicals released by male and female embryos give off reliably detectable differences. At study co-author Cristina Davis’s lab at the UC Davis Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, the team developed sensing chip technology that can collect and analyze organic chemicals in the air.  

They adapted suction cups that are already used for industrial handling of eggs to “sniff” air from the eggs without actually opening them up. Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry analyzed the air samples and the sex of the eggs was confirmed by DNA analysis at the UC Davis Department of Animal Science. 

[Related: Which Came First, The Chicken Or The Egg?]

“We found that there are volatile chemicals from the egg, a scent that you can capture and sort statistically,” study co-author and CEO of Sensit Ventures Tom Turpen said in a statement

According to the study, this air-sniffing technique was able to identify male and female embryos at eight days of incubation with 80 percent accuracy, based on two minutes of air sampling. Using this rapid suction-cup sampling method could also be carried out in rows that test multiple eggs at the same time 

“We think that the hardware platform invented at UC Davis could be integrated into hatcheries,” Turpen said.

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How studying bats can help predict and prevent the next deadly pandemic https://www.popsci.com/environment/bats-next-pandemic/ Mon, 22 May 2023 22:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=542546
flying foxes aka bats in trees spreading disease potentially
Flying foxes. Getty

Funders thought watching bats wasn’t important. Then she helped solve the mystery of a deadly virus.

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flying foxes aka bats in trees spreading disease potentially
Flying foxes. Getty

This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Dressed head-to-toe in protective gear, Peggy Eby crawled on her hands and knees under a fig tree, searching for bat droppings and fruit with telltale fang marks.

Another horse in Australia had died from the dreaded Hendra virus that winter in 2011. For years, the brain-inflaming infectious disease had bedeviled the country, leaping from bats to horses and sometimes from horses to humans. Hendra was as fatal as it was mysterious, striking in a seemingly random fashion. Experts fear that if the virus mutates, it could jump from person to person and wreak havoc.

So while government veterinarians screened other horses, Eby, a wildlife ecologist with a Ph.D., got to work, grubbing around the scene like a detective. Nobody knew flying foxes, the bats that spread Hendra, better. For nearly a quarter century, she’d studied the furry, fox-faced mammals with wingspans up to 3 feet. Eby deduced that the horse paddock wasn’t where the bats had transmitted Hendra. But the horse’s owners had picked mandarin oranges off the trees across the street. The peels ended up in the compost bin, where their horse liked to rummage. “Bingo,” Eby thought. Flying foxes liked mandarins. The bats’ saliva must have contaminated the peels, turning them into a deadly snack.

Eby, however, longed to unlock a bigger mystery: Could she, with the help of fellow scientists, predict when the conditions were prime for Hendra to spill over from bats, before it took any more lives? What if they could warn the public to be on guard — maybe even prevent the virus from making the leap? It would be painstaking work, but it wasn’t a pipe dream; Eby was already spotting patterns as she crawled around infection sites.

But when she pitched her research to a government funder the following year, she got a flat no. She proposed starting small, gathering basic data on flying foxes that could be used to figure out when and why they spread the virus. Her work, she was told, wasn’t considered a “sufficiently important contribution.”

Global health organizations and governments have long focused on responding to outbreaks rather than predicting and preventing them. Billions of dollars pour into developing treatments and vaccines for infectious diseases, but only a small fraction goes to understanding why contagions spread from animals to humans in the first place. Some experts reject even that, viewing spillover as too random, mysterious and rare to be observed and studied.

The work Eby does is the opposite of the major research projects on deadly diseases that typically get scientific grants. Government and nonprofit funders are often drawn to studies involving cutting-edge technology like artificial intelligence, and they want results in a few years’ time. Eby had spent decades trekking into the Australian bush, often on her own dime, observing flying foxes for hours on end with only a notebook and a pair of binoculars. To support her research, she took on consulting jobs, such as advising towns whose residents viewed bats as pests. She knew, though, that side hustles would never be enough to support the multidisciplinary team of scientists needed to crack the Hendra virus.

In the years that followed, Eby found like-minded scientists, and the team, led by women, persisted. They cobbled together grant after grant, battled burnout and kept impatient funders at bay. A decade after Eby’s government grant proposal was shot down, they published a groundbreaking paper in the journal Nature that demonstrated it was not only possible to predict Hendra virus spillover, but it might be preventable. Only then did it become obvious just how important Eby’s quiet fieldwork truly was.

Dr. Neil Vora, a tuberculosis physician and former officer at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he was thrilled when he saw the paper. “It gave clear evidence that we can take actions to prevent spillovers of viruses,” said Vora, who now works for environmental nonprofit Conservation International. “I hope it helps to convince funders and policymakers that spillover prevention merits implementation now.”

In a world still scarred by the COVID-19 pandemic, Eby’s dogged success exposes a global scientific blind spot. It’s not that trendy science involving the latest AI wonders isn’t worthy of research dollars. It’s that it should not be funded at the expense of the sort of long-term, shoe-leather work that allowed Eby and her colleagues to solve the mystery of a deadly contagion, Vora and other public health experts say. “All of these actions are important if we want to save as many lives as possible from infectious diseases,” Vora added.

Novel infectious diseases will keep coming at us, Eby warns. Investing in scientific work like hers “seems like a poor approach now,” she said, “but 20 years from now, we’ll look back and wonder why we didn’t do it.”


Fresh out of college in the 1970s, Eby explored the wilds of Australia on a research fellowship, following the path a German naturalist had chronicled before he disappeared in 1848. Some parts were so remote that she had to hitch a ride on the tiny plane that delivered mail to park rangers. Eby, who grew up in Kansas, was awed by the diversity of the landscape and charmed by the openness of the people. When her fellowship ended, she decided Australia was home.

Eby was in her 30s when she came to love flying foxes. Her boss at the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service asked her to figure out how bats spread fruit seeds in rainforests. She followed signals transmitted by radio collars on flying foxes and knocked on landowners’ doors to ask if she might, please, observe the bats feeding in their trees and collect droppings. She even tracked them from a single-engine Cessna, battling nausea as she discovered that the bats could migrate hundreds of miles, a fact that nobody knew at the time.

When she watches flying foxes hanging in repose, Eby’s breathing slows. It feels like meditation. “It changes my perspective so I feel less significant,” she explained. “I think that’s important for all of us to feel less significant in the world.”

She was working on her dissertation about the bats in 1994 when a novel virus struck a Brisbane suburb called Hendra. The trouble started when a pregnant racehorse named Drama Series became congested and feverish. A veterinarian gave her painkillers and antibiotics, but she died the next day. As horse after horse got sick, some thrashed in their stalls, unable to breathe. “It’s a horrible thing to see when they’re mutilating themselves,” the veterinarian, Dr. Peter Reid, recalled.

Then the horses’ trainer died. The outbreak had spread to humans.

For more than a decade, Hendra popped up sporadically. It killed another horse trainer and two veterinarians. A veterinary nurse became so ill that she had to learn to walk and talk again and never regained some of her hearing.

Scientists figured out that Hendra came from flying foxes, and it had to pass through horses before it could infect humans. Eby was aware of those discoveries but didn’t get pulled in until an unprecedented number of horses died in 2011. Nobody knew why so many were getting sick when Hendra had been rare in the past. Media helicopters rumbled over sites where horses died, and people who lived and worked near them panicked. A group of ecologists lobbied the government to add a bat expert to the team deployed to infection sites, a practice that wasn’t common then and still isn’t. The ecologists picked Eby.

Shortly after her 60th birthday, Eby began suiting up in PPE and heading to the scene every time a horse tested positive for Hendra. She soon noticed the bat roosts near these sites were new and small. Something strange was going on.

Around the same time, Dr. Raina Plowright, a professor of disease ecology at Cornell University, proposed working together. Plowright was an Australian who had emigrated in the opposite direction of Eby but had never lost interest in her homeland’s infectious diseases.

They agreed to tackle the mystery together. They applied for multiple grants and were shot down because their ambitions didn’t match the funding silos: Agencies that support human health don’t typically care about animal health, and those that back studies on the environment often aren’t interested in how it affects public health. In saying “no,” one animal foundation explained that its mandate didn’t extend to diseases that leaped to humans.

In 2012, Plowright received a small grant from the Australian government, but that was only for mathematical modeling and didn’t support fieldwork like Eby’s. By 2017, a National Science Foundation grant came through, but it wasn’t enough to cover all of the costs of catching and testing bats. The team spread itself thin. “It was headed to a burnout situation,” Plowright recalled.

Eby, meanwhile, tapped unusual sources to get data. She befriended beekeepers, who could tell her when and where key species of trees were flowering. This helped them track shortages of the bats’ favorite food: nectar from eucalyptus blossoms. She also asked workers at wildlife rehabilitation centers to keep logs about sick and injured bats that they cared for.

The team studied weather patterns and how the forest cover had changed. Eby contributed field records on the location, number and health of bat roosts. Altogether, their data spanned 25 years.

The team’s resourcefulness paid off. By 2017, the researchers figured out how and why Hendra was spilling over from bats:

In early 2017, the researchers determined that conditions were ripe for Hendra to leap from bats to horses and potentially to people. A drought, followed by too much rain, had led to a dire shortage of eucalyptus blossoms, and malnourished bats were turning up at wildlife rescue organizations. By then, there was a Hendra vaccine for horses, but few owners had opted for it. It was only a matter of time before a horse nibbled something tainted with the bats’ saliva or droppings.

Eby pushed past the fear that their prediction might be wrong. She and her colleagues published a bulletin that winter, warning veterinarians of an impending Hendra outbreak and their need to wear full protective gear near horses.

The team was right. Four horses on separate properties caught Hendra that season.

No humans got sick.


When the same pattern of weather and food shortages repeated in 2020, Eby and her colleagues were confident that it’d be a calamitous year. They sounded another warning that May, at the start of the Australian winter season: “Conditions predict heightened Hendra virus spillover risk in horses this winter: actions now can change outcomes.”

Later that month, one horse was infected and euthanized. The team braced itself for a wave of horse deaths. But then — nothing. No other Hendra cases were identified, and the outbreak that was supposed to happen just didn’t.

Somehow, they had gotten it wrong.

“We still felt confident in our understanding,” Eby recalled, “but we didn’t have the full story yet.” She ran through everything she knew about bats and Hendra, scouring for what they might have missed. There had, indeed, been a food shortage. So where were all the bats?

Eby was in COVID-19 lockdown in mid-July that year when she got stunning news. Gympie, a former gold-mining town near the east coast, had been less affected by the severe weather than expected, and a few patches of a type of eucalyptus known as the forest red gum were flowering en masse. Their slender branches teemed with fluffy white blooms. Eucalyptus trees don’t flower every winter; their blooms appear erratically. Some 240,000 flying foxes had flown in for the rare feast.

“I immediately knew,” Eby said. “This is what was different.”

Her collaborators, a field team from Griffith University, rushed to check roosts in areas where Hendra cases had previously struck. Many roosts were empty, the bats drawn away by the Gympie banquet.

Eby and Plowright had worked on this for a decade now, patching together four or five grants at a time to continue their research. Funders wanted results.

But they needed more data. They had to understand how this unexpected winter flowering in Gympie was affecting bats across eastern Australia. With the lockdown preventing Eby from examining the roost herself, she began to compile information on historic mass winter flowerings like this one.

One reason why it wasn’t initially obvious that the Gympie congregation was important was that the bats that had flocked to town were grey-headed flying foxes, not the black flying foxes that spread Hendra. Eby came to believe that a hierarchy of bat species governs which can claim the best food, and the behavior of one affects the other.

The greys get dibs on the best food. When eucalyptus nectar is scarce, the greys eat what’s available, pushing the black flying foxes to scavenge for fruits in horse paddocks, their equivalent of junk food. But when the nectar is abundant, like it was in Gympie, the greys will depart for that fine dining opportunity, allowing the blacks to ditch the horse paddocks for better food that the greys leave behind. This draws the bats that carry Hendra away from horses and people.

In the end, what she concluded was astonishing: There had never been a spillover at the same time as a rich winter flowering.

“We said, this can’t be real, it’s too good,” Plowright said. “Those remnant patches of flowering were protecting the whole landscape.”

Patches of eucalyptus around a single town could protect all of eastern Australia. Imagine a few clusters of trees in New Jersey protecting the entire Eastern Seaboard.

The researchers could see how, between 1994 and 2006, consistent winter flowering was still taking place around the country. But as people cut down more and more trees, reducing the available habitat, winter flowering became unreliable and occasional, leading bats to search in horse paddocks for other sources of food.

Habitat destruction and deforestation has been linked to outbreaks of many notorious viruses, including Ebola, monkey malaria and the brain-invading Nipah virus. The discoveries of Eby and her colleagues show that we can learn all of the elements that lead to spillover — environmental, animal and human — in enough detail to design ways to predict and prevent the next outbreak.

Their discovery comes as the threat of Hendra increases. Deforestation has decimated the bats’ winter foraging habitats and shows no signs of stopping. Climate change likely will cause more extreme weather conditions, which will further disrupt the winter budding of eucalyptus, making food shortages more common.

Eby and her colleagues see a new way forward: If the remaining patches of winter-flowering trees were preserved and more were planted, they could once again reliably draw the bats away from people and protect the entire country from Hendra virus for years to come.

Yet few government agencies and global health authorities are ready to invest in action that comes out of this hard-won discovery.

The Hendra team, in 2018, had managed to score a grant from a program under the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that was unique in its scope and vision. Called Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats, or PREEMPT, it sought to understand the mechanisms of spillover with the goal of developing technologies to protect U.S. military forces deployed to disease-prone locations. But the program was a one-off and is ending after five years. DARPA says it is not its role to fund the solution Eby and her colleagues discovered.

“We are ready for the next hard problem,” said Kristen Jordan, the deputy director for the DARPA Biological Technologies Office. “There are many we need to address.”

Department of Defense officials asked Plowright whether the model that predicted Hendra could also predict the next coronavirus spillover in Southeast Asia.

Plowright recalls responding: “Well, you need data. And we have no data.” It’d be impossible to calculate that risk without replicating the years of wildlife tracking, environmental data gathering and number-crunching that the Hendra team conducted. “People just don’t get that.”

On a crisp afternoon last September in the city of Tamworth in New South Wales, Eby pulled into the parking lot of a Hungry Jack’s burger restaurant. She had heard reports of an enormous roost of flying foxes in town and hurried to get there. Eby couldn’t see any bats from where she had parked, but she didn’t need to. Her clear blue eyes lit up and she beamed. “Can you smell them?”

Alongside the aroma of cooking grease was a musky, sweet scent that announced the presence of bats. As Eby walked to the river, she could also hear their shrill chattering. Then, there they were, hanging upside down from every branch on every tree that lined the river, grooming themselves and resting before the evening’s forage. With their wings folded around them, the bats looked like tear-drop-shaped fruit. A week earlier, another researcher had flown a heat-seeking drone over the roost and estimated that the river in Tamworth was hosting about 300,000 bats — more than half of the grey-headed flying fox population in all of Australia.

Eby moved slowly so as not to startle the roosting animals. She raised her binoculars, tallying males and females, noting any that were pregnant and scanning for babies born out of season. The roost looked healthy. She was elated. The Tamworth bats confirmed that a single unusually abundant flowering of eucalyptus could provide a protective effect for the whole system. And sure enough, there were no Hendra virus cases in the winter of 2022.

A few years ago, Eby had thought it might be time to retire. She was nearing 70 and ready to take a break from the physical grind of fieldwork. But then came an unconventional funding opportunity she couldn’t pass up.

After thousands of bushfires burned an estimated 59 million acres in a single season that came to be known as the Black Summer, money poured in to help restore habitat for Australia’s iconic koala. Eby instantly recognized the chance to explore how planting eucalyptus affects flying foxes, which conveniently feed on nectar from many of the same trees preferred by koalas. “The bats are hanging onto the coattails of the koalas,” she said with a wry grin.

There wasn’t a universal data set tracking reforestation projects, so she set out to create one. Today, supported by money from various koala-focused projects, she drives across eastern Australia training koala conservationists to upload records of their tree-planting projects into a common database. She hopes that reforestation efforts will make winter flowering commonplace again and prove the case for preventing spillovers with habitat restoration.

Eby says that she believes preventing outbreaks is possible, and that the methods she and her colleagues have developed can be applied to other disease systems. “There was nothing remarkable about my work. It can be done again in other circumstances, it just takes the will,” she said. “It also takes an understanding that this is a long term quest.”

Even while she embarks on her new mission to prove the power of reforestation, she pauses to cheer the remnant patches of forest when they bloom.

As the sun set over Tamworth, she stood above the riverbank, her hair glowing silver under the light of a streetlamp. She watched as the bats set out into the darkening sky, their long wings beating the air as they soared from the trees and headed out to feed. Eby couldn’t see where they were headed but knew that nearby, eucalyptus trees were blooming, producing sweet nectar that would keep the country safe from a Hendra virus spillover. Smiling to herself, she murmured, “Isn’t it wonderful?”

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Spy tech and rigged eggs help scientists study the secret lives of animals https://www.popsci.com/technology/oregon-zoo-sensor-condor-egg/ Mon, 22 May 2023 11:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=542389
eggs in a nest
The Oregon Zoo isn't putting all its eggs in a basket when it comes to condor conservation. The Dark Queen / Unsplash

The field of natural sciences has been embracing sensors, cameras, and recorders packaged in crafty forms.

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eggs in a nest
The Oregon Zoo isn't putting all its eggs in a basket when it comes to condor conservation. The Dark Queen / Unsplash

Last week, The New York Times went backstage at the Oregon Zoo for an intimate look at the fake eggs the zoo was developing as a part of its endangered Condor nursery program. 

The idea is that caretakers can swap out the real eggs the birds lay for smart egg spies that look and feel the same. These specially designed, 3D-printed eggs have been equipped with sensors that can monitor the general environment of the nest and the natural behaviors of the California condor parents (like how long they sat on the egg for, and when they switched off between parents). 

In addition to recording data related to surrounding temperature and movement, there’s also a tiny audio recorder that can capture ambient sounds. So what’s the use of the whole charade? 

The Oregon Zoo’s aim is to use all the data gathered by the egg to better recreate natural conditions within their artificial incubators, whether that has to do with adjusting the temperatures they set these machines to, integrating periodic movements, or play back the sounds from the nest, which will ideally improve the outcomes from its breeding efforts. And it’s not the only group tinkering with tech like this.

A ‘spy hippo’

This setup at the Oregon Zoo may sound vaguely familiar to you, if you’ve been a fan of the PBS show “Spy in the Wild.” The central gag of the series is that engineers craft hyper-realistic robots masquerading as animals, eggs, boulders, and more to get up close and personal with a medley of wildlife from all reaches of the planet. 

[Related: Need to fight invasive fish? Just introduce a scary robot]

If peeking at the inner lives of zoo animals is a task in need of an innovative tech solution, imagine the challenges of studying animals in their natural habitats, in regions that are typically precarious or even treacherous for humans to visit. Add on cameras and other heavy equipment, and it becomes an even more demanding trip. Instead of having humans do the Jane Goodall method of community immersion with animals, these spies in disguise can provide invaluable insights into group or individual behavior and habits without being intrusive or overly invasive to their ordinary way of life.  

A penguin rover

Testing unconventional methods like these is key for researchers to understand as much as they can about endangered animals, since scientists have to gather important information in a relatively short time frame to help with their conservation. 

[Related: Open data is a blessing for science—but it comes with its own curses

To prove that these inventions are not all gimmick and have some practical utility, a 2014 study in Nature showed that a penguin-shaped rover can get more useful data on penguin colonies than human researchers, whose presence elevated stress levels in the animals. 

The point of all this animal espionage?

Minimizing the effects created by human scientists has always been a struggle in behavioral research for the natural sciences. Along with the advancement of other technologies like better cameras and more instantaneous data transfer, ingenious new sensor devices like the spy eggs are changing the field itself. The other benefit is that every once in a while, non-scientist humans can also be privy to the exclusive access provided into the secret lives of these critters, like through “Spy in the Wild,” and use these as portals for engaging with the world around them.

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This ancient farming practice could get a boost from the US farm bill https://www.popsci.com/environment/silvopasture-farm-bill-climate-change/ Sat, 20 May 2023 23:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=541885
A silvopasture system can do more than simply save farmers money; it can help them diversify what they grow.
A silvopasture system can do more than simply save farmers money; it can help them diversify what they grow. USDA NRCS Texas via Flickr

By integrating trees and pasture, farmers can increase their bottom line and protect livestock from hotter summers.

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A silvopasture system can do more than simply save farmers money; it can help them diversify what they grow.
A silvopasture system can do more than simply save farmers money; it can help them diversify what they grow. USDA NRCS Texas via Flickr

This article was originally featured on Nexus Media and Ambrook Research..

On a clear morning in April, after milking his seven cows, Tim Sauder looked over the pasture where he had just turned the animals out to graze. Like many dairy farms, Sauder’s fields swayed with a variety of greenery: chicory, alfalfa and clover. But they were also full of something typically missing on an agricultural landscape — trees. Thousands of them.

Between 2019 and 2021, Sauder planted 3,500 trees at Fiddle Creek Dairy, a 55-acre family farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he and his wife raise cows to produce yogurt, cheese and beef. Today, young willow, hickory, poplar, pecan and persimmon trees stud the pastures, and on a crisp spring morning, rows of honey and black locusts, bur and cow oaks, were beginning to leaf out, casting shadows on the long grass below.

Sauder said planting trees has always been a priority; before he filled his pastures with them, the farm was home to a small fruit orchard as well as riparian buffers — trees planted along the creek to prevent erosion and safeguard water quality. But the trees that his cattle now graze beneath represent a fundamental shift in his operation.

The Sauders are betting the farm, as it were, on silvopasture, the ancient practice of raising animals and growing trees and pasture on the same piece of land (silva is forest in Latin). In a silvopasture setup, farmers carefully manage each element to benefit the other—relying on manure to fertilize trees, for example, or fallen fruit to feed the livestock—resulting in a system that’s greater than the sum of its parts. 

It’s an old idea that’s gaining modern traction. Last year, the USDA awarded the Nature Conservancy and multiple partner organizations a $64 million grant to advance agroforestry — the umbrella term for agricultural practices that incorporate trees — by providing technical and financial assistance to farmers looking to make the switch. This year’s Farm Bill could mean another infusion of funding as well as the expansion of existing agroforestry programs to more explicitly include silvopasture. 

“The USDA is doing a lot, but a lot more could be done,” said Jabob Grace, communications project manager with the Savanna Institute, a nonprofit that promotes agroforestry practices. His organization is advocating that the 2023 Farm Bill increase appropriations for the National Agroforestry Center, the only government agency dedicated to the practice, from $5 million to $25 million (Grace said the Center has been chronically underfunded, never receiving more than $2 million annually). They’re also pushing for the establishment of regional agroforestry centers, the development of a USDA technical assistance program in agroforestry, and more grant money dedicated to helping farmers like Sauder establish a silvopasture system. 

In Sauder’s pastures, “each tree has multiple benefits,” he explained. Mulberry leaves have more protein than alfalfa, and the seed pods that fall off the honey locust every autumn are packed with sugar; those trees were chosen to supplement the animals’ diet. Sauder chose other tree species with leafy canopies to protect his herd’s health. “Come August, there will be shade here when the cows need it.”

Providing shade may seem like a matter of comfort, but it can actually be one of life and death. Last summer, thousands of cattle died in Kansas, after the area was racked by historic heat and humidity. As the climate heats up, researchers think mortality events like the one in Kansas will become more common. But even when cattle survive brutally hot summers, the impact of heat stress can wreak havoc on a farm’s bottom line.

Grace said the farmers he works with are worried about what hotter temperatures mean for their livelihoods. 

“When we talk to our producers about silvopasture, the first thing they’re interested in is shade,” Grace said. “They’re noticing the hotter temperatures. Their cattle are uncomfortable, they’re not putting on weight. Cash is almost directly flowing out of that farmer’s pocket when they have overheated cattle.”

A lot of cash, in fact. A 2022 study from Cornell University predicted that losses of cattle herds due to heat stress will total $15 to $40 billion a year by the end of the century. To avoid these losses, the authors note that “tree–livestock systems can be highly effective in reducing heat stress.” And Farm Bill funding could help more farmers get started.

Shade is one way silvopasture cuts down on costs, but there are others. Some poultry farmers use the method to shield their flocks from birds of prey. Vineyards and Christmas tree farms are increasingly turning to grazing animals to mow and control weeds.

But a silvopasture system can do more than simply save farmers money; it can help them diversify what they grow. Perhaps one of the oldest — and most profitable — examples of silvopasture is the dehesa system of southern Spain, where Ibérico pigs wander among towering oak trees, feasting on acorns and fertilizing the soil, resulting in some of the world’s most expensive ham and a cash crop of cork.

While livestock health and revenue are compelling reasons for farmers to practice silvopasture, perhaps the method’s most convincing advantage is its potential as a climate solution. 

Project Drawdown, a nonprofit that analyzes climate solutions, ranks silvopasture as the 11th most effective strategy for combating climate change — well ahead of solar panels, recycling and electric cars — finding that pastures with trees sequester five to 10 times as much carbon as similarly sized but treeless pastures.

The perennial roots of a silvopasture system can also help stabilize the soil, preventing erosion as well as the flooding that’s becoming more common with heavier rains. Additionally, a well-managed silvopasture operation can reduce wildfire loads — thanks to carefully spaced and pruned trees as well as grazing animals that control the shrubby understory — and increase biodiversity.

What’s more, when livestock get to eat the forage that’s right in front of them, the gas-guzzling farming equipment and trucks typically used to get food to feedlots can stay in park. “Cutting back on harvesting and transporting means a significant reduction in greenhouse gasses,” Grace explained.

According to Grace, large swaths of the American Midwest used to be covered by a natural silvopasture of sorts, an oak savanna ecosystem where grazing animals like bison dined on prairie beneath fruit and nut trees. Many Indigenous cultures embraced and benefited from this form of land management, until European settlers got to work deforesting the region, eventually building farms that worked more like factories. 

This emphasis on efficiency led to widespread monoculture and annual cropping systems where, Grace said, “for a good chunk of the year, not much is happening.” 

Today, only about 1.5% of farmers in the U.S. (approximately 31,000) practice any form of agroforestry, including silvopasture, a 2017 USDA survey revealed. But as summers get hotter and climate predictions more dire, interest in the practice is booming. Matthew Smith, research program lead at the USDA’s National Agroforestry Center, said “the demand for silvopasture knowledge and information is higher than anyone can provide.” 

That’s because silvopasture is more complicated than turning livestock loose in the woods; it requires choosing the right trees and forage for the local climate and constantly moving livestock from one place to another. 

“If folks are interested in silvopasture, they really should have expertise in rotational grazing beforehand…which is hard to learn,” Smith said. “Things can go wrong quickly when all your crops are in the same place.” Livestock left in one spot too long can damage trees, for example, and plants grown too close together can outcompete each other for light and nutrients. 

There are other challenges. For one thing, silvopasture systems require a large area of land and more hours of labor — at least at first — to maintain. Additionally, it takes trees many years to grow and begin to provide meaningful benefits. But, by far, the greatest obstacle for most farmers who want to practice silvopasture is the high price of purchasing, planting and maintaining trees. 

The vast majority of silvopasture operations rely on grants and cost-sharing programs from organizations like the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the USDA, programs  that advocates like Grace say badly need the boost in funding and staff that this year’s Farm Bill could provide. Grace said that the handful of existing agroforestry programs, such as the Conservation Reserve Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, are vague in their wording and need to be tweaked to more explicitly fund silvopasture projects and provide additional cost-sharing opportunities to farmers. 

Savanna Institute ally and climate NGO Carbon 180 is recommending that the 2023 Farm Bill increase federal cost share to 75% for agroforestry practices to help defray upfront costs and ensure farmers can access high-quality, regionally appropriate trees and shrubs. 

In the meantime, funding remains a “major barrier to farmers hoping to pursue silvopasture,” said Austin Unruh, owner of Trees for Graziers, who helped Tim Sauder secure money from the Pennsylvania office of the NRCS. Unruh, whose business has helped about 25 farms implement silvopasture in the last three years, said helping farmers pay for them “has been frustrating. It’s a different source of funding each time, different hoops to jump through.”

For Sauder, the financial assistance from the state was paramount. He said that without it, the trees in his pasture simply wouldn’t be there, “at least not for the next 20 years or so.” 

He admits that the new system has been a lot of work upfront, but that he expects it to pay off in the form of healthier pasture, soil and cows — and hopefully his land’s ability to support more of them. 

And yet, it’s working in tandem with nature that inspires Sauder the most. Running his farm with the health of the ecosystem top of mind, he said, is like making up for the mistakes of his ancestors, Mennonite immigrants who displaced Indigenous people and bent the land to their will. 

“I’m reimagining what would have happened if they had arrived here and said instead, ‘What’s the best way to live in this place?’”


This article is copublished with Ambrook Research as part of a series that looks at ways the 2023 Farm Bill can help address the climate crisis. Nexus Media News is an editorially independent, nonprofit news service covering climate change. Follow us @NexusMediaNews.

 

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Thriving baby California condor is a ray of hope for the unique species https://www.popsci.com/environment/california-condor-chick-hatched/ Fri, 19 May 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=542142
A newly hatched California condor.
A California condor hatchling at Liberty Wildlife in Arizona. Condors are among the largest birds in North America, are a crucial part of the ecosystem, and are sacred to many indigenous peoples. Barb Del've/Liberty Wildlife

The happy, healthy hatchling is great news for an already vulnerable population facing a deadly bird flu pandemic.

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A newly hatched California condor.
A California condor hatchling at Liberty Wildlife in Arizona. Condors are among the largest birds in North America, are a crucial part of the ecosystem, and are sacred to many indigenous peoples. Barb Del've/Liberty Wildlife

On May 9, a baby California condor hatched at Liberty Wildlife, a wildlife rehabilitation, education, and conservation organization in Phoenix, Arizona. The hatching is a ray of hope and welcome good news for the struggling species that was only recently brought back from the brink of extinction

Only 22 condors were believed to be alive during the 1980s after a maelstrom of habitat loss, poaching, lead poisoning accidents with power lines, and the insecticide DDT. Currently, about 275 wild birds are cruising the skies about California, Utah, Arizona, and Baja California, Mexico, more than 160 are in captivity, and more than 400 live worldwide

[Related: Inside the Yurok Tribe’s mission to make critically endangered condors thrive.]

The largest bird species in North America and a crucial part of the ecosystem, California condors are considered sacred to many indigenous peoples. The Yurok Tribe of the Pacific Northwest call California condors “prey-go-neesh,” and say the birds have been tied to the Yurok Hlkelonah, or the cultural and ecological landscape, since the beginning of time. The tribe has officially been a driving force on condor reintroduction since 2008

Now, these sacred and important birds face a grave threat in the form of a tiny pathogen. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1), also called bird flu, is threatening condors at an alarming rate. It was first detected in the California condor in late March, and more than 20 are known to have died since. 

“It is scary particularly for endangered species like the California condors. It has the ability to wipe out an entire species,” Liberty Wildlife’s Animal Care Coordinator Jan Miller tells PopSci

One of the birds that succumbed to the disease was the new hatchling’s mother, part of a breeding pair of wild California condors. The mother was found acting suspicious in a cave near the Grand Canyon and was brought to Liberty Wildlife due to suspected bird flu. She died eight days later.  

“Using telemetry, it was assumed that she had laid an egg, probably between March 13 and March 17, and it was predicted to hatch between May 9 and May 17,” Liberty Wildlife’s Executive Director Megan Mosby tells PopSci. “The limited movement of the male led to the assumption that he was trying to incubate an egg.  The biologists at the Arizona Vermilion Cliff site decided that it wasn’t safe for the male, a known breeder, to attempt to raise a chick solo and feed himself, especially in a dank, cool cave … a perfect place for flu contamination.”

[Related: Spy tech and rigged eggs help scientists study the secret lives of animals.]

Biologists brought the egg back to Liberty Wildlife, where it was monitored in a structure called a brooder.  When the egg began to “pip,” the Los Angeles Zoo’s propagation team advised Liberty Wildlife on best practices for monitoring the hatchling’s progress. The team noticed that the chick was in the wrong position in the egg due to where it had pipped, or poked through its membrane, and that it would need assistance in order for the hatch to be successful. 

“Veterinarian Dr. Stephanie Lamb assisted in the freeing of the baby from the egg and the operation was successful.  After a health check, a swab to test for Avian Flu was obtained, and the chick was placed in an incubator with a surrogate (stuffed animal) ‘mother’ condor,” Miller says. 

The hatching of a baby California condor at Liberty Wildlife in Arizona. Dr. Stephanie Lamb and the wildlife hospital team at Liberty Wildlife assisted in the incubation, hatching, and care of the egg for the past month. The baby condor is doing well and being cared for with the best practice, by our team wearing camouflage, and with a big assist from a stuffed puppet “parent.” CREDIT: Liberty Wildlife.

The hatchling was negative for bird flu and continued to eat solid food and bond with her surrogate plush parent. According to Mosby, the team was excited to find out she was female because 11 of the 21 condors that have died due to bird flu were breeding age females.

On May 17, she was flown to The Peregrine Fund in Boise, Idaho. There she will be raised by foster parents so that she can one day be released back into Arizona’s skies.  

“At this age it is very easy for the chick to imprint on humans so getting her with her own species is critical to her releasability,” says Miller. “The Peregrine Fund has a very advanced propagation department with proven foster parents to help raise chicks for release into the wild. It is a very large operation with proven results.”

The hatching laying on blankets with her surrogate stuffed animal parent.
The hatching with her surrogate stuffed animal parent. CREDIT: Chris Sar/Liberty Wildlife.

According to the team, vultures like the California condor are not only intelligent, but are incredibly necessary to help clean up the environment since they handle dead and decaying animals that can spread disease. 

“Vultures are part of the natural cleanup crew in nature. They deserve every fair chance they can get to continue to survive and be a part of this world,” says Miller. 

In addition to this welcome hatchling’s continued success this week, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service approved the emergency use of bird flu vaccine on May 16. The Yurok Tribe called this move, “a huge step in the effort to combat this virulent threat, but still a long road ahead.”

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This spider pretends to be an ant, but not well enough to avoid being eaten https://www.popsci.com/environment/spider-camouflage-ant/ Thu, 18 May 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=541897
Siler collingwoodi is a colorful, ant-mimicking spider found in China and Japan.
Siler collingwoodi is a colorful, ant-mimicking spider found in China and Japan. Hua Zeng

Not all predators are so easily fooled.

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Siler collingwoodi is a colorful, ant-mimicking spider found in China and Japan.
Siler collingwoodi is a colorful, ant-mimicking spider found in China and Japan. Hua Zeng

If Spiderman and Antman took their DNA and mixed it together in a petri dish, the result might be something like the spider species Siler collingwoodi (S. collingwoodi). This tiny, colorful, jumping spider found in China and Japan uses a combination of camouflage and some award-worthy mimicry to deter some hungry predators. In a stressful scenario, these spiders will imitate the way an ant walks to avoid being eaten.

[Related: Black widows battle their even deadlier cousins in a brutal spider war.]

A study published May 17 in the journal iScience found that the combo of camouflage and ant mimicry works to evade spiders that eat other spiders, but not hungry praying mantises. It’s advantageous to mimic an ant because they are typically not very tasty, and can have spiny defenses, chemical repellents, or venom. Not to mention, species of “exploding” ants like Colobopsis saundersi that are not afraid to fight and bite back. While scientists already knew that S. collingwoodi walked like an ant, the team on this study were curious how accurate the mimicry is, whether it imitates multiple species of ants, and how effective it is at discouraging predators. 

“Unlike typical ant-mimicking spiders that mimic the brown or black body color of ants, S. collingwoodi has brilliant body coloration,” co-author and Peking University in China ecologist Hua Zeng said in a statement. “From a human’s perspective, it seems to blend well with plants in its environment, but we wanted to test whether their body coloration served as camouflage to protect against predators.”

To better understand how these ant-inspired theatrics help the spiders avoid becoming dinner, the team collected wild ant-mimicking spiders from four spots in southern Hainan, China, and brought them back to the lab. They also collected another type of jumping spider that does not mimic ants as a comparison and five co-occurring ant species as potential models.  

The team then compared and characterized how the insects and arachnids moved in terms of how they used their individual limbs, their speed, acceleration, and whether they followed a straight path or took a more roundabout way. 

Inside of jumping like most jumping spiders, S. collingwoodi scuttle around like ants. They raise their front legs to mimic an ant’s antennae, bob their abdomens, and lift their legs to walk more ant-like. Out of the five ant species studied, the spider’s style of walking more closely resembled three of the smaller ant species that are closer in size.

The Siler collingwoodi spider mimics the way that ants walk to evade other spiders that might want to eat it. CREDIT: Zeng et al. 2023

S. collingwoodi is not necessarily a perfect mimic, because its gait and trajectory showed high similarity with multiple ant species,” said Zeng. “Being a general mimic rather than perfectly mimicking one ant species could benefit the spiders by allowing them to expand their range if the ant models occupy different habitats.”

Then it was time to test these defenses against two likely predators. Portia labiata and the praying mantis. Portia labiata is a similarly sized jumping spider with color vision who specializes in preying upon other spiders. The praying mantis is a more generalist predator that has a monochromatic visual system–meaning it has trouble telling multiple colors apart. 

[Related: Jumping spiders might be able to sleep—perchance to dream.]

To see how the color camouflaging was working, they modeled how the two predators would perceive S. collingwoodi relative to the other prey species. They used a background of two plants that the spiders live on—the red-flowering West Indian jasmine and the Fukien tea tree The ant-mimicking spiders were better camouflaged from both predators on the jasmine plant than on the tea tree plant.

The predators were more likely to attack the non-mimicking spider than the ones that imitate ants. Out of 17 trials, the spider launched five attacks—all of them were launched towards a non-mimicking spider. However, praying mantises attacked both prey species with equal readiness.

“We initially thought that both predators would behave similarly in the anti predation experiments, but in fact the simulated ant locomotion of Siler collingwoodi only worked for the jumping spider predator, while the praying mantis showed indiscriminate attacks on both ants and mimics,” co-author and Peking University evolutionary ecologist Wei Zhang said in a statement

It is possible that this difference might be driven by each predator’s likelihood of being injured if they eat an ant. The praying mantises are much larger than their prey, and they have a better chance of eating spiny ants without risking catastrophic injury. Predatory spiders do not have this margin for error. 

“For the spider predator, a random attack on an ant could result in injury,” says Zhang, “so they are very careful predators and will only attack if they can distinguish S. collingwoodi from ants with a high degree of certainty.”

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Baboons can recover from childhood trauma with a little help from their friends https://www.popsci.com/environment/childhood-trauma-friendship-baboon/ Wed, 17 May 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=541633
A young baboon hangs from a thin tree branch.
Of the 199 baboons in a new study, 75 percent suffered through at least one stressor, and 33 percent had two or more. Deposit Photos

A difficult upbringing can cut years off of a monkey’s life, but good friends can help get them back.

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A young baboon hangs from a thin tree branch.
Of the 199 baboons in a new study, 75 percent suffered through at least one stressor, and 33 percent had two or more. Deposit Photos

Forging strong social relationships can help mitigate the effects of traumatic childhood events in human adults, but also in baboons. A study published May 17 in the journal Science Advances drew on 36 years of data from almost 200 baboons in southern Kenya and found that even though early adversity can take years of their lifespans, stronger social bonds in adulthood can help get these years back. 

[Related: Baboon poop shows how chronic stress shortens lives.]

“It’s like the saying from the King James Apocrypha, ‘a faithful friend is the medicine of life,’” co-author and Duke University biologist and evolutionary anthropologist Susan Alberts said in a statement.

Studies have consistently found that people who go through more bad experiences growing up, such as neglect or abuse,  are more likely to die early. However, the mechanisms behind how early adversity leads to a premature death has been harder for researchers to pin down, according to Alberts. Some of the limitations to earlier research is the reliance on self-reported memories which can be imprecise and subjective. 

Enter our primate cousins. Baboons share more than 90 percent of their DNA with humans and researchers have followed individual baboons near Amboseli National Park in Kenya since 1971. 

In this new study, the researchers analyzed how early life experiences and adult social connections affected long-term survival in 199 female baboons between 1983 and 2019.

Two female baboons in Amboseli, Kenya, groom together, a baboon’s way of social bonding
Two female baboons in Amboseli, Kenya, groom together, a baboon’s way of social bonding. CREDIT: Susan C. Alberts, Duke University.

Baboon childhood is certainly different from human childhood, but young baboons still face hardships. The team in the study tallied up each female’s exposure to six potential sources of early adversity, including whether she had a low-ranking or socially isolated mother or if her mother died before she reached maturity. It was also noted if she was born in a drought year or into a large group, and if she had a sibling close in age, which could contribute to more competition for both maternal attention and resources.

The team found that stressful experiences are very common for the baboons growing up in the semi-arid and unpredictable landscape of Amboseli. Of the 199 baboons in the study, 75 percent suffered through at least one stressor, and 33 percent had two or more.

Their results confirm previous findings that the more hardship a female baboon faces, the shorter her lifespan. Monkeys who experienced more upheaval at a young age were also more socially isolated as adults.

[Related: Monkeys with close friends have friendlier gut bacteria.]

However, the researchers showed that 90 percent of the dip in survival was due to the direct effects of early adversity, not to the weakened social bonds that continued into adulthood.

No matter how strong their bonds were with other baboons, each additional hardship translated to 1.4 years of life lost. Those who went through four bad experiences growing up died close to 5.6 years earlier than those who didn’t face any. Since the average female baboon lives to age 18, this is a large drop in lost years.

But an unfortunate start in life does not mean that a baboon will absolutely live a short life. 

“Females who have bad early lives are not doomed,” co-author and biologist at SUNY Oswego Elizabeth Lange said in a statement. “We found that both early life adversity and adult social interactions affect survival independently. That means that interventions that occur throughout the lifespan could improve survival.”

In baboons, strong social bonds are measured by how often they groom with their closest friends. Those with strong social bonds added 2.2 years to their lives, no matter what adversity they had faced in their earlier years. The baboons whose mothers died before they reached maturity and then forged strong friendships in adulthood showed the best ability to bounce back. 

However, the flip side is also true. Weak social bonds can magnify early life adversity, according to the study. 

It is not clear yet if these results can be translated to adult humans, but it suggests that early intervention is not the only way to overcome childhood trauma and its lingering effects. 

“If you did have early life adversity, whatever you do, try to make friends,” Alberts said.

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How migration makes life more resilient https://www.popsci.com/environment/the-jewel-box-tim-blackburn/ Tue, 16 May 2023 20:30:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=541396
Silver Y moth feeding on long fuschia flowers
The silver Y moth migrates between southern and northern Europe every spring. David Tipling/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Should we move species to aid their survival? A biologist explains the dilemma through the plight of moth flights.

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Silver Y moth feeding on long fuschia flowers
The silver Y moth migrates between southern and northern Europe every spring. David Tipling/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Excerpted from The Jewel Box: How Moths Illuminate Nature’s Hidden Rules by Tim Blackburn. Copyright © 2023. Published by Island Press.

The composition and structure of ecological communities doesn’t only depend on what happens in their immediate vicinity. Events in the wider environment are important, too. All of nature is connected. This is why migration matters.

Indeed, migrants have never mattered so much. Humanity has destroyed a substantial proportion of natural habitat worldwide, and much of what is left is now heavily fragmented—small islands in a sea of inhospitable cropland, pasture, or concrete. The populations they house will be small, too, and susceptible to the vagaries of bad
luck. Luckily, as we’ve seen, fragmented populations can still persist if they are connected by migrants. Migrants can bolster birth rates and counteract death rates, preventing population extinction and recolonizing sites when local extinction does take populations out. Humanity’s fragmentation of nature has only increased the relevance of these dynamics.

Migration can ameliorate some of the damage caused by fragmentation, but only some. Metapopulations are most secure when there is a large “mainland” population acting as a plentiful source of immigrants. Unfortunately, habitat destruction tends to reduce the extent and productivity of such mainlands, to the detriment of surrounding patches dependent on their largesse. Remaining fragments are often viewed as unimportant from a biodiversity perspective, but destroying them can increase the distance between surviving patches, and so lower the likelihood of colonization. When colonization rates are lower than extinction rates, populations will eventually disappear. More isolated habitat fragments have fewer species, moths and others.

On top of that, not all species are well adapted for a peripatetic lifestyle. Female vaporer moths, for example, lack wings, essentially being furry sacks for laying eggs. They are ill equipped for moving between habitat fragments. Likewise, winter moth, mottled umber, and early moth—all widespread species I’ve trapped in Devon but not in London, where the patchy nature of suitable habitat does them no favors. Even apparently mobile species often will not move far, like the cinnabar moth. Many skulking bird species of the Amazon rainforest understory evidently will not cross open spaces to the extent that major rivers in this basin become boundaries to their geographic distributions.

Specialists on certain habitats or food plants will fare especially badly when fragmentation increases. Species like the scarce pug, which in Britain feeds only on sea wormwood on a few east coast salt marshes. Extensive coastal development means that salt marshes are rarer and more-fragmented habitats than of old, and these are the only habitat of sea wormwood in Britain. Greater distances between suitable patches reduces the chances that dispersing individuals will find them, to colonize or rescue.

The Jewel Box book cover with a brown and pink sphinx moth, white text, and black background
Courtesy of Island Press

Migrants can also allow species to respond to changes in conditions— to take advantage of new opportunities as they develop, or escape from sinking ships. This is especially important in the face of the ongoing climate crisis. When environmental conditions change beyond the physiological tolerances of individuals, the species has only three options: adapt, move, or go extinct. The current speed of environmental change makes adaptation difficult, especially for those with slower life histories, leaving movement as the best option for survival.

Unfortunately, the ability of species to track changes in the climate is significantly hampered by habitat destruction and fragmentation. It’s easy for populations to move through continuous tracts of habitat. But remember the effects of area and isolation on the species richness of islands: small, remote pockets of habitat are harder targets for dispersing individuals to hit. Humanity has increased the need for species to move while simultaneously making it harder for them to do so.

We can help, though—right? If species need to move, we can step in and do the leg work. It’s called assisted colonization—the translocation of individuals beyond the current limits of their distribution in order to conserve species that would otherwise go extinct thanks to their inability to reach new areas in the face of a changing environment. Humans have been moving species around for all sorts of reasons for millennia now. Why not for conservation?

Well, precisely because of those species we’ve moved—the impacts of pesky aliens like the box-tree moth. In truth, that species is second division when it comes to damage. Other aliens have been much worse. I’ve already mentioned cats and rats, but take the rosy wolfsnail. It was moved to several islands across the Pacific to control populations of another alien, the giant African land snail, but instead ate its way through the entire world populations of more than 130 other snail species. Alien diseases can wipe out naïve host populations, like the fungal pathogens Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and B. salamadrovirans that, between them, have been responsible for the extinction of almost 100 amphibian species worldwide, and population declines in hundreds more. Alien plants can modify ecosystems to their own advantage, and suppress native plant species. Native birds tend to do worse in habitats dominated by alien plants, because their insect prey often cannot make a living on those plants. Aliens in general have been associated with the global extinction of more species in the last 500 years than any other human intervention, including habitat destruction. They remain one of the main drivers of global population declines.

It’s trebly ironic that not only has humanity caused problems for species by increasing the need for them to move while simultaneously making it harder for them to do so, but also has caused problems for some species by moving others. The pressure for assisted colonization is growing, but we are rightly wary of taking species to places where they have no prior history.

Buy The Jewel Box by Tim Blackburn here.

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No machine can beat a dog’s bomb-detecting sniffer https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/dogs-bomb-detect-device/ Mon, 18 Mar 2019 21:21:29 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/uncategorized/dogs-bomb-detect-device/
A Labrador retriever smelling for explosives with a member of a bomb squad at the trial of the 2015 Boston Marathon bomber
A bomb-sniffing dog walks in front of a courthouse during the 2015 trial for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images

Dogs are the best bomb detectors we have. Can scientists do better?

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A Labrador retriever smelling for explosives with a member of a bomb squad at the trial of the 2015 Boston Marathon bomber
A bomb-sniffing dog walks in front of a courthouse during the 2015 trial for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images

This story was first published on June 3, 2013. It covered the most up-to-date technology in bomb detection at the time, with a focus on research based off canine olfaction. Today, dogs still hold an edge to chemical sensors with their noses: They’ve even been trained to sniff out bed bugs, the coronavirus, and homemade explosives like HMTDs.

IT’S CHRISTMAS SEASON at the Quintard Mall in Oxford, Alabama, and were it not a weekday morning, the tiled halls would be thronged with shoppers, and I’d probably feel much weirder walking past Victoria’s Secret with TNT in my pants. The explosive is harmless in its current form—powdered and sealed inside a pair of four-ounce nylon pouches tucked into the back pockets of my jeans—but it’s volatile enough to do its job, which is to attract the interest of a homeland defender in training by the name of Suge.

Suge is an adolescent black Labrador retriever in an orange DO NOT PET vest. He is currently a pupil at Auburn University’s Canine Detection Research Institute and comes to the mall once a week to practice for his future job: protecting America from terrorists by sniffing the air with extreme prejudice.

Olfaction is a canine’s primary sense. It is to him what vision is to a human, the chief input for data. For more than a year, the trainers at Auburn have honed that sense in Suge to detect something very explicit and menacing: molecules that indicate the presence of an explosive, such as the one I’m carrying.

The TNT powder has no discernible scent to me, but to Suge it has a very distinct chemical signature. He can detect that signature almost instantly, even in an environment crowded with thousands of other scents. Auburn has been turning out the world’s most highly tuned detection dogs for nearly 15 years, but Suge is part of the school’s newest and most elite program. He is a Vapor Wake dog, trained to operate in crowded public spaces, continuously assessing the invisible vapor trails human bodies leave in their wake.

Unlike traditional bomb-sniffing dogs, which are brought to a specific target—say, a car trunk or a suspicious package—the Vapor Wake dog is meant to foil a particularly nasty kind of bomb, one carried into a high traffic area by a human, perhaps even a suicidal one. In busy locations, searching individuals is logistically impossible, and fixating on specific suspects would be a waste of time. Instead, a Vapor Wake dog targets the ambient air.

As the bombing at the Boston marathon made clear, we need dogs—and their noses. As I approach the mall’s central courtyard, where its two wings of chain stores intersect, Suge is pacing back and forth at the end of a lead, nose in the air. At first, I walk toward him and then swing wide to feign interest in a table covered with crystal curios. When Suge isn’t looking, I walk past him at a distance of about 10 feet, making sure to hug the entrance of Bath & Body Works, conveniently the most odoriferous store in the entire mall. Within seconds, I hear the clattering of the dog’s toenails on the hard tile floor behind me.

As Suge struggles at the end of his lead (once he’s better trained, he’ll alert his handler to threats in a less obvious manner), I reach into my jacket and pull out a well-chewed ball on a rope—his reward for a job well done—and toss it over my shoulder. Christmas shoppers giggle at the sight of a black Lab chasing a ball around a mall courtyard, oblivious that had I been an actual terrorist, he would have just saved their lives.

That Suge can detect a small amount of TNT at a distance of 10 feet in a crowded mall in front of a shop filled with scented soaps, lotions, and perfumes is an extraordinary demonstration of the canine’s olfactory ability. But what if, as a terrorist, I’d spotted Suge from a distance and changed my path to avoid him? And what if I’d chosen to visit one of the thousands of malls, train stations, and subway platforms that don’t have Vapor Wake dogs on patrol?

Dogs may be the most refined scent-detection devices humans have, a technology in development for 10,000 years or more, but they’re hardly perfect. Graduates of Auburn’s program can cost upwards of $30,000. They require hundreds of hours of training starting at birth. There are only so many trainers and a limited supply of purebred dogs with the right qualities for detection work. Auburn trains no more than a couple of hundred a year, meaning there will always be many fewer dogs than there are malls or military units. Also, dogs are sentient creatures. Like us, they get sleepy; they get scared; they die. Sometimes they make mistakes.

As the tragic bombing at the Boston Marathon made all too clear, explosives remain an ever-present danger, and law enforcement and military personnel need dogs—and their noses—to combat them. But it also made clear that security forces need something in addition to canines, something reliable, mass-producible, and easily positioned in a multitude of locations. In other words, they need an artificial nose.

Engineer in glasses and a blue coat in front of a bomb detector mass spectrometer
David Atkinson at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has created a system that uses a mass spectrometer to detect the molecular weights of common explosives in air. Courtesy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

IN 1997, DARPA created a program to develop just such a device, targeted specifically to land mines. No group was more aware than the Pentagon of the pervasive and existential threat that explosives represent to troops in the field, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that the need for bomb detection extended beyond the battlefield. In 1988, a group of terrorists brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. In 1993, Ramzi Yousef and Eyad Ismoil drove a Ryder truck full of explosives into the underground garage at the World Trade Center in New York, nearly bringing down one tower. And in 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated another Ryder truck full of explosives in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168. The “Dog’s Nose Program,” as it was called, was deemed a national security priority.

Over the course of three years, scientists in the program made the first genuine headway in developing a device that could “sniff” explosives in ambient air rather than test for them directly. In particular, an MIT chemist named Timothy Swager honed in on the idea of using fluorescent polymers that, when bound to molecules given off by TNT, would turn off, signaling the presence of the chemical. The idea eventually developed into a handheld device called Fido, which is still widely used today in the hunt for IEDs (many of which contain TNT). But that’s where progress stalled.

Olfaction, in the most reductive sense, is chemical detection. In animals, molecules bind to receptors that trigger a signal that’s sent to the brain for interpretation. In machines, scientists typically use mass spectrometry in lieu of receptors and neurons. Most scents, explosives included, are created from a specific combination of molecules. To reproduce a dog’s nose, scientists need to detect minute quantities of those molecules and identify the threatening combinations. TNT was relatively easy. It has a high vapor pressure, meaning it releases abundant molecules into the air. That’s why Fido works. Most other common explosives, notably RDX (the primary component of C-4) and PETN (in plastic explosives such as Semtex), have very low vapor pressures—parts per trillion at equilibrium and once they’re loose in the air perhaps even parts per quadrillion.

The machine “sniffed” just as a dog would and identified the explosive molecules. “That was just beyond the capabilities of any instrumentation until very recently,” says David Atkinson, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in Richland, Washington. A gregarious, slightly bearish man with a thick goatee, Atkinson is the co-founder and “perpetual co-chair” of the annual Workshop on Trace Explosives Detection. In 1988, he was a PhD candidate at Washington State University when Pan Am Flight 103 went down. “That was the turning point,” he says. “I’ve spent the last 20 years helping to keep explosives off airplanes.” He might at last be on the verge of a solution.

When I visit him in mid-January, Atkinson beckons me into a cluttered lab with a view of the Columbia River. At certain times of the year, he says he can see eagles swooping in to poach salmon as they spawn. “We’re going to show you the device we think can get rid of dogs,” he says jokingly and points to an ungainly, photocopier–size machine with a long copper snout in a corner of the lab; wires run haphazardly from various parts.

Last fall, Atkinson and two colleagues did something tremendous: They proved, for the first time, that a machine could perform direct vapor detection of two common explosives—RDX and PETN—under ambient conditions. In other words, the machine “sniffed” the vapor as a dog would, from the air, and identified the explosive molecules without first heating or concentrating the sample, as currently deployed chemical-detection machines (for instance, the various trace-detection machines at airport security checkpoints) must. In one shot, Atkinson opened a door to the direct detection of the world’s most nefarious explosives.

As Atkinson explains the details of his machine, senior scientist Robert Ewing, a trim man in black jeans and a speckled gray shirt that exactly matches his salt-and-pepper hair, prepares a demonstration. Ewing grabs a glass slide soiled with RDX, an explosive that even in equilibrium has a vapor pressure of just five parts per trillion. This particular sample, he says, is more than a year old and just sits out on the counter exposed; the point being that it’s weak. Ewing raises this sample to the snout end of a copper pipe about an inch in diameter. That pipe delivers the air to an ionization source, which selectively pairs explosive compounds with charged particles, and then on to a commercial mass spectrometer about the size of a small copy machine. No piece of the machine is especially complicated; for the most part, Atkinson and Ewing built it with off-the-shelf parts.

Ewing allows the machine to sniff the RDX sample and then points to a computer monitor where a line graph that looks like an EKG shows what is being smelled. Within seconds, the graph spikes. Ewing repeats the experiment with C-4 and then again with Semtex. Each time, the machine senses the explosive.

David Atkinson may have been first to demonstrate extremely sensitive chemical detection—and that research is all but guaranteed to strengthen terror defense—but he and other scientists still have a long way to go before they approach the sophistication of a dog nose.

A commercial version of Atkinson’s machine could have enormous implications for public safety, but to get the technology from the lab to the field will require overcoming a few hurdles. As it stands, the machine recognizes only a handful of explosives (at least nine as of April), although both Ewing and Atkinson are confident that they can work out the chemistry to detect others if they get the funding. Also, Atkinson will need to shrink it to a practical size. The current smallest version of a high-performance mass spectrometer is about the size of a laser printer—too big for police or soldiers to carry in the field. Scientists have not yet found a way to shrink the device’s vacuum pump. DARPA, Atkinson says, has funded a project to dramatically reduce the size of vacuum pumps, but it’s unclear if the work can be applied to mass spectrometry.

If Atkinson can reduce the footprint of his machine, even marginally, and refine his design, he imagines plenty of very useful applications. For instance, a version affixed to the millimeter wave booths now common at American airports (the ones that require passengers to stand with their hands in the air—also invented at PNNL, by the way) could use a tube to sniff air and deliver it to a mass spectrometer. Soldiers could also mount one to a Humvee or an autonomous vehicle that could drive up and sniff suspicious piles of rubble in situations too perilous for a human or dog. If Atkinson could reach backpack size or smaller, he may even be able to get portable versions into the hands of those who need them most: the marines on patrol in Afghanistan, the Amtrak cops guarding America’s rail stations, or the officers watching over a parade or road race.

Atkinson is not alone in his quest for a better nose. A research group at MIT is studying the use of carbon nanotubes lined with peptides extracted from bee venom that bind to certain explosive molecules. And at the French-German Research Institute in France, researcher Denis Spitzer is experimenting with a chemical detector made from micro-electromechanical machines (MEMs) and modeled on the antennae of a male silkworm moth, which are sensitive enough to detect a single molecule of female pheromone in the air.

Atkinson may have been first to demonstrate extremely sensitive chemical detection—and that research is all but guaranteed to strengthen terror defense—but he and other scientists still have a long way to go before they approach the sophistication of a dog nose. One challenge is to develop a sniffing mechanism. “With any electronic nose, you have to get the odorant into the detector,” says Mark Fisher, a senior scientist at Flir Systems, the company that holds the patent for Fido, the IED detector. Every sniff a dog takes, it processes about half a liter of air, and a dog sniffs up to 10 times per second. Fido processes fewer than 100 milliliters per minute, and Atkinson’s machine sniffs a maximum of 20 liters per minute.

Another much greater challenge, perhaps even insurmountable, is to master the mechanisms of smell itself.

German shepherd patrolling Union Station in Washington, D.C.
To condition detection dogs to crowds and unpredictable situations, such as Washington, D.C.’s Union Station at Thanksgiving [above], trainers send them to prisons to interact with inmates. Mandel Ngan/Afp/Getty Images

OLFACTION IS THE OLDEST of the sensory systems and also the least understood. It is complicated and ancient, sometimes called the primal sense because it dates back to the origin of life itself. The single-celled organisms that first floated in the primordial soup would have had a chemical detection system in order to locate food and avoid danger. In humans, it’s the only sense with its own dedicated processing station in the brain—the olfactory bulb—and also the only one that doesn’t transmit its data directly to the higher brain. Instead, the electrical impulses triggered when odorant molecules bind with olfactory receptors route first through the limbic system, home of emotion and memory. This is why smell is so likely to trigger nostalgia or, in the case of those suffering from PTSD, paralyzing fear.

All mammals share the same basic system, although there is great variance in sensitivity between species. Those that use smell as the primary survival sense, in particular rodents and dogs, are orders of magnitude better than humans at identifying scents. Architecture has a lot to do with that. Dogs are lower to the ground, where molecules tend to land and linger. They also sniff much more frequently and in a completely different way (by first exhaling to clear distracting scents from around a target and then inhaling), drawing more molecules to their much larger array of olfactory receptors. Good scent dogs have 10 times as many receptors as humans, and 35 percent of the canine brain is devoted to smell, compared with just 5 percent in humans.

Unlike hearing and vision, both of which have been fairly well understood since the 19th century, scientists first explained smell only 50 years ago. “In terms of the physiological mechanisms of how the system works, that really started only a few decades ago,” says Richard Doty, director of the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “And the more people learn, the more complicated it gets.”

Whereas Atkinson’s vapor detector identifies a few specific chemicals using mass spectrometry, animal systems can identify thousands of scents that are, for whatever reason, important to their survival. When molecules find their way into a nose, they bind with olfactory receptors that dangle like upside-down flowers from a sheet of brain tissue known as the olfactory epithelium. Once a set of molecules links to particular receptors, an electrical signal is sent through axons into the olfactory bulb and then through the limbic system and into the cortex, where the brain assimilates that information and says, “Yum, delicious coffee is nearby.”

While dogs are fluent in the mysterious language of smell, scientists are only now learning the ABC’s.As is the case with explosives, most smells are compounds of chemicals (only a very few are pure; for instance, vanilla is only vanillin), meaning that the system must pick up all those molecules together and recognize the particular combination as gasoline, say, and not diesel or kerosene. Doty explains the system as a kind of code, and he says, “The code for a particular odor is some combination of the proteins that get activated.” To create a machine that parses odors as well as dogs, science has to unlock the chemical codes and program artificial receptors to alert for multiple odors as well as combinations.

In some ways, Atkinson’s machine is the first step in this process. He’s unlocked the codes for a few critical explosives and has built a device sensitive enough to detect them, simply by sniffing the air. But he has not had the benefit of many thousands of years of bioengineering. Canine olfaction, Doty says, is sophisticated in ways that humans can barely imagine. For instance, humans don’t dream in smells, he says, but dogs might. “They may have the ability to conceptualize smells,” he says, meaning that instead of visualizing an idea in their mind’s eye, they might smell it.

Animals can also convey metadata with scent. When a dog smells a telephone pole, he’s reading a bulletin board of information: which dogs have passed by, which ones are in heat, etc. Dogs can also sense pheromones in other species. The old adage is that they can smell fear, but scientists have proved that they can smell other things, like cancer or diabetes. Gary Beauchamp, who heads the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, says that a “mouse sniffing another mouse can obtain much more information about that mouse than you or I could by looking at someone.”

If breaking chemical codes is simple spelling, deciphering this sort of metadata is grammar and syntax. And while dogs are fluent in this mysterious language, scientists are only now learning the ABC’s.

Dog in an MRI machine with computer screens in front
Paul Waggoner at Auburn University treats dogs as technology. He studies their neurological responses to olfactory triggers with an MRI machine. Courtesy Auburn Canine Detection Institute

THERE ARE FEW people who better appreciate the complexities of smell than Paul Waggoner, a behavioral scientist and the associate director of Auburn’s Canine Research Detection Institute. He has been hacking the dog’s nose for more than 20 years.

“By the time you leave, you won’t look at a dog the same way again,” he says, walking me down a hall where military intelligence trainees were once taught to administer polygraphs and out a door and past some pens where new puppies spend their days. The CRDI occupies part of a former Army base in the Appalachian foothills and breeds and trains between 100 and 200 dogs—mostly Labrador retrievers, but also Belgian Malinois, German shepherds, and German shorthaired pointers—a year for Amtrak, the Department of Homeland Security, police departments across the US, and the military. Training begins in the first weeks of life, and Waggoner points out that the floor of the puppy corrals is made from a shiny tile meant to mimic the slick surfaces they will encounter at malls, airports, and sporting arenas. Once weaned, the puppies go to prisons in Florida and Georgia, where they get socialized among prisoners in a loud, busy, and unpredictable environment. And then they come home to Waggoner.

What Waggoner has done over tens of thousands of hours of careful study is begin to quantify a dog’s olfactory abilities. For instance, how small a sample dogs can detect (parts per trillion, at least); how many different types of scents they can detect (within a certain subset, explosives for instance, there seems to be no limit, and a new odor can be learned in hours); whether training a dog on multiple odors degrades its overall detection accuracy (typically, no); and how certain factors like temperature and fatigue affect performance.

The idea that the dog is a static technology just waiting to be obviated really bothers Waggoner, because he feels like he’s innovating every bit as much as Atkinson and the other lab scientists. “We’re still learning how to select, breed, and get a better dog to start with—then how to better train it and, perhaps most importantly, how to train the people who operate those dogs.”

Waggoner even taught his dogs to climb into an MRI machine and endure the noise and tedium of a scan. If he can identify exactly which neurons are firing in the presence of specific chemicals and develop a system to convey that information to trainers, he says it could go a long way toward eliminating false alarms. And if he could get even more specific—whether, say, RDX fires different cells than PETN—that information might inform more targeted responses from bomb squads.

The idea that the dog is a static technology just waiting to be obviated really bothers Paul Waggoner.

After a full day of watching trainers demonstrate the multitudinous abilities of CRDI’s dogs, Waggoner leads me back to his sparsely furnished office and clicks a video file on his computer. It was from a lecture he’d given at an explosives conference, and it featured Major, a yellow lab wearing what looked like a shrunken version of the Google Street View car array on its back. Waggoner calls this experiment Autonomous Canine Navigation. Working with preloaded maps, a computer delivered specific directions to the dog. By transmitting beeps that indicated left, right, and back, it helped Major navigate an abandoned “town” used for urban warfare training. From a laptop, Waggoner could monitor the dog’s position using both cameras and a GPS dot, while tracking its sniff rate. When the dog signaled the presence of explosives, the laptop flashed an alert, and a pin was dropped on the map.

It’s not hard to imagine this being very useful in urban battlefield situations or in the case of a large area and a fast-ticking clock—say, an anonymous threat of a bomb inside an office building set to detonate in 30 minutes. Take away the human and the leash, and a dog can sweep entire floors at a near sprint. “To be as versatile as a dog, to have all capabilities in one device, might not be possible,” Waggoner says.

Both the dog people and the scientists working to emulate the canine nose have a common goal: to stop bombs from blowing up. It’s important to recognize that both sides—the dog people and the scientists working to emulate the canine nose—have a common goal: to stop bombs from blowing up. And the most effective result of this technology race, Waggoner thinks, is a complementary relationship between dog and machine. It’s impractical, for instance, to expect even a team of Vapor Wake dogs to protect Grand Central Terminal, but railroad police could perhaps one day install a version of Atkinson’s sniffer at that station’s different entrances. If one alerts, they could call in the dogs.

There’s a reason Flir Systems, the maker of Fido, has a dog research group, and it’s not just for comparative study, says the man who runs it, Kip Schultz. “I think where the industry is headed, if it has forethought, is a combination,” he told me. “There are some things a dog does very well. And some things a machine does very well. You can use one’s strengths against the other’s weaknesses and come out with a far better solution.”

Despite working for a company that is focused mostly on sensor innovation, Schultz agrees with Waggoner that we should be simultaneously pushing the dog as a technology. “No one makes the research investment to try to get an Apple approach to the dog,” he says. “What could he do for us 10 or 15 years from now that we haven’t thought of yet?”

On the other hand, dogs aren’t always the right choice; they’re probably a bad solution for screening airline cargo, for example. It’s a critical task, but it’s tedious work sniffing thousands of bags per day as they roll by on a conveyor belt. There, a sniffer mounted over the belt makes far more sense. It never gets bored.

“The perception that sensors will put dogs out of business—I’m telling you that’s not going to happen,” Schultz told me, at the end of a long conference call. Mark Fisher, who was also on the line, laughed. “Dogs aren’t going to put sensors out of business either.”

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A ‘butterfly tree of life’ reveals the origins of these beautiful insects https://www.popsci.com/environment/butterfly-evolution-america/ Mon, 15 May 2023 15:30:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=541137
A blue butterfly on a pink flowering plant.
Butterflies first evolved 100 million years ago. Deposit Photos

The colorful insects first evolved more than 100 million years ago thanks to some enterprising moths.

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A blue butterfly on a pink flowering plant.
Butterflies first evolved 100 million years ago. Deposit Photos

Up until 100 million years ago, butterflies were night creatures. Only nocturnal moths were living on Earth until some rogue moths began to fly during the day. These enterprising members of the order Lepidoptera took advantage of the nectar-rich flowers that had co-evolved with bees by flying during the day. From there, close to 19,000 butterfly species were born.

[Related: Save caterpillars by turning off your outdoor lights.]

In 2019, a large-scale analysis of DNA helped solve the question of when they evolved. Now,  the mystery of where in the world colorful winged insects evolved plagues lepidopterists and museum curators. A study published May 15 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution found that butterflies likely evolved in North and Central America, and they forged strong botanical bonds with host plants as they settled around the world.

Getting to this conclusion took a four-dimensional puzzle that makes 3D chess look like a game of Candyland. Scientists from multiple countries had to assemble a massive “butterfly tree of life” using 100 million years of natural history on their distribution and favorite plants, as well as the DNA of more than 2,000 species representing 90 percent of butterfly genera and all butterfly families

Within the data were 11 rare butterfly fossils that proved to be crucial pieces to the story.  Butterflies are not common in the fossil record due to their thin wings and very threadlike hair. The 11 in this study were used as calibration and comparison points on the genetic trees, so the team could record timing of key evolutionary events.

They found that butterflies first appeared somewhere in central and western North America. 100 million years ago, North America was bisected by an expansive seaway called the Western Interior Seaway. Present day Mexico was joined in an arc with the United States, Canada, and Russia. North and South America were also separated by a strait of water that butterflies had little difficulty crossing.

The study believes that butterflies took a long way around to Africa, first moving into Asia along the Bering Land Bridge. They then radiated into Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and eventually the Horn of Africa. They were even able to reach India, which was an isolated island separated by miles of open sea at this time. 

[Related: The monarch butterfly is scientifically endangered. So why isn’t it legally protected yet?]

Australia was still connected to Antarctica, one of the last remnants of the supercontinent Pangaea. Butterflies possibly lived in Antarctica when global temperatures were warmer, and made their way north towards Australia before the landmasses broke up. 

Butterflies likely lingered along the western edge of Asia for up to 45 million years before making the journey into Europe. The effects of this pause are still apparent today, according to the authors. 

“Europe doesn’t have many butterfly species compared to other parts of the world, and the ones it does have can often be found elsewhere. Many butterflies in Europe are also found in Siberia and Asia, for example,” study co-author and curator of lepidoptera at the Florida Museum of Natural History Akito Kawahara said in a statement

Once butterflies were established all over the world, they rapidly diversified alongside their plant hosts. Nearly all modern butterfly families were on Earth by the time dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago. Each butterfly family appears to have had a special affinity for a specific group of plants.

“We looked at this association over an evolutionary timescale, and in pretty much every family of butterflies, bean plants came out to be the ancestral hosts,” Kawahara said. “This was true in the ancestor of all butterflies as well.”

Over time, bean plants have increased their roster of pollinators to include multiple types of bees, flies, hummingbirds, and mammals, while butterflies have similarly expanded their palate. These botanical partnerships helped make butterflies blossom from a minor offshoot of moths to one of the world’s largest groups of insects, according to the study.

“The evolution of butterflies and flowering plants has been inexorably intertwined since the origin of the former, and the close relationship between them has resulted in remarkable diversification events in both lineages,” study co-author and Florida Museum curator Pamela Soltis said in a statement

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This lawn-mowing robot can save part of your yard for pollinators https://www.popsci.com/technology/husqvarna-rewilding-mower-mode/ Mon, 15 May 2023 14:30:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=541155
Pink clover meadow and blue sky.
Husqvarna's Rewilding Mode saves one tenth of yard for natural growth. Deposit Photos

Husqvarna has introduced a new autopilot mode for its mowers that omits a portion of owners' yards to promote sustainability.

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Pink clover meadow and blue sky.
Husqvarna's Rewilding Mode saves one tenth of yard for natural growth. Deposit Photos

This month marks the fifth anniversary of “No Mow May,” an annual environmental project dedicated to promoting sustainable, eco-friendly lawns via a 31-day landscaping moratorium. In doing so, the brief respite gives bees and other pollinators a chance to do what they do best: contribute to a vibrant, healthy, and biodiverse ecosystem. To keep the No Mow May momentum going, Swedish tech company Husqvarna has announced a new, simple feature for its line of robotic lawnmowers: a “rewilding” mode that ensures 10 percent of owners’ lawns remain untouched for pollinators and other local wildlife.

While meticulously manicured lawns are part of the traditional suburban American mindset, they come at steep ecological costs such as biodiversity loss and massive amounts of water waste. The Natural Resource Defense Council, for instance, estimates that grass lawns consume almost 3 trillion gallons of water each year alongside 200 million gallons of gas for traditional mowers, as well as another 70 million pounds of harmful pesticides. In contrast, rewilding is a straightforward, self-explanatory concept long pushed by environmentalists and sustainability experts that encourages a return to regionally native flora for all-around healthier ecosystems.

[Related: Build a garden that’ll have pollinators buzzin’.]

While convincing everyone to adopt rewilding practices may seem like a near-term impossibility, companies like Husqvarna are hoping to set the literal and figurative lawnmower rolling with its new autopilot feature. According to Husqvarna’s announcement, if Europeans set aside just a tenth of their lawns, the cumulative area would amount to four times the size of the continent’s largest nature preserve.

Enabling the Rewilding Mode only takes a few taps within the product line’s Automower Connect app, and can be customized to change the overall shape, size, and placement of the rewilding zones. Once established, the robotic mower’s onboard GPS systems ensure which areas of an owner’s lawn are off-limits and reserved for bees, butterflies, and whatever else wants to set up shop.

Of course, turning on Rewilding Mode means owning a Husqvarna robotic mower that supports the setting—and at a minimum of around $700 for such a tool, they might be out of many lawn care enthusiasts’ budgets. Even so, that doesn’t mean you should abandon giving rewilding a try for your own lawns. It’s easy to get started on the project, and as its name suggests, doesn’t take much maintenance once it’s thriving. If nothing else, there’s still two weeks left in No Mow May, so maybe consider postponing your weekend outdoor chore for a few more days.

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Light pollution is messing with coral reproduction https://www.popsci.com/environment/coral-reef-spawn-light-pollution/ Mon, 15 May 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=541131
A coral reef in the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba in the Red Sea. Corals here and in the Persian Gulf are particularly affected by light pollution.
A coral reef in the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba in the Red Sea. Corals here and in the Persian Gulf are particularly affected by light pollution. Sahchaf Ben Ezra

More than 7 million square miles of coastal ocean are possibly affected by increasingly common nighttime lights.

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A coral reef in the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba in the Red Sea. Corals here and in the Persian Gulf are particularly affected by light pollution.
A coral reef in the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba in the Red Sea. Corals here and in the Persian Gulf are particularly affected by light pollution. Sahchaf Ben Ezra

A dark side effect of the electricity that helps society run around the clock is the pollution caused by our increasing numbers of lights at night. Light pollution can obscure stargazing, confusing sea turtles when they hatch, and also could be harming coral reefs.   

[Related: The switch to LEDs in Europe is visible from space.]

The light pollution from cities along the coast can trick the reefs into spawning outside of their optimal reproductive times, according to a study published May 15 in the journal Nature Communications.

“Corals are critical for the health of the global ocean, but are being increasingly damaged by human activity. This study shows it is not just changes in the ocean that are impacting them, but the continued development of coastal cities as we try and accommodate the growing global population,” Thomas Davies, a study co-author and conservation ecologist at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom,  said in a statement. 

The moon’s cycles trigger coral to spawn. During these spawning events, hundreds of eggs are released on certain nights of the year. These nights are critical to maintain and recover coral reefs after mass bleaching or other adverse events.

By using a combination of spawning observations and data on light pollution, an international team of researchers showed that the corals exposed to artificial light at night (ALAN) are spawning about one to three days closer to the full moon compared to reefs that are not.

If coral spawn on different nights, coral eggs are less likely to be fertilized and survive to produce adult corals. Population growth is needed now more than ever to help the population recover after disturbing events like bleaching.

The study builds on research from 2021 that mapped out the areas of the ocean that are most affected by light pollution. It found that at 3.2 feet deep, over 7 million square miles of coastal ocean are exposed to biologically important ALAN.  

“This study further emphasizes the importance of artificial light pollution as a stressor of coastal and marine ecosystems, with the impacts on various aspects of biodiversity only now being discovered and quantified,” Tim Smyth, a co-author and biogeochemist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, said in a statement

The team paired their new data with a global dataset representing 2,135 coral spawning observations taken over the last 23 years. They saw that ALAN is possibly advancing the triggers for spawning by creating a fake illuminance between sunset and sunrise on the nights after the full moon. 

[Related: The best ways to reduce light pollution and improve your quality of life.]

The study looked at coastal regions around the world, but the coral reefs of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf in the Middle East are particularly affected by light pollution. These coastlines have been heavily developed in recent years, putting the reefs near the shore at risk. 

“Despite the challenges posed by ALAN, corals in the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba are known for their thermal tolerance and ability to withstand high temperatures. However, a disturbance in the timing of coral spawning with the moon phases can result in a decline in new coral recruits and a reduction in the coral population,” Oren Levy, co-author and marine ecologist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, said in a statement

Some individual methods to reduce light pollution, especially for those along the coast, include removing nighttime lighting that is not necessarily needed for public safety, removing all unnecessary light even if it is just one in a backyard, and switching away from white lights to more muted red lights that are less intense.

“By implementing measures to limit light pollution, we can protect these vital habitats and safeguard the future of the world’s oceans. It’s our responsibility to ensure that we preserve the biodiversity of our planet and maintain a healthy and sustainable environment for generations to come,” said Levy.

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How echolocation lets bats, dolphins, and even people navigate by sound https://www.popsci.com/science/what-is-echolocation/ Mon, 15 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=540498
Dolphins use echolocation to find fish and navigate in the dark sea.
Dolphins, porpoises, and other toothed whales have mastered echolocation thanks to unique anatomical structures. Depositphotos

The word "echolocation' says it all. But different animals have put their own twist on the sensory superpower.

The post How echolocation lets bats, dolphins, and even people navigate by sound appeared first on Popular Science.

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Dolphins use echolocation to find fish and navigate in the dark sea.
Dolphins, porpoises, and other toothed whales have mastered echolocation thanks to unique anatomical structures. Depositphotos

In an environment without light, or where sight is otherwise useless, some creatures have learned to thrive by sound. They rely on calls, clicks, and twitters to create a kind of map of their surroundings or pinpoint prey. That ability is called echolocation, and a simple way to understand how it works is to crack open the word itself. 

What is echolocation?

Imagine an echo that locates things. The sound hits an object and bounces back, relaying information about a target’s whereabouts or cues for navigation. When Harvard University zoologist Donald Griffin coined the word “echolocation” in the journal Science in 1944, he was describing how bats rely on sounds to “fly through the total darkness of caves without striking the walls or the jutting stalactites.”

In the decades since, scientists have identified many other animals that use echolocation, aka biosonar. For example, at least 16 species of birds echolocate, including swiftlets and nocturnal oilbirds, which roost deep in South America’s caves. Laura Kloepper, an expert in animal acoustics at the University of New Hampshire, calls this shared ability an example of convergent evolution, in which “you have two unrelated species evolve the same adaptive strategy.” 

How does echolocation work?

To find fish in deep waters, or avoid crashing in the inky night, whales and bats produce loud ultrasonic sounds at frequencies all the way up to 200 kilohertz. That is way beyond human hearing (most adults can’t perceive pitches above 17 kilohertz). 

[Related on PopSci+: 5 sounds not meant for the human ear]

Why do specialized echolocators use ultrasonic sound? “High-frequency sounds give really fine spatial resolution,” Kloepper explains. Hertz is a measure of the distance between each acoustic wave: The higher the hertz, the tighter the wave, and the smaller the detail captured by the vibration of energy in the air. If you were to echolocate in a room, a big, low-frequency wave might simply reflect off a wall, Kloepper says, while an echo from a higher-frequency sound could tell you where the doorway or even the knob was.

Echoes, if you know how to interpret them, are rich in information. As Kloepper explains it, when an animal with the ability hears a reflection, it examines that sound against an “internalized template” of the call it sent out. That comparison of echo versus signal can yield the distance to a target, the direction it might be traveling in, and even its material make-up.

Ultrasonic calls give another bats boost, too—they rely on next-level frequencies to find mates. Many species of moths hunted by bats have evolved ears attuned to these frequencies as a means of survival.

What animals use echolocation?

Of the echolocating critters, bats and toothed whales like dolphins are the all-stars. Dolphins are able to detect objects more than 300 feet away, and can even tell if a target has fluid inside of it. Bats’ range maxes out at about a dozen feet, but they can sense objects while flitting through a dense forest or a huge bat swarm. Using sound, both types of mammals are able to discern differences in location down to fractions of an inch. Other animals have their own versions of sonar, too, adapted to their unique features and needs. 

Bats

Fossils indicate that bats have been guided by sound for at least 52 million years, which is longer than humans have even existed. Today, hundreds of species in this mammalian group can echolocate, which they use to chase down mosquitoes, moths, and other prey. Some insectivorous bats are so adept at this skill, they can spot motionless bugs hiding on leaves in the dark of night. In response, many insects have evolved defenses against bat sonar—a struggle that biologists have likened to an arms race. Luna moths sprout long tails that might act as reflective decoys, confusing bats. Other flutterers emit ultrasonic signals of their own to jam the enemy’s sonar.  

[Related: How fast is supersonic flight?]

To make ultrasound, a bat vibrates a specialized organ in its throat called a larynx. It’s not too different from how the human voice box works, except the bat produces a much higher frequency sound. Certain bat species then release the sound from their mouths, while others screech from the snout, using an elaborate nasal structure nicknamed a nose-leaf

A pair of greater horseshoe bats, whose distinctive noses aid them in echolocation.
The distinctive shape of these greater horseshoe bats’ noses helps direct echolocation signals. Depositphotos

Whales

Dolphins, orcas, and other toothed whales echolocate for the same reasons as bats do: to chase down tasty prey and navigate through darkness. But these aquatic mammals emit ultrasound in a completely different way. Inside whale heads, often close to their blowholes, sit lip-like flaps. When the animals push air across the flaps, the appendages vibrate, producing clicks. “It’s just like if you inflate a balloon and let all the air out of that balloon. It makes a pbbft noise,” Kloepper says. 

The curves of dolphin skulls propel that noise into fatty structures at the front of their heads, called melons. These, in turn, efficiently transmit vibrations in seawater. The waves bounce off prey or other objects, but the whales don’t rely on external ears to hear the echo (their ear canals are plugged up with wax). Instead, the vibrations are channeled via their jawbones, where sound is received by fat-filled cavities so thin that light can pass through them. The cavities are near the whales’ inner ears, which sense the echoing clicks. The process can reveal all sorts of details: where a fish is, where it’s going, and how fast it’s swimming.

Shrews

Shrews have sensitive whiskers but poor eyesight. To supplement their senses as they explore their forest and grassy meadow habitats, they might use a coarse form of echolocation, which Sophie von Merten, a mammalogist at the University of Lisbon in Portugal, calls “echo-orientation” or “echo-navigation.” This ability could “give them a hint that there is an obstacle coming,” she says, such as a fallen branch detected by the shrews’ twitters. Their bird-like sounds are faint, but audible to humans. 

The extent of shrew echo-navigation isn’t entirely clear. In a 2020 “experiment, von Merten and a colleague found that, when shrews are introduced to new environments, the wee mammals twitter more frequently. Von Merten says it’s likely they are sensing the unfamiliar location by these vocalizations, but another interpretation could be that the captive animals are stressed. That’s a hypothesis she doesn’t find very convincing, though her ongoing research will measure shrew stress, too.

Soft-furred tree mice

In 2021, a study in the journal Science found that four species of soft-furred tree mice echolocate via squeaks. The rodents, which belong to the genus Typhlomys, meaning “blind mouse,” live in dense bamboo forests in China and Vietnam. Examining the animals’ behavior, anatomy, and genetics, the researchers concluded there was “strong evidence” that these tree mice are a newly discovered “echolocating lineage within mammals.”

Could there be other undiscovered creatures out there that echolocate? “I think it’s very likely,” Kloepper says. She adds that it’s hard to tell which animals beyond mammals and birds display the behavior, given “just how little we know about vocalizations of many cryptic species.”

Humans

Unlike bats, people aren’t born with the innate power of echolocation—but we can still make it work. In his original 1944 paper, Griffin discussed a, such as captains listening for echoes of ship horns against cliff faces, or those who are blind following the taps of their canes. 

[Related: Bat-like echolocation could help these robots find lost people]

Perhaps the most famous human echolocator is Daniel Kish, the president of World Access for the Blind, who described how he navigates by clicking his tongue in a 2020 Popular Science interview. “The longer the time delay between the noise emitted and the return,” Kish said, “the farther away an object is.” Kish has taught others to click like he does. Similar examples show that echolocation in humans doesn’t require special brains or unnaturally good hearing—it’s a learned behavior that can be picked up in about 10 weeks of practice and training.  

The post How echolocation lets bats, dolphins, and even people navigate by sound appeared first on Popular Science.

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How to get rid of mice and keep them away https://www.popsci.com/get-rid-mice/ Mon, 07 Jan 2019 21:26:56 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/uncategorized/get-rid-mice/
A mouse eating a morsel of food, a scene that would prompt many to wonder how to get rid of mice.
Good housemates don't chow down while completely naked. That's just one reason to learn how to get rid of mice. Sandy Millar / Unsplash

Protect your house from vermin.

The post How to get rid of mice and keep them away appeared first on Popular Science.

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A mouse eating a morsel of food, a scene that would prompt many to wonder how to get rid of mice.
Good housemates don't chow down while completely naked. That's just one reason to learn how to get rid of mice. Sandy Millar / Unsplash

There’s a scritching sound in the darkened bedroom. Your eyes spring open, your breathing rapid and shallow, with every muscle tensed and ready to run… only to find that all is still and silent. You start to drift back to sleep.

Rustle.

Every nerve in your body is now on high alert, and you turn on the light just in time to see a flash of fur dart into the crack under your closet door. You scream an undignified “YEEAAARRGGEETTTOUTTTTT,” which, roughly translated from panicked shrieking, means: “Hello, you are a mouse. Please leave.”

Signs you have a mouse in your house

“Something I’ve noted over the years is that you know someone has a mouse when you hear the very distinct scream the person makes when they’ve seen a mouse,” jokes Michelle Niedermeier of Pennsylvania State University. “Male, female, old, young—it’s the same screech.”

Niedermeier works with the Pennsylvania Integrated Pest Management Program, helping communities deal with pest problems. She says that often, for her, the first sign of a mouse is seeing the critter itself scurry across the floor.

But because mice are nocturnal and you’re unlikely to see them (or you may catch only catch a bleary-eyed glimpse in the middle of the night), there are other signs of an infestation you should be aware of. They may also be inhabiting areas you only visit infrequently, such as an attic or crawlspace.

One of the most obvious signs of a mouse infestation is feces. The poop of a typical house mouse is only a few millimeters long, black, and pellet-like. Mice poop a lot, and they poop just about everywhere, so seeing their droppings is usually a good sign that the rodents have taken up residence.

If an infestation goes on for long enough, you might start to notice a distinct and unpleasant smell, or even some strange markings on your walls.

“Where mice go, they leave scent, and they leave a grease trail too,” says Jeff Schalau, an extension agent with The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension. Near baseboards and along walls, this grease trail resembles the smudges from handprints on a painted surface. It appears when a mouse rubs against the wall, leaving behind dirt and oils from its fur. Mice tend to avoid open spaces, and will usually travel as close to the wall as possible, which makes their trails easy to predict.

The best way to get rid of mice

Unlike some other pests, a mouse infestation is one you can take care of yourself. There’s no need to call an exterminator—just screw your courage to the sticking place and get to work.

1. Make sure mice have nothing to eat

Start by making your home an unattractive crash pad for any tiny guests.

“It all boils down to food, water, and shelter,” Niedermeier says. Cut off those three things, and you’ll make your home a lot less attractive to mice.

The problem is that mice are resourceful. For water, they can take advantage of leaks that you might not even know exist, and for shelter, they can make use of just about any kind of clutter or hole. That makes food the most important factor to tackle. “Eliminating food is paramount to getting rid of a mouse problem,” Niedermeier says.

Mice will eat pretty much anything, too, so you’ll have to be thorough. Start by cleaning up any crumbs or food debris on surfaces and floors. When you cook, promptly clean dirty dishes instead of letting them sit out. Store food in places mice can’t reach, like the refrigerator, or inside containers they cannot nibble through, such as glass or sturdy plastic. And don’t forget about your pets’ supply. Only put out the amount of food a pet will eat in one sitting. While Fifi might like grazing on kibble throughout the day, so do mice.

2. Seal up any entry points

Now that you’ve made your home unfriendly to mice, it’s time to bar the door. Literally. Mice can enter the house through the same entrances you do, so add a door sweep or barrier to any exterior doors.

Then it’s time to block up all the unconventional entrance and exit points. If you happen to see a mouse, pay attention to where it runs, and stay on the lookout for any holes or cracks.

“If you can stick a regular old pencil in a hole, a mouse can get through,” Niedermeier says. She explains that the largest part of a mouse is its tiny skull, which is usually only the width of a pencil. “If their head can get through, the rest of their body can get through as well,” she adds.

Close up any holes you see, and even the holes you’ve helped put in. Holes around pipes or wiring are often overlooked, but can act as a mouse superhighway system through your home. Don’t forget to look up high—mice can climb walls as long as their claws can grab hold.

When you fill in holes, use high-quality materials that will last for years. In the end, it will save you a lot of work. Niedermeier recommends using silicone caulk or stainless steel or copper mesh—think a pot scrubber—to block any openings. Silicone lasts for a longer time than latex caulk, and unlike steel wool, copper and stainless steel don’t rust.

“You really only want to do this job once,” Niedermeier says. And if you do it well enough, your hard work will keep mice away as long as your home remains sealed-up.

3. Trap any remaining mice

So you’ve cleaned up, boxed up, and sealed up your home—but there are still some mice inside. Now, it’s time to get rid of the stalwarts that remain. It’s time to address the big question: Do you know how to catch a mouse?

For starters, as much as you might want to, you can’t just snatch them up and take them outside. Mice have excellent senses of direction, and even moving them some distance from your house isn’t enough to get rid of them. In experiments, they find their way home quickly, even heading through obstacles to get back to their residences. The best way to get rid of mice from your home, unfortunately, is to kill them.

[Related: How to fight an ant infestation]

The most effective method is a trap, baited with tasty morsels like peanut butter, oats, or dried fruit. Place them along baseboards and walls, where mice prefer to travel, with the bait directly in their path. Simple wood and wire snap traps are a classic for a reason. They work fast, they’re effective, they’re cheap, and they’re reusable. When in doubt, this is a good first option for any home with a mouse problem.

More modern plastic snap traps, which look something like a binder clip, are also effective. Like the wooden snap traps, the plastic ones are easy to set up and use. Between the two, it’s mostly a matter of personal preference.

If you have a pet, be sure to place the traps where your pet can’t reach. If this isn’t possible, Schalau recommends placing a sturdy box with a mouse-sized hole in it along the wall and over the trap. This will allow the mouse to reach the bait, while keeping your pet safe.

Another effective and humane option is an electric box trap, which can be baited just like a snap trap. The battery-powered machine has an opening that mice can run into to try and catch the bait. When a mouse enters the box, it steps on a plate that carries a current and is instantly electrocuted. Then, a small light begins flashing to indicate that the trap has caught a mouse and should be re-set. Electric box traps are good for getting rid of mice in homes with pets, because they are completely enclosed—no dog or cat can get to the charged plate. In addition, they leave very little mess, which makes them easy to clean. The downside is that you do need to make sure the batteries are regularly charged, and they cost considerably more than a snap trap.

Why you should care

All that may seem like a lot of work, but in addition to the unwanted gross-out factor, mice (at least in relation to humans) are not a healthy addition to a home.

“Mice are a health concern,” Niedermeier says. “They spread disease, they trigger asthma, and so having a mouse in your house is a real health issue.”

They also tend to carry foodborne diseases like salmonella. And since mice enjoy noshing on the same foods that people and pets do, they have the potential to spread diseases onto our food and meal preparation surfaces.

And that’s not the only illness these fuzzy creatures can spread. “Hantavirus is a serious issue out here in the west,” Schalau says. Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, carried by rodents including mice, can be fatal.

So if you find a mouse, don’t try cohabiting. “As soon as you identify a problem, take action,” Schalau says. Otherwise, the infestation will only grow—and you’ll soon have to contend with multiple generations of rodents. “Their reproductive potential is off the charts,” Schalau says. “At the first sign of any mice inside your house, you need to get on it.”

What not to do when you’re getting rid of mice

A mouse between two dirt and stone walls. If you use mouse poison, it could die back there where you can't reach it.
Mouse poison is a bad idea. The only thing harder than getting mice out of your walls is getting dead mice out of your walls. Yunu Dinata / Unsplash

It’s not enough to know how to kill mice—you need to do it properly. Poison might sound good, but pest control experts do not recommend this option. While it will kill mice, poison can also kill any animals that might feed on mouse carcasses. It can also inadvertently poison pets.

And there’s another downside. Most poisons don’t work instantly, for good reason: Manufacturers don’t want mice to become gun-shy of poisoned bait. So what often happens is that a mouse eats a poison pellet, walks back to its nest, and only then dies. Unfortunately, mice like tiny holes and often take up residence in hard-to-reach places like walls.

Trust. You do not want to smell a dead mouse for months as it slowly decays inside your walls. Don’t do it.

Another popular option on the market is glue traps, which stick to the bodies of any mice that walk over the trap. Theoretically, this should immobilize the mouse. But starving to death while stuck to a piece of cardboard is not a great or humane way to go. And few people are willing to kill the mouse by hand. That is, if the trap actually works.

“The glue, though it’s sticky, is not sticky enough,” Niedermeier says. Older, stronger mice—which are more likely to be breeding and creating a mouse problem—can often pull themselves out of the glue traps, sometimes with a very gruesome effect. “They are ready, willing, and able to gnaw off their own arm to get out of it,” she explains. “It’s more humane to use a snap trap.”

Cleaning up after a mouse infestation

Once you’ve closed off access to your food, water, and shelter, sealed entrances and exits, and killed any interlopers unfortunate enough to remain in your domain, it’s time to clean up.

If you used traps, you should keep your hands covered while you dispose of mouse carcasses in the trash. Use disposable gloves, a plastic bag, or even sturdy leather work gloves to keep a safe distance between you and the mouse. Remember, mice can harbor diseases, so you’ll want to be cautious as you handle their bodies.

You can also take the bodies outside if you live in a rural area, but be sure to put the remains in an area far away from your house, where pets won’t be likely to bring them back in, and they won’t attract additional unwanted scavengers.

Also, take the opportunity to clean up any mouse urine or droppings, wearing a face mask if you are allergic or have asthma. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the safest way to clean up after mice is to wear gloves and spray the droppings with diluted bleach before wiping up the waste. Needless to say, washing any clothing or bedding that mice have pooped on is always a good idea. And don’t forget to wash your hands afterward.

Whew. You’re all set. Sleep the sleep of the content knowing that you have a mouse-free house.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on February 24, 2017.

The post How to get rid of mice and keep them away appeared first on Popular Science.

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Stressed clams turn ghostly white in warming waters https://www.popsci.com/environment/bleaching-climate-ocean-clams-coral-reef/ Fri, 12 May 2023 22:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=540926
In response to stress, giant clams can lose the symbiotic zooxanthellae that live in their fleshy
mantles.
In response to stress, giant clams can lose the symbiotic zooxanthellae that live in their fleshy mantles. Photo by Rasmus Loeth Petersen/Alamy Stock Photo

Giant clams suffer from bleaching like coral reefs, though the consequences don’t seem quite as dire.

The post Stressed clams turn ghostly white in warming waters appeared first on Popular Science.

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In response to stress, giant clams can lose the symbiotic zooxanthellae that live in their fleshy
mantles.
In response to stress, giant clams can lose the symbiotic zooxanthellae that live in their fleshy mantles. Photo by Rasmus Loeth Petersen/Alamy Stock Photo

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Bleaching occurs when a stressed marine creature, most commonly a coral, expels its symbiotic algae and turns a ghostly white, often in response to a warming sea. But bleaching affects more than just corals. Giant clams—massive mollusks that can grow more than 1.2 meters in diameter and weigh as much as 225 kilograms—can bleach, too. And in recent research, scientists have learned more about how bleaching disrupts these sessile giants, affecting everything from their nutrition to their reproduction.

Giant clams live on coral reefs and are the largest bivalves on Earth. Like corals, giant clams bleach when they’re stressed, often as a response to excessively warm water. As with a coral, a bleached giant clam expels the algae, called zooxanthellae, that live inside it. These algae dwell in the soft tissue of the clam’s mantle and provide energy for the animal through photosynthesis, leaving a bleached clam with less energy and nutrients. At worst, bleaching can kill giant clams through food deficiency.

Scientists have been studying bleaching in giant clams for decades. In 1997 and 1998, during a brief period that saw extensive coral bleaching worldwide with corals succumbing in at least 32 disparate countries, bleached giant clams were observed from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to French Polynesia after water temperatures in the South Pacific rose significantly. In 2010, similar temperatures in the water off Thailand’s Ko Man Nai Island also led to scores of deaths.

Of the 12 species of giant clams, some are more resistant to heat stress than others. But as scientists are finding, even when a giant clam survives bleaching, other physiological functions can still be severely impaired.

A recent study in the Philippines of wild clams, for example, found that bleaching can hamper their reproduction. Bleaching reduces the number of eggs giant clams produce, and the more severe the bleaching, the fewer eggs they make. Reproducing “takes a lot of energy. So instead of using that energy for reproduction, they just use it for their survival,” says Sherry Lyn Sayco, the lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan.

Mei Lin Neo, a marine ecologist and giant clam expert at the National University of Singapore who was not involved in the study, says the work contributes to the story of how climate change can have “repercussions on the longevity of species.”

In general, she says, we know much more about how climate change affects corals than marine species with similar physiologies. “By understanding how other symbiotic species respond to climate change, each species becomes a unique indicator on how the overall reef ecosystem is doing.”

Bleached giant clams, it turns out, are often better than corals at coping with bleaching. Near Ko Man Nai Island, 40 percent of the bleached clams re-colored after a few months as the zooxanthellae repopulated in their tissues when temperatures cooled again. After the 1997–1998 bleaching event, over 95 percent of the 6,300 bleached clams near Australia’s Orpheus Island recovered.

Giant clams seem amenable to restocking, too. In the Philippines, where the largest species, Tridacna gigas, went locally extinct in the 1980s, restocking has brought it back.

“Clams are not just any organism,” Sayco says. “It’s not that we are just conserving them for them to be there,” she adds, “they have lots of benefits and ecosystem services, such as [boosting] fisheries [and] tourism.”

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Happy Mother’s Day to nature’s moms, especially spiders who feed themselves to their babies https://www.popsci.com/mothers-day-animal-kingdom/ Mon, 18 Mar 2019 18:08:06 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/uncategorized/mothers-day-animal-kingdom/
This young orangutan can rely on its mom to supply breast milk for up to eight years.
This young orangutan can rely on its mom to supply breast milk for up to eight years. Deposit Photos

We salute you, orangutans that nurse their children for eight years.

The post Happy Mother’s Day to nature’s moms, especially spiders who feed themselves to their babies appeared first on Popular Science.

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This young orangutan can rely on its mom to supply breast milk for up to eight years.
This young orangutan can rely on its mom to supply breast milk for up to eight years. Deposit Photos

On Sunday, phone lines across the world will be their busiest—if we all remember to call our mothers. But we’re hardly the only creatures with good reason to celebrate our moms. We’ve searched the Popular Science archives to give you a roundup of stories featuring heroic mothers from across the animal world.

The moms who really give parenting their all

Cayenne caecilian,Typhlonectes compressicauda
This caecilian might look like a worm, but it’s actually an amphibian. Deposit Photos

For the wriggling offspring of the Taita Hills caecilian, there’s no better taste than mom’s peeling skin. These land-dwelling, legless amphibians—found in the forests of southern Kenya—rip off the thick, protein-packed layer with gusto. By the time her kids are done feasting, mama caecilian will lose more than a tenth of her body weight.

Then there’s the mother desert spider, whose sacrifice for her brood goes more than skin-deep. Once the hatchlings emerge, she spits up her own meals to feed her children. Pretty tame, until the digestive enzymes that come up with her puke eat away at her insides. She’ll continue to feed and protect her young for the next two weeks while the enzymes from her stomach kill her from the inside out. But the baby spiders won’t let the corpse go to waste—they’ll gobble up what remains of mom before setting out on their own.

A whole lot of milk

Mammals might only feed their newborns breast milk, but that doesn’t mean they are any less impressive. Elusive orangutan mothers will breastfeed their children at night and under tree cover for up to eight years, well past the time their young is small enough to carry around. That’s the longest any wild animal nurses their young.

For the burrowing, venomous, shrew-looking mammal called a solenodon, children don’t get milk near mom’s chest. The offspring climb next to her butt, where her nipples are found, to breastfeed for several months.

Love to spare

albatross and chick
This mama loves her chick, no matter whether it belongs to the same species. USFWS

Some mothers don’t raise their own biological children, or even members of their own species. At the end of the year, biologists on an American island in the North Pacific got really excited when a Short-tailed albatross couple had an egg in their nest. It would have been the fourth time that a chick of the endangered species was born on U.S. soil. But once the egg hatched and scientists peered into the nest, they didn’t find a little Short-tailed albatross. Instead, the couple had adopted an egg from a smaller, more common bird, the Black-footed albatross. The researchers weren’t too disappointed—fostering a foundling could be great practice for the first-time parents.

Sharks with virgin births

For certain species of fish, fathers are optional. At the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, female zebra sharks reproduced by fertilizing their eggs with their own genetic material. That process, known as parthenogenesis, is typically a last-ditch move when males aren’t available. But the female sharks shared their enclosure with potential mates. “This changes what we think we know about parthenogenesis and why it occurs,” said Lise Watson, Shedd Aquarium’s assistant director of animal operations and habitats, to Popular Science.

Mouse moms teach parenting life skills

Animals photo
Mother mice teach younger rodents how to care for crying pups. Deposit Photos.

Young mice get pointers on how to parent from older mother mice. A study published in the journal Nature in 2021 reported a behavior called “shepherding,” in which mother mice pushed virgin female mice into a nest of crying mouse pups. It’s as though the mothers were urging the other mice to learn a lesson in babysitting: “It wasn’t violent or forceful or aggressive, but definitely like an experienced mom grabbing the older child by the hand and dragging them into the nursery,” study author and NYU professor Robert Froemke told Popular Science. 

Straight from the womb

Humans have a few weird quirks thanks to their moms, beyond the traits they might have inherited. If a mother eats strong flavors like garlic, vanilla, or mint while pregnant, their infant may be more gung-ho to try those foods later on. The microbes found in our guts are also from our moms. A lot of those bugs come straight from her birth canal. That’s just one more thing to thank your folks for when you give them a call this weekend.

This post has been updated. It was originally published on May 12, 2018.

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Extinct ‘thunder beasts’ went from mini to massive in the blink of an evolutionary eye https://www.popsci.com/environment/thunder-beasts-evolution-megaherbivore/ Fri, 12 May 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=540793
Brontotheres were the relatives of modern tapirs, horses, and rhinos, and were equipped with Y-shaped horns on their noses.
Brontotheres were the relatives of modern tapirs, horses, and rhinos, and were equipped with Y-shaped horns on their noses. DepositPhotos

The Eocene-era megaherbivores took full advantage of the dinosaur's demise.

The post Extinct ‘thunder beasts’ went from mini to massive in the blink of an evolutionary eye appeared first on Popular Science.

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Brontotheres were the relatives of modern tapirs, horses, and rhinos, and were equipped with Y-shaped horns on their noses.
Brontotheres were the relatives of modern tapirs, horses, and rhinos, and were equipped with Y-shaped horns on their noses. DepositPhotos

After an asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs struck the Earth, the prehistoric giants lost their dominion over the planet. The mammals that rose up about 66 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch had some big shoes to fill—and they certainly grew into the challenge over time.

[Related: We’re one step closer to identifying the first-ever mammals.]

In a study published May 11 in the journal Science, found that a family of extinct rhinoceros-like herbivores called brontotheres began their time on Earth about the size of a dog, but evolved to reach elephant size over a relatively short amount of time. Brontotheres also may have not reached its full size potential before it went extinct roughly 34 million years ago due to changes in their environment.

With the dinosaurs gone at the end of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago), the mammals of the world had significantly less competition for resources, and scientists believe this led to their success as a family. Brontotheres was one of the biggest winners among mammals, and grew from about coyote-sized, 40 pound creatures into 2,000 pound goliaths. According to the study, they did this over a period of only 16 million years, which is very quick in evolutionary terms.

Brontothere means “thunder beasts,” and their powerful name was inspired by Lakota oral histories of violent thunderstorms accompanied by giants, according to the National Park Service.The animals lived in Asia, Europe, and North America. Most species weighed over a ton, but the biggest roamed what is now the South Dakota Badlands. These giants clocked in at about 8 feet tall and 16 feet long. They are the relatives of modern tapirs, horses, and rhinos, and were equipped with Y-shaped horns on their noses. 

The team of researchers on this brontothere size evolution study peered back at the evidence from the family’s fossil record and a family tree of 276 known brontothere individuals. They were fortunate that the fossil record shows most of their evolutionary record, and the team generated computer models to track how the genetic traits of different brontothere species changed. 

They also conducted phylogenetic analysis, or an evaluation of the evolutionary avenues that causes a new species to take shape. This helped them determine how such evolutionary changes may be linked or connected to their increase in body size. 

The data showed that body size actually evolved in both directions across brontothere species. Some would evolve bigger, while other times a species would evolve smaller. They found that the smaller species were more prone to extinction compared to their bigger cousins, and a trend of bulkier brontotheres persisted longer than the smaller species emerged.  

[Related from PopSci+: An ancient era of global warming could hint at our scorching future.]

Towards the end of the Eocene, the remaining brontotheres were true thunder beasts. Their status as megaherbivores likely benefited the beasts, with the smaller animals being more vulnerable to become a carnivore’s dinner. Competition from other big and small herbivores could hardly stand up to the beasts, according to the study.

Unfortunately, at this same time, the climate drastically changed from a more humid herbivore’s paradise to something much more dry. The brontotheres thus lost their evolutionary advantages when the previously lush and green ecosystem dried up. They eventually went extinct about 34 million years ago.

Further research into this family could model the ecological factors like ancient climate shifts that affected how much edible vegetation covered the planet and how it led to the demise of these megaherbivores.

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Baby anemonefish can rapidly change their genes to survive in the sea https://www.popsci.com/environment/anemonefish-genetics-clownfish/ Thu, 11 May 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=540518
A clownfish swimming in an anemone.
Before setting into life on the reef, many reef fishes are spawned in the open ocean and must swim against strong currents to get back. Deposit Photos

Reef fish larvae can also swim a speedy 10 to 12 body lengths per second.

The post Baby anemonefish can rapidly change their genes to survive in the sea appeared first on Popular Science.

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A clownfish swimming in an anemone.
Before setting into life on the reef, many reef fishes are spawned in the open ocean and must swim against strong currents to get back. Deposit Photos

It’s been just about 20 years since Finding Nemo was released in theaters and the lost “little clownfish from the reef” swam his way into our hearts. However, there is way more to coral reef fish than their beautiful scales and fictional tales. 

[Related: This rainbow reef fish is just as magical as it looks.]

A study published May 11 in the open access journal PLOS Biology found that some of the fish that live in anemones and reefs go through intense physiological changes when they switch from speedy swimming in the open ocean as larvae to settling down to life on the reef.  

Nemo and his young sea turtle pal named Squirt may have had a bit more in common than their age. Like sea turtles, many coral reef fish spawn away from where the animals will eventually settle and live. Adult coral reef fish spawn their larvae in the open ocean and the larvae swim against strong currents to get back to the reef where they will live as adults. Other bottom dwelling marine organisms like sea stars, corals, and urchins also follow this pattern. 

“These first weeks of life can be the most vulnerable for coral reef fishes, and if they don’t make it, that means they cannot grow up to be healthy adults and contribute to coral reef ecosystems,” co-author and James Cook University marine biologist Jodie L. Rummer told PopSci.

All of this swimming demands a lot of energy from the tiny fish, but then once they are settled on the reef floor, they must drastically switch gears and survive in a low-oxygen, or hypoxic, environment at night. 

To learn more about how this adjustment  works, the team collected daily measurements of the cinnamon anemonefish (Amphiprion melanopus) larvae’s swimming speed, oxygen update, and hypoxia tolerance. They observed them in a laboratory setting from the time that they hatched until when they settled down, usually around day nine of life.

“Coral reef fishes, including anemonefishes, as larvae are swimming among the fastest relative to their body size,” study co-author Adam Downie told PopSci. Downie is currently an animal physiologist at the University of Queensland in Australia and conducted the research as part of his PhD at James Cook University. “In our study, maximum speeds were over 12 centimeters [4.7 inches] per second, but for a fish that is the size of your pinky finger nail, that is 10-12 body lengths per second. Comparatively, relative to their size, larval coral reef fishes, including clownfish, outcompete most other marine life in a swimming test and all humans!”

Additionally, they saw that their hypoxia tolerance in the fish increased around day five while their oxygen intake decreased. To investigate how their bodies cope with these lack of oxygen, they sequenced mRNA from larvae of different ages to look for changes in gene activity that occurs during development. These physiological changes were correlated to areas of the gene where hemoglobin are produced and the activity of 2,470 genes changed during development.

[Related: Invasive rats are making some reef fish more peaceful, and that’s bad, actually.]

“These baby fish can change the expression patterns of certain genes that code for oxygen transporting and storage proteins just in time to cope with such low oxygen conditions on the reef,” said Rummer. “These proteins, like hemoglobin and myoglobin, are found in our bodies too and are important in getting oxygen from the environment and delivering it to the muscles, heart, and other organs. Indeed, timing is everything!”

The study found that relative to their body size, cinnamon anemonefish (also called cinnamon clownfish) larvae have the highest oxygen uptake rate of any bony fish currently measured. The genetic changes they can make to take in more oxygen underpin how reef fish can swim at speeds that would make even the most decorated Olympians envious. According to Downie, some studies have clocked clownfish at up to 50 body lengths per second, compared with Michael Phelps’ just under two body lengths per second. 

Since the effects of climate change threatens all marine life, the team believes that warmer ocean temperatures could impair clownfish swimming since the energy demands are so high. The warming waters put reef ecosystems at even more risk, in addition to coral bleaching, ocean acidification, disease, and more. 

“Next steps would be to see how different climate change stressors, such as temperature and pollutants may impact swimming performance of larval clownfishes and their ability to successfully transition from the open ocean to coral reefs,” said Downie. 

The post Baby anemonefish can rapidly change their genes to survive in the sea appeared first on Popular Science.

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These whales might follow their noses to their next snack in the surf https://www.popsci.com/environment/north-atlantic-right-whales-algae-smell/ Thu, 11 May 2023 01:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=539659
Scientists are trying to devise a way to predict North Atlantic right whales’ movements so as to better protect them.
Scientists are trying to devise a way to predict North Atlantic right whales’ movements so as to better protect them. NOAA

North Atlantic right whales seem to find food by sniffing for a chemical cue. Could scientists use this to save them?

The post These whales might follow their noses to their next snack in the surf appeared first on Popular Science.

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Scientists are trying to devise a way to predict North Atlantic right whales’ movements so as to better protect them.
Scientists are trying to devise a way to predict North Atlantic right whales’ movements so as to better protect them. NOAA

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Onboard the Song of the Whale, spotting a cetacean comes with perks. “There is always a competition,” says Niall MacAllister, the boat’s skipper. Whoever sees the first whale, or the most whales, might be treated to a pint the next time the sailboat docks. Not that the people on this specially designed research vessel need extra motivation to watch for whales.

Since being built in 2004, the extra-quiet Song of the Whale and its crew have studied whales in western Europe, the Mediterranean, Greenland, and elsewhere. Right now, they’re off the coast of Massachusetts, where they’ve been trying to ensure a future for the North Atlantic right whale, a species in dire danger of extinction. That effort recently had them searching the water for a chemical clue they think might help predict the whales’ movements—and hopefully protect them from danger.

North Atlantic right whales have been called the “urban whale” because they live mostly along the bustling east coast of North America. Once nearly eradicated by whalers, the species bounced back to around 500 by the year 2010. But ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear continued to plague the whales, and they encountered further trouble in the past decade when the warming ocean pushed their prey northward. Following their food, the whales suddenly showed up in large numbers in Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence.

“There weren’t any protections, and there wasn’t an expectation that they were going to be there. And it resulted in some pretty tragic deaths,” says Kathleen Collins, the marine campaign manager for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

As the whales had even more run-ins with ships, ropes, and other human hazards, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared an unusual mortality event starting in 2017. Today, there are thought to be fewer than 340 of the animals alive, with under 70 breeding females.

With the clock ticking, IFAW sent the Song of the Whale on a mission to follow the North Atlantic right whales up North America’s east coast. It’s a bid to learn what they can about the whales’ movements—including how to anticipate where they’ll be ahead of time.


In some ways, we know these whales intimately. Researchers can identify every living North Atlantic right whale by sight, and they maintain a catalog of the whales’ biographies. In other ways, though, the whales’ affairs are a mystery.

“One of the leading questions that we have in the larger scientific community is, Where are these right whales right now, and where are they going?” Collins says. “They’re notoriously hard to track.”

To protect them, it would be helpful to understand not just where the whales are now, but where they’re headed next. Scientists at NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary have put their hopes in the chemical dimethyl sulfide (DMS).

The molecule is made by phytoplankton, microscopic ocean algae. Its importance in understanding ocean food chains became apparent in the 1990s when Gabrielle Nevitt, a sensory ecologist at the University of California, Davis, was studying how certain Antarctic seabirds find krill to eat. The birds don’t seek out the fishy smell of the krill themselves, she found. Instead, the seabirds follow DMS. “They would track it like a little bloodhound,” Nevitt says.

Why follow DMS? The chemical tells seabirds that their prey are nearby having a meal of their own. DMS comes out of the tiny algae when krill or any other of the ocean’s miniature animals, called zooplankton, are eating them. “So as zooplankton crunch on phytoplankton, this DMS gas is just released into the water,” says David Wiley, a marine ecologist and research coordinator at Stellwagen.

Some fish also follow the smell of DMS to find food in coral reefs. Given the importance of DMS for various predators, Wiley and others wondered if right whales might be using the same cue.

Right whales are baleen whales, which means they fuel their massive bodies with minute crustaceans that they filter from gulps of seawater. We know what they eat, says Wiley, but “we don’t really know how whales find their food.”

Using a device that repeatedly tests the concentration of DMS in the water, Wiley and his colleagues have shown that higher concentrations of DMS correspond to denser patches of zooplankton. It’s not proof that whales, like birds and fish, follow the trail of DMS to find food. However, it shows that following that trail would work.

That’s why, this spring, Wiley joined the crew of the Song of the Whale to continue studying whether North Atlantic right whales are following the scent of DMS. As in his previous research, Wiley sampled the water for DMS. The team also recorded the locations of whales and, if they could, embarked on a smaller inflatable boat to sample the water closer to the animals.

Wiley says his preliminary data from this and other recent experiments shows that right whales—as well as another species called sei whales—are more likely to turn up in areas with higher DMS, suggesting they sniff the chemical out. “So far, all the data point to yes,” he says.


The crucial step will be to put this hypothesis into action. Now that Wiley and his colleagues have a strong suspicion that North Atlantic right whales are following DMS to find food, they hope their studies will reveal a specific threshold of DMS that predicts where the whales might soon come to feed.

If they can determine that, scientists could use sensing buoys or even satellite observations to gauge DMS concentrations in the ocean and warn local authorities, which could call for vessels to slow down or take other measures to limit the hazards to whales.

Such a system could someday join other ways scientists are trying to predict where whales will be, such as a project that tracks blue whales by modeling their movements based on environmental conditions, or one that finds humpbacks by looking for congregations of seabirds.

Nevitt, who discovered DMS sensing in seabirds, says working with DMS and getting timely, ecologically relevant measurements can be tricky. When it comes to following whales’ food, she says, “there might be less subtle indicators that are easier to measure.”

Whether it’s by following DMS or something else, efforts to predict North Atlantic right whales’ movements could help keep the teetering species alive so that future generations can spot them, too—perks or no.

“I’m optimistic that right whales, if left alone, can do fine,” Wiley says. “We just have to find ways to leave them alone.”

The post These whales might follow their noses to their next snack in the surf appeared first on Popular Science.

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Can scented soap make you less of a mosquito buffet? https://www.popsci.com/environment/mosquito-repellent-soap-smell/ Wed, 10 May 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=540263
A mosquito hanging upside down on a leaf.
Mosquitoes feast on blood as well as plant nectar. Deposit Photos

Certain chemicals have a small association with repelling and attracting the tiny blood suckers.

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A mosquito hanging upside down on a leaf.
Mosquitoes feast on blood as well as plant nectar. Deposit Photos

Sadly, vitamins and supplements will not really keep the mosquitoes from biting you this summer, but scientists are still trying to figure out why the insects seem to love sucking some blood more than others.

[Related: How can we control mosquitos? Deactivate their sperm.]

In a small study published May 10 in the journal iScience, a team of researchers looked at the possible effects that soap has on mosquitoes. While some soaps did appear to repel the bugs and others attracted them, the effects varied greatly based on how the soap interacts with an individual’s unique odor profile.

“It’s remarkable that the same individual that is extremely attractive to mosquitoes when they are unwashed can be turned even more attractive to mosquitoes with one soap, and then become repellent or repulsive to mosquitoes with another soap,” co-author and Virginia Tech neuroethologist Clément Vinauger said in a statement.

Soaps and other stink-reducing products have been used for millennia, and while we know that they change our perception of another person’s natural body odor, it is less clear if soap also acts this way for mosquitoes. Since mosquitoes mainly feed on plant nectar and not animal blood alone, using plant-mimicking or plant-derived scents may confuse their decision making on what to feast on next.  

In the study, the team began by characterizing the chemical odors emitted by four human volunteers when unwashed and then after they had washed with four common brands of soap (Dial, Dove, Native, and Simple Truth). The odor profiles of the soaps themselves were also characterized. 

They found that each of the volunteers emitted their own unique odor profile and some of those odor profiles were more attractive to mosquitoes than others. The soap significantly changed the odor profiles, not just by adding some floral fragrances. 

“Everybody smells different, even after the application of soap; your physiological status, the way you live, what you eat, and the places you go all affect the way you smell,” co author and Virginia Tech biologist Chloé Lahondère said in a statement. “And soaps drastically change the way we smell, not only by adding chemicals, but also by causing variations in the emission of compounds that we are already naturally producing.”

The researchers then compared the relative attractiveness of each human volunteer–unwashed and an hour after using the four soaps–to Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. These mosquitoes are known to spread yellow fever, malaria, and Zika among other diseases. After mating, male mosquitoes feed mostly on nectar and females feed exclusively on blood, so the team exclusively tested the attractiveness using adult female mosquitoes who had recently mated. They also took out the effects of exhaled carbon dioxide by using fabrics that had absorbed the human’s odors instead of on the breathing humans themselves.   

[Related from PopSci+: Can a bold new plan to stop mosquitoes catch on?]

They found that soap-washing did impact the mosquitoes’ preferences, but the size and direction of this impact varied between the types of soap and humans. Washing with Dove and Simple Truth increased the attractiveness of some, but not all of the volunteers, and washing with Native soap tended to repel mosquitoes.

“What really matters to the mosquito is not the most abundant chemical, but rather the specific associations and combinations of chemicals, not only from the soap, but also from our personal body odors,” said Vinauger. “All of the soaps contained a chemical called limonene which is a known mosquito repellent, but in spite of that being the main chemical in all four soaps, three out of the four soaps we tested increased mosquitoes’ attraction.”

To look closer at the specific soap ingredients that could be attracting or repelling the insects, they analyzed the chemical compositions of the soaps. They identified four chemicals associated with mosquito attraction and three chemicals associated with repulsion. Two of the mosquito-repellers are a coconut-scented chemical that is a key component in American Bourbon and a floral compound that is used to treat scabies and lice. They combined these chemicals to test attractive and repellent odor blends and this concoction had strong impacts on mosquito preference.

“With these mixtures, we eliminated all the noise in the signal by only including those chemicals that the statistics were telling us are important for attraction or repulsion,” said Vinauger. “I would choose a coconut-scented soap if I wanted to reduce mosquito attraction.”

The team hopes to test these results using more varieties of soap and more people and explore how soap impacts mosquito preference over a longer period of time. 

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The best dog houses of 2023 https://www.popsci.com/story/reviews/best-dog-house/ Tue, 23 Nov 2021 17:49:33 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/story/?p=281885
Keep your pooch warm and safe in one of the best dog houses.

You can make a sizable difference in your pet’s comfort and security when you pick one of the best houses for man's best friend.

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Keep your pooch warm and safe in one of the best dog houses.

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Best overall The Eillo Dog House is one of the best options available for dogs at an affordable price. MidWest Homes for Pets Eillo Folding Outdoor Wood Dog House
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Available in multiple sizes, the sturdy construction keeps your pet safe from the elements.

Best double A grey with black roof wooden outdoor dog house with two doors in it. PawHut Wood Cabin-Style Elevated Pet Shelter
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This pick can house two dogs and is easy to maintain.

Best budget A small outdoor do house with one door and white wall and blue roof. Pet Republic Dog House
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This affordable option offers an elevated floor and is ideal for small-to-medium dogs.

Setting up your four-legged friends with a cozy place to rest, like a dog house, is one of the easiest ways to help them feel secure. Dogs crave companionship, true, but they are also denning animals that need a space where they can go to get away if they are stressed or seek a break from typical household traffic. Granting your dog a dedicated sanctuary—whether it’s a dog crate or a full-fledged dog house—is a surefire way to bring them peace of mind in a communal space and provide a predictable place for them to park for naps, to shelter from inclement weather, and to use as a home base. While choosing the best dog house for your pet can seem tricky due to the many variations and styles available on the market, we’ve kept a few simple factors in mind so you can pick from a list that guarantees a perfect fit for your pooch.

How we chose the best dog houses

We’re big dog lovers at Popular Science. There’s no shortage of gear to buy for your canine, but we look for items that can genuinely help improve your pet’s life. Our dog house selections provide valuable shelter from both the cold and the heat. We examined the quality of build materials, size, appropriateness for different breeds, insulation, ventilation, and price. We also considered user reviews in compiling our list of recommendations.

The best dog houses: Reviews & Recommendations

Whether you’ve got a terrier who loves to bask in the sun or an older dog that can use some insulation during the winter months, these dog houses can help keep your pet stay safe and cozy through the seasons.

Best overall: MidWest Homes for Pets Eillo Folding Outdoor Wood Dog House

Midwest Homes for Pets

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Specs

  • Sizes: Small, medium, large
  • Dimensions: Medium (25.24 inches D x 40.6 inches W x 29.1 inches H)
  • Materials: Wood, asphalt, metal
  • Weight: 35.7 pounds

Pros

  • Easy to assemble
  • Made of wood
  • Comes in three sizes

Cons

  • Insulation kit has to be ordered separately

The Eilio Folding Outdoor Wood Dog House checks all the major requirements for shelter for your canine. Made of water-resistant wood, this dog house comes in a beige stain that’s attractive while easily able to blend in with the surroundings. The roof is made of asphalt to protect against the elements, and the elevated floor keeps dogs off the wet ground. This model is available in small, medium, and large sizes to fit a range of breeds. If you’re looking for an insulated dog house, you can purchase a tailored kit for each size. Setup is easy and doesn’t require any tools. And the dog house comes with a one-year warranty. Add another layer of comfort with a dog bed.

Best all-weather: Petsfit Wooden Dog House

Petsfit

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Specs

  • Sizes: Small, medium, and large
  • Dimensions: 19 inches D x 41 inches W x 27.5 inches H (medium)
  • Materials: Finnish spruce, stainless steel, asphalt
  • Weight: 46.3 pounds

Pros

  • Attractive design
  • Waterproof
  • Easy to assemble and clean
  • Comes in three sizes

Cons

  • Some users say the wood is lightweight and flimsy
  • Not insulated

Available in three sizes (small, medium, and large) and multiple colors (grey, light grey, red, and yellow and white), this dog house from Petsfit offers ample protection for your pup, regardless of size. It uses stainless steel hardware and asphalt shingles to offer a durable shelter. The roof can be opened up for easy cleaning. A raised floor keeps your pet from dealing with the soggy ground.

Best for small breeds: WARE Premium Plus A-Frame Dog House

Ware

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Specs

  • Sizes: Small, medium, large, and extra large
  • Dimensions: Small (20 inches L x 28 inches W x 30 inches H)
  • Materials: Wood
  • Weight: 32.6 pounds

Pros

  • Attractive design
  • Waterproof
  • Easy to assemble

Cons

  • A few users said the product arrived with broken parts
  • Some extra parts (including door) sold separately

Just because you may not be able to afford a rustic cabin in the woods doesn’t mean you can’t help your Chihuahua lead its best life. WARE’s Premium Plus A-Frame Dog House is a top-of-the-line house for small dogs. This modern dog house will likely inspire some envy with its architectural look, but it’s also designed with waterproof shingles to protect from the elements. Unfortunately, a door, porch, and insulation kit are considered add-ons and are sold separately, but this house does come with adjustable feet that keep your pooch away from the ground. And this modern dog house is available in sizes from small to extra large to accommodate a range of breeds.

Best extra-large: Confidence Pet XL Waterproof Plastic Dog Kennel

Confidence

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Specs

  • Sizes: One
  • Dimensions: 41 inches D x 38 inches W x 39 inches H
  • Materials: Plastic
  • Weight: 29.5 pounds

Pros

  • Insulated
  • Waterproof
  • Durable

Cons

  • Some users report plastic panels aren’t easy to assemble
  • May be affected by strong winds

Looking for a big dog house for your Newfie or a Great Dane? This kennel from Confidence Pet is sized for large dogs, with an exterior that’s 41 inches long, 38 inches wide, and 39 inches tall. It has a wide entrance for easy access and is constructed out of waterproof plastic for easy assembly and enduring protection in the rain and snow. Two air vents allow your pet to stay cool in hot weather—an essential feature for any extra-large dog house.

Best double: PawHut Wood Cabin-Style Elevated Pet Shelter

PawHut

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Specs

  • Size: One (comes in grey and natural wood)
  • Dimensions: 59 inches L x 63.5 inches W x 39.25 inches H
  • Materials: Fir wood
  • Weight: 85 pounds

Pros

  • Rustic look
  • Designed for two dogs
  • Raised construction protects pets from moisture

Cons

  • Some users say it’s cheaply made
  • Expensive
  • Not large enough for big dogs

This durable pet shelter from PawHut is made of solid fir wood and has a total weight capacity of 286 pounds, making it one of the sturdiest and best double dog houses available. This large doghouse has a raised design and a big basking porch leading to its two living rooms with vinyl-curtained doorways. A hinged asphalt-finished roof offers plenty of protection for various weather conditions while still allowing easy cleanup, and its large side windows promote a healthy degree of airflow.

Best indoor: Casual Home Wooden Large Pet Crate and End Table

Casual Home

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Specs

  • Sizes: Five 
  • Dimensions: 27.5 inches L x 20 inches W x 24 inches H
  • Materials: Wood 
  • Weight: 28.25 pounds

Pros

  • Attractive design
  • Doubles as an end table
  • Comes with lockable gate

Cons

  • Will show chew marks
  • Some users said the materials weren’t high quality

This dog crate from Casual Home doubles as a stylish end table, making it one of the best indoor “dog houses” for any space. It sports functional mission-style side slats for good ventilation, and the locking gate keeps your pet cozy and secure overnight or while you’re out. Its top offers ample space for lamps, beverages, and more. For another portable crate option, consider the Diggs Revol Dog Crate.

Best for travel: Enventur Inflatable Dog House

Diggs

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Specs

  • Sizes: Small, medium, large
  • Dimensions: Small (27 inches L x 18 inches W x 20 inches H)
  • Materials: PVC, nylon mesh, metal 
  • Weight: 13 pounds

Pros

  • Easy to transport
  • Lightweight
  • Comfortable

Cons

  • Not immediately available

Even traveling, having a few familiar comforts from home is nice for you. Your dog is no different, so Enventur’s Inflatable Dog House is super cool. Developed as part of a Kickstarter campaign, this dog house combines the durable PVC used in inflatable kayaks, bite-resistant mesh, and rust-resistant metal that can withstand the elements. Using the included adapter, you can inflate it with a standard manual or electric air pump in minutes. It’s designed with D-rings that attach inside your car to keep your pet secure as you travel to your destination. The floor and walls are cushioned to ensure a relaxing experience for your pooch, and mesh windows provide plenty of ventilation. And when you’re ready to pack up, the Enventur folds down flat and comes with handles for easy carry. It comes in small, medium, and large and is currently available for preorder.

Best budget: Pet Republic Dog House

Pet Republic

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Specs

  • Sizes: Two (medium and large)
  • Dimensions: 27.17 inches W x 25.6 inches D x 27.16 inches H
  • Materials: Plastic
  • Weight: Not available

Pros

  • Provides ventilation
  • Weather resistant
  • Easy to clean

Cons

  • Some users found it hard to assemble

If you’re in the market for cheap dog houses, consider this shelter from Pet Republic. This model is set apart from other budget dog houses by its thoughtful use of an elevated floor for better isolation during rain and a system of buckles and screws for assembly. It has an entrance of 17.7 inches tall and 10 inches wide, making it perfect for small to medium dogs of every kind, and it’s fairly lightweight, allowing users to move it about space as needed.

Things to consider when shopping for the best dog house

Your pet’s safety and comfort are paramount when picking the best dog house. Here are the factors you should take into consideration before making a purchase.

Materials

Dog house materials and insulation are another key design variant that determines whether an outside dog house suits your specific needs. Dogs living in temperate locations or spending equal time indoors and outdoors may do well with a standard wooden dog house for ample protection from mild rain or sunny days. Pets living in snowy or wet locales that reach lower temperatures, meanwhile, will gain much more from having a properly insulated dog house to provide their shelter (of course, pets should never be left unattended outdoors in freezing temperatures, so these dog products are meant as a short-term shelter for outdoor stays in bad weather).

Weather

While many designs of outdoor dog houses are available, only certain models offer a level of flexibility suitable for long-term use in various weather conditions. Wooden dog houses are fantastic for a temperate climate and dogs that primarily reside indoors. Still, if you’re looking to be prepared for any possible scenario, an insulated model finished with durable plastic will deliver in spades.

Insulated plastic designs are some of the best outdoor dog houses available due to their ability to withstand normal wear and tear from extreme environmental factors, including ultraviolet light, rain, and frost. This toughness allows them to provide consistent protection for your dog at a level superior to regular wood and to last much longer than less durable constructions, making them more effective in a wider range of situations. The plastic also provides a stable shell for foam insulation to reside within, which can add to the consistency of your pet’s comfort in cold and hot weather. Adjustable window vents and elevated flooring are other key aspects found in the best outdoor dog house designs, which provide a customizable level of comfort in any season and add resistance to flooding and excess cold.

Size of dog

It’s easy to see larger dogs as more resilient and more tolerant of the discomfort brought on by the elements, but they need shelter and comfort just as much as smaller pets. Of course, protecting your large dog from harsh sunlight and cold winds can pose a, well, bigger challenge if you’re dealing with a limited amount of outdoor space, so it’s crucial to select a properly sized design that provides ample shelter without introducing a cumbersome or restrictive obstacle to your yard.

The best extra-large dog houses on the market are constructed from durable plastics that are both lightweight and waterproof, allowing them to perform leaps and bounds above alternative wooden designs when it comes to flexibility. Besides, wooden constructions in this size class tend to be heavy and difficult to move around when needed. And, unlike most wooden dog houses, plastic designs also won’t require any extra finishing on the user’s part if they want true waterproof performance.

Number of dogs

Pet owners with more than one dog may prefer a double dog house over a traditional offering due to their fun apartment-style designs and space-saving efficiency. Double dog houses provide the perfect alternative to buying multiple outdoor shelters at once and also offer your pets the option of sticking together rather than having separate dwellings, which is an important consideration for these companionship-driven pack animals.

When shopping for the best double dog house for your yard, you may want to maximize your space by selecting a design that offers a dedicated exterior common area, like a porch or basking area. Models that integrate thoughtful features like this allow your dogs to enjoy extra comfort and convenience not normally afforded by resting on the ground. As is the case with single outdoor dog houses, the best double dog house should also be elevated somewhat to achieve better insulation and isolation from snow, ice, and water.

Size of house

Proper sizing is one of the most significant and misunderstood factors that come into play when shopping for the best dog houses for family pets. While traditional human-centric logic may suggest that a dog house with extra interior space to spare is more desirable, the opposite is actually true when it comes to dogs. 

Sure, an extra-large dog needs an extra-large dog house, but there’s actually no benefit, and there may be a detriment, to an extra-extra-large design. A model that’s too big for your pet won’t retain their body heat like a snug design, which is especially crucial to consider when shopping for an outdoor dog house that can be used in cold weather. In addition, dogs in the toilet training process are prone to soiling a designated area in their dog house if given the space to comfortably do so without messing in their resting area. For these reasons, it’s generally recommended that dog houses offer no more space than required for your pet to enter, turn around, and comfortably lie down.

Decor

The best indoor “dog houses” combine the elegance and simplicity of fine home furnishings with the security and comfort that only a dedicated shelter can provide. To avoid ending up with an indoor den that’s intrusive or cumbersome, it’s a good idea to choose a piece that can blend in with your existing furniture collection and provide some measure of versatility by doubling as an end table or other useful piece of furniture. Doing so will ensure that you not only save valuable indoor space, but also you end up with a resting place for your dog that’s much more durable and lasting than a traditional plush indoor dog house.

Many indoor options include swiveling containment doors and function more as dog crates, which is useful for providing an extra level of security and comfort for your dog, as well as a measure of discipline and regularity. An indoor sanctuary with a closing door can keep your pet safely contained in short-term situations where you don’t want them roaming around (say, when you’re running errands or seeing a movie) and help them grow accustomed to a bedtime and wake-up routine.

Price

A sturdy dog house that provides reliable comfort and protection isn’t exactly easy to find on the cheap, but if you’re willing to make a few compromises and forgo some of the flexibility found in more pricey offerings, you can find a suitable model for low-impact use on a budget. The best inexpensive choices are more sheds than houses and are made of durable plastics that offer natural resistance to the weather, allowing your pet to stay dry and the structure to last. Due to the fact that wood is both more absorbent and more expensive than plastics, this is actually one of the more desirable features of less expensive plastic dog houses.

Insulated dog house models are also difficult to acquire on a budget, and it’s important to note that waterproof plastic isn’t really meant for prolonged shelter in inclement weather. Adjustable ventilation is also not typically found at a lower price point, but choosing a house with static vents is a great way to ensure your pet stays cool and comfortable in hot weather.

FAQs

Q: How much does a dog house cost?

Dog houses range in cost from $50 for plastic options that provide basic shelters to luxury dog houses modeled on multimillion-dollar homes that can cost thousands of dollars, such as the Beam House. While compiling our list of the best dog houses, we prioritized durability and value.

Q: What is the best dog house for cold weather?

An insulated dog house made of durable plastics is best for extended cold-weather protection. Look for a design with an interior floor elevated off the ground, as this will provide further isolation from the elements on cold and wet days.

Q: Is it cheaper to build or buy a dog house?

Though it may be cheaper to build a dog house, it’s difficult to quantify the difference between a good pre-made plastic dog house and a hand-built wooden design. A well-made plastic design is durable and weatherproof on a long-term basis right out of the box, while a wooden build will require much more finishing and insulation despite the small cost savings.

Q: What makes a good dog house?

The best dog houses are sized properly for the intended occupant to increase their warmth and comfort. Whether made of wood or plastic, choosing a design that specifically accommodates the local climate is essential to provide the protection your dog requires.

The final word on the best dog houses

Finding the best dog house for your canine companion comes down to ensuring that the size is appropriate for their breed and that the material is appropriate for the environment where it will be used. While wood is a great material for outdoor dog houses in temperate locations, insulated plastic is the preferred construction for wetter and colder climes. The best designs should have an elevated floor to isolate your pet from the elements. Allowing your dog access to its own comfy space is important for maintaining its sense of comfort and security while protecting its long-term physical and emotional well-being.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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Lord of the Rings villain Sauron inspires the name of new butterfly genus https://www.popsci.com/environment/butterfly-genus-lord-of-the-rings-sauron/ Tue, 09 May 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=539918
A new butterfly species with orange wings and black spots next to the eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings films.
Saurona triangula and Saurona aurigera are the first butterflies species in a new butterfly genus. Royal Entomological Society/New Line Cinema

The 'one butterfly to rule them all' lives in the southwest Amazon boasting fiery orange wings with black spots.

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A new butterfly species with orange wings and black spots next to the eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings films.
Saurona triangula and Saurona aurigera are the first butterflies species in a new butterfly genus. Royal Entomological Society/New Line Cinema

The piercing and malevolent gaze of Sauron, the powerful villain The Lord of the Rings, is being honored in a way that may even make Gandalf’s heroic eagles envious. A new genus of butterflies has been named Saurona in honor of one of fiction’s greatest villains.

[Related: Scientists Calculate Calories Needed To Walk To Mordor.]

With their fiery orange hindwings and piercingly dark eyespots, Saurona triangula and Saurona aurigera are the first two species described in this new genus, described in a study published April 10 in the journal Systematic Entomology. Scientists believe that there are more species within this genus waiting to be described.  

“Giving these butterflies an unusual name helps to draw attention to this underappreciated group,” study co-author and Senior Curator of Butterflies at London’s Natural History Museum Blanca Huertas said in a statement. “It shows that, even among a group of very similar-looking species, you can find beauty among the dullness. Naming a genus is not something that happens very often, and it’s even more rare to be able to name two at once. It was a great privilege to do so, and now means that we can start describing new species that we have uncovered as a result of this research.”

Saurona triangula and Saurona aurigera are the first butterflies to be named after the epic villain, but they are not the only animals named after Sauron and other characters from JRR Tolkien’s epic trilogy. A dinosaur (Sauroniops pachytholus) and an insect (Macropsis sauroni), and has also been named after the antagonist and his eye that constantly surveys the lands of Middle Earth. Sauron’s foil and heroic wizard Gandalf also has some animals named for him, including a species of crab, moth, and beetle and a group of fossil mammals. The tragic and troubled creature Gollum has fish, wasps, and fish named after him. 

Naming animals after fictional characters can help draw attention to them in the real world. A recent example comes from the devastating 2019-202 wildfires that struck Australia. The fires burned over 42 million acres and harmed 3 billion animals. Three Australian beetles that were devastated by the fires were named after Pokémon in an effort to attract conservation funding.

The Saurona butterflies are found in the southwestern Amazon rainforest and belong to a butterfly group Euptychiina. This group is difficult to tell apart by their physical characteristics alone, and the scientists on this study used genetic sequencing to help differentiate the new species.

“These butterflies are widely distributed in the tropical lowlands of the Americas, but despite their abundance they weren’t well-studied,” Blanca said. “Historically, the Euptychiina have been overlooked because they tend to be small, brown, and share a similar appearance. This has made them one of the most complex groups of butterflies in the tropics of the Americas.”

[Related: How are dinosaurs named?]

Even with major advances in DNA sequencing like target enrichment and Sanger sequencing that can produce vast amounts of DNA from samples, it took the team over 10 years to assess more than 400 different butterfly species. 

They deciphered the relations between groups and described nine new genera including one called Argenteria. In English, Argenteria translates to “silver mine,” and was named by Blanca and her team due to the silver scales on their wings. Argenteria currently has six species within the genus, but there are likely more out there waiting to be discovered.

The researchers on this study estimate they uncovered up to 20 percent more uncovered species than there were before the project began, and they hope to describe even more. More description will help scientists to better understand the relationships between the different species and the issues they face

“It’s important to study groups like the Euptychiina because it reveals that there are many species we didn’t know about, including rare and endemic ones,” said Blanca. “Some of these species are threatened with extinction, and so there’s a lot to do now we can put a name to them. There are also many other butterfly and insect groups that need attention so that they can be better understood and protected.”

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Wild koalas are getting vaccinated against chlamydia https://www.popsci.com/environment/wild-koalas-vaccinate-chlamydia-australia/ Tue, 09 May 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=539989
A koala in a leafy tree.
Chlamydia one of the most significant threats to Australia's famed koalas. Deposit Photos

The first-of-its-kind trial in the iconic marsupial hopes to curb a 30-year-long epidemic.

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A koala in a leafy tree.
Chlamydia one of the most significant threats to Australia's famed koalas. Deposit Photos

Scientists in Australia have just begun vaccinating wild koalas against chlamydia. This field trial in the state of New South Wales is an effort to protect one of Australia’s most beloved animals against the disease that can cause blindness, infertility, and death. The chlamydia epidemic in koalas has been ravaging populations of the marsupial since the 1990s. 

[Related: A new vaccine may curb the koala chlamydia epidemic.]

Koalas along the east and southeast Australian coasts have been particularly affected, with some populations having infection rates of up to 100 percent. In 2021, Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital veterinarian and research coordinator Amber Gillett called chlamydia one of the most significant threats to koalas and treatment after infection is not enough to save them. “Although many koalas with chlamydia can be treated using traditional antibiotics, some animals cannot be saved due to the severity of their infection. Having a vaccine that can help prevent both infection and the severity of the disease is a critical element in the species’ conservation management.”

While origins of the disease is koalas aren’t fully confirmed, but scientists believe that marsupials possibly caught the disease from exposure to the feces from infected cattle and sheep. Chlamydia then spread via sexual contact or was passed from mother to offspring.  

This single-shot vaccine has been designed just for koalas and was tested in a few hundred fluffy specimens in wildlife rescue centers. For this new field trial, the team hopes to catch, vaccinate, and subsequently monitor about half of the koala population living in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales–about 50 koalas. 

“It’s killing koalas because they become so sick they can’t climb trees to get food, or escape predators, and females can become infertile,” Samuel Phillips, a microbiologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast who helped to develop the new vaccine, told the Associated Press.

The first koalas were caught and vaccinated in March, and the effort is expected to last for three months. To find them, the team spots koalas in eucalyptus trees to then build circular enclosures around the base of the trees with doors that lead into cages. Eventually, the koalas climb down from one tree to get more eucalyptus leaves from another tree and wander into the traps.

They are then given a check-up to assess their health and given anesthesia before getting the vaccine. They are kept under observation for 24 hours after waking up to check for unexpected side effects, according to Jodie Wakeman, the veterinary care and clinical director at Friends of the Koala. The nonprofit organization runs a wildlife hospital where the koalas are getting vaccinated.

[Related: How to handle a koala-chlamydia epidemic.]

The koalas are marked with a pink dye on their backs so that the same animals are not caught twice before being released back into the wild. 

Australia’s federal government declared that the koalas in the eastern regions of New South Wales, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory were endangered. A 2020 report from the New South Wales government found that the unique creatures could become extinct by 2050 due to disease, road collisions, and habitat loss. Climate change is only exacerbating the problem.

The trial was approved by multiple Australian governing bodies balancing the risk of disturbing the marsupials against the danger of allowing chlamydia to continue to spread unchecked. It is one of only a few worldwide examples of scientists attempting to inoculate endangered wildlife for the purposes of conservation. In 2016, a team began to vaccinate Hawaiian monk seals morbillivirus and in 2020, biologists in Brazil started vaccinating golden lion tamarins against yellow fever.

“Vaccination for wildlife is certainly not routine yet,” Jacob Negrey, a biologist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine told the AP. “But whether it should be used more often is a fundamental question that conservation biologists are really wrangling with right now.”

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The blueprints for early organs may be hiding in sea stars https://www.popsci.com/environment/sea-star-organ-development/ Tue, 09 May 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=539906
A bat sea star on a dark background.
Bat sea stars have transparent embryos that make observing tubulogenesis easier to observe. Jerry Kirkhart/Marine Biological Laboratory

Echinoderms offer clues to how some of our body’s most complicated organs are built.

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A bat sea star on a dark background.
Bat sea stars have transparent embryos that make observing tubulogenesis easier to observe. Jerry Kirkhart/Marine Biological Laboratory

The humble sea star is an ancient marine creature that possibly goes back about 480 million years. They are beloved in touch tanks in aquariums for their celestial shape, spongy skin, and arm suckers. These beautiful five-limbed echinoderms are also helping scientists figure out a crucial life process called tubulogenesis. 

[Related: What’s killing sea stars?]

A study published May 9 in the journal Nature Communications, examined this process of hollow tube formation in sea stars that provides a blueprint for how the organs of other creatures develop.

Tubulogenesis is the formation of various kinds of hollow, tube-like structures. in the body. These tubes eventually form blood vessels, digestive tracts, and even complex organs like the heart, kidneys and mammary glands. It is a basic and crucial process that occurs in the embryo stage, and abnormalities during these processes can cause dysfunctional, displaced, or non-symmetrical organs and even regeneration defects in structures like blood vessel. 

Little is known about the general mechanisms of the hollow tube formation during embryogenesis since animals all use very different strategies to form these tubular structures.

That’s where the sea star comes in. Their process of tubulogenesis is relatively easy to observe since their embryos are very transparent and can be observed without disturbing them. Not to mention, they breed in large numbers year round. This new study reveals the initiation and early stages of tube formation in the sea star Patiria miniata or bat star.

“Most of our organs are tubular, because they need to transport fluids or gasses or food or blood. And more complex organs like the heart start as a tube and then develop different structures. So, tubulogenesis is a very basic step to form all our organs,” study co-author and cell biologist Margherita Perillo of the University of Chicago-affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory said in a statement

Not only is the sea star an ideal because of its translucence, the researchers needed an animal that was along the base of the tree of life and evolved before the phylum Chordata– vertebrates including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, Perillo adds.

Perillo and her colleagues used CRISPR gene editing and other techniques to analyze the gene functions in the sea stars and long time-lapse videos of developing larvae. The team worked out how the sea star generates the tubes that branch out from its gut. From these observations, they could define the basic tools needed for more advanced chordate tubular organs that may have developed. Now, they are getting closer to answering how organisms developed up from one cell into the more complex 3D tubular structures that make up various organisms. 

According to Perillo, in some organisms such as flies, “there is a big round of cell proliferation before all the cells start to make very complex migration patterns to elongate, change their shapes, and become a tube.”

[Related: These urchin-eating sea stars might be helping us reduce carbon levels.]

In other animals, including mammals, cell proliferation and migration occur together. The team found that in sea stars, cells can also proliferate and migrate at the same time in order for the tubes to form the way they do in vertebrate formation. The mechanism behind making organs must have already been established at the base or root of chordate evolution, according to the team. 

Beyond providing evolutionary insights into organ formation, sea stars can also aid in biomedical research. Perillo found that a gene called Six1/2 is a key regulator of the branching process in tube formation. If Six1/2 is taken out of mice, their kidneys form abnormally, but the mice that lack the gene also resist tumor formation, even if they are injected with tumor cells. Understanding this gene, that is overexpressed in cancer cells, may lead to new ways to study disease progression.  

“I can now use this gene to understand not only how our organs develop, but what happens to organs when we have a disease, especially cancer,” said Perillo. “My hope is that, in five to 10 years maximum, we will be able to use this gene to test how organs develop cancer and how cancer becomes metastatic.”

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Elephants have complex communities and distinct traditions https://www.popsci.com/environment/india-elephants-nuanced-understanding/ Tue, 09 May 2023 01:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=539646
An elephant herd at a national park in India.
An elephant herd at a national park in India. DepositPhotos

Developing a nuanced perception of elephant life could prevent conflict with them in India.

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An elephant herd at a national park in India.
An elephant herd at a national park in India. DepositPhotos

This article was originally published on Undark.

In 2018, news spread around Saroj Duru’s village that four elephants had gathered at a nearby lake. Such creatures didn’t typically visit her region in central India — they were known to stay further north in more forested habitats — and so, out of curiosity, Duru and her neighbors walked down to see them.

The elephants rested in the water as people jostled at the shore, trying to get a closer look. Others climbed trees for a better view. After an hour of savoring the thrill of seeing such large animals, Duru headed back home. She was not sure when she would see them again.

Instead, that same day, a herd rampaged through the village’s farms. “They tore our boundary wall and tore up our banana tree,” Duru said. “They uprooted the gate.”

She was terrified, and, like many of her neighbors, climbed up to her roof for safety. No villagers were killed that night, but the elephants ate budding rice seedlings, damaging the season’s crop.

Around three decades ago, elephants began to push into Chhattisgarh, the state where Duru is from, migrating southwest from their historical habitats. Scientists aren’t sure why they began to move, but some think they were pushed out as mining and other human activities devastated their home forests. India lost 1.6 million acres of forest between 2015 and 2020, second only to Brazil.

Those shifts have generated friction between humans and the pachyderms: Each year, elephants kill around 400 people in India, according to a 2020 study. Around 150 elephants die due to conflict with humans as well, with many more electrocuted by fences or struck by trains.

Now, many people — from farmers to forest service employees to elephant scientists — are working to understand the movements and behaviors of a species that’s been subject to decades of intensive conservation work. As farmers like Duru try to come to terms with their new neighbors, many researchers are developing a nuanced view of elephant life — one which focuses on them less as pests out to eat people’s hard-earned crops, and more as members of complex communities, with distinctive traditions and cultures, undergoing a series of pressures that can have tragic consequences.

In studying human-elephant conflict, researchers have often focused on mapping the animals’ movements and numbers, studying whole populations rather than zooming in on how a single elephant might weigh risk and reward.

“We’ve not really taken behavior as a core or the basis for our decisions,” said Nishant Srinivasaiah, an elephant behavior ecologist based in south India. While group data is also important, he and his colleagues believe researchers should pay more attention to how individual elephants make decisions, understanding them as highly intelligent animals attempting to navigate a changing environmental and social landscape.

An old debate in Indian conservation circles is whether humans have the right to their lives and livelihood in areas where they come up against wildlife, or whether the state should sometimes evict people to protect the animals. This already contentious argument fractures in places like Chhattisgarh, where the state is grappling with how to protect both communities.

Researchers across Asia, like Srinivasaiah, are trying to bridge this gap by gathering data to help understand the complex internal lives of elephants — and what interventions humans can make to nudge the animals away from conflict. When — and whether — those interventions might make a significant difference is still an open question.


It’s a blazing hot afternoon in December 2022, and Srinivasaiah deftly pilots his rugged Maruti Suzuki Gypsy through the narrow one-lane road of a village near the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary in south India. He eventually pulls up to a white concrete house, home to the field office of the Frontier Elephant Program, an interdisciplinary research group.

Srinivasaiah works in the southern state of Karnataka, far from Chhattisgarh. But he and his colleagues want to answer questions that are relevant to people like Duru: How do elephants make decisions about where to forage or migrate? Why has their social behavior changed over time? And how can the animals be nudged away from conflict?

Inside the group’s village office are two cots and a wide table where Srinivasaiah and his colleagues set up their laptops. The heart of the group’s tracking operations hangs on a wall: A large whiteboard that lists the status of the dozens of camera traps that the team has seeded in the deciduous forest near the village.

The devices are installed on trees at about four to five feet off the ground, and take photos when they detect movement. Researchers also follow elephants on foot to photograph them and observe their behavior. These thousands of images create a library of the activities, movement, and habits of hundreds of elephants in and around the 250,000-acre wildlife sanctuary. After spending countless hours sifting through photos, Srinivasaiah and his colleagues can often recognize an individual from the shape of an ear, a chipped tusk, a scar.

The team divides observed behaviors into three categories — affiliative interactions, when elephants bond with each other; agonistic behavior, when they exert dominance; and neutral or self-directed behavior, such as eating, flapping their ears, or dusting themselves. They track how often elephants engage in these behaviors, and the precise places they do them.

Using this information, the team can tease out subtleties of elephant interactions. For instance, researchers have long understood that adolescent male Asian elephants disperse from their natal herds, and generally live a relatively solitary lifestyle until they enter musth, the period during which they seek to mate. But Srinivasaiah has found that in areas populated by humans, bulls are starting to form long-lasting cohesive groups even when they are not raiding crops. In a 2019 study, Srinivasaiah and several colleagues speculated that the male elephants may choose to band together to survive threats from human development.

His team has also observed that, while elephants communicate audibly in forested areas, when they are near humans they switch to infrasound communication at a frequency below the range of human hearing. “Elephants are exhibiting something that is called third-order behavior, which is ‘I know that you know that I am here’,” he said. Only a few other species, such as dolphins and chimpanzees, exhibit this kind of plasticity, Srinivasaiah said.

Understanding these types of behaviors, he and other elephant researchers say, represents a shift in the field of human-elephant conflict. Rather than seeing the species as a monolith that responds to stimuli without variation, researchers are getting a better view of their complexity, which could in turn inform how the government designs interventions to reduce conflicts.

Srinivasaiah said that a newly popular intervention in India, born from the careful observation of elephant decision-making, might help to reduce conflicts. Elephants can dismantle regular electrified fences within months of encountering them for the first time, often just by pushing them down with large branches. In response to this behavior, a new kind of fence consists of lightly electrified wires, suspended several feet above the ground. The free-hanging wires sway in the breeze so that the elephants find it difficult to tear them down, even as they get buzzed by them.

Srinivasaiah’s hope is that the elephants will conclude the reward of passing a fence isn’t worth the pain and hassle. A prototype fence that the Frontier Elephant Program installed around a mango orchard in their study area has successfully kept elephants away for three years now. Elephants had previously raided the same orchard 38 times in the span of two years.

Increased development — such as urbanization and mining projects — means that more undisturbed elephant habitat will be converted to human use, leading to more human-elephant interactions, Srinivasaiah said. “Knowing elephants and how they are deciding their next move, that is critical for us,” he added.


In the 1980s, when researchers began to study how Asian elephants come into conflict with humans, the elephants themselves were on the move, part of a series of massive changes that have reshaped elephant — and human — life in India.

Entire elephant clans, led by their matriarchs, decided to move away from their original habitats in forested areas in southern and eastern India. One of the first recorded elephant migrations in India was in the early 1980s, when around 50 elephants moved from Tamil Nadu, India’s southernmost state, across state boundaries to Andhra Pradesh.

Raman Sukumar, a pioneering elephant ecologist in India, had been observing that clan in a particular valley. “In 1983, my area’s elephants were suddenly not there,” he said.

Researchers outside of India have also noticed the strain that environmental pressures and poaching seem to put on elephant communities, leading to upheaval. Clans have moved to new places. Elephant behavior has shifted. In Kruger National Park in South Africa, researchers found that young elephants who had survived a mass culling suffered psychological distress similar to PTSD.

“Elephant society in Africa has been decimated by mass deaths and social breakdown from poaching, culls, and habitat loss,” a group of researchers wrote in Nature in 2005.

Similar shifts, happening over decades, are felt keenly in places like Gudrudih, where Duru and her neighbors have to adjust to new elephants.

In the nearby village of Borid, which sits adjacent to the Barnawapara Wildlife Sanctuary, elephants are a constant threat. People have changed their cultivation patterns after learning that elephants prefer some crops, such as rice, to others.

Locals feel like they have limited recourse. Under India’s Wild Life (Protection) Act of 1972, killing an elephant is punishable by three to seven years in prison which makes people wary of more violent action against the large mammals.

“We have no traditional way to chase elephants,” said Dashrath Khairwar, a farmer. Like others in the area, he believes that the government has conspired to relocate the elephants here from another forest.

Residents say the state has done little to help them adjust to their new neighbors. Though the state’s Forest Department has publicized a helpline for elephant sightings, locals say that they do not always get assistance when they call. Instead, they have to settle for compensation for crop losses of 500 to 700 rupees ($6 to $9) per acre. Saroj Duru said she received the equivalent of about $120 for three years of crop damage, and nothing at all for rebuilding her home compound.

Government officials told Undark in an interview that their interventions have been effective in cutting down on crop damage and loss of life. In 2019, state officials recorded damage to nearly 4,000 acres of agricultural land in Mahasamund district. Between January and July 2022, the state recorded only 2.2 acres of damage in the same district. However, Saroj Duru says that in 2022, around 10 to 15 people in just her village reported crop damage.

Pankaj Rajput, the highest-ranking forest official of the district, attributes the reduction in casualties and damage to a central government initiative called the Gaj Yatra, which roughly translates to Elephant Journey. Based on research by the Wildlife Trust of India, Gaj Yatra — which launched in 2017 — aims to sensitize people to protect elephants. The Forest Department alerts citizens about elephant movements through WhatsApp and educates people about how to engage with them.

In the 14 months since they implemented Gaj Yatra in his district, Rajput said in December, “we have had zero human deaths, zero human injuries and zero elephant deaths or injuries.”

In January 2022, however, a young elephant was killed in an illegal electrified fence in Mahasamund district, said resident Hemlata Rajput. Three people who set up the fence, she said, have been charged.

But, villagers said, the elephants are still there — and still feel like a constant threat.

In Borid, as in Gudrudih village, people are grappling with their own questions. Where did the animals come from? Are they going to be here forever? And can the villagers ever coexist with the elephants?


Like Srinivasaiah, other researchers are now working to understand individual elephant behavior in order to address those questions. “There is a growing focus on how ecological and behavioral data can be applied directly to human-elephant conflict mitigation,” said Joshua Plotnik, a comparative psychologist at Hunter College who studies elephants in Thailand.

In a 2022 paper, Plotnik and his colleagues reported on how elephants’ decisions to raid crop fields or interact with humans can be influenced by sensory information from scents or sounds. Mitigation strategies might target these senses, such as by burning chilies to prevent elephants from smelling crops; or by playing audio of matriarchal elephant groups — which male elephants tend to avoid when not sexually active — to deter the bulls from venturing to human settlements.

Such strategies tap into what researchers already know or are beginning to learn about disgust or disease-avoidance in elephants, as Plotnik and colleagues wrote about in a 2023 paper for the Journal of Animal Ecology.

But while scientists hope such research could lead to engineering solutions that minimize conflict, the fruits of their labor have not yet quite come to pass. Most interventions still rely on a one-size-fits-all approach rather than the more tailored technique that researchers such as Plotnik and Srinivasaiah envision.

If and when such interventions are developed, it’s also not certain that elephants won’t outsmart them. “It becomes sort of like an arms race,” as each new crop raiding solution is bested by the animals, said T.N.C. Vidya, a researcher of elephant socioecology and behavior at the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research.

“When you have things like conflict, usually the problem is that people are looking at the conflict from the human point of view,” said Vidya. It’s important, she added, to examine their behavior independent of humans and outside of conflict, “because that probably influences what they’re doing when they’re coming into conflict.”

Frontier elephants exist at the boundary of human-use landscapes, which makes clashes inevitable. And as those boundaries expand, such clashes are likely to increase in frequency.

For now, many people in India feel stuck — uncertain of how to respond to the elephants, reliant on government aid that they said is often not forthcoming, and forced to invest in costly interventions that may have limited effect.

Many of the measures that they can take to protect themselves imply huge long-term investments. In Nandbaru village, close to the Barnawapara Wildlife Sanctuary, a resident said the village government spent 250,000 rupees, or $3,000, to set up an electrified fence around their village over three years. At one point, an elephant got trapped inside that fence, leaving the entire village stuck inside the perimeter until the Forest Department was able to extricate it.

If elephants decide to move on, this will have been only a temporary deterrent. After a research team in Chhattisgarh radio collared elephants in the northern part of the state, they found that some of them have since moved further, leaving behind only the lingering memories of fear and uncertainty.

Khairwar, the farmer from Borid, lamented the indifference of the Forest Department. When people call helpline numbers for help to chase elephants away from fields, officials do not often come. “They come only after an incident happens,” he said. Resigned to having to deal with elephants for years to come, he added, “They are here to stay.”


Mridula Chari is an independent journalist covering development and the environment from Mumbai, India.

Reporting for this story was supported in part by a grant from the Keystone Foundation, an environmental and conservation advocacy organization based in Tamil Nadu, India, that focuses on sustainable development and indigenous rights.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Wildlife photo

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What busy bees’ brains can teach us about human evolution https://www.popsci.com/environment/honey-bee-brain-evolution/ Mon, 08 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=539605
A honeybee pollenating a yellow flower.
Insect and human brains share some similarities. Deposit Photos

The honey bee has specialized neurons that provide buzz-worthy clues.

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A honeybee pollenating a yellow flower.
Insect and human brains share some similarities. Deposit Photos

If humans want to learn more about our higher brain functions and behaviors, some scientists think we should look towards insects—including everything from busy bees to social butterflies  to flies on the wall. A study published May 5 in the journal Science Advances found three diverse, specialized Kenyon cell subtypes in honey bee brains that likely evolved from one single, multi-functional Kenyon cell subtype ancestor.

[Related: Older bees teach younger bees the ‘waggle dance.’]

Kenyon cells (KCs) are a type of neural cell that are found within a part of the insect brain. These cells are  involved in learning and memory, particularly with the sense of smell called the mushroom body. They are found in insects in the large Hymenoptera order from more “primitive” sawflies up to the more sophisticated honey bee. 

“In 2017, we reported that the complexity of Kenyon cell subtypes in mushroom bodies in insect brains increases with the behavioral diversification in Hymenoptera,” co-author and University of Tokyo graduate student said in a statement. “In other words, the more KC subtypes an insect has, the more complex its brain and the behaviors it may exhibit. But we didn’t know how these different subtypes evolved. That was the stimulus for this new study.”

In this study, the team from University of Tokyo and Japan’s National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) looked at two Hymenoptera species as representatives for different behaviors. The more solitary turnip sawfly has a single KC subtype, compared to the more complex and more social honey bee that has three KC subtypes.

It is believed that the sawfly’s more “primitive” brain may contain some of the ancestral properties of the honey bee brain. To find these potential evolutionary paths, the team used  transcriptome analysis to identify the genetic activity happening in the various KC subtypes and speculate their functions.

[Related: Like the first flying humans, honeybees use linear landmarks to navigate.]

“I was surprised that each of the three KC subtypes in the honey bee showed comparable similarity to the single KC type in the sawfly,” co-author and University of Tokyo biologist Hiroki Kohno said in a statement.  “Based on our initial comparative analysis of several genes, we had previously supposed that additional KC subtypes had been added one by one. However, they appear to have been separated from a multifunctional ancestral type, through functional segregation and specialization.” 

As the number of KC subtypes increased, each one almost equally inherited some distinct properties from a single ancestral KC. The subtypes were then modified in different ways, and the results are the more varied functions seen in the present-day insects.

To see a specific behavioral example of how the ancestral KC functions are present in both the honey bee and the sawfly, they trained the sawflies to partake in a behavior test commonly used in honey bees. The bees, and eventually sawflies, learned to associate an odor stimulus with a reward. Despite initial challenges, the team got the sawflies to engage in this task. 

The sawflies in this experiment were difficult to train, as they didn’t respond to a typical sweet sugar solution and may feign death when touched. The researchers were able to persuade them to participate in the test by feeding extracts from their favorite plant, the harlequin glory-bower, direct to their sensory mouth parts (palps) as a reward. In this clip the sawfly’s proboscis extension reflex, is the trained response to a conditioned stimulus, a unique odor which it learned to associate with getting the reward. CREDIT: 2023, Takayoshi Kuwabara.

Then, the team manipulated a gene called CaMKII in sawfly larvae. In honey bees, this gene is associated with forming long-term memory, which is a KC function. After the gene manipulation, the long-term memory was impaired in the larvae when they became adults, a sign that this gene also plays a similar role in sawflies. CaMKII was expressed across the entire single KC subtype in sawflies, but it was preferentially expressed in one KC subtype in honey bees. According to the authors, this suggests that the role of CaMKII in long-term memory was passed down to the specific KC subtype in the honey bee.

Even though insect and mammalian brains are very different in terms of size and complexity, we share some common functions and architecture in our nervous systems. By looking at how insect cells and behavior has evolved, it might provide insights into how our own brains evolved. Next, the team is interested in studying KC types acquired in parallel with social behaviors, such as the honey bee’s infamous “waggle dance.”

“We would like to clarify whether the model presented here is applicable to the evolution of other behaviors,” co-author and University of Tokyo doctoral student Takayoshi Kuwabara said in a statement. “There are many mysteries about the neural basis that controls social behavior, whether in insects, animals or humans. How it has evolved still remains largely unknown. I believe that this study is a pioneering work in this field.”

The post What busy bees’ brains can teach us about human evolution appeared first on Popular Science.

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A fish-kill mystery in a remote Alaska village takes a toxic turn https://www.popsci.com/environment/cyanobacteria-fish-kill-kotzebue-alaska/ Mon, 08 May 2023 01:59:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=539234
Yellow-green cyanobacteria bloom in Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon. Events like these can cause mass fish dieoffs.
Cyanobacteria, sometimes also called blue-green algae, are fairly common in lakes, such as in this image taken at Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon, but they can also grow in brackish water and the ocean. Photo by Christopher Boswell/Alamy Stock Photo

A foul chartreuse sea of cyanobacteria drove researchers to learn more about Arctic water quality.

The post A fish-kill mystery in a remote Alaska village takes a toxic turn appeared first on Popular Science.

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Yellow-green cyanobacteria bloom in Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon. Events like these can cause mass fish dieoffs.
Cyanobacteria, sometimes also called blue-green algae, are fairly common in lakes, such as in this image taken at Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon, but they can also grow in brackish water and the ocean. Photo by Christopher Boswell/Alamy Stock Photo

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Dead fish were everywhere, speckling the beach near town and extending onto the surrounding coastline. The sheer magnitude of the October 2021 die-off, when hundreds, possibly thousands, of herring washed up, is what sticks in the minds of the residents of Kotzebue, Alaska. Fish were “literally all over the beaches,” says Bob Schaeffer, a fisherman and elder from the Qikiqtaġruŋmiut tribe.

Despite the dramatic deaths, there was no apparent culprit. “We have no idea what caused it,” says Alex Whiting, the environmental program director for the Native Village of Kotzebue. He wonders if the die-off was a symptom of a problem he’s had his eye on for the past 15 years: blooms of toxic cyanobacteria, sometimes called blue-green algae, that have become increasingly noticeable in the waters around this remote Alaska town.

Kotzebue sits about 40 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, on Alaska’s western coastline. Before the Russian explorer Otto von Kotzebue had his name attached to the place in the 1800s, the region was called Qikiqtaġruk, meaning “place that is almost an island.” One side of the two-kilometer-long settlement is bordered by Kotzebue Sound, an offshoot of the Chukchi Sea, and the other by a lagoon. Planes, boats, and four-wheelers are the main modes of transportation. The only road out of town simply loops around the lagoon before heading back in.

In the middle of town, the Alaska Commercial Company sells food that’s popular in the lower 48—from cereal to apples to two-bite brownies—but the ocean is the real grocery store for many people in town. Alaska Natives, who make up about three-quarters of Kotzebue’s population, pull hundreds of kilograms of food out of the sea every year.

“We’re ocean people,” Schaeffer tells me. The two of us are crammed into the tiny cabin of Schaeffer’s fishing boat in the just-light hours of a drizzly September 2022 morning. We’re motoring toward a water-monitoring device that’s been moored in Kotzebue Sound all summer. On the bow, Ajit Subramaniam, a microbial oceanographer from Columbia University, New York, Whiting, and Schaeffer’s son Vince have their noses tucked into upturned collars to shield against the cold rain. We’re all there to collect a summer’s worth of information about cyanobacteria that might be poisoning the fish Schaeffer and many others depend on.


Huge colonies of algae are nothing new, and they’re often beneficial. In the spring, for example, increased light and nutrient levels cause phytoplankton to bloom, creating a microbial soup that feeds fish and invertebrates. But unlike many forms of algae, cyanobacteria can be dangerous. Some species can produce cyanotoxins that cause liver or neurological damage, and perhaps even cancer, in humans and other animals.

Many communities have fallen foul of cyanobacteria. Although many cyanobacteria can survive in the marine environment, freshwater blooms tend to garner more attention, and their effects can spread to brackish environments when streams and rivers carry them into the sea. In East Africa, for example, blooms in Lake Victoria are blamed for massive fish kills. People can also suffer: in an extreme case in 1996, 26 patients died after receiving treatment at a Brazilian hemodialysis center, and an investigation found cyanotoxins in the clinic’s water supply. More often, people who are exposed experience fevers, headaches, or vomiting.

When phytoplankton blooms decompose, whole ecosystems can take a hit. Rotting cyanobacteria rob the waters of oxygen, suffocating fish and other marine life. In the brackish waters of the Baltic Sea, cyanobacterial blooms contribute to deoxygenation of the deep water and harm the cod industry.

Dark green cyanobacteria in the ocean, seen from NASA satellite
With the right combination of nutrients, light, and temperature, cyanobacteria can reproduce quickly or “bloom.” NASA

As climate change reshapes the Arctic, nobody knows how—or if—cyanotoxins will affect Alaskan people and wildlife. “I try not to be alarmist,” says Thomas Farrugia, coordinator of the Alaska Harmful Algal Bloom Network, which researches, monitors, and raises awareness of harmful algal blooms around the state. “But it is something that we, I think, are just not quite prepared for right now.” Whiting and Subramaniam want to change that by figuring out why Kotzebue is playing host to cyanobacterial blooms and by creating a rapid response system that could eventually warn locals if their health is at risk.


Whiting’s cyanobacteria story started in 2008. One day while riding his bike home from work, he came across an arresting site: Kotzebue Sound had turned chartreuse, a color unlike anything he thought existed in nature. His first thought was, Where’s this paint coming from?

The story of cyanobacteria on this planet goes back about 1.9 billion years, however. As the first organisms to evolve photosynthesis, they’re often credited with bringing oxygen to Earth’s atmosphere, clearing the path for complex life forms such as ourselves.

Over their long history, cyanobacteria have evolved tricks that let them proliferate wildly when shifts in conditions such as nutrient levels or salinity kill off other microbes. “You can think of them as sort of the weedy species,” says Raphael Kudela, a phytoplankton ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Most microbes, for example, need a complex form of nitrogen that is sometimes only available in limited quantities to grow and reproduce, but the predominant cyanobacteria in Kotzebue Sound can use a simple form of nitrogen that’s found in virtually limitless quantities in the air.

Cyanotoxins are likely another tool that help cyanobacteria thrive, but researchers aren’t sure exactly how toxins benefit these microbes. Some scientists think they deter organisms that eat cyanobacteria, such as bigger plankton and fish. Hans Paerl, an aquatic ecologist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, favors another hypothesis: that toxins shield cyanobacteria from the potentially damaging astringent byproducts of photosynthesis.

Around the time when Kotzebue saw its first bloom, scientists were realizing that climate change would likely increase the frequency of cyanobacterial blooms, and what’s more, that blooms could spread from fresh water—long the focus of research—into adjacent brackish water. Kotzebue Sound’s blooms probably form in a nearby lake before flowing into the sea.


The latest science on cyanobacteria, however, had not reached Kotzebue in 2008. Instead, officers from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game tested the chartreuse water for petroleum and its byproducts. The tests came back negative, leaving Whiting stumped. “I had zero idea,” he says. It was biologist Lisa Clough, then from East Carolina University and now with the National Science Foundation, with whom Whiting had previously collaborated, who suggested he consider cyanobacteria. The following year, water sample analysis confirmed she was correct.

In 2017, Subramaniam visited Kotzebue as part of a research team studying sea ice dynamics. When Whiting learned that Subramaniam had a long-standing interest in cyanobacteria, “we just immediately clicked,” Subramaniam says.

Environmental scientists in waterproof gear on a boat full of gear off of Kotzebue, Alaska
Alex Whiting, the environmental program director for the Native Village of Kotzebue, left, and Ajit Subramaniam, a microbial oceanographer from Columbia University, New York, right, prepare water-monitoring equipment for deployment. Photo by Saima Sidik

The 2021 fish kill redoubled Whiting and Subramaniam’s enthusiasm for understanding how Kotzebue Sound’s microbial ecosystem could affect the town. A pathologist found damage to the dead fish’s gills, which may have been caused by the hard, spiky shells of diatoms (a type of algae), but the cause of the fish kill is still unclear. With so many of the town’s residents depending on fish as one of their food sources, that makes Subramaniam nervous. “If we don’t know what killed the fish, then it’s very difficult to address the question of, Is it safe to consume?” he says.

I watch the latest chapter of their collaboration from a crouched position on the deck of Schaeffer’s precipitously swaying fishing boat. Whiting reassures me that the one-piece flotation suit I’m wearing will save my life if I end up in the water, but I’m not keen to test that theory. Instead, I hold onto the boat with one hand and the phone I’m using to record video with the other while Whiting, Subramaniam, and Vince Schaeffer haul up a white-and-yellow contraption they moored in the ocean, rocking the boat in the process. Finally, a metal sphere about the diameter of a hula hoop emerges. From it projects a meter-long tube that contains a cyanobacteria sensor.

The sensor allows Whiting and Subramaniam to overcome a limitation that many researchers face: a cyanobacterial bloom is intense but fleeting, so “if you’re not here at the right time,” Subramaniam explains, “you’re not going to see it.” In contrast to the isolated measurements that researchers often rely on, the sensor had taken a reading every 10 minutes from the time it was deployed in June to this chilly September morning. By measuring levels of a fluorescent compound called phycocyanin, which is found only in cyanobacteria, they hope to correlate these species’ abundance with changes in water qualities such as salinity, temperature, and the presence of other forms of plankton.

Environmental scientists in waterproof gear drop water-monitoring equipment into the waters off Kotzebue, Alaska
Whiting, Subramaniam, and Vince Schaeffer, son of the boat’s captain, Bob Schaeffer, deploy the water-monitoring equipment. Information gathered from the device will help determine the conditions in which cyanobacteria tend to bloom. Photo by Saima Sidik

Researchers are enthusiastic about the work because of its potential to protect the health of Alaskans, and because it could help them understand why blooms occur around the world. “That kind of high resolution is really valuable,” says Malin Olofsson, an aquatic biologist from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, who studies cyanobacteria in the Baltic Sea. By combining phycocyanin measurements with toxin measurements, the scientists hope to provide a more complete picture of the hazards facing Kotzebue, but right now Subramaniam’s priority is to understand which species of cyanobacteria are most common and what’s causing them to bloom.

Farrugia, from the Alaska Harmful Algal Bloom Network, is excited about the possibility of using similar methods in other parts of Alaska to gain an overall view of where and when cyanobacteria are proliferating. Showing that the sensor works in one location “is definitely the first step,” he says.


Understanding the location and potential source of cyanobacterial blooms is only half the battle: the other question is what to do about them. In the Baltic Sea, where fertilizer runoff from industrial agriculture has exacerbated blooms, neighboring countries have put a lot of effort into curtailing that runoff—and with success, Olofsson says. Kotzebue is not in an agricultural area, however, and instead some scientists have hypothesized that thawing permafrost may release nutrients that promote blooms. There’s not much anyone can do to prevent this, short of reversing the climate crisis. Some chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, show promise as ways to kill cyanobacteria and bring temporary relief from blooms without affecting ecosystems broadly, but so far chemical treatments haven’t provided permanent solutions.

Instead, Whiting is hoping to create a rapid response system so he can notify the town if a bloom is turning water and food toxic. But this will require building up Kotzebue’s research infrastructure. At the moment, Subramaniam prepares samples in the kitchen at the Selawik National Wildlife Refuge’s office, then sends them across the country to researchers, who can take days, sometimes even months, to analyze them. To make the work safer and faster, Whiting and Subramaniam are applying for funding to set up a lab in Kotzebue and possibly hire a technician who can process samples in-house. Getting a lab is “probably the best thing that could happen up here,” says Schaeffer. Subramaniam is hopeful that their efforts will pay off within the next year.

In the meantime, interest in cyanobacterial blooms is also popping up in other regions of Alaska. Emma Pate, the training coordinator and environmental planner for the Norton Sound Health Corporation, started a monitoring program after members of local tribes noticed increased numbers of algae in rivers and streams. In Utqiaġvik, on Alaska’s northern coast, locals have also started sampling for cyanobacteria, Farrugia says.

Whiting sees this work as filling a critical hole in Alaskans’ understanding of water quality. Regulatory agencies have yet to devise systems to protect Alaskans from the potential threat posed by cyanobacteria, so “somebody needs to do something,” he says. “We can’t all just be bumbling around in the dark waiting for a bunch of people to die.” Perhaps this sense of self-sufficiency, which has let Arctic people thrive on the frozen tundra for millennia, will once again get the job done.

The reporting for this article was partially funded by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing Taylor/Blakeslee Mentored Science Journalism Project Fellowship.

The post A fish-kill mystery in a remote Alaska village takes a toxic turn appeared first on Popular Science.

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Researchers built a ‘SoftZoo’ to virtually test animal-inspired robots https://www.popsci.com/technology/softzoo-animal-robots/ Fri, 05 May 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=539279
Young panda eating branch while sitting in tree.
Yes, there's a pandabot option. Deposit Photos

The open-source testing ground could help engineers envision future soft robotic designs.

The post Researchers built a ‘SoftZoo’ to virtually test animal-inspired robots appeared first on Popular Science.

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Young panda eating branch while sitting in tree.
Yes, there's a pandabot option. Deposit Photos

There are so many animal-inspired soft robots out there at this point that you could easily pack an entire zoo with them. Although an adorable idea, it’s unlikely any such program will find its way into the real world soon—that said, a virtual zoo filled with digital soft robot prototypes will soon become available to researchers hoping to design and optimize their own creations.

A team at MIT recently unveiled SoftZoo, an open framework platform that simulates a variety of 3D model animals performing specific tasks in multiple environmental settings. “Our framework can help users find the best configuration for a robot’s shape, allowing them to design soft robotics algorithms that can do many different things,” MIT PhD student and project lead researcher Tsun-Hsuan Wang said in a statement. “In essence, it helps us understand the best strategies for robots to interact with their environments.”

While MIT notes similar platforms already exist, SoftZoo reportedly goes further by simulating design and control algorithms atop virtual biomes like snow, water, deserts, or wetlands. For instance, instead of a program only offering animal models like seals and caterpillars moving in certain directions, SoftZoo can place these designs in numerous settings via what’s known as a “differentiable multiphysics engine.”

[Related: Watch this robotic dog use one of its ‘paws’ to open doors.]

Soft robotics have quickly shown themselves to be extremely promising in navigating natural, real-world environments. Unlike laboratory settings, everyday clutter can prove extremely challenging for traditional robots. Soft variants’ malleability and adaptability, however, make them well suited for difficult situations such as volatile search-and-rescue scenarios like collapsed buildings and swift moving waters. The MIT team’s open-source SoftZoo program allows designers to simultaneously optimize their own works’ body and brain instead of relying on multiple expensive, complicated systems.

SoftZoo animal robot model examples
OpenZoo soft robot models. Credit: MIT/CSAIL

“This computational approach to co-designing the soft robot bodies and their brains (that is, their controllers) opens the door to rapidly creating customized machines that are designed for a specific task,” added Daniela Rus, paper co-author and director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).

Of course, it’s one thing to simulate a soft robot, and another thing entirely to actualize it in the real world. “The muscle models, spatially varying stiffness, and sensorization in SoftZoo cannot be straightforwardly realized with current fabrication techniques, so we are working on these challenges,” explained Wang. Still, offering an open source program like SoftZoo allows researchers to experiment and test out their robot ideas in an extremely accessible way. From there, they can move on to making their best and most promising designs a reality.

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The best dog pens of 2023 https://www.popsci.com/reviews/best-dog-pen/ Fri, 20 Aug 2021 11:16:33 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=390654
Keep your pet secure with one of the best dog pens.

Gently corral your pooch with one of these indoor or outdoor options.

The post The best dog pens of 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

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Keep your pet secure with one of the best dog pens.

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more ›

Best overall Chewy's Frisco is the best dog pen overall. Frisco Wire Dog & Small Pet Exercise Pen
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Safe for your floors, this aesthetically-pleasing dog pen also features a lockable doggy door.

Best for large dogs The BestPet Playpen Exercise Pen is the best dog pen for large dogs. BestPet Pet Playpen Exercise Pen
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Perfect for enclosing the big dogs outside while encouraging them to have plenty of room to play!

Best for travel The EliteField Soft Pet Playpen is the best dog pen for traveling. EliteField 2-Door Soft Pet Playpen
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Easy to pack and ideal for traveling either to a hotel or a campsite.

Whether you are indoors, outdoors, or on the road, dog pens are an essential tool for pets and pet owners alike. They can safely keep a mischievous puppy from chasing other animals or gnawing on the living-room furniture, provide an exercise space as a dog run, or help with obedience or anti-anxiety training. Whether you’re searching for one of the best dog pens for your living room, backyard, or to take on the road, here’s how to find the best option for you and your furry friend.

How we chose the best dog pens

When you’re leaving your pet home for a few hours or are working in the backyard, a dog pen is a good solution to keep your canine secure while still providing room to play. We researched options from leading brands, including Chewy, BestPet, and Petmaker, to compile our list of recommendations. We considered the quality of material; the ability to customize shape and size for different breeds; whether the dog pen is designed for the outdoors, indoors, or can work in both; and user experiences. We also considered durability and price in making our picks.

The best dog pens: Reviews & Recommendations

The dog play pens on the market range from large metal pens designed to keep big dogs secure in the backyard to smaller, cushioned dogs pens that are easily transportable for traveling with your pet. Whether you’re looking for an option for your living room, backyard, or a campsite, you should find an option that works for you and your dog.

Best overall: Frisco Wire Dog & Small Pet Exercise Pen

Chewy

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Specs

  • Dimensions: 62 inches L x 62 inches W x 36 inches H (36-inch model)
  • Material: Metal
  • Sizes: Five (24, 30, 36, 42, 48 inches)

Pros

  • Comes in five sizes and can customize shape
  • Can attach to a second pen to double space
  • Works indoors and out

Cons

  • Some users say the metal bends easily
  • Dogs may get paws caught

A dog pen should provide room for your pet to play while keeping your canine safe and secure. The versatile Frisco Wire Dog & Small Pet Exercise Pen does a good job of both. Made of sturdy metal wire, this pen comes in five sizes (24, 30, 36, 42, and 48 inches) that allow you to provide more space. The system also allows you to join two of the pens together with snap hooks. And you can customize the shape of the right panels and customize the shape into a square, rectangle, or octagon to best fit your place. 

The versatile Frisco dog pen also works both indoors and outdoors and comes with metal anchors to secure it into the ground and keep it in place. It’s also designed with double-locking doors and high walls to keep your pet securely inside. And when you’re done using it, this foldable dog pen is easy to collapse and store or take on the road with you.

Best for small dogs and puppies: ESK Collection Puppy Dog Playpen

ESK Collection

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Specs

  • Dimensions: 48 inches L x 48 inches W x 25 inchesH
  • Material: Mesh
  • Sizes: One

Pros

  • Cushioned
  • Made from breathable mesh
  • Comes in four colors (pink, red, blue, black)

Cons

  • Only available in one size
  • Some users say material tears easily

The ESK Collection Puppy Dog Playpen is a great option for small dogs and small spaces. At 48 inches by 25 inches, this small dog pen is available in black, pink, red, and blue. It’s made with Oxford cloth and mesh material that is breathable, durable, and waterproof. This puppy pen also features quality zippers and Velcro to keep your pooch inside. And when you’re done, reward the pup with one of these treats for your dog.

Best for large dogs: BestPet Pet Playpen Exercise Pen

BestPet

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Specs

  • Dimensions: Comes in oval and rectangular shapes 
  • Material: Metal
  • Sizes: 24, 23, and 40 inches high; 8, 16, 24, and 32 panels

Pros

  • Range of sizes and heights
  • Spacious
  • Metal is rust-resistant

Cons

  • Some users say the metal is lightweight 

The heavy-duty metal BestPet Pet Playpen Exercise Pen features eight panels that can easily be set up into rectangle, octagon, and circle shapes that will keep your pooch intrigued when he enters. With a perimeter of 126 inches, this large dog pen allows your dog to run around freely and safely solo or with other dog friends, making it an ideal dog exercise pen. The rust-resistant metal works both indoors and outdoors, and its foldable structure is simple to set up and break down. 

Best for indoors: North States Mypet Petyard Passage

MYPET

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Specs

  • Dimensions: 35.25 inches L x 10.3 inches W x 26.5 inches H (8 panel)
  • Material: Plastic
  • Sizes: Two (8 and 6 panels)

Pros

  • Designed with lockable door
  • Portable
  • Comes with pads to avoid scratching floors

Cons

  • Some users say latch is not secure
  • Some dogs can climb out

If you’re in search of an indoor dog pen, the North States Mypet Petyard Passage creates up to 34.4 square feet of play room, and includes a swinging doggy door, which you can lock as you please. It comes with eight panels, and can be made smaller by removing two panels at a time. The assembly is super simple, thanks to its foldable panels, lightweight build, and carry-strap. Now that your pet is safe, keep him healthy with the help of these top vitamins for dogs.

Best for outdoors: Richell Convertible Indoor/Outdoor Pet Playpen

Richell

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Specs

  • Dimensions: 63.8 inches L x 33.1 inches W x 36 inches H
  • Material: Plastic
  • Sizes: 6 and 4 panels

Pros

  • Can adjust from hexagon to square
  • Converts into gate
  • Works indoors and outside

Cons

  • Designed for small dogs only
  • Some users say dogs can easily get out

Recommended for dogs up to 88 pounds, the Richell Convertible Indoor/Outdoor Pet Playpen can be used indoors or outdoors due to its easy-to-clean and durable plastic construction. This plastic dog pen features specially designed caps that lock the panels for extra stability, customizable panels, a lockable gate door, and a convertible pet comfort mat (for the six- panel hexagonal configuration) which can be used as a top for shade protection or a mat for paw comfort. This indoor and outdoor dog pen is also available with four or six panels for optimum sizing.

Best for travel: EliteField Soft Pet Playpen

EliteField

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Specs

  • Dimensions: 62 inches L x 62 inches W x 36 inches H; 30 inches L x 30 inches W x 20 inches H; 42 inches L x 42 inches W x 24 inches H; 48 inches L x 48 inches W x 32 inches H; 62 inches L x 62 inches W x 24 inches H; 62 inches L x 62 inches W x 30 inches H; 36 inches L x 36 inches W x 24 inches H; 52 inches L x 52 inches W x 32 inches H
  • Material: Mesh
  • Sizes: 8

Pros

  • Easy to transport and set up
  • Designed with breathable mesh
  • Comes with floor pads that are easy to clean

Cons

  • Some users had issues with the quality of the material and zipper

In the market for a portable dog pen? Consider the EliteField Soft Pet Playpen. It’s designed for safety, with both doors featuring locking zippers. This dog pen also includes two accessory pockets (never lose your treats or leash!) and a water bottle with holder. You’ll get a removable zip-off portion as well as a floor mat and top cover that can be put in the wash. The material is well-ventilated, lightweight, and stylish (it comes in eight different colorways!).

Best budget: PETMAKER Exercise Playpen

PETMAKER

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Specs

  • Dimensions: 58 inches L x 60 inches W x 30 inches H
  • Material: Steel
  • Sizes:  One (30-inch x 24-inch panels)

Pros

  • Budget-friendly
  • Durable
  • Easy to set up and store

Cons

  • Only comes in one size
  • Not customizable

The budget-friendly PETMAKER Exercise Playpen is ideal for pups up to 40 pounds. It includes eight ground anchors, four snaps for extra safety, and an easy-access door for the pooches to enter. It folds flat for convenient storage when you no longer need it, and is made with durable coated steel panels with a black epoxy finish that will protect it against the elements over time. And if your pet appreciates a challenge, try one of these great dog puzzles.

Things to consider when buying a dog pen

Dog pens are enclosed spaces that ensure your pet is safely confined (hello, owner peace of mind!), while not having him feel as limited as he would if put in a crate. They come in many different shapes and sizes, can be used in different environments, and have been designed for different purposes, like training and/or exercise. When thinking about which dog pen is best for you, consider these factors.

Size

Dog pens are meant to provide safe and enjoyable experiences for dogs and their owners alike. Your pooch won’t be so thrilled if this new enclosure feels like a jail cell, so it’s vital to ensure the space is large enough for your dog to trot around a bit and play with its dog toys. Plus, if your pup thinks that the dog pen is an awesome place to be, there will be no problems encouraging your pooch to get in next time! 

Not only do you have to consider the size of your puppy or dog (the larger the dog, the larger the pen), but you also need to bear in mind the measurements of the space you are planning on occupying (the smaller the room, the smaller the pen). Also consider your dog’s ability to run around and keep the height of the enclosure in mind so they can’t jump out. This is important for those crazy jumpers! Make sure the height makes sense as compared with the height of your dog’s typical jump.

Location

There are dog pens designed for indoor-only use, outdoor-only use, and some that can cover both categories. If you know it will be inside, you can basically have your pick of the litter of what type of material you want. If you plan to use your pen outdoors, you’ll have to consider the elements. You can easily find an outdoor dog pen that’s waterproof, rust-resistant, and durable enough to last.

Portability

Consider you and your pooch’s lifestyle, too! If you like to hit the road and travel at times, you may want to invest in a portable playpen that is easy to transport—you’ll be able to get your adventures in while having peace of mind that your pooch is in a safe place. 

If you want to take your new dog pen with you on a trip, or simply put it in storage for some time, check out how easy or difficult it is to pack up and move. Some are made with this in mind, while others are better off staying put in one place. In line with portability, make sure you read the assembly instructions before buying so you know what you are getting yourself into!

Price

If you are hoping to keep your pup safely confined to one space, but don’t want to pay a pretty penny for a new product, look no further than this budget option.

FAQs

Q: What should I look for in a dog pen?

When buying a dog pen, you should be sure to consider the product’s size, height, environment, durability, portability, and assembly requirements. Think about your lifestyle and the needs of your dog to find the best match for you. 

Q: How tall of a playpen should I get for my dog?

If the point of the playpen is to keep your dog safely enclosed, you’re going to need one that he or she can’t escape out of. Think about how high your dog typically jumps, and beat that height in your next playpen.

Q: Is a dog pen better than a crate?

Dog pens and dog crates serve different purposes and should not be used interchangeably. While crates are great for a night’s sleep or a safe space for one dog (and is also highly necessary when training puppies), a dog pen will allow for more room to roam. The dog pen should be used when you want to keep your pooch safe and confined, but still allow them to get some exercise in.

The final word on the best dog pens

There are many great options on the market for dog pens. Once you figure out where you’ll be situating your dog pen and match the size of the pen to your pooch (and possibly his or her doggie friends), it’s smooth sailing! Get on with your day while you enjoy peace of mind knowing your pet is secure.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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You only have today to take advantage of these Amazon Pet Day deals https://www.popsci.com/gear/amazon-pet-day-sale/ Wed, 03 May 2023 17:52:14 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=538718
A lineup of pets items on sale on a teal background
Amanda Reed

There's no better time to stock up on treats, supplies, toys, and food with Amazon's Pet Day deals.

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A lineup of pets items on sale on a teal background
Amanda Reed

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more ›

Are you curious about what your pet does when you’re not home? The result could be heartwarming or heartbreaking—or you could just learn that they bark at whoever is delivering mail or walking by. Find out if your pet is a menace or an angel behind your back with a Ring Indoor Camera, on sale as part of Amazon Pet Day, which is today—and today only.

Ring Indoor Cam (1st Gen) $39.99 (Was $59.99)

Amanda Reed

SEE IT

The Ring Indoor Camera is small and discreet, letting you hear and even speak to your pets from a phone, tablet, or Echo device. It’s a great introductory indoor camera at an even better price. If you already have a Ring doorbell, you’re in luck if you add a Ring Indoor Camera—you can access all of your cameras in the Ring app. Set-up is easy—all you have to do is place the camera on a flat surface or mount it to the wall with a separate wall mount and scan the QR code on the back of the device. We personally love using Live View to see if our pets are snoozing on the couch, running around and meowing, or making a mess by rooting around in the litterbox, with Live Notifications letting us know if the plumber has decided to make a surprise visit.

Amazon Pet Day is one day only—here are other Pet Day deals we think you should take advantage of:

Pet cameras

Feeders, bowls, and fountains

Treats, chews, and vitamins

Toys, beds, and stairs

Pet cleaning products

Pet care

Tests

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Male woolly mammoths had hormone-fueled bouts of aggression https://www.popsci.com/environment/woolly-mammoths-musth-testosterone/ Wed, 03 May 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=538661
Woolly mammoth tusks in dawn light on Wrangel Island, northeast Siberia, where the female mammoth tusk used in the testosterone study had been found several years earlier.
Woolly mammoth tusks in dawn light on Wrangel Island, northeast Siberia, where the female mammoth tusk used in the testosterone study had been found several years earlier. Daniel Fisher, University of Michigan

Paleoendocrinologists unveiled new details on a testosterone-surge called musth.

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Woolly mammoth tusks in dawn light on Wrangel Island, northeast Siberia, where the female mammoth tusk used in the testosterone study had been found several years earlier.
Woolly mammoth tusks in dawn light on Wrangel Island, northeast Siberia, where the female mammoth tusk used in the testosterone study had been found several years earlier. Daniel Fisher, University of Michigan

There is truly no shortage of interesting courting and mating rituals throughout the animal kingdom. From trilobites “jousting” to win mates to the important pee sniffing rituals of giraffes, getting it on is serious business. And so is winning over a mate. 

[Related: Male California sea lions have gotten bigger and better at fighting.]

For the first time, scientists have found direct evidence that adult male woolly mammoths experienced an event called musth. Musth comes from the Hindi and Urdu word for intoxicated, and in the case of giant mammals like adult elephants, this is a testosterone-fueled event where the male sex hormone surges and aggression against rival males is heightened. 

The study, published online May 3 in the journal Nature, found evidence that testosterone levels are recorded within the growth layers of both elephant and mammoth tusks. In living male elephants, blood and urine tests recognized the elevated testosterone, but musth battles from its extinct relatives has only been inferred from to fossilized consequences of testosterone-fueled battle, such as pieces of tusk tips and skeletal injuries. 

In the study, an international team of researchers report the presence of annually recurring testosterone surges (up to 10 times higher than baseline levels) are present within a permafrost-preserved woolly mammoth tusk. 

The team sampled tusks from one adult African bull elephant from Botswana and two adult woolly mammoths: a male who roamed Siberia over 33,000 years ago and a roughly 5,597 year-old female that was discovered on Wrangel Island. This Arctic Ocean island used to be connected to northeast Siberia and is the last place where woolly mammoths survived up until about 4,000 years ago. 

“This study establishes dentin as a useful repository for some hormones and sets the stage for further advances in the developing field of paleoendocrinology,” study co-author and paleontologist at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology Michael Cherney said in a statement. “In addition to broad applications in zoology and paleontology, tooth-hormone records could support medical, forensic and archaeological studies.”

Hormones are signaling molecules that help regulate physiology and behavior. Testosterone in male vertebrates is part of the steroid group of hormones. Testosterone circulates throughout the bloodstream and accumulates in various tissues.   

[Related: How much acid should you give an elephant? These scientists learned the hard way.]

According the authors, their findings demonstrate that steroid records in teeth can provide scientists with meaningful biological information that can even persist for thousands of years.

“Tusks hold particular promise for reconstructing aspects of mammoth life history because they preserve a record of growth in layers of dentin that form throughout an individual’s life,” study co-author and U-M Museum of Paleontology curator Daniel Fisher said in a statement.  “Because musth is associated with dramatically elevated testosterone in modern elephants, it provides a starting point for assessing the feasibility of using hormones preserved in tusk growth records to investigate temporal changes in endocrine physiology.”

Traces of sex hormones extracted from a woolly mammoth’s tusk provide the first direct evidence that adult males experienced musth, a testosterone-driven episode of heightened aggression against rival males. CREDIT: University of Michigan.

They team used CT scans to find the annual growth increments deep within the tusks, like tree rings. Modern elephant and ancient mammoth tusks are elongated upper incisor teeth, and only hold on to traces of testosterone and other steroid hormones. The chemical compounds are all incorporated into dentin, which is the mineralized tissue that makes up the interior portion of teeth. 

The study also required new methods to extract steroids from the tusk dentin with a mass spectrometer. Mass spectrometers identify chemical substances by sorting the ions present by their mass and charge. 

“We had developed steroid mass spectrometry methods for human blood and saliva samples, and we have used them extensively for clinical research studies. But never in a million years did I imagine that we would be using these techniques to explore ‘paleoendocrinology,'” study co-author and U-M endocrinologist Rich Auchus said in a statement

The results and the new measuring technique will likely further new approaches to investigating reproductive endocrinology, life history, and even disease patterns in modern and prehistoric context.

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Your state bird probably needs a makeover. Birder data is here to help. https://www.popsci.com/science/state-bird-data/ Tue, 02 May 2023 20:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=538506
Male indigo bunting, which could be a better Illinois state bird, sits on a branch
The brilliant indigo bunting would make a great state bird for Illinois. Deposit Photos

States have better, more accurate options for feathered ambassadors than the Northern cardinal.

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Male indigo bunting, which could be a better Illinois state bird, sits on a branch
The brilliant indigo bunting would make a great state bird for Illinois. Deposit Photos

Let’s be honest, most state birds in the US are boring or outright inaccurate. 

The General Federation of Women’s Clubs first pitched the idea of state birds in the 1920s. Alabama jumped on the tradition right away, choosing the Northern flicker (then regionally known as the “yellowhammer”) in 1927. Arizona was the last to the party, picking the cactus wren in 1973. 

But because these decisions were mainly made by politicians, state bird designations are often out of touch with the birding communities they represent. For starters, only 20 out of 50 states have a unique species, while the other 30 share a pool of just seven species. Some of those species aren’t even native to the state that claims them. Rhode Island, for instance, chose the Rhode Island red, a breed of domestic chicken originally from southern Asia. 

Seeing that there isn’t a lot of rhyme or reason to these choices, two Cornell ornithologists recently made a playful proposal to find better state birds. Their main source of guidance? The biggest public bird database on the planet.

The mother lode of bird data

In 2002, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society launched eBird with the goal of crowdsourcing information on where birds are seen and heard across the US. In the 21 years since, the platform has exploded and gone global. With an estimated 820,000 users as of 2022 and 100 million new records per year, eBird is one of the more massive citizen science projects in the world. Birders can use Cornell’s eBird app to submit checklists of observations, photos, sound clips, and more.

eBird’s latest release, the Status and Trends toolkit, leverages that database, using machine learning to predict where bird species are throughout the year and understand how their populations have changed over time—a game-changer for people trying to conserve avian life and their habitats. 

[Related: These new interactive maps reveal the incredible global journeys of migrating birds]

In a five-part series, Cornell researchers Matt Smith and Marc Devokaitis use the toolkit to suggest data-driven bird selections that celebrate each state’s ecology. They prioritize species whose global populations disproportionately depend on a state’s habitat to select a unique species for each place. 

A new list of state birds

In total, the report matches all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 13 Canadian provinces to new birds. Some big changes include the golden-cheeked warbler for Texas, a black and white songbird with a bright yellow head, which only breeds in the juniper-oak woodlands in the central part of the state. Another highlight is the Kirtland’s warbler for Michigan, a jack pine-dweller that nearly went extinct in the 1980’s, but has since recovered in one of the most iconic conservation success stories of all time. The authors also suggest that the Rhode Island red, mentioned above, be swapped out for the saltmarsh sparrow, a sulky tawny songbird that relies on the tidal saltmarshes of Rhode Island to support its densest breeding population.

Male Kirtland's warbler in a jack pine tree in Wisconsin
A Kirtland’s warbler, an endangered bird that lives in jack pine forests in Michigan and Wisconsin. Joel Trick/USFWS

While clearly written for entertainment, the series hits on a more sincere and important point: Big data has gifted us an incredible view into ecosystems that we’ve never had before. The one-two punch of crowdsourced science and machine learning allowed the Cornell team to better understand the true makeup of birds across the country. It’s a visual map that early ornithologists could’ve only dreamed of, and the insights we can glean from it are on full display in this report.  

Goodbye cardinals

As a Chicago-born, corn-raised Illinoisan, my home state sits in the middle of this discussion. Illinois shares its state bird, the Northern cardinal, with six other states. Frankly, it’s not hard to see why—no one questions the beauty of the crested red songbird. My parents, who aren’t birders, call me just to share updates on a pair that nests in their backyard. 

But the Cornell authors have a better choice for Illinois: the indigo bunting, a strikingly blue songbird that depends on the open woodlands of Illinois to support almost 7 percent of its entire population. It isn’t a species my parents can easily identify, and it will probably never nest in their yard. To see it, they’d need to visit the parks or forest preserves around town. But maybe that should be part of why state birds exist—to get us to move beyond the familiar and explore the extraordinary biodiversity our homes have to offer.

[Related: How to start birding in any US city]

My first job out of college was at Nachusa Grasslands, a restored tallgrass prairie in the heart of the Prairie State. When I arrived at the bunkhouse I’d call home for the summer, indigo buntings lined the roadside as if to welcome me. I remember how special it felt for them to be there.

I couldn’t help but smile when I read that science agrees. 

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Fossil trove in Wales is a 462-million-year-old world of wee sea creatures https://www.popsci.com/environment/wales-marine-dwarf-world-ordovician/ Tue, 02 May 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=538383
An illustration of the organisms that lived in the Castle Bank community.
A reconstruction of the organisms that once lived in the Castle Bank community, including rare soft-bodied creatures. YANG Dinghua

The species may be tiny, but are filling in big evolutionary gaps.

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An illustration of the organisms that lived in the Castle Bank community.
A reconstruction of the organisms that once lived in the Castle Bank community, including rare soft-bodied creatures. YANG Dinghua

The tiny country of Wales on the western coast of Great Britain may now be home to one of the world’s most unexpected fossil sites. Scientists found an “unusually well-preserved”  deposit of over 150 species from 462 million years ago. Interestingly enough, many of them have miniature bodies. The findings by an international team of scientists from the United Kingdom, China, Sweden are detailed in a study published May 1 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

[Related: These weird marine critters paved the way for the ‘Cambrian explosion’ of species.]

The “marine dwarf world,” as dubbed by the research team, is located in Castle Bank near Llandrindod, central Wales. Two of the study’s authors, Joe Botting and Lucy Muir,  found the site in 2020. Castle Bank is a rare site where the soft tissues and complete organisms are preserved. These specimens help scientists observe how life evolved over time

Similar fossil sites like the Burgess Shale fossil deposits in Canada date back 542 to 485 million years ago during the Cambrian period, when recognizable animals first appear in the fossil record. This period is known for a huge explosion of life on Earth. During the Cambrian, the origins of major animal groups still around today, such as mollusks, arthropods, and worms, occurred in what scientists call the Cambrian Explosion

The fossilized time capsule from Castle Bank is from the middle of the succeeding Ordovician Period, about 462 million years ago. The Ordovician was a critical time in the history of life when extraordinary diversification of animals occurred and more familiar ecosystems like coral reefs began to appear at the end of the period. Until now, a big gap has existed between thes Cambrian and Ordovician eras. Some of the fauna found at Castle Bank dating back to the middle of this time interval will help fill in evolutionary mysteries about animal shifts over time. 

The more than 150 species found at Castle Bank are almost all new. Many are less than an inch long, but contain tiny details in their bodies. They range from arthropods like crustaceans and horseshoe crabs to worms, sponges, starfish, and more. 

In some animals in the study, internal organs like digestive systems, the limbs of tiny arthropods, delicate filter-feeding tentacles, and even nerves have been preserved. According to the authors, exquisite detail like this is known from Cambrian specimens, but not previously from the Ordovician.

The range of fossils also includes several unusual discoveries, including unexpectedly late examples of animals from the Cambrian that look like the strange looking proto-arthropod opabiniids and slug-like wiwaxiids. Some of the early fossils also resemble modern goose barnacles, possible marine relatives of insects and cephalocarid shrimps, which have no fossil record at all.

[Related: This fossilized ‘ancient animal’ might be a bunch of old seaweed.]

“It coincides with the ‘great Ordovician biodiversification event’, when animals with hard skeletons were evolving rapidly,” Muir, a paleontologist and research fellow from the National Museum Wales, told the BBC. “For the first time, we will be able to see what the rest of the ecosystem was doing as well.”

These findings also have important implications for the evolution of sponges, particularly Hexactinellida. Also called a glass sponge, this animal is considered a transitional interval between sponges that the team have been studying for years. 

“Despite the extraordinary range of fossils already discovered, work has barely begun,” Botting, a paleontologist and research fellow at the National Museum Wales and Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the BBC. “Every time we go back, we find something new, and sometimes it’s something truly extraordinary. There are a lot of unanswered questions, and this site is going to keep producing new discoveries for decades.”

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A scientific exploration of big juicy butts https://www.popsci.com/science/butt-science/ Tue, 02 May 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537937
Red cherry shaped as butt on orange and purple ombre background
Julia Dufossé for Popular Science

Build your appreciation for the largest, most booty-ful muscle in your body with these fact-filled stories.

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Red cherry shaped as butt on orange and purple ombre background
Julia Dufossé for Popular Science

BUMS. HEINIES. FANNIES. DERRIERES. Few muscles in the human body carry as much cultural clout as the gluteus maximus. “Butts are a bellwether,” writes journalist Heather Radke in her 2022 book Butts: A Backstory. Radke goes on to explain that our feelings about our hindquarters often have more to do with race, gender, and sex than with the actual meat of them. Unlike with a knee or an elbow, Radke argues, when it comes to the tuchus, we’re far more likely to think about form than function—even though it features the largest muscle in the human body

For all the scrutiny we spare them (outside of when we’re trying on new jeans) our butts aren’t mere aesthetic flourishes. A booty is, in fact, a unique feat of evolution: Out of any species, humans have the most junk in their trunks. Many other creatures have muscle and fat padding their backsides, and some even have butt cheeks. But none pack anything close to the same proportions as us.

So why did our ancestors develop such a unique cushion? Evolutionary biologists’ best guess is that our shapely rears help us walk upright. The curved pelvic bone that gives the butt its prominence likely developed as our weight moved upward and our muscular needs shifted. Research increasingly suggests that more massive muscles in the vicinity of the buttocks make for faster sprinting and better running endurance too. “The butt is an essential adaptation for the human ability to run steadily, for long distances, and without injury,” Radke writes. 

That said, the gluteus maximus does more than just keep us on our feet. The fat that sits atop it affects how we feel whenever we sit or lie down. The organs nestled behind those cheeks also have a massive influence on our health and wellbeing. Here are a few of the ways our bums factor into scientific understanding, lifesaving medicine, and the future of engineering. 

Digging deep for ancient backsides 

For as long as humans have been making art, they’ve been thinking about bodacious butts. The 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf is a famous pocket-size figurine carved by a Western European civilization during the Upper Paleolithic. The statuette, which some archaeologists suspect served as a fertility charm, immortalizes a body too thick to quit.

Backside of Benus of Willendorf statue on light blue
The original Venus of Willendorf statue was excavated in present-day Austria, and is now housed at the Museum of Natural History in Vienna. Ali Meyer / Corbis / VCG / Getty Images

Scientists also love peeping at the actual posteriors of our early ancestors, which hold a broader archaeological significance in telling the stories of ancient people and their lifestyles. Differences in the pelvis and other sat-upon bones have long been used to determine the sexes of unearthed skeletal remains, though we know now there isn’t as clear-cut a binary as researchers long assumed. In 1972, anthropologist Kenneth Weiss flagged that experts were 12 percent more likely to classify skeletons found at dig sites as men versus women, which he blamed on a bias for marking indeterminate skeletons as male. Recent research bears that out, with anthropologists now designating many more remains as having a mix of pelvic characteristics (or simply being inconclusive) than they did historically. Still, while the distinction isn’t completely black and white, the signs of a body primed for or changed by childbirth are useful in figuring out the age and sex of ancient remains. Butt bones can also tell us about how people lived: This March, archaeologists published the oldest known evidence for human horseback riding in the journal Science Advances. They identified their 5,000-year-old equestrians—members of the Yamnaya culture, which spread from Eurasia throughout much of Europe around that same time—with the help of signs of wear and tear to hip sockets, thigh bones, and pelvises. 

Green pear shaped like butt on purple and pink ombre background
Julia Dufossé for Popular Science

Supporting heinies of all shapes and sizes

As Sharon Sonenblum, a principal research scientist at the School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech, puts it, “What could be better than studying butts?” The Rehabilitation Engineering and Applied Research Lab that she’s part of is perhaps more aptly referred to by its acronym: REAR. 

Stephen Sprigle, a Georgia Tech professor in industrial design, bioengineering, and physiology, started REARLab with better solutions for wheelchair users in mind. A decade ago, he and Sonenblum saw the potential for an engineering-minded solution to the serious clinical problem of injuries from sitting or lying down for extended periods. Pressure sores and ulcers are a risk whenever soft tissue presses against a surface for a prolonged time, and they become more dangerous in hospital settings—where antibiotic-resistant bacteria often lurk—and in people with conditions that hinder wound healing, like diabetes. 

Sonenblum recalls that they set out to answer a deceptively simple question: What makes one backside different from another? To answer it, they had to put a whole lot of booties into an MRI scanner. Those imaging studies and others (including some done on supine patients) have provided an unprecedented amount of data about butt cheeks and the stuff inside them. 

The big headline, Sprigle says, is that “we’re big bags of water.” “What the skeleton does in that big bag of goo is totally fascinating,” he says. 

The work proved particularly humbling for Sonenblum, who’d intended to spend her career studying how the gluteus maximus affects seating. Instead, she and her colleagues figured out that humans don’t rest on muscle at all—the fat is what really counts. Sonenblum and the rest of the REARLab team are investigating how the natural padding in our rears changes over time, particularly in people who spend a lot of time sitting or supine.

Today, REARLab creates more precise computer models and “phantoms” to help cushion testing—mainly for wheelchair seats, but also for ergonomic chairs of all stripes—better account for real-world bums. Phantoms aren’t quite faux butts; they’re simple and scalable geometric shapes, almost like the convex version of a seat cushion designed for your tuchus to nestle into. They don’t account for bodies’ individual differences either. 

“Phantoms are always a tricky balance between time and representation,” Sonenblum says. “You want to represent the population well, but you can’t have too many or you’ll spend your entire life running tests.”

Two butt scans with renderings of butt adipose tissue conforming to a chair when seated
REARLab renderings compare the soft adipose tissue on two seated butts. On the left, the tissue is mostly intact, providing good cushioning for the body; on the right, the tissue has lost it structural integrity and almost resembles cottage cheese. © Sharon Sonenblum / Georgia Institute of Technology

REARLab’s current approach is to use two shapes—elliptical and trigonometric—to represent a fuller backside and one more likely to pose biomechanical problems when seated, respectively. It would be reasonable to assume the trigonometric butt is the bonier of the two, Sonenblum says, but the reality isn’t so simple. Large individuals with lots of adipose tissue can still lose the round cushioning when they sit. 

“I’ve seen scans of butts that look like this, and when I do, I think, Wow, that’s a high-risk butt,” Sonenblum explains. It comes down to the quality of the tissue, she adds. “If you touch a lot of butts, you’ll find that the tissue changes for people who are at risk [of pressure injuries]. It feels different.”

Sonenblum and Sprigle hope that continued work on backside modeling, cushion-testing standards, and adipose analysis will help wheelchair users and patients confined to their beds for long stretches stay safer and more comfortable. But their work has implications for absolutely anyone who sits down. When asked what folks should take away from their studies, they’re both quick to answer: Move. People with limited mobility may not be able to avoid the loss of structural integrity in their butt tissue, but anyone with the ability to get up often and flex their muscles can keep that natural padding in prime health. 

Finding better bellwethers for bowel cancer

When it comes to protecting your posterior, it’s not just the bodacious bits of the outside that count. One of the biggest backside-related issues scientists are tackling today is the sharp rise in colorectal cancer, which starts with abnormal cell growth in the colon or rectum. It’s already the third-most-common cancer and second leading cause of cancer death, but it represents a mounting threat, especially for millennials. New cases of young-onset colorectal cancer (yoCRC)—defined as a diagnosis before age 50—have gone up by around 50 percent since the mid-1990s. 

Blake Buchalter, a postdoctoral fellow at Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute focused on cancer epidemiology, says that the most troubling thing about this recent uptick in cases is how little we know about what’s causing it. He and his colleagues suspect that 35- to 49-year-olds who die from colorectal cancer may share many of the same demographics and risk factors—higher body weight, lower activity levels, smoking, alcohol use, and diets high in processed and red meats—seen in patients aged 50 and older. But those under the age of 35 don’t follow those patterns as closely as expected. 

“This indicated to us that mortality among the youngest colorectal cancer patients may have different drivers than among older populations,” Buchalter says. “Our future work in this space aims to identify underlying factors that might be driving higher incidence and mortality among certain age groups in particular geographic regions.” 

During a standard colonoscopy, gastroenterologists are able to identify and remove potentially precancerous polyps known as adenomas on the spot. No DIY kit can manage that.

Buchalter hopes that more granular data will encourage more granular screening guidelines too. While he was heartened to see the US Preventative Services Task Force shift the recommended colon cancer screening age down from 50 to 45 in 2021, it’s clear that some populations are at risk for the disease earlier, he says. Buchalter and his colleagues hope to zero in on who should be getting screened in their 20s and 30s. 

But colonoscopies, the most commonly recommended form of detection, present a major hurdle in themselves. A 2019 study found that only 60 percent of age-eligible US adults were up to date on their colorectal cancer screenings, with others citing fear, embarrassment, and logistical challenges such as transportation to explain their delayed colonoscopies. At-home fecal tests offer a less invasive alternative, but research shows that fear of a bad diagnosis and disgust with the idea of collecting and mailing samples still keep many folks from using them. Blood tests and colon capsule endoscopy (CCE), in which patients swallow a pill-size camera to allow doctors to examine the gastrointestinal tract, both show promise in supplementing, and perhaps someday replacing, the oft-dreaded colonoscopy.

For now, it’s worth going in for the physical screening if you can manage it. While blood and stool tests can accurately detect signs of the cancer, colonoscopies can actually help prevent it. During a standard colonoscopy, gastro­enterologists are able to identify and remove potentially precancerous polyps known as adenomas on the spot. No DIY kit can manage that.  

Red strawberry shaped like a butt on a blue and white ombre background
Julia Dufossé for Popular Science

Tracking microbiomes with futuristic commodes

Meanwhile, other researchers are uncovering health secrets from long-ago water closets. In 2022, archaeologists uncovered what they believe to be the oldest flush toilet ever found, in Xi’an, China. The 2,400-year-old lavatory features a pipe leading to an outdoor pit. Researchers believe the commode, which was located inside a palace, allowed servants to wash waste out of sight with buckets of water. Flush toilets wouldn’t appear in Europe until the 1500s, and wouldn’t become commonplace until the late 19th century. Up until that point, major US cities employed fleets of “night soil men” to dig up and dispose of the contents of household privies and public loos.

As far as we’ve come from the days of night soil, the future of the humble toilet looks even brighter. Sonia Grego, an associate research professor in the Duke University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, says she’s “super-excited” to see commodes enter the 21st century. 

“Smart” toilets boast everything from app-controlled heated seats to detailed water-usage trackers, and could grow into a $13.5 billion industry by the end of the decade. But Grego’s team—the Duke Smart Toilet Lab at the Pratt School of Engineering—is focused on turning waste flushed down porcelain bowls into a noninvasive health tool. She envisions a future in which your toilet can warn you of impending flare-ups of gut conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, flag dietary deficiencies, and even screen for signs of cancer. 

“When we first started to work on the smart toilet for stool analysis, laboratory scientists were skeptical that accurate analytical results could be obtained from specimens that had been dropped in a toilet instead of a sterile collection container,” Grego recalls. “The perspective is very different now.”

Brown fuzzy kiwi shaped like a butt on a green ombre background
Julia Dufossé for Popular Science

Drawing inspiration from wild butts 

Humans may be unusually blessed in the butt-cheek department, but that doesn’t mean other animals’ rears hold less scientific appeal. From modeling the evolution of the anus to cracking the code on climate-friendly gut microbes, scientists are keeping close tabs on all sorts of animal bottoms. Some researchers are even hoping to harness the power of butt breathing—yes, actually breathing through your butt—for future applications in human medicine. 

We’ll circle back to backside breathing in a moment. First, let’s consider the wombat. While it’s true enough that everybody poops, these marsupials are the only animals known to drop cubes. For years, no one was quite sure how they managed to get a square peg out of a round hole. Some even assumed the wombat must have an anus designed for squeezing out blocks instead of cylinders. In 2020, mechanical engineers and wildlife ecologists at Georgia Tech teamed up to publish a surprising new explanation for the shape in the aptly named journal Soft Matter. They’d borrowed roadkill from Australia to do the first-ever close examination of a wombat’s intestines. By inflating the digestive tract and comparing it to more familiar pig intestines, they were able to show that the marsupial’s innards have more variation in elasticity: Instead of being fairly uniform throughout, the organs have some inflexible zones. The team’s findings suggest that a few nooks within the digestive system—some stretchy, others stiff—provide a means to shape the refuse into a square. 

Wombat butts themselves, by the by, are veritable buns of steel. Their rumps contain four fused bony plates surrounded by cartilage and fat and can be used to effectively plug up the entrance to a burrow when potential predators come sniffing around. While this has yet to be caught happening live, some scientists think wombats can even use their powerful bums to crush the skulls of intruders like foxes and dingoes who manage to make it inside. 

So now we have more clarity on how wombats poop cubes, but the question of why remains unanswered. Experts have posited that wombats communicate with one another by sniffing out the location of poop cubes, making it advantageous to produce turds less likely to roll out of place. Others argue that the unusual shape is a happy accident: Wombats can spend as long as a week digesting a single meal, with their intestines painstakingly squeezing out every possible drop of moisture to help them survive the arid conditions Down Under. Their entrails, when unwound, stretch some 33 feet—10 feet more than typical human guts—to help facilitate the frugal squeezing. When the species is raised in captivity with loads of food and water, their poops come out moister and rounder

Elsewhere in the world of scat science, folks are working to understand the secrets of nonhuman gut microbiomes. Earlier this year, biotechnologists at Washington State University showed that baby kangaroo feces could help make beef more eco-friendly. Joey guts contain microbes that produce acetic acid instead of methane, which cows burp out in such abundance that it significantly worsens climate change. By reseeding a simulated cow stomach with poop from a newborn kangaroo, researchers say they successfully converted the gut to a factory of acetic acid, which doesn’t trap heat in the atmosphere. They hope to try the transfer out in a real bovine sometime soon. 

Warty comb jelly's translucent body in the ocean
When the warty comb jelly needs to expel digested food, it forms a new pore between its skin and digestive skin (also known as a “transient anus”). ImageBROKER / Getty Images

Going back to the butt breathing, scientists are hoping to suss out how to give humans a superpower already exhibited by catfish and sea cucumbers. In 2021, Japanese researchers reported in the journal Med that they’d been able to keep rodents alive in oxygen-poor conditions by ventilating them through their anuses. Inspired by loaches—freshwater fish that can take in oxygen through their intestines—the scientists are trying to find new ways to help patients who can’t get enough air on their own. They’ve moved on to study pigs, which they say do wonderfully with a shot of perfluorodecalin (a liquid chemical that can carry large amounts of oxygen) up the bum. 

From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s not all that surprising that our outbox can handle the same duties as our inbox. Though it’s still not clear which came first, it’s well established that the anus and the mouth develop out of the same rudimentary cell structures wherever they appear. Some of the most basic animals still use a single opening for all their digestive needs. And one creature—just one, as far as we know—has a “transient anus.”

In 2019, Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, demonstrated that the warty comb jelly creates new anuses as needed. Whenever sufficient waste builds up—which happens as often as every 10 minutes in young jellies—the gut bulges out enough to fuse with the creature’s epidermis, creating an opening for defecation. Then it closes right back up. It’s possible that the world’s first anuses followed the same on-demand model, proving yet again that the butt and its contents are worthy of our awe, curiosity, and respect.  

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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The best dry dog foods of 2023 https://www.popsci.com/reviews/best-dry-dog-food/ Fri, 11 Jun 2021 14:33:54 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=370174
retriever puppies best dry dog food
jagdprinzessin, Pixabay

Dry dog food provides the proper nutrition for your dog’s age, size, and medical conditions.

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retriever puppies best dry dog food
jagdprinzessin, Pixabay

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Best for senior dogs Chicken and brown rice flavored dry dog food on a blue and and light color package Blue Buffalo Life Protection Formula Natural Senior Dry Dog Food
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Formulated with glucosamine, chondroitin, and essential proteins to support joints and mobility for your senior pooch.

Best for puppies Taste of the Wild dry dog food grain free with roasted bison and roasted venison Taste of the Wild High Prairie Puppy Recipe
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This pick is nutrient-rich and high protein to support bones, joints, and muscles. Real meat is also the first ingredient, so you can be sure your pup is getting only the best.

Best for sensitive stomachs Salmon and sweet potato flavored, grain free dry dog food Canidae PURE Grain Free
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For pups with sensitive stomachs, this hypoallergenic, grain-free option made with real meat and whole ingredients prevents any discomfort.

For many people, dogs are more than a pet—they’re a part of the family. Not only must dogs get exercise and grooming, but as beloved family members, they deserve the best nutrition available. The best dry dog foods contain all the nutrients a dog needs for his age, size, and health conditions. Dogs are carnivores, so the number one ingredient in any dry dog food should be a natural protein source. They also need a mix of fats and fiber to keep their coat, eyes, and joints healthy and happy. Dry dog foods are often the most economical choice. Plus, they store well and are easy to transport. We’ve created a list of some of the best dog food on the market, including formulas balanced for optimum nutrition, from puppy to senior recipes.

The best dry dog foods: Our picks

It’s a crowded market in the dry dog food section. New recipes and companies spring up seemingly overnight. Keep your dog’s age, size, and medical history in mind as you narrow down the options. The dry dog foods on our list contain high-quality ingredients and offer healthy nutrition for a wide range of dogs. 

Best for small dogs: Hill’s Science Diet Adult Small Paws

Hill’s Science Diet

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Hill’s Science Diet Adult Small Paws starts with high-quality chicken as the main protein source. With 24.9-percent crude protein, it’s heavy on the nutrients small dogs need. Kibble size and calorie density target the higher metabolism of small breeds. Hill’s Science Diet includes a special antioxidant blend designed specifically for the challenges of being a petite pup. This best dry dog food for small dogs is also rich in omega-6 fatty acids and vitamin E to support skin and coat health. 

Best for senior dogs: Blue Buffalo Life Protection Formula Natural Senior Dry Dog Food 

Blue Buffalo

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Blue Buffalo’s Life Protection Formula Natural Senior Dry Dog Food contains the 18-percent protein senior dogs need, along with a whole lot more. The recipe includes extra glucosamine, a compound found in the body’s connective tissues, and chondroitin sulfate, which maintains and rebuilds joint cartilage. Add to that natural sources of omega fatty acids and DHA to support the brain and eyes. The extra nutrients address areas that begin to decline in a dog’s later years. 

Best for sensitive stomachs: Canidae PURE Grain Free

CANIDAE

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Canidae PURE Grain Free comes in many flavors, each with a single protein source, including familiar options like chicken or duck and the less common wild boar or salmon. A greater variety of options helps those trying to narrow down a dog’s source of allergies or the reason for an upset stomach. Canidae also lists the very short ingredient list, eight in total, on the front of the package. It’s simple yet contains essential nutrients, such as the omega fatty acids needed for optimum skin and coat health. 

Best for puppies: Taste of the Wild High Prairie Puppy Recipe 

Taste of the Wild

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Taste of the Wild High Prairie Puppy Recipe gives puppies nutrients they need like DHA for their developing brain and eyes. Small kibble is easier for pint-sized mouths to chew, yet it’s crunchy to keep puppy teeth clean. The addition of probiotics in the best puppy food promotes digestive health by balancing the gut biome. The top two ingredients—water buffalo and lamb—are protein sources rich in essential amino acids for healthy growth and development. This recipe leaves out grains because they are a common source of allergies, but always check with a veterinarian to be sure grain-free is right for your junior dog.

Best budget: Wag Dry Dog/Puppy Food

WAG

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Wag Dry Dog/Puppy Food contains nutrients for adults and puppies in a single recipe. A high 35-percent protein content brings high levels of omega fatty acids and essential amino acids. Because it’s designed for puppies, it also contains DHA to feed brain and eye development and health. Wag comes in five flavors, each with a protein as the first and most plentiful ingredient on the list. Medium-sized kibble works for adults and isn’t too big for puppies.

What to consider when shopping for the best dry dog foods

Dog foods aren’t created with equal nutritive value. The ingredients’ quality, nutrient content, and kibble size all play a role in which one is right for your dog. Breeds of different sizes also have different nutritional needs. A food that’s tailored to your dog’s individual traits and circumstances will ensure he has the energy for all of your adventures together.

Dog age and food requirements

Like humans, a dog’s nutritional needs change throughout his life. Dogs need calorie-dense food with omega fatty acids and DHA for brain and vision development during the puppy years. They also need foods with a balanced calcium to phosphorus ratio for adequate bone development. Additionally, puppy foods often have smaller or softer kibble for little jaws that don’t function at full strength. 

Depending on the breed, dogs l mature from puppyhood between one and two years old. In their adult years, they don’t need the extra calories found in puppy chow. Adult dogs who eat puppy food may gain too much weight. A high-quality dry dog food designed for adult dogs works well during this stage of life. 

Dogs enter their senior years around age seven, but that can vary by breed. For example, small breeds tend to live longer than large breeds, while a large breed may begin showing signs of aging around five years old. 

Senior dogs need the same nutrients as younger adult dogs. However, they tend to slow down and live a more sedentary lifestyle. Consequently, many senior dog foods have fewer calories or may be labeled as diet food. Some senior foods include extra vitamin E, beta-carotene, glucosamine, or other nutrients that support the immune system or joint health. Plus, many diets are even supplemented with specific dog vitamins.

Dog size and type of kibble

Size matters. Large dog breeds have slower metabolisms, burning only about 20 calories per pound. Small breeds burn around 40 calories per pound. The best dry dog food for small dogs usually has a higher caloric density than a recipe designed for larger dogs. Additionally, small dogs, especially toy breeds, may not have the jaw strength to eat the large kibble found in regular dry dog food.

Dog medical history and diet

Dogs can suffer from many of the same medical conditions found among humans, like food allergies, diabetes, and obesity. And as with people, a dog’s diet can help control some common health issues. For example, LID foods are usually made with a single (possibly two) protein source and a limited list of ingredients. They’re also made of less common protein sources like venison or buffalo instead of chicken or beef, to which more dogs are allergic. If your dog has stomach or digestive problems, the veterinarian may recommend an LID (Limited Ingredient Diet) food to help identify the specific allergy. Many manufacturers also make a grain-free version of their adult dog foods to accommodate canines with sensitive stomachs or allergies. 

Find high-quality sources of protein, healthy fats, and digestible carbohydrates in dog food

As carnivores, dogs have different nutritional needs than humans. They require a dry dog food made of at least 18-percent protein, no less than 5-percent fat, and around 5-percent fiber. Many dry dog foods have a label with a breakdown of the protein, fiber, fat, and carbohydrate percentages and content. 

Check for high-quality ingredients like natural sources of protein and whole vegetables and fruits. Ingredients are listed with the most abundant ingredient first. The first ingredient on the list should be an animal protein source like fish, chicken, or beef because they naturally contain the right balance of essential amino acids that dogs need. Some of the less expensive dog foods will contain meat by-products, which aren’t as high quality, nor do they contain everything your dog needs. They shouldn’t be the only protein source in the food. 

Related: Best dog treats of 2023

FAQs

Q: Which dry dog food brand is the best?

There are several fantastic dry dog food brands worth considering. Blue Buffalo, Canidae, Hill’s Science Diet, and Taste of the Wild, all of which made our list, are some of the best brands on the market. They source high-quality ingredients and create recipes designed to meet the different stages of a dog’s life.

Q: What is the highest quality dog food?

The highest quality dog food has whole ingredients sourced from reputable farms and providers. As far as dry dog food goes, Taste of the Wild stands out for its focus on ingredients native to a wild dog’s diet, such as sorghum, millet, and water buffalo. These sources still meet the nutritional needs of the modern dog but are less likely to trigger allergies compared to some contemporary canine food sources. 

Q: Should dogs eat grain-free?

Dogs don’t have to eat grain-free. Some dogs have gluten or other food allergies that stem from grains. In that case, a grain-free diet makes sense. However, for dogs without allergies or other health conditions which grain could affect, grains provide vital nutrients for a balanced diet. 

Related: Best wet dog foods of 2023

The final word on shopping for the best dry dog foods

Your dog deserves the best dry dog food for his age, size, and medical needs. Many dry dog foods are budget-friendly and nutritionally sound. Whether your dog’s in need of the best puppy food, the best senior dog food, or somewhere in between, dry dog food can keep him fueled, healthy, and ready to live life with his favorite person (you). 

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Seals provided inspiration for a new waddling robot https://www.popsci.com/technology/seal-soft-robot/ Mon, 01 May 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537958
Two seals laying on shore near water.
Pinnipeds are getting robotic cousins. Deposit Photos

Fin-footed mammals, aka pinnipeds, provided the template for a new soft robot.

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Two seals laying on shore near water.
Pinnipeds are getting robotic cousins. Deposit Photos

It might be difficult to see at first, but if you squint just right, you can tell the latest animal-inspired robot owes its ungainly waddle to seals. Researchers at Chicago’s DePaul University looked at the movements of the aquatic mammal and its relatives for their new robot prototype—and while it may look a bit silly, the advances could one day help in extremely dire situations.

According to their paper’s abstract, the team writes they aimed to build a robot featuring “improved degrees of freedom, gait trajectory diversity, limb dexterity, and payload capabilities.” To do this, they studied the movements of pinnipeds—the technical term given to fin-footed mammals such as seals, walruses, and sea lions—as an alternative to existing quadrupedal and soft-limbed robots. Their final result is a simplified, three-limbed device that propels itself via undulating motions and is supported by a rigid “backbone” like those of their mammalian inspirations.

As also detailed last week via TechXplore, the robot’s soft limbs are each roughly 9.5 inches long by 1.5 inches wide, and encased in a protective outer casing. Each arm is driven by pneumatic actuators filled with liquid to obtain varying degrees of stiffness. Changing the limbs’ rigidness controls the robot’s directional abilities, something researchers say is generally missing from similar crawling machines.

[Related: Robot jellyfish swarms could soon help clean the oceans of plastic.]

Interestingly, the team realized that their pinniped product actually moves faster when walking “backwards.” While in reverse, the robot waddled at a solid 6.5 inches per second, compared to just 4.5 inches per second during forward motion. “Pinnipeds use peristaltic body movement to propel forward since the bulk of the body weight is distributed towards the back,” explains the team in its research paper. “But, the proposed soft robot design has a symmetric weight distribution and thus it is difficult to maintain stability while propelling forward. As a consequence, the robot shows limited frontal movements. Conversely, when propelling backward, the torque imbalance is countered by the body.”

But despite the reversal and slightly ungainly stride, the DePaul University team believes soft robots such as their seal-inspired creation could one day come in handy for dangerous tasks, including nuclear site inspections, search and rescue efforts, and even future planetary explorations. It might be one small step for robots, but it may prove one giant waddle for pinniped propulsion tech.

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The oldest chili pepper specimen may be from present-day Colorado https://www.popsci.com/science/colorado-chili-pepper-fossil/ Mon, 01 May 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537824
Scientists recognized the 50 million-year-old pepper by the unique shape of its calyx teeth: spikes on the end of the fruiting stem that hold on to the pepper.
Scientists recognized the 50 million-year-old pepper by the unique shape of its calyx teeth: spikes on the end of the fruiting stem that hold on to the pepper. Rocío Deanna

The spicy treat is older than scientists thought—with a surprising origin story.

The post The oldest chili pepper specimen may be from present-day Colorado appeared first on Popular Science.

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Scientists recognized the 50 million-year-old pepper by the unique shape of its calyx teeth: spikes on the end of the fruiting stem that hold on to the pepper.
Scientists recognized the 50 million-year-old pepper by the unique shape of its calyx teeth: spikes on the end of the fruiting stem that hold on to the pepper. Rocío Deanna

It’s hard to imagine life without the nightshade family. It includes the likes of tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplants—some of the essential ingredients for a healthy diet–and delicious recipes. But, it turns out one of these tasty flowering plants has a longer history in North America than scientists previously believed. 

According to a March paper in the journal New Phytologist, the chili pepper may have been growing roots in present-day Colorado at least 50 million years ago—quite a bit earlier than scientists originally believed.  Previously, the chili pepper’s origin was placed 15 million years ago in South America. The newest theory emerged when a postdoc and an undergraduate student at University of Colorado-Boulder discovered a fossil of a plant that uncannily resembles the chili pepper, notably through its spiky ends on a fruiting stem called the calyx. 

“The world has maybe 300,000 plant species. The only plants with that kind of calyx is this group of 80 or 90 species,” Stacey Smith, senior author of the paper and associate professor of evolutionary biology at CU Boulder, said in a press release.

[Related: 5 heirloom foods that farmers want to bring back from obscurity.]

The well-preserved specimen was revealed in the Green River Formation, a site chock full of Eocene fossils and discoveries. But, it ended up not being as rare as the authors thought at first—two more similar chili pepper deposits from Green River were hidden in the CU Boulder collections and another at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. These fossils were uncovered in the 1990s, but it certainly isn’t unheard of for discoveries to lay in wait until the right scientists come along

The Green River Formation is a marvel for capturing the Eocene, which lasted from around 34 to 56 million years ago and marked the beginning of the era of mammals. During this epoch, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere was around double that of today, paving the way for palm trees to grow in Alaska and a lack of ice driving sea levels 500 feet higher than they are currently. 

So what could’ve happened that caused the gap between when chili peppers were evolving in Colorado and when they appeared in South America during the Miocene? The authors theorize that modern birds, which have been able to fly long distances for some 60 million years, could’ve carried seeds and plants in their poop or stuck to their bodies. 

Through birds, chili peppers would’ve made their way to South America. Since the latest discovery puts the evolution of chili peppers back to the days of Gondwana, transoceanic travel may have been unnecessary. Birds could simply fly across shorter watery distances or via a chain of volcanic islands, the scientists wrote in the new paper. 

[Related: Oldest evidence of digested plants in a roughly 575-million-year-old creature’s gut.]

Nevertheless, this discovery puts the oldest chili peppers in a place that no longer has many native nightshades or any chili peppers at all. “These chili peppers, a species that we thought arose in an evolutionary blink of an eye, have been around for a super long time,” Smith added. “We’re still coming to grips with this new timeline.”

So next time you break out a meal of Colorado-style chili, that bowl of goodness might have even more local roots that anyone realized.

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Researchers release more than 5,000 snails in the Pacific https://www.popsci.com/environment/polynesian-tree-snails-conservation/ Mon, 01 May 2023 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537671
A small partula snail crawls on a leaf.
Newly released partula snails are painted with a red UV-reflective dot on their shells so conservationists can monitor their progress. ZSL

Snailed it! These tiny and important ‘extinct in the wild’ break down fungi and decomposing tissue.

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A small partula snail crawls on a leaf.
Newly released partula snails are painted with a red UV-reflective dot on their shells so conservationists can monitor their progress. ZSL

It wasn’t snakes on a plane to the Pacific islands of Tahiti and Moorea, but some very special snails. Over 5,000 of partula snails bred and raised at zoos in London, Scotland, and Missouri were flown over 9,000 miles to be reintroduced in the wild

[Related from PopSci+: Beavers, snails, and elephants are top grads from nature’s college of engineering.]

These ‘extinct in the wild’ partula snails (also called Polynesian tree snails) eat decaying plant tissue and fungi. They also play an important role in maintaining forest health. When invasive African giant land snails took over some islands in French Polynesia, the rosy wolf snail was introduced to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the rosy snails hunted down the native partula snails instead.

Returning partula snails back to the wild, in coordination with the French Polynesian Government’s Direction de l’environnement, is a step towards restoring some ecological balance in these islands.

“Despite their small size, these snails are of great cultural, ecological and scientific importance— they’re the Darwin’s finches of the snail world, having been researched for more than a century due to their isolated habitat providing the perfect conditions to study evolution,” the London Zoological Society curator of invertebrates Paul Pearce-Kell said in a statement

The nocturnal snails that measure less than an inch long were individually marked with a dot of red reflective paint before being released, so that the conservationists can track them better. The team reintroduced eight species and subspecies classified as Extinct-in-the-wild, Critically Endangered, or Vulnerable.

In the early 1990s, the last few surviving individuals of several Partula species were rescued and brought back to the London and Edinburgh Zoos for an international conservation breeding program that brought together 15 zoos. 

“After decades of work caring for these species in conservation zoos—and working with the Direction de l’environnement to prepare the islands for their return—we began releasing Partula snails back into the wild nine years ago,” said Pearce-Kell.

[Release: Large, destructive snails have invaded Florida.]

Eleven snail species have since been saved, including the last known individual of the Partula taeniata sumulans. This lone snail was brought to Edinburgh zoo in 2010 and was bred back to several hundred individuals. Unfortunately, the Partula faba wasn’t as lucky. The nine individuals at Edinburgh could not successfully breed in captivity and the species became extinct in 2016.

The zoos worked with the French Polynesian government to prepare the islands for their return to the wild nine years ago.

“Since then, we’ve reintroduced over 21,000 Partula snails to the islands, including 11 Extinct-in-the-wild species and sub-species: this year’s was the largest reintroduction so far, thanks to the incredible work of our international team efforts with collaborators,” said Pearce-Kell.

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How deadly amphibians survive their own poisons https://www.popsci.com/environment/poisonous-amphibians-survival-toxin/ Sun, 30 Apr 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537629
Over the long arc of evolution, animals have often turned to poisons as a means of defense.
Over the long arc of evolution, animals have often turned to poisons as a means of defense. DepositPhotos

Many brightly colored frogs and salamanders have enough toxins in their skin to kill multiple people.

The post How deadly amphibians survive their own poisons appeared first on Popular Science.

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Over the long arc of evolution, animals have often turned to poisons as a means of defense.
Over the long arc of evolution, animals have often turned to poisons as a means of defense. DepositPhotos

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.

From the brightly colored poison frogs of South America to the prehistoric-looking newts of the Western US, the world is filled with beautiful, deadly amphibians. Just a few milligrams of the newt’s tetrodotoxin can be fatal, and some of those frogs make the most potent poisons found in nature.

In recent years, scientists have become increasingly interested in studying poisonous amphibians and are starting to unravel the mysteries they hold. How is it, for example, that the animals don’t poison themselves along with their would-be predators? And how exactly do the ones that ingest toxins in order to make themselves poisonous move those toxins from their stomachs to their skin?

Even the source of the poison is sometimes unclear. While some amphibians get their toxins from their diet, and many poisonous organisms get theirs from symbiotic bacteria living on their skin, still others may or may not make the toxins themselves — which has led scientists to rethink some classic hypotheses.

Deadly defenses

Over the long arc of evolution, animals have often turned to poisons as a means of defense. Unlike venoms — which are injected via fang, stinger, barb, or some other specialized structure for offensive or defensive purposes — poisons are generally defensive toxins a creature makes that must be ingested or absorbed before they take effect.

Amphibians tend to store their poisons in or on their skin, presumably to increase the likelihood that a potential predator is deterred or incapacitated before it can eat or grievously wound them. Many of their most powerful toxins — like tetrodotoxin, epibatidine and the bufotoxins originally found in toads — are poisons that interfere with proteins in cells, or mimic key signaling molecules, thus disrupting normal function.

That makes them highly effective deterrents against a wide range of predators, but it comes with a problem: The poisonous animals also have those susceptible proteins — so why don’t they get poisoned too?

It’s a question that evolutionary biologist Rebecca Tarvin took up when she was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. Tarvin opted to study epibatidine, one of the most potent poisons of the thousand-plus known poison frog compounds. It’s found in frogs such as Anthony’s poison arrow frog (Epipedobates anthonyi), a small, ruddy creature with light-greenish-white splotches and stripes. Epibatidine binds to and activates a receptor for a nerve-signaling molecule called acetylcholine. This improper activation can cause seizures, paralysis and, eventually, death.

Tarvin hypothesized that the frogs, like some other poisonous animals, had evolved resistance to the toxin. She and her colleagues identified mutations in the genes for the acetylcholine receptor in three groups of poison frogs, then compared the activity of the receptor with and without the mutation in frog eggs. The mutations slightly changed the receptor’s shape, the team found, making epibatidine bind less effectively and limiting its neurotoxic effects.

That helps to solve one problem, but it presents another: The mutations would also prevent acetylcholine itself from binding effectively, which would disrupt normal nervous system functions. To address this second problem, Tarvin found, the three groups of frogs each have another mutation in the receptor protein that again changes the receptor’s shape in a way that allows acetylcholine to bind but still rejects epibatidine. “This is a series of very slight tweaks,” Tarvin says, which make the receptor less sensitive to epibatidine while still allowing acetylcholine to perform its usual neural duties.

Endangered Species photo
Epibatidine, a potent toxin used by some poison frogs, works by binding to the same receptor as the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (left). This improperly activates the receptor, disrupting normal nerve activity. In response, the poison frogs have a mutation in their receptor that changes its shape so epibatidine no longer binds as effectively (center) — but neither does acetylcholine. So the frogs have evolved a second change in the receptor’s shape that restores acetylcholine’s ability to bind while still excluding epibatidine, re-establishing normal nerve function.

Tarvin, now at the University of California, Berkeley, is researching how animals evolve to cope with toxins, using a more tractable experimental organism, the fruit fly. To that end, she and her colleagues fed food containing toxic nicotine to two lineages of fruit flies that differed in their ability to break down nicotine.

When the researchers exposed fly larvae to predators — parasitic wasps that laid eggs in the flies — both groups of flies were protected by the nicotine they ate, which killed off some of the developing parasites. But only the faster-metabolizing flies benefited from their toxic diet, because the slower-metabolizing flies suffered more from nicotine poisoning themselves.

Tarvin and her students are now working on an experiment to see if they can induce the evolution of adaptations, such as those she identified in the frogs’ proteins, by exposing generations of flies to nicotine and wasps, then breeding the flies that survive.

Fishing for poisons

Poisonous animals must do more than survive their own toxins; many of them also need a way to safely transport them in their bodies to where they’re needed for protection. Poison frogs, for instance — which obtain their toxins from certain ants and mites in their diet — must ship the toxins from their gut to skin glands.

Aurora Alvarez-Buylla, a biology PhD student at Stanford University, has been trying to nail down which genes and proteins the frogs use for this shipping. To do so, Alvarez-Buylla and her colleagues used a small molecule she describes as a “fishing hook” to catch proteins that bind to a toxin — pumiliotoxin — that the frogs ingest. One end of the hook is shaped like pumiliotoxin, while the other end bears a fluorescent dye. When a protein that would normally bind to pumiliotoxin instead latches onto the similar hook, the dye allows the researchers to identify the protein.

Endangered Species photo
Poison frogs like this one get their toxins from animals in their diet. To find out how the frogs transport the poisons from their gut to their skin, scientists have gone on molecular fishing expeditions to see what binds to the toxin.
CREDIT: TIMO VOLZ / UNSPLASH

Alvarez-Buylla expected her hook to catch proteins similar to saxiphilin, which is thought to play a role in transporting toxins in frogs, or other proteins that transport vitamins. (Vitamins, like toxins, are usually scavenged from the diet and then moved around the body.) Instead, she and her fellow researchers found a new protein, similar to a human protein that transports the hormone cortisol. This new transporter, they found, can bind to multiple different toxic alkaloids found in different species of poison frogs. The similarity suggests that the frogs have borrowed the hormone-transporting system to also transport toxins, says Lauren O’Connell, Alvarez-Buylla’s PhD advisor at Stanford and a coauthor of the paper, which is still to be formally peer-reviewed.

This may explain why the frogs aren’t poisoned by the toxins, O’Connell says. Hormones often become active only when an enzyme cleaves their carrier, releasing the hormone into the bloodstream. Similarly, the new protein may bind to pumiliotoxin and other toxins and prevent them from coming into contact with parts of the frog nervous system where they could cause harm. Only when the toxins reach the right spot in the frogs’ skin would the toxin-carrying protein release them, into skin glands where they can be safely stored.

In future work, the scientists aim to understand exactly how the new protein can bind to several different types of toxins. Other known toxin-binding proteins, like saxiphilin, tend to bind tightly to just a single toxin. “What’s special about this protein is that it’s a little bit promiscuous in who it binds to, but also there’s some selectivity there,” says O’Connell. “How does that work?”

Turning toxic

While poison frogs definitively get their toxins from the food they eat, the source of toxins used by other poisonous amphibians is not always clear-cut. Amphibians such as toads, it appears, may make their own poisons.

To show this, TJ Firneno, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Denver, and his colleagues manually emptied the toxin glands of 10 species of toads by squeezing the glands (“It’s like popping a zit,” Firneno says, and is harmless to the toads), then looked at which genes were most active in those glands 48 hours later. The hypothesis, says Firneno, was that genes especially active after the glands are emptied could be involved in toxin synthesis.

Firneno and his colleagues identified several activated genes that are known to be part of metabolic pathways for creating molecules related to toxins in plants and insects. The genes they identified, Firneno says, can help point scientists in the right direction for further investigations into how toads may make their toxins.

Other amphibians may rely on symbiotic bacteria for their toxins. In the United States, newts of the genus Taricha are among the country’s most toxic animals. Though they look harmless, individual newts from some populations of these ancient creatures contain enough tetrodotoxin to kill numerous people. Many scientists believed the newts made the toxin themselves. But when a team of researchers collected bacteria from the newts’ skin, then cultured individual microbial strains, they found four types of tetrodotoxin-producing bacteria on the amphibians’ skin. That’s similar to other tetrodotoxin-containing species, such as crabs and sea urchins, where scientists agree that bacteria are the source of the toxin.

Endangered Species photo
Newts in the genus Taricha, like this one, are among America’s most toxic animals. Scientists are still unsure whether the newts make deadly tetrodotoxin themselves or borrow it from bacteria living on their skin.
CREDIT: GEOFFREY GILLER

The origin of the toxin in these newts has broader ramifications, because they — and the garter snakes that eat them — are poster animals for what has been considered a classic example of coevolution. The snakes’ ability to eat the highly toxic newts is evidence that they have coevolved with the newts, gaining resistance so that they can continue to eat them, some scientists think. Meanwhile, the newts, the idea goes, have been evolving ever-greater toxicity to try and keep the snakes at bay. Scientists refer to this kind of escalating competition as an evolutionary arms race.

But in order for the newts to participate in such an arms race, they have to have genetic control of the amount of toxin they produce so that natural selection can act, says Gary Bucciarelli, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Davis, who coauthored a re-evaluation of the arms race idea in the 2022 Annual Review of Animal Biosciences. If the tetrodotoxin actually comes from bacteria on the newts’ skin, it’s harder to see how the newts could turn up the toxicity. The newts could conceivably coerce the bacteria to pump out more tetrodotoxin, Bucciarelli says, but there’s no evidence that this happens. “It’s certainly not this very tightly linked, antagonistic relationship between newts and garter snakes,” he says.

Indeed, at the field sites where Bucciarelli works in California, he’s never actually witnessed a garter snake eating a newt. “If you follow the literature, you’d think that there are snakes just picking off newts like crazy at the edge of a stream or a pond. You just don’t see that,” he says. Instead, the snakes’ resistance to tetrodotoxin could have arisen for some other reason, or even by evolutionary happenstance, he says.

The newts’ toxin source is far from nailed down, though. “Just because you have bacteria that do something that live on your skin, doesn’t mean that’s the source in newts,” says biologist Edmund Brodie III, who was among the scientists that first put forward the arms race hypothesis between the snakes and newts more than 30 years ago. Brodie notes that other researchers have found that newts contain molecules that, based on their structures, may be part of a biological pathway for newts to synthesize their own tetrodotoxin. Still, Brodie says of the study showing that bacteria found on the newts can produce tetrodotoxin, “it’s the best thing we have so far.”

Brodie’s instinct is that one way or the other, the newts control their tetrodotoxin production, whether that’s by making the tetrodotoxin themselves or somehow manipulating their bacteria. The presence of bacteria as a third player in the newt-snake war would just make it an even more interesting system, he says.

Endangered Species photo
Bacterial communities on the skin and in the glands of Taricha newts. Some of these bacteria, researchers have shown, are capable of producing tetrodotoxin. This suggests, but does not yet prove, that the newts may get their toxins from their skin bacteria.

One major barrier in determining whether the newts can make tetrodotoxin on their own is that no full genome has been published for Taricha newts. “They have one of the largest genomes of any animal we know of,” says Brodie.

Studying the ways that poison animals adapt and use toxins, just like much basic science research, has inherent interest for researchers who seek to understand the world around us. But as climate change and habitat destruction contribute to an ongoing loss of biodiversity that has hit amphibians especially hard, we’re losing species that not only have intrinsic importance as unique organisms but are also sources of potentially lifesaving and life-improving medicines, says Tarvin.

Epibatidine, tetrodotoxin and related compounds, for example, have been investigated as potential non-opioid painkillers when administered in tiny, controlled doses.

“We’re losing these chemicals,” Tarvin says. “You could call them endangered chemical diversity.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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Volcanoes can be a fiery death sentence for fish https://www.popsci.com/environment/volcanoes-fish-death/ Sat, 29 Apr 2023 23:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537187
Explosions can take a toll on nearby fish.
Explosions can take a toll on nearby fish. DepositPhotos

Whether the eruption is underwater or on land, fish don’t have an easy time dealing with nature’s fury.

The post Volcanoes can be a fiery death sentence for fish appeared first on Popular Science.

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Explosions can take a toll on nearby fish.
Explosions can take a toll on nearby fish. DepositPhotos

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

They found the victims floating in the water. Some had eyeballs full of air bubbles, others had their stomachs pushed up into their mouths. Many had severe internal bleeding.

Volcanoes can be life-threatening for fish. A major eruption in 2011 in Chile, for instance, killed 4.5 million of them. Researchers have studied how lava flows, hot gases, and deadly debris can cause mass die-offs or even cut fish off from the sea in suddenly landlocked lakes. But few have been able to document in detail the grisly fates experienced by the unlucky fish that find themselves at the mercy of an angry volcano. That’s why when one erupted underwater off the coast of El Hierro in the Canary Islands for 150 days in late 2011 and early 2012, researchers including Ayoze Castro Alonso at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria saw the perfect opportunity to study the intricacies of these piscine casualties.

Ten years later, the devastating eruption of a terrestrial volcano on nearby La Palma, another of the Canary Islands, gave Alonso and his colleagues a chance to see an altogether different way that volcanoes can butcher unsuspecting fish—by overwhelming them with debris.

The scientists detail in a new paper the shocking injuries suffered by 49 fishes killed by the El Hierro eruption and 14 fishes killed by the volcanism near La Palma. “It’s a volcanic eruption in both cases, but the pathological syndromes are completely different,” says Alonso. “One is acute, the other is chronic.”

The underwater eruption near El Hierro superheated the water by as much as 19 °C, reduced the oxygen level, and rapidly acidified the ocean. Alonso and his colleagues found fishes with gas bubbles in their bodies. The team concluded the injuries occurred while the fishes were still alive because the scientists found inflammatory cells indicative of physical trauma and a severe build-up of blood in the fishes’ tissues.

The researchers’ detailed necropsies also hint that the fishes made a fateful dash for safety. Once the El Hierro eruption was underway, Alonso says, the fishes ascended rapidly. “They tried to escape,” he says.

As the fishes swam upward, sudden depressurization likely caused the gases dissolved in their bodies to bubble out, accounting for the bubbles in their eyes and under their skin. Depressurization would also explain why the animals’ stomachs were pushed up into their mouths and why some had overinflated swim bladders. These gas-filled organs expand when fish rise toward the surface.

On La Palma, though, molten lava flowed over land and into the ocean where the sudden clash with cold water quenched it into a glassy rock known as hyaloclastite. Within a week, huge clouds of volcanic ash settled into the water. Fish died after their gills became clogged with ash, or after their digestive tracts were impacted with fragments of glassy hyaloclastite.

Some of the findings are familiar to Todd Crowl, an ecosystem scientist at Florida International University who was not involved in the current study but who witnessed an eruption on Dominica in the Caribbean during the 1990s. A few centimeters of ash fell on the island, Crowl says, contaminating streams and killing thousands of filter-feeding shrimp. “All that ash just completely clogged up [the shrimp’s] filters,” he says.

Alonso and his colleagues’ research is the first to analyze the wounds fish suffer during a volcanic eruption in such detail—in part because getting access to the victims while their bodies are still fresh is incredibly difficult. After the eruptions at El Hierro and La Palma, local officials gathered up stricken fishes and shipped them on ice to the researchers within a matter of days.

Crowl says this rapid collection let the scientists conduct their analyses before the fishes rotted away. “We get fish kills all the time in Florida because of algal blooms and stuff like that,” Crowl says. “But by the time we get the specimens, there’s lots of degradation.”

Volcano ecologist Charlie Crisafulli, formerly of the US Forest Service, who was not involved in the work, agrees that the study of such fresh victims is novel: “We haven’t seen this before.” However, Crisafulli isn’t certain that the fishes killed by the El Hierro eruption actively tried to flee. Alternatively, they might have been stunned by the rapid changes in their environment and simply floated upward in a state of shock.

Though all of this seems deeply unpleasant, Crisafulli stresses there is a bigger picture here worth thinking about. Volcanoes kill, but they also create. Eruptions contribute nutrients to the environment, and lava flows build new land—sometimes entire islands.

“With this so-called destruction and loss of life, also there’s the creation of new habitats,” Crisafulli says. “What was initially a loss ends up becoming a gain through time.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Protecting wildlife starts with securing land for animals to roam https://www.popsci.com/environment/land-conservation-size-wildlife/ Fri, 28 Apr 2023 22:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537179
A bison herd on the America Prairie reserve in Montana.
A bison herd on the America Prairie reserve in Montana. Photo by Amy Toensing/Getty Images

Here’s what it takes to conserve those much-needed acres.

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A bison herd on the America Prairie reserve in Montana.
A bison herd on the America Prairie reserve in Montana. Photo by Amy Toensing/Getty Images

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Driving north on state Highway 66 through the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in central Montana, it’s easy to miss a small herd of bison lounging just off the road behind an 8-foot fence. Each winter, heavy snows drive bison out of Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park – the only place in the U.S. where they have lived continuously since prehistoric times – and into Montana, where they are either killed or shipped off to tribal lands to avoid conflict with cattle ranchers.

In the winter of 2022-2023 alone, over 1,500 bison have been “removed,” about 25% of Yellowstone’s entire population. The bison at Fort Belknap are refugees that have been trucked 300 miles to the reservation from past Yellowstone winter culls.

Although bison are the U.S. national mammal, they exist in small and fragmented populations across the West. The federal government is working to restore healthy wild bison populations, relying heavily on sovereign tribal lands to house them.

Indeed, tribal lands are the great wildlife refuges of the prairie. Fort Belknap is the only place in Montana where bison, critically endangered black-footed ferrets and swift foxes, which occupy about 40% of their historic range, all have been restored.

But Indigenous communities can’t and shouldn’t be solely responsible for restoring wildlife. As an ecologist who studies prairie ecosystems, I believe that conserving grassland wildlife in the U.S. Great Plains and elsewhere will require public and private organizations to work together to create new, larger protected areas where these species can roam.

Rethinking how protected areas are made

At a global scale, conservationists have done a remarkable job of conserving land, creating over 6,000 terrestrial protected areas per year over the past decade. But small has become the norm. The average size of newly created protected areas over that time frame is 23 square miles (60 square kilometers), down from 119 square miles (308 square kilometers) during the 1970s.

Chart showing number and average size of new protected areas from 1900-2020
From the 1970s through 2020, the annual rate of protected area creation on land (solid purple bars) increased, but these areas’ average size (hollow bars) decreased.
David Jachowski/Data from Protected Planet, CC BY-ND

Creating large new protected areas is hard. As the human population grows, fewer and fewer places are available to be set aside for conservation. But conserving large areas is important because it makes it possible to restore critical ecological processes like migration and to sustain populations of endangered wildlife like bison that need room to roam.

Creating an extensive protected area in the Great Plains is particularly difficult because this area was largely passed over when the U.S. national park system was created. But it’s becoming clear that it is possible to create large protected areas through nontraditional methods.

Consider American Prairie, a nonprofit that is working to stitch together public and tribal lands to create a Connecticut-sized protected area for grassland wildlife in Montana. Since 2004, American Prairie has made 37 land purchases and amassed a habitat base of 460,000 acres (about 720 square miles, or 1,865 square kilometers).

The American Prairie initiative is working to create a protected zone of prairie grassland the size of Connecticut by knitting together public and private lands where ranchers and others are still working.

Similarly, in Australia, nonprofits are making staggering progress in conserving land while government agencies struggle with funding cuts and bureaucratic hurdles. Today, Australia is second only to the U.S. in its amount of land managed privately for conservation.

Big ideas make room for smaller actions

Having worked to conserve wildlife in this region for over 20 years, I have seen firsthand that by setting a sweeping goal of connecting 3.2 million acres (5,000 square miles, or 13,000 square kilometers), American Prairie has reframed the scale at which conservation success is measured in the Great Plains. By raising the bar for land protection, they have made other conservation organizations seem more moderate and created new opportunities for those groups.

One leading beneficiary is The Nature Conservancy, which owns the 60,000-acre Matador Ranch within the American Prairie focal area. When the conservancy first purchased the property, local ranchers were skeptical. But that skepticism has turned to support because the conservancy isn’t trying to create a protected area.

Instead, it uses the ranch as a grassbank – a place where ranchers can graze cattle at a low cost, and in return, pledge to follow wildlife-friendly practices on their own land, such as altering fences to allow migratory pronghorn to slip underneath. Via the grassbank, ranchers are now using these wildlife conservation techniques on an additional 240,000 acres of private property.

Using smooth wire instead of barbed wire for prairie fences enables pronghorn to cross under them with less chance of injury.

Other moderate conservation organizations are also working with ranchers. For example, this year the Bezos Earth Fund has contributed heavily to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s annual grants program, helping to make a record $US16 million available to reward ranchers for taking wildlife-friendly actions.

A collective model for achieving a large-scale protected area in the region has taken shape. American Prairie provides the vision and acts to link large tracts of protected land for restoring wildlife. Other organizations work with surrounding landowners to increase tolerance toward wildlife so those animals can move about more freely.

Instead of aiming to create a single polygon of protected land on a map, this new approach seeks to assemble a large protected area with diverse owners who all benefit from participating. Rather than excluding people, it integrates local communities to achieve large-scale conservation.

A global pathway to 30×30

This Montana example is not unique. In a recent study, colleagues and I found that when conservationists propose creating very large protected areas, they transform conservation discussions and draw in other organizations that together can achieve big results.

Many recent successes started with a single actor leading the charge. Perhaps the most notable example is the recently created Cook Islands Marine Park, also known as Marae Moana, which covers 735,000 square miles (1.9 million square kilometers) in the South Pacific. The reserve’s origin can be traced back to Kevin Iro, an outspoken former professional rugby player and member of the islands’ tourism board.

While some individual conservation organizations have found that this strategy works, global, national and local policymakers are not setting comparable large-scale targets as they discuss how to meet an ambitious worldwide goal of protecting 30% of the planet for wildlife by 2030. The 30×30 target was adopted by 190 countries at an international conference in 2022 on saving biodiversity.

Critics argue that large protected areas are too complicated to create and too expensive to maintain, or that they exclude local communities. However, new models show that there is a sustainable and inclusive way to move forward.

In my view, 30×30 policymakers should act boldly and include large protected area targets in current policies. Past experience shows that failing to do so will mean that future protected areas become smaller and smaller and ultimately fail to address Earth’s biodiversity crisis.The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The best cat trees of 2023 https://www.popsci.com/reviews/best-cat-tree/ Mon, 24 May 2021 14:59:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=365810
A black and white cat standing over a beige cat tree.
Petrebels, Unsplash

Stuck at home with a pent-up pet? These keep even the most high-climbing, adventurous kitties amused.

The post The best cat trees of 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

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A black and white cat standing over a beige cat tree.
Petrebels, Unsplash

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more ›

Best for large cats FANDReA is the best cat tree for large cats. FEANDREA Cat Tree for Large Cats
SEE IT

This cushy condo for big cats  is designed with anti-tipping technology for extra safety.

Best wooden cat tree The Vesper Cat Tree is the best wooden cat tree. Vesper Modern Cat Tree
SEE IT

This eco-friendly modern design comes with a sisal scratching mat and memory-foam bed.

Best on a budget A cat sitting over a cat tree in a beige color and with two floors. AmazonBasics Cat Condo Tree Tower with Hammock Bed
SEE IT

Help your kitty get away from it all in this affordable hammock bed made with plush carpeting.

Does your cat enjoy scaling your cabinets and bookshelves? Do they spend every morning surveying their domain from the top of the refrigerator? A cat tree is a wonderful way to keep your cat occupied, especially if they have a fondness for high places. The majority also come equipped with scratching posts, which keep claws away from your beloved sofa. If your cat hides in closets and under beds, a cat tree house with covered shelters will provide them a sense of security and personal space. And all these options come stacked in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and materials. Do you need a towering kitty castle, or a cozy perch for a cat that just wants to loaf? Does your interior aesthetic call for a modern cat tower? From kitten to couch potato, we’ll go over the best cat tree for you and your feline’s specific needs.

The best cat trees: Reviews & Recommendations

Best overall: Armarkat 77-inch Faux Fleece Cat Tree & Condo

Chewy

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The Armarkat stands over six feet high and boasts 10 scratching posts, six platforms, and two comfy condos. This feline fortress is built to handle the more exuberant kitty personalities, with a weight capacity of 80 pounds and a sturdy plywood structure. Your cat can govern from the highest perch of this large cat tree or spend all day snoozing in the privacy of a faux fleece cube.

Best small: Frisco 32-inch Real Carpet Wooden Cat Tree

Chewy

SEE IT

The Frisco Cat Tree is a double-decker tower for your cat to stretch out on. This wooden cat tower is built to last all nine lives, with a handcrafted solid wood structure and two heavy-duty sisal rope posts. It’s wrapped in plush, household-grade carpet, with a familiar texture that every cat can enjoy. This small cat tree comes fully assembled with two luxurious platforms and a hanging toy. The base of this tree measures 20 inches on both sides.

Best for large cats: FEANDREA Cat Tree for Large Cats

FEANDREA

SEE IT

The FEANDREA Cat Tree is a welcoming abode that won’t budge under pressure. The roomy cat condos and oversized plush perch provide an abundance of space for big cat naps. Each post is wrapped in natural sisal rope and reinforced with battens at the base of the tree. It also includes an anti-toppling wall attachment if you are super wary of tipping.

Best wooden: Vesper Modern Cat Tree

VESPER

SEE IT

This cat tower is made with laminated MDF board and comes in three attractive shades: warm walnut, natural oak, and classic black. With a tall observation platform, cozy cat cube, and seagrass scratching posts, this modern cat tree will keep your cat occupied while complimenting your meticulously curated apartment. The sisal scratching mat and memory foam beds are easily removable for easy washing. Vesper Trees are built for lifelong use, and replacement parts for scratching poles, cushions, carpets, and toys are available.

Best budget: AmazonBasics Cat Condo Tree Tower with Hammock Bed

Amazon Basics

SEE IT

This tower includes plush carpeting, an elevated hammock bed, two pillars wrapped in natural jute rope, and a hanging toy. The Amazon Basics cat tower is super easy to assemble and has a 15.7-inch base, but keep in mind that this condo is best for small and medium-sized cats and might be too snug for a larger breed.

Features to consider when buying a cat tree

There are a few features to keep in mind when shopping for your new cat tree. It is a good idea to designate a space in your home for your cat and keep the limitations of that space in mind. Sprawling homes can accommodate a large cat tree, but a tight apartment might require a more compact design. Then you will want to consider your cat’s activity level. Rambunctious kittens love to clamber up multilevel towers, but they are not as accessible for older cats; a cat with mobility issues will need a shorter model with wide platforms rather than a high-rise cat condo.

If your cat loves to scratch, it is important to choose a tower that they can’t wait to sink their needle-sharp nails into. The best cat tree will include a scratching material that you know your kitty loves, whether it’s sisal rope, jute, cardboard, or wood. And if your tabby loves to spread out, their dream tower will include ample space for afternoon catnaps. There’s a lot to choose from when it comes to pet products, so let’s break it down some more.

Related: Fulfill your cat’s dream of comfortable slumber with the best cat beds.

What’s the best for active cats?

The majority of house cats spend all day inside and they need a place to exert their bundles of energy. If you’re looking to entertain a cat that seems hellbent on toppling your bookshelves, a tall cat tree is an easy way to redirect their attention. If you have multiple cats, a large cat tower can accommodate three to four felines and prevent territorial scuffles. Tall cat towers are also a good way to stimulate and challenge curious kittens.

The most important features to keep in mind when shopping for tall cat trees are durability and weight capacity. Yours will have to handle high-speed cat leaps, and you don’t want the tower to wobble or tip. If you have enough room for a larger cat tower, you will also want to ensure that it offers an assortment of interactive elements. The best cat tower will have scratching pads, a variety of perches, toy attachments, and condos to hide in. Check out our favorite for high-climbing cats.

What if I’m looking for a smaller cat tree?

If you live in an apartment or smaller home, you might not have room for a kitty skyscraper. Small cat towers are a great way to designate a spot for your furry friend without sacrificing precious living room space. Does your cat spend all day lounging by the window? The majority of small cat perches are window-level, which makes them perfectly suited for hours of cat contemplation. Although small cat towers are lower to the ground, you will still want one that won’t sway when jumped on. The best small cat tree will have a sturdy base, resilient scratching posts, and soft platforms for maximum relaxation.

What’s the best for larger breeds?

Your Maine coon might not fit on a regular cat perch, but that doesn’t mean he has to miss out on the fun. There are a variety of cat tower designs available that are built to lodge bigger cats. If your cat weighs over 15 pounds, their tower should be uniquely constructed to handle that extra fluff. When selecting cat towers for large breeds, you should ensure that the platforms are wide enough for them to fully recline, and that they contain spare padding for optimal comfort. The best way to avoid tipping is with a two-pillar design, which prevents trees from leaning to one side.

What if I prefer a more modern design?

We know that your décor vision might not include a carpeted cat tower. Wooden designs are a sleek solution for those that prefer a more minimal aesthetic. Traditional designs might cause unwanted visual clutter, while a modern cat tower can blend seamlessly into a contemporary layout. Wooden designs may not be covered in plush fabric, but they are easier to clean and attract less hair. The best wooden cat tree will fit your modern style without compromising on kitty comfort. Here’s our favorite for sophisticated cats.

What can I get for under $30?

We know that quickly cat furniture can run you into the triple digits, especially if you’re shopping for a complex tower or a contemporary design. Luckily, there are options available for inexpensive single-platform trees. Cheap cat towers are sometimes made with flimsier materials, so you will want to ensure that what you pick is sturdy and claw-proof. The best cat tree on a budget will have durable construction, a soft bed, and tough scratching posts. Here’s an economical tree for your four-legged friend.

FAQs

Q: Where should I put the cat tree?

Buying the cat tree is only half the battle—you have to get your cat to actually use it. You might want to stick it in the most convenient or concealed location, but that is not always the most attractive spot for your cat. We recommend setting it up in a shared living space where your cat can keep tabs on you from the comfort of their perch. Proximity to a window is great for cats that love to birdwatch.

Q: How can I get my cat interested in my cat tree?

When you’re first introducing cat furniture to a kitty habitat, you should provide as many positive associations as possible. You can sprinkle the tower with catnip, reward them with treats when they show interest and line their condo with used toys and blankets for a familiar smell.

Q: How many cat towers do I need for two cats?

With a multiplatform cat tower like the Amarkat, two friendly cats or kittens can coexist peacefully. If your two cats struggle to get along and display territorial aggression, it might be better to purchase more than one cat tower. Ultimately, the number of trees you need depends on the dynamic between your feline pair. 

Related: Best robot mops

The final word on finding the best cat trees

Cat towers are a smart solution for pet parents looking to keep their cats occupied and relaxed. The right cat products can resolve a scratching habit and entertain your pet while you’re away. From jungle-gym climbing trees to glossy wooden condos, the best cat tower will help your kitty feel truly at home.

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A cutting-edge appetite stimulator was inspired by the thorny devil lizard https://www.popsci.com/technology/thorny-devil-lizard-gut-health/ Fri, 28 Apr 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537523
Side by side of Australian thorny devil lizard and ingestible medical capsule
The thorny devil lizard's moisture wicking skin inspired a new ingestible medical device. Deposit Photos/MIT/Popular Science

The spiky reptile's unique hydration methods helped craft a brand-new fluid-wicking stomach tool.

The post A cutting-edge appetite stimulator was inspired by the thorny devil lizard appeared first on Popular Science.

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Side by side of Australian thorny devil lizard and ingestible medical capsule
The thorny devil lizard's moisture wicking skin inspired a new ingestible medical device. Deposit Photos/MIT/Popular Science

Your stomach is extremely moody—at any given time, a complex interplay of factors such as hormone production and various neurological signals can leave you feeling hungry, overstuffed, excited, or nauseous. These experiences stem directly from the enteric nervous system (ENS), which controls gastrointestinal tract functions along a path known as the gut-brain axis. The ENS is so complex, in fact, that it is often referred to as your “second brain.”

Because of this, there are a number of ways for things to go sideways, resulting in issues such as suppressed appetites and slow digestion. Recently, however, researchers developed a first-of-its-kind treatment to help spur hunger via stimulating hormone levels in the gut—an “electroceutical” ingestible capsule inspired by a “water wicking” reptile.

In a new paper published by a team of scientists at NYU Abu Dhabi working alongside experts at MIT, the team explored a novel way to “significantly and repeatedly” induce the production of ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger. To accomplish this, they looked to the Australian thorny devil lizard, whose spiky skin is evolved to transport any water it touches towards the reptile’s mouth. Similarly, the research team’s ingestible device features a grooved, hydrophilic exterior designed to defer fluids away from the stomach’s inner lining. When this occurs, the pill-shaped tool’s electrodes come into direct contact with the tissue to produce a tiny current stimulating ghrelin production.

[Related: Doctors need to change the way they treat obesity.]

Dan Azagury, an associate professor and Chief of Minimally Invasive and Bariatric Surgery at Stanford University who was not involved in the study, admired the new device, and said they found the findings “really intriguing.”

“I love the creativity of the device, the idea, and how they found a way to get around the fluid constraints,” Azagury said via email, but cautioned that “even if that works, the path for this to show clinical efficacy in a disease as complex as obesity, is very, very challenging.”

Azagury points towards experts’ still relatively poor understanding of gut hormones and the gut-brain axis, which are “more complex than we think, and likely underutilized.” As an example, he offered that the “new blockbuster drugs” used to treat obesity are based on gut hormones only discovered in the 1980s, far after doctors had begun performing weight loss surgeries.

Although Azagury estimates there is a “long road ahead” before the device is commercially used to treat diseases, its creators are more optimistic. “It’s a relatively simple device,” Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the senior author of the study, argued in a statement for MIT. “So we believe it’s something that we can get into humans on a relatively quick time scale.”

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Male California sea lions have gotten bigger and better at fighting https://www.popsci.com/environment/california-sea-lions-size/ Fri, 28 Apr 2023 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537288
An adult male and adult female California sea lion sit on a beach surrounded by pups.
Adult male California sea lions are larger, have dark brown fur, and a conspicuous crest on their forehead. Adult females are blonde to light brown and are smaller than the adult males. Pups are dark brown to black. NOAA

Size matters during mating season, but the 'raccoons of the sea' face a risky future due to fish shortages.

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An adult male and adult female California sea lion sit on a beach surrounded by pups.
Adult male California sea lions are larger, have dark brown fur, and a conspicuous crest on their forehead. Adult females are blonde to light brown and are smaller than the adult males. Pups are dark brown to black. NOAA

In response to climate change, a lot of animals—such as polar bears and birds like sparrows—appear to be getting smaller in size. However, male California sea lions have increased their average body size even as their population has grown and the competition for food and resources has increased. 

In a study published April 27 in the journal Current Biology found that sex selection was a strong driving force for the male sea lions to strengthen the neck and jaw muscles that they use to fight for mate and to grow larger. Additionally, both male and female sea lions responded to food shortages by diversifying their diets and foraging further from the shore in some cases.

[Related: Fish populations thrive near marine protected areas—and so do fishers.]

Numerous marine species have rebounded a bit since the Marine Mammal Protection Act was passed in 1972, but California sea lions are notable for the size and duration of their population increase. The number of breeding females have tripled since the 1970s and the population growth is only beginning to plateau now. 

“Body size reduction is not the universal response to population increase in marine predators,” co-author and University of California Santa Cruz and the Smithsonian Institution paleoecologist  Ana Valenzuela-Toro said in a statement. “California sea lions were very resilient over the decades that we sampled and were able to overcome increasing competition thanks to prey availability. They’re like the raccoons of the sea: they can consume almost everything, and they can compensate if something is lacking.”

A larger male California sea lion next to a smaller female.
Illustration of a male and female California sea lion, showing how different they are in size. They also differ in foraging  behavior. CREDIT: Sarah Gutierrez.

In the study, the team analyzed museum specimens of adult male and female California sea lions that were collected between 1962 and 2008. To estimate changes in body size, they then compared the overall size of over 300 sea lion skulls, taking into account other skull features like the size of muscle attachment points, to assess the changes made in both neck flexibility and biting force.

To get an idea of where the sea lions were foraging and what they were eating, the team took tiny bone samples from the skulls and measured their stable carbon and nitrogen isotope composition. “Carbon provides information about habitat use—whether they’re foraging along the coast or offshore—and nitrogen provides insights about the trophic level of their prey, for example if they’re consuming smaller or larger fish,” said Valenzuela-Toro.

The team found that overall the male sea lions have increased in size, while females have remained stable. They believe that the sex difference is likely due to the fact that size matters more for a male in terms of mating success. “One male can breed with many females, and males in the breeding colony fight with each other to establish their territory,” said Valenzuela-Toro. “Bigger males are more competitive during physical fights, and they can go longer without eating, so they can stay and defend their territory for longer.”

[Related: For marine life to survive, we must cut carbon emissions.]

The male sea lions also increased their biting force and neck flexibility over this same time period. This allows them to move their heads more with greater agility and bite harder when fighting other males. 

The isotopic analyses showed that both sexes managed to meet nutritional needs through diet diversification and going further north for food. Female sea lions consistently had a more diverse diet than the male sea lions, and the authors suggest that this flexibility in food choice may be what allowed females to maintain average body size. 

The flexibility can only take sea lions so far, however, and climate change is putting their future in jeopardy. The dynamics that allowed for this growth occurred when their prey of sardines and anchovies were plentiful, and the populations of both fish have collapsed in recent years. The California sea lions have continued to diversify their diets to compensate, but are struggling

“As climate change progresses, prey availability of sardines and anchovies will decrease even more, and eventually we will have more permanent El Niño-like warming conditions, reducing the size and causing a poleward shift of these and other pelagic fishes,” said Valenzuela-Toro “It will be a really hostile environment for California sea lions, and eventually we expect that their population size will stop growing and actually decline.”

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How different is Balto, the heroic sled dog, from today’s Siberian huskies? https://www.popsci.com/environment/baltos-husky-dog-sled-genetics-dna/ Thu, 27 Apr 2023 19:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537198
Balto's taxidermy on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
After Balto died in 1933 at the Cleveland Zoo, his taxidermy mount was put on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Scientists sequenced the famed pup’s genome to learn more about modern working dogs.

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Balto's taxidermy on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
After Balto died in 1933 at the Cleveland Zoo, his taxidermy mount was put on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Cleveland Museum of Natural History

For nearly a century, Balto the sled dog has been celebrated with books, movies, and even a statue in New York’s Central Park. When a deadly infection called diphtheria swept through the isolated town of Nome, Alaska in 1925, Balto and a relay team of sled dogs traveled for six days across hundreds of miles in a raging blizzard to bring critical antitoxin to the town. 

[Related: Humans have partnered with sled dogs for 9,500 years.]

Balto is still helping people 90 years after his death, but this time, with his DNA. In a study published April 17 in the journal Science, scientists detail how they sequenced Balto’s genome to learn more about the genetics of the sled dogs of the 1920s and see how they compare to modern dogs.  

Balto was raised in a kennel by breeder Leonhard Seppala and belonged to a population of small, fast sled dogs that had been imported from Siberia in northern Russia. These dogs became known as Siberian huskies, but the modern versions of the breed, as well as modern sled dogs are quite different from Balto. Other living dog lineages that share this common ancestry with Balto include Greenland sled dogs, Vietnamese village dogs, and Tibetan mastiffs.

“It’s really interesting to see the evolution of dogs like Balto, even in just the past 100 years,” study co-author and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz Katherine Moon said in a statement. “Balto’s population was different from modern Siberian huskies, which have since been bred for a physical standard, but also from modern working Alaskan sled dogs.”

An archival photograph of famed sled dog Balto standing in the snow with his owner Gunnar Kasson.
Balto and his owner, Gunnar Kasson, circa 1925. CREDIT: Cleveland Public Library/Photograph Collection.

The team extracted DNA from  tissue samples of Balto’s taxidermied remains from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History  to investigate his genetic traits and ancestry. They found that Balto shared only part of his ancestry with Siberian huskies, and that he actually belonged to a population of working sled dogs that were more genetically diverse than modern breeds. 

The researchers also found evidence that his population was genetically healthier than modern breeds. “Balto came from a population of working dogs that were different from modern breeds and were adapted to harsh conditions,” said coauthor Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist from UC Santa Cruz, in a statement.

To analyze Balto’s genome, the team needed to compare it to a dataset of 682 genomes from modern wolves and dogs, as well as an alignment of 240 mammalian genomes developed by the Zoonomia Consortium, an an international collaboration effort to find the genomic basis of shared and specialized traits in mammals.

[Related: Humans probably have big brains because we got lucky.]

According to Shaprio, a key innovation behind this study is the ability to align the genomes of hundreds of species so that corresponding positions in different genomes can be compared. Comparing these genomes can then reveal DNA sequences that are the same across species and haven’t been changed during millions of years of evolution. This stability is an indication that these parts of the genome are important, and these crucial bits are where mutations could be especially harmful. 

A chart of the Alaskan sled dog Balto's ancestry. He common ancestry with modern Asian and Arctic canine lineages. He had no discernable wolf ancestry.
The Alaskan sled dog Balto shares common ancestry with modern Asian and Arctic canine lineages. He had no discernable wolf ancestry. CREDIT: Kathleen Morrill.

“A gene that’s on one chromosome in us is on a completely different chromosome in another species,” Shapiro said. “You need a tool that can line them up so you can see which parts of these genomes are the same and which are different. Without that it’s just a bunch of genomes of species that are very divergent.”

The study on Balto’s DNA used this approach to characterize genetic variation seen in Balto compared to modern dogs. Populations of working sled dogs like Balto were more “genetically healthy” than breed dogs due to lower burdens of rare and potentially damaging variations in their genes. The team also identified protein-altering, evolutionarily constrained variants in Balto’s genes related to tissue development, which could represent beneficial genetic adaptations. 

Variations in genes related to skin thickness, joint formation, coordination, and weight were also found, and Balto had a better ability to digest starch compared to Greenland sled dogs and wolves. However, Balto’s ability to digest starchy foods is still not as strong as modern dogs. 

The team was also able to use this genetic treasure trove from Balto’s genome to reconstruct his physical appearance, including his coat color, in more detail than even historic photos could reveal. “This project gives everyone an idea of what’s starting to be possible as more high-quality genomes become available to compare,” Moon said. “It’s an exciting moment because these are things we haven’t done before. I feel like an explorer, and once again Balto is leading the way.”

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We probably have big brains because we got lucky https://www.popsci.com/environment/humans-evolved-bigger-brains-mutations/ Thu, 27 Apr 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=537293
Evolution of human brain size shown with brass sculptures at a kids science museum in China
The evolution of human brain size depicted at the Hisense Science Discovery Center in Qingdao, China. CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Life makes mistakes. A major genetic study shows how some of those mistakes worked out well for humans.

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Evolution of human brain size shown with brass sculptures at a kids science museum in China
The evolution of human brain size depicted at the Hisense Science Discovery Center in Qingdao, China. CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor, but 4 to 6 million years ago they split off on different evolutionary paths. Chimps continued to walk on all fours and live in trees, while we lost our fur and grew past the need for a tail. But it was our large brains that set us the most apart from our closest relatives. The human brain (about the size of 10 tennis balls) is three times bigger than a chimp’s.

There are multiple theories for why we evolved large and complex brains. Some evolutionary biologists think humans developed bigger bodies as a response to environmental pressures such as living in open, unforested habitats that required more cooperation and thinking to catch prey. Others speculate our brains needed to grow to handle the information needed to manage social relationships. And in a new study published in Science today, geneticists offer a third explanation: We just got lucky.

Lead author Katie Pollard, the director of the Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology in California, likes to think of it as rolling dice. Every time another member of a species is born, there’s a chance that mutations will spring up in their genome. Each new generation gets more opportunities to score big with tweaks in the gene pool that increase the odds of survival. These beneficial mutations are more likely to stick around as organisms thrive and pass them on to offspring. In the case of humans and brain size, eventually, the buildup of mutations would be reflected in changes in the overall genome, Pollard says.

These random mutations could have contributed to the 49 short DNA sequences in our genome called human accelerated regions (HARs). Pollard and her team were the first to find these segments back in 2006 when comparing the genomes of humans to chimpanzees. HARs work as gene enhancers, controlling which genes are turned up or down during embryonic development, especially for brain formation. 

[Related: Eating meat may not have been as crucial to human evolution as we thought]

HARs in humans are very similar in each individual but vary when compared to accelerated regions in other vertebrates like chimps, frogs, and chickens. Since the initial discovery, research has found a connection between HARs and multiple traits that make our species distinct. And while Pollard has spent a lot of time understanding how HARs helped humans evolve, the current study focuses on why HARs emerged in the first place. 

The team collected data from 241 mammalian genomes (in concert with the larger Zoonomia project) and identified 312 accelerated regions across all of them. Most of the accelerated regions identified acted as neurodevelopmental enhancers, indicating a connection to brain development. But when comparing human and chimp DNA sequences, 30 percent of HARs were in areas of the genome where the DNA was folded differently. This suggests the structural variations in the human genome likely came from a random mutation during reproduction. “Mutations happen all the time and everytime sperm and eggs get made, there are some mistakes that cause cuts, deletions, and other edits to the DNA,” explains Pollard. “Many of the mutations don’t make any difference, but now and then some have a positive effect and that’s actually very rare.” 

In this case, scrunching and folding up DNA in different ways seemed to help with fitting a copy of the genome in every cell of the body. “It’s a big surprise that genome folding is involved since it hadn’t been on anyone’s radar when studying human accelerated regions,” says Pollard. “We had been thinking of DNA as a text file in a big folder full of A, C, T, and G’s, and looking for patterns as you move linearly through the sequence.”

The folding change would have affected how enhancers regulated gene activity in early humans. Depending on how the DNA was folded, enhancers could have been situated near new sequences, giving them different genes to target and boost. In humans, it just so happened that most of the adjacent genes were involved in brain development. In other words, we won the mutation lottery.

“The main achievement of this study is the discovery that the evolutionary history of HARs is connected in some way with the complex dynamics of structural configurations of the human genome,” says Anastasia Levchenko, a genetic researcher for the Institute of Translational Biomedicine at Saint Petersburg State University in Russia who has previously studied HARs’s role in brain development. However, she would like to see more research on the sequence of events in the evolution of the human genome. For example, it’s possible that HARs appeared way earlier than the changes in our DNA folds, or that DNA folding is only one factor contributing to the creation of HARs.

[Related: This is the most complete map we have of the human genome]

What’s more, humans might have used other genetic pathways to develop different features from other animals. Pollard’s study is one of 11 papers published in Science today as part of the Zoonomia Project, an international collaboration that aims to understand the codes behind shared and specialized traits across hundreds of mammalian species. For example, Zoonomia researchers identified the distinct parts of Balto’s genome that helped the sled dog deliver a serum to a remote Alaskan village, as well as genetic variants in early humans that could play a role in modern-day diseases. Another paper focuses on using information from DNA to predict which species are more likely to face extinction. All together, identifying the different genomes will open the door to understanding mammalian evolution and what exactly makes us uniquely human. 

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Robot jellyfish swarms could soon help clean the oceans of plastic https://www.popsci.com/technology/jellyfish-robot-ocean-pollution/ Wed, 26 Apr 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=536873
The Jellyfish-Bot is small, energy efficient, and virtually noiseless.
The Jellyfish-Bot is small, energy efficient, and virtually noiseless. MPI-IS

By simulating jellyfish movement with artificial muscles, the robots can safely kick up ocean trash for recycling.

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The Jellyfish-Bot is small, energy efficient, and virtually noiseless.
The Jellyfish-Bot is small, energy efficient, and virtually noiseless. MPI-IS

The oceans are inundated with plastic. Despite the numerous flashy proposed solutions, there unfortunately still isn’t any surefire way to clean it all up. One of the most buzzed about ideas—underwater vacuuming—has recently come up against intense scrutiny for its potential collateral damage to marine ecosystems and wildlife. Meanwhile, even the more delicate alternatives often hinge upon large, cumbersome surface skimmers. To tackle some of these issues, scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) have created a robotic trash collector inspired by some of the oceans’ oldest and most resilient residents—jellyfish.

Recently detailed in the research journal Scientific Advances, the team’s “Jellyfish-Bot” already shows promise in helping cleanup the copious amounts of human-generated trash littering the planets’ aquatic environments. But unlike many other underwater cleaners, the prototype is incredibly small, energy-efficient, and nearly noiseless. Additionally, the hand-sized device doesn’t need to actually physically interact with its cleanup targets. Instead, the robot takes a cue from jellyfishes’ graceful movements via six limbs employing artificial muscles called hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic actuators, or HASELs.

As New Atlas explains, HASELs are ostensibly electrode-covered sacs filled with oils. When the electrodes receive a small current—in this case, about 100 mW—they become positively charged, then safely discharge the current into the negatively charged water around them. Alternating this current forces the oil in the sacs to move back and forth, thus making the actuators flap in a way that generates momentum to move trash particles upward. From there, humans or other gathering tools can scoop up the detritus.

“When a jellyfish swims upwards, it can trap objects along its path as it creates currents around its body,” study author and postdoc in the MPI-IS Physical Intelligence Department Tianlu Wang explained in a statement. “In this way, it can also collect nutrients.”

Wang went on to describe how their robot similarly circulates water around it. “This function is useful in collecting objects such as waste particles,” Wang adds. “It can then transport the litter to the surface, where it can later be recycled.”

[Related: Ocean plastic ‘vacuums’ are sucking up marine life along with trash.]

Apart from generating currents, the Jellyfish-Bots’ actuators could also be divided up into separate responsibilities. In the team’s demonstrations, the prototypes could use all six of its limbs for propulsion, or rely on two of them as claws to lightly grasp targets like an N95 face mask.

The biggest drawback at the moment is simply the fact that a controlled Jellyfish-Bot still requires a wired connection for power, thus hampering its scope. Although researchers have been able to incorporate battery and wireless communications modules into the robots, the untethered versions cannot currently be directed in a desired path. Still, it’s easy to envision future iterations of the Jellyfish-Bot clearing this relatively small hurdle. If that is accomplished, then fleets of the cute cleanup machines may soon be deployed as a safe, efficient, and environmentally harmless way to help tackle one of the environment’s most pressing threats.

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What prehistoric poop reveals about extinct giant animals https://www.popsci.com/environment/prehistoric-poop-fungi-megafauna-biodiversity/ Wed, 26 Apr 2023 16:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=536815
A mushroom called coprophilous grows in woods.
Spores of coprophilous fungi pass through the guts of these megafauna during their life cycle and offer clues to their past lives. Deposit Photos

Spores from a fungi found in megafauna poop can tell us when enormous creatures went extinct.

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A mushroom called coprophilous grows in woods.
Spores of coprophilous fungi pass through the guts of these megafauna during their life cycle and offer clues to their past lives. Deposit Photos

Looking at poop can tell us a lot. Poop offers a window into all sorts of hidden worlds: bird microbiomes, clam habitats, recovering coral forests, and more. 

Excrement can also tell us about how and when animals went extinct thousands of years ago. A study published April 26 in the journal Quaternary Research looked at the fungal spores in the dung of the large animals, such as 20-foot-tall ground sloths and 1,000 pound armadillo-looking animals called armored glyptodonts, that roamed the Colombian Andes in South America during the Pleistocene. 

[Related: Ancient poop proves that humans have always loved beer and cheese.]

They found that the animals became extinct in not one, but two waves. The megafauna in this study first became locally extinct at Pantano de Monquentiva, a valley in Colombia surrounded by hills and near a bog, about 23,000 years ago and then again in the same area about 11,000 years ago. 

Spores of coprophilous fungi pass through the guts of these megafauna during their life cycle. The presence of these spores in sediment samples provides evidence that these long-extinct animals lived in a certain place and time. 

The team used samples found in a peat bog in Pantano de Monquentiva, about 37 miles from Bogota, Colombia. The findings offer a window back in time to better understand how the disappearance of large animals could transform ecosystems like they did all those millennia ago. 

“We know that large animals such as elephants play a vital role in regulating ecosystems, for example by eating and trampling vegetation,” Dunia H. Urrego, co-author and University of Exeter biologist and geographer, said in a statement. “By analyzing samples of fungal spores, as well as pollen and charcoal, we were able to track the extinction of large animals, and the consequences of this extinction for plant abundance and fire activity.

The team found that the Monquentiva ecosystem changed dramatically when the megafauna disappeared, with different plant species thriving and increased wildfires. The analysis of the fungal spores didn’t tell exactly which large animals were present, but it’s possible that the animals were either the giant sloth and armadillo, or even macrauchenids and toxodonts, two peculiar extinct animals reminiscent of today’s camels and rhinoceroses.

[Related: Our bravest ancestors may have hunted giant sloths.]

The study also found that when all of this plentiful megafauna disappeared, it had major effects on the ecosystem. Roughly 5,000 years after their disappearance, the megafauna began to live again. This reprieve was short lived, and they all went extinct in a second wave of extinction 11,000 years ago. While the team does not know the direct causes of this, a number of factors like plant extinctions, climate changes, increased hunting by humans, and even a meteorite spike are potential causes.

“After the megafauna vanished, plant species at Monquentiva transitioned, with more woody and palatable plants (those favored by grazing animals), and the loss of plants that depend on seed dispersal by animals,” co-author and geographer also at the University of Exeter Felix Pym said in a statement.  “Wildfires became more common after the megafauna extinctions – presumably because flammable plants were no longer being eaten or trampled upon. 

With the planet’s current biodiversity crisis in mind, the study points to the importance of conserving local plants and watching fire activity before the value humans gain from nature completely disappears. 

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The best pet GPS trackers of 2023 https://www.popsci.com/reviews/best-pet-gps-tracker/ Fri, 23 Jul 2021 11:59:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=382452
Keep tabs on your furry friends with the best pet GPS tracker.
Blue Bird, Pexels

The best pet GPS trackers allow you to keep a watchful eye on even the most sneaky dogs and cats.

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Keep tabs on your furry friends with the best pet GPS tracker.
Blue Bird, Pexels

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Best overall Whistle Go Explore is the best overall pet GPS tracker. Whistle Go Explore Ultimate Health and Location Tracker for Pets
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Set up safe areas and alerts for when your pet decides to go on an adventure—rest easy with this location-tracking pick.

Best locator-tracking device The Tractive LTE GPS Tracker is the best pet GPS tracker Tractive LTE GPS Tracker
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This pick offers real-time tracking updates so you can know where your pet is within the second, no search team needed.

Best budget The FitBark GPS Dog Tracker is the best pet GPS tracker on a budget. FitBark Dog Activity Monitor
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Get all the high-features of other picks at an affordable cost. You can set up safe zones, find your pet, and see their activity levels.

Most pet owners can agree that safety and health are the number-one priorities when it comes to their furry friends. And if you’re a pet owner, you know that sometimes, despite your best efforts, your curious cat or adventurous dog might just follow their noses outside of your home or yard. Or if you like to go hiking with your dog off-leash, there’s a chance he or she may get ahead of you. To avoid a potentially scary situation or just to have some peace of mind, it’s not a bad idea to get your pet a GPS-tracking device. Easily attached to a collar, the best pet GPS trackers provide real-time location tracking and you can set up alerts when your pet has left designated safe areas so you can easily locate your pup or kitty. We’ve rounded up the best pet GPS tracking devices so you can rest easy knowing your pet’s location is just a click away.

The best pet GPS trackers: Reviews & Recommendations

The best pet GPS tracker is a great pet accessory to invest in, especially if your pet has a habit of exploring new areas. The ability to see where your dog or cat is through an app is incredibly reassuring. Additionally, monitoring and regulating your pet’s activity and behavior helps to promote a healthy lifestyle. Once you’ve narrowed down what features your pet and yourself need most with a tracking device, you’ll have a much easier time narrowing down the options.

Best overall: Whistle Go Explore Ultimate Health and  Location Tracker for Pets

Whistle

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Available in three colors to best suit your pet’s coloring, the Whistle Go Explore Tracker provides real-time location tracking. If you have a particularly sneaky pet, you can set up alerts to quickly locate him or her when they decide to go on a little adventure. Plus you can designate safe areas and set up alerts for when your pet leaves those spots. You can also monitor your pet’s activity levels, calories, and distance, and keep an eye on behavior like scratching or licking that could be potential health problems. With a 20-day battery and an adjustable built-in nightlight, you can rest a little easier knowing this pet GPS tracker features added safety measures. Something to note: a Whistle subscription is required for $8.25/month with your first 30 days free and this device uses WiFi connection and the AT&T nationwide network and Google Maps. 

Best locator-tracking device: Tractive LTE GPS Tracker

Tractive

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The Tractive LTE GPS Tracker provides not only real-time tracking but also location history so you can see exactly where your pet has been and where they might be going. By going into LIVE mode, you can get updates every two to three seconds. Plus, by marking “safe places” like your backyard, you can know when your pet has left the premises and when they return. With unlimited range, you can track your pet wherever you are, no matter the distance by connecting with AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Viaero Wireless USA (will connect directly to cell networks regardless of which wireless provider you have). Additionally, this small, lightweight, and waterproof device tracks your pet’s activity, rest, and calories. A subscription plan is needed—monthly and one-to-five-year plans available starting at $4.99/month—and provides unlimited location tracking. All features can be managed through the free Tractive GPS app for iOS, Android, and in any browser.

Best mini GPS tracker: Jiobit GPS Dog and Cat Location Monitor

Jiobit

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The Jiobit GPS Dog and Cat Location Monitor might be tiny in size but has big features like next-gen low-power 5G-compatible network and beaconing technology that combines the use of your cellular, GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth connectivity to track your pet’s location both indoors and out. Easily attached to your dog or cat’s collar, this device is durable, has a long-lasting battery life (up to 20 days), and is waterproof so no matter what your pet gets into — think muddy puddles and bushes — you’ll be able to track him or her. A subscription plan is necessary and can be selected through the Jiobit app, available for Android and iOS. Through the app, you can create custom geofences to see if or when your pet leaves the area.

Best budget: FitBark GPS Dog Tracker

FitBark

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Fits most collars up to one and a half inches wide, the FitBark GPS Dog Tracker is slip-on, lightweight, durable and waterproof. This device requires WiFi, Verizon LTE-M, and in-app subscription from $5.95/month. Through the app, get alerts when your dog escapes designated safe areas and locate him or her in minutes with the embedded Verizon 4G LTE-M cell service. Additionally, it monitors your pet’s activity, sleep quality, calorie intake, and behavior. You can also link your FitBit, Apple Watch, or Google Fit Device to get active with your pup! If you have more than one pet, you can add multiple profiles in the app (iOs 12+ or Android 6+ required). The battery lasts 10 to 20 days depending on WiFi connection, Bluetooth, and Verizon availability. At just $99.99, this is the best pet GPS tracker on a budget and compares nicely with its more expensive competitors. 

Best with app: Wagz Freedom Smart Dog Collar

Wagz

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This shock-free collar allows you to stay connected to your furry friend with GPS and cellular coverage. The shock-free geofence containment system keeps your dog safe by creating and customizing “off-limit” keep out zones. Additionally, you can use vibration, audible cues, and ultrasonic sounds to correct your dog’s behavior. The connected app—which requires a 99.99 annual subscription—also monitors your dog’s step count, sleep time, and more. If you’re looking to get insight on your dog’s behavior and movement using data, WAGZ is the system for you.

Best collar: Garmin TT 15 Dog GPS Collar Tracker

Garmin

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The Garmin TT 15 Dog GPS Collar Tracker varies from other pet GPS trackers in that it doesn’t require a subscription or app to use. The collar, used for only location and tracking, is paired with a compatible handheld device (Astro 320, Astro 430, and Alpha 100—sold separately). Visible from 100 yards away, the LED Beacon lights are activated by the handheld device and are great for low-light scenarios as well as night time. The GPS collar is durable and water-resistant up to 32 feet. Plus your pet can be located up to nine miles away. With the option of two lengths of antenna—18.5 inch or 22.5 inch—you can choose if you want standard or extended rand for increased quality communication. If you have multiple pets, you can sync all of their Garmin collars to the compatible handheld device. The lithium-ion batteries are rechargeable and included with your purchase. 

What to look for when shopping for the best pet GPS trackers

The best pet GPS trackers provide peace of mind for owners and added safety measures for pets. When shopping around for the best one for you, there are a few key factors to take into consideration. Everything from how the tracker is affixed to the collar or if it’s a collar and tracker combined to subscription rates, how the tracker stays connected to the range of distance are important things to think about. Understanding your pet and his or her habits will help determine which tracker will best suit both of your needs.

How do you want to attach the GPS tracker? 

There are a few options when it comes to attaching the GPS tracker to your pet’s collar. Most will either slide or clip on but some are sold as a collar and tracker in one. Consider the size of your pet as you don’t want any discomfort with a heavy tracker although most are quite small and lightweight. Additionally, you don’t want the material to rub your pet’s skin either.

Are you on a budget?

While pet GPS trackers can be quite costly, there are plenty of options that are more budget-friendly. While they may not be as technologically advanced as some of their more expensive counterparts, they offer many of the great features you’d want in a GPS locator.

Do you want to monitor health and behavior as well?

Tracking the location of your pet is important, but wouldn’t it be nice to monitor his or her activity as well? Some GPS trackers offer both. With these devices, you can keep tabs on your pet’s activity levels, calories, distance traveled, and even behaviors such as excessive licking or scratching. You can then use this information along with your pet’s breed and age to discuss your pet’s health with your vet.

Do you want to sync the tracker to your phone? 

With pet GPS trackers, you have two options. The first option is you can pay a monthly or yearly fee for a subscription to use the navigation services. It’s important to confirm the tracker is compatible with your cellular service. Something to note: most need WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity to work. The GPS tracker syncs to an app (usually free!) on your phone where you can see your pet’s whereabouts, set safe designated locations, and set alerts. The second option is you can purchase a handheld device that is compatible with your tracker. This way you’re not paying for a subscription and don’t need WiFi to use. 

How many pets do you have? 

If you have multiple pets, you want to ensure the brand’s app can connect with multiple GPS trackers so you can keep an eye on all of them.  

FAQs

Q: Do I need a GPS tracker even if my dog is microchipped?

Yes, you do need a GPS tracker even if your dog is microchipped! The reason is that the microchip is not a GPS device and cannot track a lost dog or its location. The microchip is a small electronic chip placed right beneath your dog’s skin that when scanned, reveals an identification number. Both are extremely helpful in getting your dog home if he or she is lost but work in different ways. 

Q: How is a dog GPS tracker attached? 

Most dog GPS trackers can be placed on your dog’s collar. Depending on the model, it will either clip or slide onto the collar as it is meant to sit comfortably and not irritate your pup’s skin. 

Q: Can I use the tracker on my cat? 

Absolutely! Pet GPS trackers are intended for both cats and dogs and can be attached to the collar. Some GPS trackers work as collars too so you can choose what’s best for you and your pet. 

The final word on the best pet GPS trackers

Selecting the best pet GPS tracking device has a lot to do with your a) your pet and b) your location. Taking both into consideration will offer you a clear sense of where you need to begin with your search. If your pet likes to wander off or if you live in a place with lots of land, you’ll want a GPS pet tracker that works well no matter the distance. Plus a long-lasting battery is paramount. On the other hand, you might want a GPS locator that works as a pet monitor as well. No matter which features are most important to you (and you have lots of choices!), a GPS tracking device will keep your furry friend safe and will provide you with peace of mind. 

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Mudskippers blink—and that’s a huge evolutionary clue https://www.popsci.com/environment/mudskippers-blink-evolution/ Mon, 24 Apr 2023 19:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=536328
Two mudskippers fighting in the mud, with eyes and pectoral fins exposed.
Two mudskippers fighting in shallow waters at Mai Po Nature Reserve in Hong Kong. The fish's blinking behavior when on land is providing clues as to how and why blinking might have evolved during the transition to life on land in our own ancestors. Daniel J. Field

Their mucus-filled tears may tell a story of how animals moved from water to land.

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Two mudskippers fighting in the mud, with eyes and pectoral fins exposed.
Two mudskippers fighting in shallow waters at Mai Po Nature Reserve in Hong Kong. The fish's blinking behavior when on land is providing clues as to how and why blinking might have evolved during the transition to life on land in our own ancestors. Daniel J. Field

The unusual looking mudskipper has a startling face, and a fascinating backstory. The fish is actually amphibious and has evolved traits that ensure its survival in both water and on land. They have eyes on the top of their heads for better aerial vision and also use oxygen from their water stored in their gill chambers to breathe on land. However, the mudflat-dwelling fish’s ability to blink its eyes is shedding light on how our own ancestors evolved from living in the water to walking on land.

A study published April 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that the blinking behavior serves many of the same functions of our blinking, and it may be part of that suite of traits that allowed tetrapods to evolve on land. Tetrapods are the group of animals, including today’s amphibians, birds, reptiles and mammals, that evolved to exist on land in a rapid turn of events roughly 375 million years ago.

[Related: Our four-legged ancestors evolved from sea to land astonishingly quickly.]

Animals blink to keep the eyes wet and clean and protect them from injury. Sometimes, blinking can even be a form of communication. Humans and other tetrapods blink constantly through the day and despite it being a subtle action, it is quite complex. Strangely enough, mudskipper’s blink lasts roughly the same length of time as a human’s. 

“Studying how this behavior first evolved has been challenging because the anatomical changes that allow blinking are mostly in soft tissues, which don’t preserve well in the fossil record,” co-autor and Penn State University biologist Thomas Stewart said in a statement. “The mudskipper, which evolved its blinking behavior independently, gives us the opportunity to test how and why blinking might have evolved in a living fish that regularly leaves the water to spend time on land.”

To better understand how mudskippers evolved the ability to blink, the team analyzed blinking using high-speed videos. They compared the mudskippers’ anatomy with a closely related water-bound fish that doesn’t blink. Mudskippers blink with eyes that bulge out of the top of their heads, similar to a frog’s eyes. They momentarily retract their eyes down into the sockets, when they are covered by a sketchy membrane called a dermal cup

An Indian mudskipper (Periophthalmodon septemradiatus) blinking while on land. CREDIT: Brett Aiello.

“Blinking in mudskippers appears to have evolved through a rearrangement of existing muscles that changed their line of action and also by the evolution of a novel tissue, the dermal cup,” co-author and Seton Hall University biologist Brett Aiello said in a statement. “This is a very interesting result because it shows that a very rudimentary, or basic, system can be used to conduct a complex behavior. You don’t need to evolve a lot of new stuff to evolve this new behavior — mudskippers just started using what they already had in a different way.”

To understand why the mudskippers blink on land, the team looked to the roles that blinking plays in other tetrapods. Tears in humans are critical to keeping the eye’s cells oxygenated and healthy, so the team looked to see if mudskippers blink to keep their eyes wet when exposed to the air.  

[Related: Tiktaalik’s ancient cousin decided life was better in the water.]

“We found that, just like humans, mudskippers blink more frequently when confronted with dry eyes,” said Aiello. “What’s incredible is that they can use their blinks to wet the eyes, even though these fish haven’t evolved any tear glands or ducts. Whereas our tears are made by glands around our eyes and on our eyelids, mudskippers seem to be mixing mucus from the skin with water from their environment to produce a tear film.”

They also found that blinking in mudskippers is triggered to protect the eye from injury as well as  clearing their eyes from possible debris. The finding suggests that mudskipper blinking appears to fulfill blinking’s three major functions—protecting, cleaning, and maintaining moisture.

“Based on the fact that mudskipper blinking, which evolved completely independently from our own fishy ancestors, serves many of the same functions as blinking in our own lineage, said Stewart. “We think that it was likely part of the suite of traits that evolved when tetrapods were adapting to live on land.”

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Nice chimps finish last—so why aren’t all of them mean? https://www.popsci.com/environment/chimpanzee-personality-bully-evolution/ Mon, 24 Apr 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=536294
A male chimpanzee named Frodo frowns.
Known as a bully, Frodo the chimpanzee was Gombe's alpha male for five years. Ian C. Gilby, Arizona State University

Long-term data on chimpanzees adds another piece to the personality puzzle.

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A male chimpanzee named Frodo frowns.
Known as a bully, Frodo the chimpanzee was Gombe's alpha male for five years. Ian C. Gilby, Arizona State University

Is the phase “nice guys finish last” actually true? Unfortunately for all the soft-hearted among us, brutish behavior can be an effective path to power and dominance in both humans and chimpanzees. A study published April 24 in the journal PeerJ Life and Environment found that the male chimpanzees who exhibited greedy, irritable, and bullying personalities reached a higher social status. These rascals were also more successful at producing offspring. 

[Related: Adolescent chimpanzees might be less impulsive than human teens.]

However, the team is still plagued by a puzzling question from these findings: if being mean is the key to success, why isn’t every chimp a bully

For the study, the team followed 28 male chimpanzees living in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. A previous study had found that  these particular chimpanzees had a few members that  are more sociable whereas others are loners. Some of the chimps had overbearing personalities, and some were more easy-going. And, of course, there are a handful that are more quick to pick fights with others. 

Tanzanian field researchers performed personality assessments on the chimpanzees based on years of near-daily observations of how each animal interacted with others and behaved among the group. They found that a personality combination of high dominance and low conscientiousness helped the male chimpanzees fare better in life than the others, but it still doesn’t answer the evolutionary puzzle of why personality differences exist at all. 

A long held theory is that different personality traits matter at different points in an animal’s life or that certain traits that are a liability when an animal is young may pay off in old age. 

“Think of the personality traits that lead some people to peak in high school versus later in life,” Alexander Weiss, co-author and comparative psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. “It’s a trade-off.” 

The team tested the theory using almost 40 years of data that goes back to famed primatologist Jane Goodall’s early research at Gombe. Across the lifespan, the same personality traits were linked to both high reproductive success and high social rank. 

[Related: Popular chimpanzees set hand-holding trends for the whole group.]

Something else must be behind the diversity of chimpanzee personality. The “best” personality to have could depend on social or environmental conditions. Gender could matter too—a trait that is beneficial to males could cost a female. If this is true, then “genes associated with those traits would be kept in the population,” Weiss said. Further study is needed to confirm this idea. 

The suggestion that animals have distinct personalities was considered taboo not too long ago, with Goodall herself accused of anthropomorphism with her descriptions. Scientists have studied animals ranging from squid to birds, finding evidence of distinct personalities. These quirks, idiosyncrasies, and ways of relating to the world around them remain reasonably stable over time and across situations.

Like with measures of human personality, personality ratings for animals have also been proven to be as consistent from one observer to the next. “The data just doesn’t support the skepticism,” Weiss said.

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Carnivorous pitcher plants may use tempting aromas to lure prey to their death https://www.popsci.com/environment/carnivorous-sarracenia-pitcher-plants-smell-prey/ Mon, 24 Apr 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=536249
A carnivorous Sarracenia plant growing in the wild.
Sarracenia pitcher plants eat insects to supplement their diets in the bogs and in poor soil environments they grow in throughout North America. Deposit Photos

The odors may be sweet, but deadly if you’re a wasp.

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A carnivorous Sarracenia plant growing in the wild.
Sarracenia pitcher plants eat insects to supplement their diets in the bogs and in poor soil environments they grow in throughout North America. Deposit Photos

Carnivorous plants come in a variety of shapes and colors—and it’s often their looks that help them attract their prey. However, these floral tricksters may use a different scene to attract their dinner: smell. A small study published this month in the journal PLOS One found evidence that different species of Sarracenia, a genus of North American pitcher plant, produces scents that are directed at certain groups of prey.

[Related: Two newly discovered Andes Mountain plant species have an appetite for insects.]

Sarracenia pitcher plants typically make their home in bogs and in poor soil throughout North America. Their signature purple or reddish flowers are actually leaves which form a cup called the “pitcher”  filled with digestive enzymes.  If an insect gets too close to the plant, the pitcher traps it and digests the insect to help supplement their diet in a nutrient-poor home. 

The odor of carnivorous plants hasn’t been well-studied by humans, but has been suspected for over a century. Charles Darwin wrote about the unique plants about 150 years ago, but it’s been more difficult to find concrete evidence of its olfactory mechanisms. 

“Of the signals involved in communication, odor is probably the most cryptic to humans,’ co-author and carnivorous plant expert French National Centre for Scientific Research Laurence Gaume said in a statement. “In plants, it is often correlated with other plant characteristics such as nectar, shape and visual signals, which make it difficult to disentangle its effect from others.”

In this new study, a team identified the odor molecules emanating from four types of pitcher plants. The scents appear to correlate with the types of incense that wound up inside of the pitchers. The chemicals that make up some of the scents are similar to ones known to act as signals to certain insects, which may mean the pitcher plants have evolved to take advantage of their prey’s senses.

“It offers potentially interesting avenues in the field of biological control, and one can imagine drawing inspiration from the olfactory cues of these pitcher plants to control plant pests, for example,” said Gaume.

The team grew Sarracenia purpurea and three of its hybrids with other pitcher plants in a lab.  

They found that all of the pitchers produced a scent that was similar to more generalist plants that are pollinated by many different species. This can allow them to cast a wide net for prey, but they noted that there were subtle differences in the volatile organic compounds that they produced. 

[Related: Dying plants are ‘screaming’ at you.]

The pitchers attracting butterflies and bees were rich in compounds like limonene, a chemical that gives citrus fruits their unique smell. The aroma comes from a class of chemicals found in the scents of around two thirds of flowering plants which attract these pollinators.

Meanwhile, S. purpurea also had an odor that was high in fatty acid chemicals known to attract parasitoid wasps and possibly other insect predators. Wasps and insects made up a large part of the plant’s diet, which suggests that the scent could be targeting them directly. 

The team found that both the odor of a pitcher and its dimensions could help predict the prey caught by a plant about 98 percent of the time. This is not definitive proof, but it suggests a possible link between a pitcher plant’s scent and its prey. 

Since carnivorous plants cannot move to hunt for their prey like a lion or a shark, smells can help them not only find food, but communicate with other plants. Plants being eaten can release scents that tell other plants nearby to get their defenses ready or produce a smell that attracts predators. 

Plants that are pollinated by animals often rely on scents to attract pollinators, like bees. Anything that hides their scent–like air pollution–can cause a drop in the number of pollinators that can find them. 

Further studies could help explain how carnivorous plants that are pollinated by insects can attract some for pollination and other for food. For example, the most important pollinators of Venus fly traps are never found inside its traps, and scent could play a role in this. 

 “However, we remain cautious because our results are currently based on correlations. Even with strong correlations, further tests are necessary to investigate whether the different insect types are indeed attracted to particular scents,” said Gaume.

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Deep-sea mining has murky aftereffects https://www.popsci.com/environment/deep-sea-mining-ocean-impact-sediment/ Mon, 24 Apr 2023 01:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535885
“The ocean is an interconnected whole,” says Jeff Drazen, a deep-sea ecologist at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. “We can’t think of it as discrete shallow-water and deep-sea systems. What affects one is likely to affect the other.”
“The ocean is an interconnected whole,” says Jeff Drazen, a deep-sea ecologist at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. “We can’t think of it as discrete shallow-water and deep-sea systems. What affects one is likely to affect the other.”. DepositPhotos

Mining promises to kick up a bunch of seafloor-smothering sediment. The question is, how much?

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“The ocean is an interconnected whole,” says Jeff Drazen, a deep-sea ecologist at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. “We can’t think of it as discrete shallow-water and deep-sea systems. What affects one is likely to affect the other.”
“The ocean is an interconnected whole,” says Jeff Drazen, a deep-sea ecologist at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. “We can’t think of it as discrete shallow-water and deep-sea systems. What affects one is likely to affect the other.”. DepositPhotos

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Industrial mining in the deep ocean is on the horizon. Despite several countries including Germany, France, Chile, and Canada calling for a pause on the field’s development, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the organization tasked with both regulating and permitting deep-sea mining efforts, is nearing the deadline to finalize rules for how companies will operate. Companies, meanwhile, are busy testing the capabilities of their machines—equipment designed to collect polymetallic nodules, rocks rich in cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese that litter some parts of the seafloor.

Top of mind for many scientists and politicians is what ramifications deep-sea mining might have on fragile marine ecosystems, including those far from the mining site. At the heart of the debate is concern about the clouds of sediment that can be kicked up by mining equipment.

“Imagine a car driving on a dusty road, and the plume of dust that balloons behind the car,” says Henko de Stigter, a marine geologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. “This is how sediment plumes will form in the seabed.”

Scientists estimate that each full-scale deep-sea mining operation could produce up to 500 million cubic meters of discharge over a 30-year period. That’s roughly 1,000 six-meter-long shipping containers full of sediment being discharged into the deep every day, spawning from a field of mining sites spread out over an area roughly the size of Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, and Germany.

These sediment plumes threaten to smother life on the ocean floor and choke midwater ecosystems, sending ripples throughout marine ecosystems affecting everything from deep-sea filter-feeders to commercially important species like tuna. Yet discussions of the plumes’ potential consequences are clouded by a great deal of uncertainty over how far they will spread and how they will affect marine life.

To clarify just how murky deep-sea mining will make the water, scientists have been tagging along as companies conduct tests.

Two years ago, Global Sea Mineral Resources, a Belgian company, conducted the first trials of its nodule-collecting vehicles. Scientists working with the company found that more than 90 percent of the sediment plume settled out on the seafloor, while the rest lingered within two meters of the seabed near the mined area. Other studies from experiments in the central Pacific Ocean found that the sediment plumes reached as far as 300 meters away from the disturbed site, though the thickest deposition was within 100 meters. This is a shorter spread than earlier models, which predicted deep-sea mining plumes could spread up to five kilometers from the mining site.

Beyond the sediment kicked up by submersibles moving along the seafloor, deep-sea mining can muddy the water in another way.

As polymetallic nodules are lifted to the surface, the waste water that’s sucked up along with the nodules is discharged back into the ocean. Doug McCauley, a marine scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says this could potentially create “underwater dust storms” in upper layers of the water column. Over the course of a 20-year mining operation, this sediment could be carried by ocean currents up to 1,000 kilometers before sinking to the seabed.

Some particularly fine-grained particles could remain suspended in the water column, traveling long distances with the potential to affect a wide range of marine animals. According to another recent study, it’s these tiny particles that are the most harmful to filter-feeders like the Mediterranean mussel.

To avoid these consequences on midwater ecosystems, at least, scientists are advising would-be deep-sea miners to discharge waste water at the bottom of the ocean where mining has already created a disturbance. This would be a departure from the ISA’s messaging, which is to not specify at what depth waste water should be released.

For its own trials last December, the Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian company, says it worked hard to minimize the amount of sediment discharged in the waste water it released at a depth of 1,200 meters.

“We’ve optimized our system to leave as much sediment on the seabed as possible,” says Michael Clarke, environmental manager at TMC. Clarke says he’s skeptical of previously published research projecting vast sediment plumes. “When we were trying to measure the [midwater] plume a few hundred meters away from the outlet, we couldn’t even find the plume because it diluted so much.”

Clarke says the company is currently analyzing both baseline and impact data for its test mining, including looking at how far small particles spread and how long they remain suspended. The results will be submitted to the ISA as part of an environmental impact assessment.

As deep-sea mining inches closer and scientists ramp up their research efforts, it’s important to keep one thing clear: “I can tell you that we’re not going to discover that deep-sea mining is good for marine ecosystems,” McCauley says. “The question is, How bad will it be?”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Giving drones inflatable suits could help them survive crash landings https://www.popsci.com/technology/bird-inspired-collision-drone/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535966
Perfectly perched.
Perfectly perched. Arizona State University

Birds once again inspire robots to nimbly navigate the skies and obstacles.

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Perfectly perched.
Perfectly perched. Arizona State University

When entering into disaster scenarios, robots still have a major downside—their inability to recover when they inevitably crash into things. Scientists, however, have taken a page out of biology’s playbook, as they often do, to create a drone that can bounce back when met with various obstacles. 

Think of a bird landing on a tree branch—in order to do so, they likely have to collide with a few smaller branches or leaves in the process of touching down. But, their joints and soft tissues cushion these bumps along the way, and their feet are built precisely to lock themselves in place without straining a muscle. When a drone opts for a similar route, taking on a bunch of collisions on the way to their destination, it’s a little bit more dramatic. “They don’t recover; they crash,” Wenlong Zhang, an associate professor and robotics expert at Arizona State University said in a release

“We see drones used to assess damage from high in the sky, but they can’t really navigate through collapsed buildings,” Zhang added. “Their rigid frames compromise resilience to collision, so bumping into posts, beams, pipes or cables in a wrecked structure is often catastrophic.” 

Zhang is an author of a recent paper published in Soft Robotics wherein a team of scientists designed and tested a quadrotor drone with an inflatable frame, apparently the first of its kind. The inflatable frame acts almost like a blow-up suit, protecting the drone from any harsh consequences of banging into a wall or another obstacle. It also provides the kind of soft tissue absorption necessary for perching—the team’s next task.

[Related: Watch this bird-like robot make a graceful landing on its perch.]

After studying how birds land and grip onto branches with their taloned feet, the team developed a fabric-based bistable grasper for the inflatable drone. The grasper had two unpowered “resting states,” meaning it can remain open or closed without using energy, and reacts to impact of landing by closing its little feet and gripping hard onto a nearby object.

“It can perch on pretty much anything. Also, the bistable material means it doesn’t need an actuator to provide power to hold its perch. It just closes and stays like that without consuming any energy,” Zhang said in the release. “Then when needed, the gripper can be pneumatically retracted and the drone can just take off.”

A more resilient type of drone is crucial for search and rescue scenarios when the path forward may be filled with debris, but the authors could also see this kind of creation being useful in monitoring forest fires or even exploration on other planets.

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Elephants and humans share surprising similarities. A new docuseries dives deep into that relationship. https://www.popsci.com/environment/secrets-of-the-elephants/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535591
A forest elephant with a raised trunk surrounded by greenery. Forest elephants are much smaller in size compared to savanna elephants, and their ears are an oval shape.
Forest elephants are much smaller in size compared to savanna elephants, and their ears are an oval shape. National Geographic for Disney/Fleur Bone

From curious calves to wise grandmothers, 'Secrets of the Elephants' follows the survival of herds and the local experts trying to protect them.

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A forest elephant with a raised trunk surrounded by greenery. Forest elephants are much smaller in size compared to savanna elephants, and their ears are an oval shape.
Forest elephants are much smaller in size compared to savanna elephants, and their ears are an oval shape. National Geographic for Disney/Fleur Bone

A herd of African elephants stands above a cliff nearly 600 feet tall in the first episode of the new documentary series Secrets of the Elephants. After a brutal dry season in Zimbabwe, an elephant matriarch must guide her herd down the cliff in search of water. Their enormous three-to-four-ton bodies are not built for this kind of expedition—they use their trunks to test the ground. To complicate the descent, they must be mindful of the younger elephants, and reassure and soothe the babies with their tails along the way. Everyone is tense as they navigate the steep path of the gorge, including  the wildlife experts and filmmakers watching from the sidelines. 

“It was amazing, even for me, to see that,” veteran conservationist and elephant advocate Paula Kahumbu tells PopSci during a recent interview. In the 30-something years she’s studied African elephants, Kahumbu had never seen them inching down a cliff this way. In the documentary, she described how just watching the process made her legs feel weak and her body unsteady, and couldn’t imagine what it must be like for these giants of the savanna.

Chilojo Cliffs in Zimbabwe seen from aerial view
The iconic Chilojo Cliffs can be seen in the distance of the remote Gonarezhou National Park, Zimbabwe. National Geographic for Disney/Freddie Claire.

Broken into four episodes—Savanna, Desert, Rainforest, and Asia—Secrets of the Elephants presents the lives and issues that elephants face as incredibly nuanced and interconnected. Human-caused climate change and decades of ivory poaching have taken its toll, but beneath that lies the more complex and interwoven problems of disappearing elephant range, fences that impede their movements, and culling individuals who encroach on farmland. When people are killed or injured by the powerful mammals, Kahumbu says governments are then forced to take actions due to the loss of property or life. 

“Retaliation and intolerance towards elephants is now by far, the number one threat to elephants across east Africa” says Kahumbu. Most of Africa’s elephants live in the eastern and southern part of the continent in various habitats. Both species of African elephants are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature; their latest assessment found that the number of African forest elephants fell by more than 86 percent over the last 31 years, and the population of African savanna elephants decreased by at least 60 percent over the last 50 years. Their Asian relatives are listed as endangered, with an estimated 48,000 to 50,000 left in the wild.

The series explores this tension between two incredibly smart terrestrial mammals, elephants and humans—but more importantly, the striking similarities between them. Their parallel existence goes back millennia, as both humans and elephants evolved out of Africa at the same time. Elephants are incredible problem solvers and mirror human adaptability so well that they can typically figure out any deterrent or barrier that communities devise to keep them out. The elephants then pass the knowledge down generations. 

Their innate intelligence and ability to pass down survival skills can also benefit conservation efforts. As an example, Kahumbu cites successful elephant underpasses that help link one group of elephants found near Mount Kenya with their relatives in the forests, plains, and the Aberdares Mountains, while keeping them away from the area’s enormous wheat farms. “Once the elephants figured out that that’s the safe way to get from this mountain to the other mountain, they started not only using it, but teaching each other to use it. There are very few animals which will teach each other and elephants are one of them,” she explains.

[Related: Ivory poaching has triggered a surge in elephants born without tusks.]

Despite being one of the most studied animals on the planet, elephants keep surprising experts with their unique features and complex behaviors. They rarely get sick, with less than five percent getting cancer compared to about 25 percent of humans, and are even known to self medicate with the plants around them. Female elephants also do not fade into obscurity or die once they are unable to reproduce. In both African and Asian species, they likely play an integral grandmother role similar to that of humans and possibly orca whales. Kahumbu describes elephant matriarchs as the knowledge keepers: They know where to eat and find water, where to rest, and even keep internal maps of the vast landscapes they traverse.

An African elephant with a calf on the savanna
A family of elephants roams through Kimana Sanctuary, a crucial corridor that links Amboseli National Park with the Chyulu Hills and Tsavo protected areas in Kenya. National Geographic for Disney/Nichole Sobecki.

The series depicts the female elephants’ ability to take generational insights and adapt it to the constant challenges and changes, sometimes with bizarre results. In one rare case, an elephant in Zimbabwe named Nzou who lost her entire family to poachers when she was two years old now finds herself the matriarch to a herd of buffalo at age 50. “It’s very hard to say much because it’s just such a one-off strange thing that happened,” Kahumbu explains. “We’re increasingly seeing unusual wild animal behaviors. Adopting buffaloes is kind of funny, and it’s also quite sad.”

She didn’t fit in with other groups of elephants when rescuers tried to rehome her, but she found her place among a more unique family. Now, she has to figure out how to manage an unusual herd without the benefit of the years of living among older female elephants—but her instinct to lead is still strong.  

“In a way, it teaches us that just like humans, there are certain needs we all have, and we’re going to have to get them somehow,” says Kahumbu.

[Related: Elephants and monkeys are fighting climate change in ways humans can’t.]

Another central theme of the four-part series is the value that local people’s wisdom holds for both conservation and science communication. Experts from Namibia in southern Africa and Borneo in southeast Asia made the documentary possible through their historic observations of elephants and guidance. “A lot of things which we filmed have never been filmed or seen on camera before, but actually, a lot of it has been known by local people on the ground for a very long time,” says Kahumbu. “We are asking people for local knowledge, but we’re involving them in the series and getting them on camera as well.”

Elephant ecologist in a white head scarf talking into camera
Farina Othman is an elephant ecologist who’s study focuses on reducing the conflict between humans and elephants. National Geographic for Disney/Cede Prudente.

Engaging communities on the ground and connecting the rest of the world with their stories through film could be a big step in further protecting elephants. Reaching younger and wider audiences, particularly in Africa, is part of why Kahumbu has seamlessly moved from the research space into more policy, advising, and education in an effort to save elephant lives.

“What’s shifted for me dramatically is this realization that we’re running out of time,” says Kahumbu. “I think that unleashing young people with their own creativity to identify how they can help is what I’d love to see happen as a result of this TV series. That connection is very powerful and very important.”

Secrets of the Elephants premieres on Friday, April 21 on National Geographic. All four episodes will stream on Earth Day (April 22) on Disney+ and Hulu. 

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New Zealand’s wild pigs could be a source of much-needed donor organs https://www.popsci.com/environment/new-zealand-invasive-pigs-transplant/ Fri, 21 Apr 2023 01:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535280
Auckland Island pigs scour the coastline for food. Due to their smaller stature compared to other breeds, the pigs are better candidates for xenotransplantation.
Auckland Island pigs scour the coastline for food. Due to their smaller stature compared to other breeds, the pigs are better candidates for xenotransplantation. Visual: New Zealand Department of Conservation

The animals evolved into ultra-resilient, disease-free predators while isolated on Auckland Island.

The post New Zealand’s wild pigs could be a source of much-needed donor organs appeared first on Popular Science.

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Auckland Island pigs scour the coastline for food. Due to their smaller stature compared to other breeds, the pigs are better candidates for xenotransplantation.
Auckland Island pigs scour the coastline for food. Due to their smaller stature compared to other breeds, the pigs are better candidates for xenotransplantation. Visual: New Zealand Department of Conservation

This article was originally published on Undark.

Approximately 300 miles south of New Zealand, the Auckland Islands lie in a belt of winds known as the Roaring Forties. In the late 19th century, sailing ships departing Australasia would catch a ride back to Europe by plunging deep into the Southern Ocean to ride the westerlies home.

But these seas were poorly charted, and weather conditions frequently horrendous.

Sometimes, navigators miscalculated the islands’ position and, too late, found their vessels thrown upon the islands’ rocky ramparts. Ships were torn to pieces and survivors cast ashore on one of the most remote and inhospitable places on the planet. These castaways soon found out they were not alone.

The main land mass in the Auckland archipelago, Auckland Island, was — and still is — home to pigs, initially introduced in the first half of the 19th century by European hunters and explorers, as well as a group of Indigenous New Zealanders fleeing conflict.

The pigs have no natural predators, and over time, they have wrought destruction upon Auckland Island’s flora and fauna. Government conservationists now want them gone — but there’s a twist: These once domesticated farm animals have evolved into ultra-resilient, disease-free pigs that have caught the eye of scientists who study xenotransplantation, a type of medical procedure in which cells, tissues, or organs from one species are transferred into another species.

Last year, for the first time, surgeons transplanted pig hearts and pig kidneys into humans. Such procedures have not yet been tested in clinical trials, and they are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or regulatory agencies in New Zealand. But researchers say that xenotransplantation could eventually prove effective at treating a range of conditions and may alleviate the huge global need for donor organs. The Auckland Island pigs, with their unique genetics, may be especially well-suited for this purpose.

Some of the hardy quadrupeds are now housed in a research facility on the New Zealand mainland. Meanwhile, conservation authorities are preparing a massive effort to eradicate those left in the wild.


The first European ship to reach the Auckland Islands (known as Maukahuka or Motu Maha in the Māori language) was the whaler Ocean, in 1806. The ship’s captain returned the following year to drop off a team of seal hunters. During this visit, pigs were first released as a food source. Subsequent introductions continued, and in the late 1800s, with the tales of shipwreck and survival piling up, the New Zealand and Australian governments got involved, releasing additional pigs for the castaways.

The pigs, which were of mostly European and Asian origin, had to learn to live with the persistent cold, rain, and wind — far from ideal conditions for animals bred for sheltered barnyards. But because pigs produce up to two litters each year, they can adapt relatively quickly, said Michael Willis, of the Rare Breeds Conservation Society of New Zealand. Soon, Auckland Island’s pigs formed one unique strain.

In the winter, they survived by eating the island’s endemic plants and scavenging carrion. In the summer, their fortunes changed, and they gorged on plump albatross chicks and protein-filled penguin eggs. Twenty-five species of seabird breed on the Auckland Islands, but after two centuries of pig predation, their numbers have fallen. New Zealand conservationists are increasingly wary of the porcine prowlers.

The archipelago is “an immensely special place,” said Stephen Horn, a project manager at New Zealand’s Department of Conservation. It’s the biggest remaining stronghold of the yellow-eyed penguin, the world’s rarest penguin species, and the Gibson’s wandering albatross, which breeds there exclusively. (Currently, said Horn, seabirds on Auckland Island nest only on the precipitous edges of the land, where even the most tenacious pig won’t venture.)

The pigs have also taken a toll on the spectacular flowering plants known as megaherbs, which are now “almost non-existent” on Auckland Island, Horn said. “They’re absent until you get to the extremely steep cliff areas. Then you can see patches of green that are out of reach” of the pigs.

Heart Disease photo
On Auckland Island, a pig roots near a white-capped mollymawk colony. Currently, Horn said, seabirds on the island are successfully breeding only on the precipitous edges of the land, where even the most tenacious pig won’t venture. Visual: Paul Sagar/New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research

Horn believes there are between 700 and 1,500 pigs on the island, with the population fluctuating widely. Survival to breeding age, he said, is low. Those that do make it have to be tough and adaptable. “On one hand, super admirable,” he said, “the way they’re able to adapt and survive in those conditions.” And on the other hand, incredibly damaging. “They use the coastline pretty heavily,” he said. “They’ll eat anything that turns up, scavenging things like dead whales and seals or even krill and squid.”

Mindful of the Department of Conservation’s long-held wish to eradicate the pigs, the Rare Breeds Conservation Society sent a team to retrieve some in 1999. Using dogs, they managed to catch 17. “Hunger appeared to be the pigs’ constant companion,” wrote team member Peter Jackson for New Zealand Geographic. “The suckling sows had only two or three teats producing milk, which told how few piglets survived.”

The team loaded the pigs on a boat and brought them back to the southern New Zealand town of Invercargill. There, the animals were put into a quarantine facility, intended to protect the country’s domestic pig herd from potential diseases.

Horn believes there are between 700 and 1,500 pigs on the island, with the population fluctuating widely.

Keeping the pigs in quarantine required money the Society didn’t have, so they prevailed upon Invercargill’s then-mayor, Tim Shadbolt, a colorful former left-wing activist, who dipped into his contingency fund for the approximately 2,300 in today’s New Zealand dollars, or $1,400, needed to feed them.

During the first year of quarantine, the pig population ballooned. “They dined on porridge and swedes and they became raging sexual beasts, producing larger litters than they did on the Auckland Islands,” Shadbolt recalled in a 2008 article in the Otago Daily Times. The pig’s food bill increased tenfold — an expenditure that whipped up a political storm in Invercargill, with councilors and constituents railing against what they characterized as a scandalous waste of public money. Shadbolt was unceremoniously stripped of his contingency fund.

The mayor, though, would be vindicated. These pigs from a previous century soon found an unlikely home in the futuristic world of xenotransplantation.


Globally, the demand for transplant organs is overwhelming. Every year, thousands of people die waiting for a new heart, liver, kidney, or lung that never arrives. In the United States alone, around 17 people on the organ waiting list die every day. For decades, xenotransplantation has been seen as a possibility to bridge this shortfall.

Since the 1960s, surgeons have transplanted chimpanzee and baboon parts into a small number of humans with life-threatening conditions, but these efforts have had little success. The biggest challenge is getting the human body’s immune system to accept the new organ.

The use of non-human primates for biomedical research is controversial, so over time, researchers looked to pigs. “Their organs, their tissues, and their physiology are sufficiently close to humans,” said Paul Tan, founder and CEO of New Zealand xenotransplantation research company NZeno. “Their cells function in a manner that is very close to humans. So their blood sugar levels and our blood sugar levels are pretty close.”

In the late 1980s, New Zealand pediatrician Bob Elliott and colleague David Collinson started a company called Diatranz to investigate whether pig islet cells could be used to treat Type-1 diabetes. For Collinson, the quest was personal. His son suffered from the disease.

Islet cells are found in the pancreas and produce insulin, but in Type-1 diabetes patients, are destroyed by the immune system. Trial transplants of human islet cells had met with mixed results, and in any case, with millions of Type-1 diabetes sufferers globally, there were nowhere near enough human donors to meet demand.

Diatranz aimed to surgically implant pig islet cells, encapsulated in a seaweed-derived polymer that shielded them from the human immune system, into the pancreases of diabetes patients. In the 1990s, though, the work stalled amid fears of disease.

Xenotransplantation, of both cells or organs, carries the risk of bacterial or viral infections crossing from the donor animal into humans. Pigs are not as closely related to humans as apes and baboons, a circumstance that makes transplanted pig parts less likely to spread disease to humans. Still, the risk persists.

While common diseases might be eliminated with medicines, a more serious risk was thought to come from viruses that essentially gatecrash the genetic material of the host animal. These are called retroviruses; they include HIV as well as viruses that cause certain cancers.

In the United States alone, around 17 people on the organ waiting list die every day. For decades, xenotransplantation has been seen as a possibility to bridge this shortfall.

Some retroviruses, called endogenous retroviruses, have, in the deep past, even insinuated themselves into the DNA of sperm and egg cells — they are therefore part of the animal’s genetic makeup, replicated in every cell in the body and passed down through generations. There is currently no medication to eliminate retroviruses.

The concern was that pig tissues could secrete infectious particles of a porcine endogenous retrovirus, or PERV, which could then infect human cells to create a new, transmissible human disease. In the worst-case scenario, it was feared, such an event could trigger a global pandemic.

In the late 1990s, a London-based research team confirmed that, in a laboratory setting at least, PERVs could infect human cells.

The discovery, for a time, “killed xenotransplantation,” said Björn Petersen, a xenotransplantation researcher with the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, the German government’s animal-disease research center. “Pharmaceutical companies withdrew their money from the research.”

Around the world, the hunt was on for pigs that were as disease-free as possible.


In 1998, Diatranz partner Olga Garkavenko turned on her radio and got wind of Invercargill’s new arrivals. She decided to investigate.

The company obtained tissue samples from the quarantined pigs for analysis. The islands’ harsh conditions, it seemed, had been tough on disease.

“They remained isolated and therefore they remained free of a lot of common infections that you have in pigs,” said Tan. “The pigs that were weak were probably wiped out. Only the fittest survived.”

The pigs also have an unusually low number of retrovirus copies in their genome. Petersen noted that the population is also completely free of a type of PERV called PERV-C, which may pose the biggest risk to human transplant recipients. This was possible “because they were isolated for a long time and they never had contact with other pigs.”

Joachim Denner, a xenotransplantation researcher from the Free University of Berlin, said the Auckland Island pigs had another major advantage over other pig breeds — their small stature. At around 90 pounds in weight, he said, “they are the right size for transplantation.” A domestic pig weighs 300 to 700 pounds, and its organs, he added, are too large.

Auckland Island pigs scour the coastline for food. Due to their smaller stature compared to other breeds, the pigs are better candidates for xenotransplantation.
Auckland Island pigs scour the coastline for food. Due to their smaller stature compared to other breeds, the pigs are better candidates for xenotransplantation.  Visual: New Zealand Department of Conservation

In 2004, Elliott, Tan, and others set up a company called Living Cell Technologies, or LCT, which absorbed Diatranz and took over the pigs’ care, building an expensive facility near Invercargill to keep them in medical-grade isolation while they were selectively bred for xenotransplantation.

The animals housed in quarantine were suddenly reputed to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each, much to then-Mayor Shadbolt’s barely-concealed glee.

The project brought jobs and millions of dollars of investment to Invercargill. “It has all come to fruition,” Shadbolt said in the 2008 Otago Daily Times article. “I rub it into those people who didn’t support me at every opportunity.”


By the 2010s, concerns around PERVs were lessening, as multiple clinical trials of cell transplants suggested not only that pig cells could be effective in treating diabetes, but also that PERVs weren’t passing to humans. New gene-editing technology also meant that retrovirus genes could be rendered non-functional before an animal was born.

With these advancements, the race to successfully implant pig organs in humans has gathered pace. Groups around the world now breed pigs for this purpose. It’s big business — a recent report estimated the global xenotransplantation market could be worth $24.5 billion by 2029.

In January 2022, a University of Maryland group, using a pig organ from the U.S. company Revivicor, conducted the first successful transplant of a pig heart into a living patient. The patient survived for two months. While the cause of his death is still being examined, evidence of a disease called porcine cytomegalovirus was found during the autopsy. The pig used in the transplant, said Tan, would have been rigorously screened for the virus, which, he added, shows the importance of breeding pigs that are genuinely free from such diseases.

Paul Tan now runs NZeno, which has taken over the breeding and keeping of the Auckland Island pigs. LCT, meanwhile, has switched its focus to Parkinson’s disease and recently began clinical trials of a treatment that involves inserting capsules containing pig brain cells into the human brain to repair nerve damage.

NZeno supplies pig cells to LCT and is also trying to establish itself as a major player in the organ game. “We like to think that our strain of pigs, derived from the Auckland Islands, further developed at Nzeno, would be the ideal pig strain for human organ xenotransplantation,” said Tan. Their cells, he noted, have already been used in humans for years, and have a very good track record of safety. The small number of retrovirus copies in the pigs’ genomes, he said, also require less gene editing compared to other breeds.

NZeno recently provided its pig cells to a team at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, which aims to have a genetically-modified pig ready for a pig-human heart transplant by 2025. NZeno is also working with another xenotransplantation group in China that aims to develop kidneys for transplant.

Petersen agreed that there is a solid rationale for minimizing gene editing. “The more genetic modifications you do,” he said, “the more side effects you can maybe expect.” But, he added, there may be cases in which it doesn’t make sense to prioritize the minimization of gene editing. For example, “if you want to have a universal donor” — an animal that can supply a variety of suitable organs or cells for human transplant — “then you need to have a pig with more genetic modifications right from the beginning.”

Denner said the Auckland Island pigs, which he describes as the most disease-free pigs in the world, may yet prove their true worth. But he cautioned against viewing them — or any pig — as a silver bullet. “All these studies have limitations,” he said. “The real effect of PERVs on humans, we will see when we perform the first transplants of organs.”


For now, wild Auckland Island pigs continue to run free in their storm-battered home, but the clock is ticking. Over the last five years, New Zealand’s Department of Conservation has been preparing for eradication.

Stephen Horn leads the team charged with this enormous task. Previous work attached GPS trackers to pigs, trying to learn their movements, and Horn’s team has trialed various methods of killing them. The plan is to wipe out the pigs using a combination of traps, poisoning, and hunters shooting from helicopters and on foot.

“The approach is really high intensity, as quickly as possible,” said Horn, “and try to keep the population as naive as possible.

“You need a suite of tools,” he continued, “because pigs are smart. Not every pig is going to be vulnerable to the same technique.”

Compounding the difficulty is the island’s size and isolation. It is several days’ dangerous sail from the mainland and, aside from a few uninhabitable hut shelters, the islands have no infrastructure to support human life. Once ashore, movement through the dense undergrowth and shoulder-high grasses is extraordinarily difficult.

Heart Disease photo
For now, the Auckland Island pigs continue to run free, but the clock is ticking: New Zealand’s Department of Conservation has been preparing for eradication. Visual: New Zealand Department of Conservation

“It’s rugged, remote, and massive,” said Horn. “It’s pretty overwhelming when you’re looking at it through a lens of animal pest control.”

Not everyone is thrilled at the prospect of the pigs’ demise. The animals are “very much part of our heritage,” said Willis of the Rare Breeds Conservation Society. The organization argues more effort should be made to preserve at least some of them. Perhaps the pigs could be fenced off, so as not to disrupt the entire island, said Willis. Or some could be relocated to another island, where they might not pose as much of a problem. As far as he is aware, however, these options are not being considered.

Paul Tan said he would also jump at the chance to retrieve more pigs.

The Department of Conservation, said Horn, has fielded inquiries about recovering pigs, but the logistics of retrieving them from the Auckland Islands, as well as the enormous costs involved in quarantine, are major hurdles to overcome.

Horn said that while staff are actively discussing options for retrieving pigs, their focus is eradication. With a plan in place, the department just needs to secure enough funding to make it happen, he said, “to undo some of the damage that was done by people, on what is an extremely fragile, but important place.”


Bill Morris is a documentary filmmaker, wildlife cameraman, and science journalist based in Dunedin, New Zealand. He is a regular contributor to New Zealand Geographic magazine and his work has also appeared on the BBC and Animal Planet.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Heart Disease photo

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Seals snooze during 20-minute ‘sleeping dives’ to avoid predators https://www.popsci.com/environment/seals-sleep-swimming/ Thu, 20 Apr 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535570
Sleeping elephant seals on a California beach
On the shore, elephant seals sleep for about 10 hours a day. But while at sea, they sleep just two hours daily. Jessica Kendall-Bar

A new brainwave study reveals elephant seals spiral downward while fast asleep.

The post Seals snooze during 20-minute ‘sleeping dives’ to avoid predators appeared first on Popular Science.

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Sleeping elephant seals on a California beach
On the shore, elephant seals sleep for about 10 hours a day. But while at sea, they sleep just two hours daily. Jessica Kendall-Bar

Northern elephant seals are challenging the world record for the mammal that sleeps the fewest hours a day. The current record holder is the African elephant, who rests a measly two hours daily. Now scientists report that elephant seals also sleep an average of two hours a day when they’re out at sea and do this by splitting their slumber into a series of nap-like “sleeping dives.” 

These findings were published today in the journal Science

Elephant seals divide their time between land and sea, though it’s unequal. They spend an average of seven months out of the year in the open ocean and only resurface to breed, molt, and rest. Because they spend so much time in open waters, scientists figured these marine mammals must have developed some way of getting the sleep they need while avoiding detection from predators like the orca whales and great white sharks. But exactly how they do this has been poorly understood.

[Related: Take the best naps, with science]

One challenge in understanding the sleep behavior of elephant seals is finding a device that’s both waterproof and can handle deep-sea pressure. To overcome this, the study team created a flexible head cap that can respond to seals’ twisting and flexing motions. It’s also made up of a synthetic rubber called neoprene, the same material found in wetsuits. The scientists used this cap to monitor the seals’ brain activity, heart rate, and three-dimensional spatial movement.

Scientists outfitted 13 wild seals with the cap. Five were kept in a lab, while the other eight could freely roam around Monterey Bay, California. The EEG recordings collected from the head cap represented brain activity during different sleep stages. 

“We can take the data and use it to recreate what the sleeping dives look like, and also what’s happening within the animal brain, how fast its heart is beating, etcetera,” says lead study author Jessica Kendall-Bar, a Scripps postdoc scholar at the University of California, San Diego.

How do seals sleep in the ocean?

Elephant seals sleeping in the ocean shallows
Sleeping 2-month-old northern elephant seals in the shallow lagoon at Año Nuevo State Park, California. Jessica Kendall-Bar

The collected data indicates elephant seals sleep about two hours a day while at sea, though not all at once. When it was time to get a little shut-eye, seals dove hundreds of meters below the surface—the maximum depth was about 1,200 feet—where they would take quick naps lasting less than 20 minutes. 

Kendall-Bar says this “degree of flexibility and sleep duration has really only been demonstrated in birds and is pretty much unprecedented in mammals.”

Dive naps likely evolved as a way for seals to avoid getting attacked since their natural predators lurk near the surface, explains Kendall-Bar. They are also more vulnerable than other marine mammals when resting because they undergo bilateral sleep. This means both halves of the elephant seal’s brain rest when they sleep. Human beings also experience bilateral sleep. 

Meanwhile, fur seals and sea lions experience unihemispheric sleep—one brain hemisphere rests while the other stays awake and monitors for predators.

Different stages of underwater sleep

The study data suggests seals go through one complete sleep cycle during each nap-like “sleeping dive.” When these brief sleep cycles end, the seals return to the surface. This process allows them to rest at depths with lower predation risk while staying vigilant in more dangerous waters. 

Elephant seal sleep spiral in the ocean in a blue and purple diagram
When seals go into REM sleep during dives, sleep paralysis causes them to drift downwards in a “sleep spiral,” as seen in this diagram. Jessica Kendall-Bar

During nap dives, the seals entered slow-wave sleep while maintaining an upright posture. They then turned upside down while their sleep cycle transitioned from slow-wave sleep to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. 

“The sleep state of the animal is actually reflected in its movement through the water,” explains Kendall-Bar. 

Once the cycle was complete, the seals immediately woke up and returned to the surface to find food.

[Related: Pendulums under ocean waves could prevent beach erosion]

Since muscle paralysis from REM sleep leaves seals exposed and defenseless, they took the shortest naps possible and compensated for the lack of sleep after reaching land again. As a result, the seals slept five times longer ashore than they did in the water. Some seals even slept up to 14 hours a day on land.

“What really stood out for me is the fine-scale analysis the researchers did to identify the different sleep states and how they were able to translate this analysis to estimate sleep patterns in seals at sea,” says Cassondra Williams, a comparative physiologist at the National Marine Mammal Foundation who was not involved in the study. “This will be an important tool for future behavior studies of pinnipeds freely diving at sea.”

Most diving naps took place just near the shore. While northern elephant seals are not currently endangered (in the 1800s, they were almost hunted to extinction), Kendall-Bar and her team are concerned that shipping traffic and traps on the seafloor may be disturbing their habitats. Understanding when and where seals slumber could help conservation efforts and ensure seals get all two hours of their beauty sleep.

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How African penguins continue to survive changes in climate https://www.popsci.com/environment/how-african-penguins-continue-to-survive-climate-changes/ Thu, 20 Apr 2023 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535493
African penguins standing on a sandy beach.

Today's population has only 13,600 breeding pairs left in the wild.

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African penguins standing on a sandy beach.

For at least 22,000 years, the African penguin has been struggling to survive because of habitat loss.  Scientists are now peering into the past to learn more about why to better help the lovable feathered creatures  today and in the future. A study published April 20 in the African Journal of Marine Science paints a paleo-historical picture of where these climate change survivors lived and moved to as the last Ice Age came to a close—and how that changed over time. 

According to the study, the African penguin,also called the black-footed penguin, the Cape penguin, or the Jackass penguin, lived on 15 large islands off the coast of southern Africa more than 20,000 years ago. During this period called the Last Glacial Maximum, massive ice sheets dominated a huge portion of the Earth, and it ended about 15 to 20,000 years ago. Upon this climate shift sea levels began to rise as ice melted, effectively sinking the islands. The rising water reduced the suitable nesting habitat for the penguin colonies by tenfold over the next 22,000 years. 

[Related: The march of the penguins has a new star: an autonomous robot.]

To help them paint this picture, the team used topographical maps of the ocean floor to find potential former islands that lay 32 to 426 feet below today’s sea levels. Penguins use islands as breeding spots to escape predators on the mainland and also need suitable foraging grounds for sardines and anchovies within about a 12 mile radius. 

With the assumption that sea levels were lower during the last Ice Age, the team identified 15 large islands that possibly stood off the southwest coast of Africa, with the largest being about 115 miles long and laying 426 feet below the surface of the sea. When taking the rate of sea level rise over the past 15,000 to 7,000 years into account, they found 220 islands that would have been suitable nesting spots for penguins. 

By comparison, some of the largest modern-day islands with penguins off the southwest coast of Africa are Robben Island less than two miles long, Dassen Island less than one mile, and Possession Island also less than a mile long, which all clock in at less than two miles long.

The study estimates that between 6.4 million and 18.8 million individual penguins could have lived among these islands during the Last Glacial Maximum, before the numbers began to plummet. 

These changes in habitat availability over the past 22,000 years “could have had a massive effect on penguin populations,” co-author and Stellenbosch University ecologist Heath Beckett said in a statement. “These populations are now experiencing additional human pressures on top of this in the form of climate change, habitat destruction, and competition for food.” 

According to Beckett, this new paleo-historical image of penguins all over the islands of southern Africa stands in contrast to the current reality of a post-1900 collapse of the African penguin population. Dassen Island was once teeming with about 1.45 million penguins, but South Africa’s entire African penguin population collapsed to 21,000 breeding pairs by 2011. As of 2019, they dropped even further to 13,600, and roughly 97 percent of the current population in South Africa is supported by seven breeding colonies.

[Related: Ceramic ‘igloos’ could keep African penguins cool and cozy.]

“Changing sea levels would have necessitated the need for multiple relocations of breeding colonies of African penguins on time-scales of centuries, if not even shorter time-scales, and intense competition for breeding space as island habitat became greatly reduced in size,” said Beckett. “This historical flexibility of response provides some leeway for conservation managers to make available suitable breeding space, even in mainland sites, as long as appropriate nesting sites are made available.”

Some further questions brought on by this research surround relocation for the penguins, and analyzing just how much more the species can handle as human pressures continue to rise and food competition heats up. 

However, despite the alarming drops in population and their continued struggle, the team points out that these findings highlight the African penguin’s resilience as a species and that this could be leveraged for its conservation and management in an uncertain climate.

“It’s a total survivor and given half a chance, they will hang on,” co-author and Stellenbosch University biologist Guy Midgley concluded in a statement.  “Island hopping saved it in the past, they know how to do this.” 

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Parrots are deeply intelligent. But do we understand their emotions? https://www.popsci.com/environment/captive-parrot-ptsd/ Thu, 20 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535420
White Moluccan cockatoo on a branch turning toward a person's hand. Reddish flames are behind the bird to symbolize past trauma. Illustrated.
Maybe Harpo found comfort by repeating the words that were once used against him. Isabel Seliger for Popular Science

The profound story of Harpo the cockatoo gives us insights on trauma among captive birds.

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White Moluccan cockatoo on a branch turning toward a person's hand. Reddish flames are behind the bird to symbolize past trauma. Illustrated.
Maybe Harpo found comfort by repeating the words that were once used against him. Isabel Seliger for Popular Science

How well do you know your pets? Pet Psychic takes some of the musings you’ve had about your BFFs (beast friends forever) and connects them to hard research and results from modern science.

ONE AFTERNOON several years ago, a Moluccan cockatoo named Harpo arrived at Midwest Avian Adoption & Rescue Services in St. Paul, Minnesota. As Galiena Cimperman sat quietly with him and scratched his head, the bird started to talk.

This was perfectly normal. Harpo, like others of his species and the parrot family to which it belongs, was a very vocal creature and gifted mimic. Cimperman, the sanctuary’s executive director, was accustomed to him keeping up a semicoherent monologue of under-his-breath babble. But a long while after their first meeting, he shared something unexpected.

“I hate this bird,” Harpo said, loudly and clearly. He repeated it twice more. “I hate this bird. I hate this bird.”

Harpo had certainly heard that insult before, likely in unpleasant circumstances. But what did the cockatoo mean by it? According to Cimperman, the words didn’t have the same significance for him that they would for us; Harpo was repeating the sounds, not using them as language. But that doesn’t mean the outburst was insignificant.

Cimperman believes the phrase reflected traumas the cockatoo experienced earlier in life and that uttering them was part of his recovery. “I’m hesitant to say, because I don’t have any scientific backing on this,” she explains, “but I think he was probably working through stuff.”

Her diagnosis of Harpo—and many other residents of MAARS, one of 100 or so sanctuaries in the US that provide lifetime homes to abused and abandoned parrots—indeed comes without a seal of scientific approval. Although there’s plenty of research on parrot memory, problem-solving, and communication (the cognitive sophistication of some species is likened to that of human children), the birds’ emotions are largely unstudied.

That makes the relationship between parrots and people all the more difficult. The birds’ intelligence, physiology, and social nature often makes it difficult for them to flourish in captivity—yet there are more than 50 million parrots in households and zoos worldwide. Many are ultimately dumped at overwhelmed rescue operations, where volunteers like Cimperman have to piece together their pasts to help them find solace in the present.

As for whether the animals’ suffering can lead to psychological trauma—defined as an ongoing emotional response to an intensely distressing event—there’s even less research on that than on their feelings. But between their emotions and their excellent long-term memories, they do possess the cognitive capacities necessary to experience extended trauma.

One of the only scientific papers about parrot trauma, in fact, emerged from a collaboration between MAARS caretakers and Gay Bradshaw, the psychologist and ecologist best known for identifying PTSD in orphaned elephants who witnessed their parents and elders being killed. Presented more than a decade ago at a conference of avian veterinarians, the paper describes how parrots at the sanctuary frequently meet the criteria for the disorder.

What Bradshaw learned is that the birds undergo intensely distressing experiences, beginning in most cases at birth. Unlike parrots in the wild, whose parents provide close, attentive care from hatching through fledging, commercially bred individuals often start life in isolation. They receive little attention except for intermittent tube feeding.

“I really think their whole lives are, in some form or another, traumatic,” Cimperman says. “The way people raise them is completely absent of everything they should have.” In a review of standard commercial breeding methods, bird vet Michelle Curtis Velasco likened them to the infamous Romanian orphanages where, in the near absence of human contact, infants went on to develop severe behavioral disorders.

At parrot sanctuaries, it’s important that the birds feel control over their own lives.

Then, at an age when their wild counterparts meet other young flock members while continuing to receive parental instruction, fledgling parrots enter a human home. They have evolved to live in large groups, but as pets, just one or a few often-absent people become their entire social world. These situations are intrinsically fraught; even well-meaning guardians may ignore or punish their parrots after tiring of unwittingly powerful bites and earsplitting cries for company. Sometimes keepers are not so well-meaning, and the situation devolves into full-blown abuse.

The birds are ill-equipped to cope, says Cimperman, and stress is magnified by helplessness and an inability to escape. Many parrots, especially the larger ones, either have their wings clipped to prevent flight or never learn to fly at all; they lack the sense of security that mobility provides.

Little wonder that some parrots arrive at MAARS with symptoms of severe psychological disturbance: tics like picking their feathers out and even wounding themselves, extreme aggression, hypersensitivity to everyday noises, repetitive movements, incessant screaming, constant agitation, catatonic unresponsiveness, and so on. In extreme cases, parrots have stayed in their cages for years, avoiding eye contact and trembling when humans approach.

When seen in people, those behaviors raise concerns about PTSD. “I know this hasn’t been borne out scientifically to the degree that it should be, but I don’t know what else it adds up to,” Cimperman says. So MAARS adapts insights on human PTSD into its treatment regime. New arrivals are initially kept separate from the flock; as they begin to acclimatize, grooming, eating, and showing curiosity about their surroundings, caretakers work with them to develop a sense of trust in humans.

It’s important that the birds feel control over their own lives, says Cimperman. “So much of a parrot’s life in captivity is without choice,” she says. “We try to give everyone a sense of free agency as much as possible, closer to what they would have in the wild.” Later they may be exposed to reminders of past trauma—the sight of a garbage bag, for example, for a bird delivered to the sanctuary inside one—as they learn to regulate their feelings. The process may take months or even years.

In Harpo’s case, the details of his early life are murky. He had one guardian before arriving at a sanctuary in Texas; there Harpo killed several birds and left volunteers with wounds requiring medical treatment, at which point MAARS took him in. “We couldn’t have him out for more than five minutes. He would just kind of implode and start flying at your face or attacking anything he could get his beak on,” Cimperman recalls.

By the time Harpo said, “I hate this bird,” she had worked with him for three years. He still had episodes when “he would just kind of blank out and kind of go into attack mode,” but he was improving. He felt safe around Cimperman, and she saw that utterance—delivered with the pinned-back feathers and slit-eyed glare that signify intensely negative feelings—as part of the process. To her, it signified a mental reenactment of his past. “I think they store a lot of stuff that’s happened to them. And to be able to move forward, there has to be some getting out of stuff,” she says.

Erin Colbert-White, a comparative psychologist at the University of Puget Sound in Washington who has studied how African grey parrots use words, says she’s open to the possibility that parrots experience PTSD. She cautions, however, that Harpo’s invective is difficult to parse as a recollection of his trauma because we don’t know the context in which he first heard the disparaging phrase. “It’s such a complex conclusion to draw that I would want to somehow be able to study it systematically. I’m not saying it’s not true. I would just have more questions. The scientist in me says, ‘Proceed with caution.’”

Colbert-White also warns that the expectation that another species will “experience psychological disorders in ways that humans do is a big assumption.” Rigorous, without-a-doubt scientific evidence may be unobtainable, though; it would require inflicting trauma on captive parrots in controlled conditions. “There’s no way to ethically reproduce these sorts of situations,” Colbert-White says.

Even granting that uncertainty, just the possibility that parrots experience psychological effects that resemble humans’ adds to the urgency of protecting them—not just in captivity, notes Cimperman, but also in the wild. Half of all parrot species are declining, and one-quarter are threatened with extinction, yet they receive relatively little conservation attention. Thriving populations are frequently persecuted for the wildlife trade or in the name of “pest management.”

By the end of Harpo’s life in 2021, nine years after his arrival at MAARS, he was one of the friendliest feathered guests there. He ran to greet people and was positively joyful. “I think who Harpo was and who he ended up being were completely different birds,” Cimperman says. “He was literally unrecognizable.” And whatever he’d meant when he said “I hate this bird,” he had stopped saying it.

We hope you enjoyed Brandon Keim’s column, Pet Psychic. Check back on PopSci+ in June for the next article.

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Turf wars between whales and crabbers have increased due to climate change https://www.popsci.com/environment/whales-crabbers-climate-change/ Thu, 20 Apr 2023 01:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535215
As ocean conditions change, Dungeness crab fishers are finding themselves in conflict with whales more often.
As ocean conditions change, Dungeness crab fishers are finding themselves in conflict with whales more often. DepositPhotos

As climate change causes more marine heatwaves, finding space for both is getting even more difficult.

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As ocean conditions change, Dungeness crab fishers are finding themselves in conflict with whales more often.
As ocean conditions change, Dungeness crab fishers are finding themselves in conflict with whales more often. DepositPhotos

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

In Dick Ogg’s 25 years of commercial fishing, he’s had a few close encounters with whales—mostly while pulling Dungeness crab pots off the ocean floor. “I’ve had whales right next to me,” within about five meters, says Ogg. “They follow me, they watch, they’re curious. And then they go on about their business.”

Ogg is fortunate his interactions have been so leisurely. For nearly a decade, California’s whales and crabbers have been locked in a persistent struggle. From 1985 to 2014, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported an average of 10 whales were entangled in fishing gear each year along the west coast of the United States. But between 2015 and 2017, that number jumped to 47 entanglements per year. Since 2015, most of the identifiable gear found on entangled whales has been from crab pots. For crabbers, efforts to protect whales from entanglement often hit their bottom line.

The Dungeness crab fishery is one of California’s largest and most lucrative; until recently, it was considered one of the most sustainable fisheries in the state. In recent years, managers have sought a balance between protecting whales and ensuring crabbers’ livelihoods. But as climate change transforms the northeast Pacific and whales are increasingly at risk of being entangled in crabbers’ lines, that delicate balance is beginning to unravel.

The 2015 crabbing season was a catastrophe for both crabbers and whales. A marine heatwave nurtured a bloom of toxic algae that pushed anchovies close to shore, and the whales followed. That year, NOAA recorded 48 entangled whales along the US west coast—nearly five times the historical average. The algae also rendered the crabs inedible, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) delayed the start of the fishing season by several months. The federal government declared the failed season a fishery disaster.

In 2017, the environmental nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity sued the CDFW over the spate of entanglements, prompting the department to set up a rapid risk assessment and mitigation program that closes portions of the Dungeness crab fishery when whales are nearby. The new approach has decreased entanglements, but it’s come at a high price for commercial fishers.

The CDFW has a handful of other tools they can use to protect whales, such as shortening the crabbing season and limiting the number of traps crabbers can drop. But according to a recent study, the only measure that could have effectively protected whales during the heatwave—shortening the crabbing season—is the one that would have hampered crabbers the most. And even then, these strong restrictions would have only reduced entanglements by around 50 percent.

If a similar marine heatwave hits again, entanglements could spike, too, says Jameal Samhouri, a NOAA ecologist and author of the paper. “It’s going to be really hard to resolve these trade-offs,” he says. “There may be some hard choices to make between whether we as a society want to push forward conservation matters or allow the fishery.”

Every year since the CDFW set up its mitigation program, the fishery has faced closures. Since 2015, the crabbing season has only opened on time once. Though the heatwave is gone, a boom of anchovy has kept whales close to shore.

For Ogg, the most difficult part of the season is waiting to go fish and not having any income. “It’s been really, really tough for a lot of guys,” he says. Another recent study calculates that in 2019 and 2020, whale-related delays cost California Dungeness fishers US $24-million—about the same as they lost during the heatwave in 2015.

Smaller boats, the study showed, were most severely impacted by the closures. It’s a trend Melissa Mahoney, executive director of Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust, has seen firsthand. While a large boat might set hundreds of crab pots in a day, smaller vessels can’t make up for a shortened season. “I just don’t know how long a lot of these fishermen can survive,” Mahoney says.

With climate change, marine heatwaves are now 20 times more frequent than they were in preindustrial times. As the Earth grows warmer, heatwaves that would have occurred every 100 years or so could happen once a decade or even once a year. In this hotter world, balancing the needs of both crabbers and whales will only grow more difficult.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Experience the uncomfortable weirdness of a snail eating fruit https://www.popsci.com/environment/snail-eating-video/ Wed, 19 Apr 2023 21:30:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535221
Brown garden snail eating a strawberry on a white table
Snails can cause significant damage in gardens and orchards. Another Perspective/YouTube

Snails use thousands of microscopic teeth to chow down on produce or wreak havoc on gardens.

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Brown garden snail eating a strawberry on a white table
Snails can cause significant damage in gardens and orchards. Another Perspective/YouTube

Snails are notoriously slow, excellent ecosystem engineers, and invasive and destructive pests in many gardens and on farms. Their eating methods are also pretty gnarly if you can get up close and personal. A German photographer named Jens Braun from YouTube channel Another Perspective released a video of a snail munching on a strawberry, with close-up details offering a fresh perspective on an unusual mollusk.

Snail eating Strawberry in Extreme Macro with Laowa Probe Lens. Credit: Jens Braun/Another Perspective

Brown garden snails are about one inch in diameter at maturity and have a brown and gray color pattern. They are most active when the air and ground are damp, mostly sliding around during the nighttime and early morning hours. They are native to Great Britain, Western Europe, and along the borders of the Black and Mediterranean seas, but can now be found across most of the southeastern US and both coasts. 

[Related from PopSci: Sea snail venom could lead to better insulin for diabetics]

Snails typically are omnivores, but the main staples of their diet are ornamental plants, flowers, weeds, veggies, and of course fruits.  Snails and their close relatives, the slugs, eat with their jaw and a flexible band of microscopic teeth called a radula. During a process called rasping, thousands of radula scrape up food particles, then they use their jaw to cut off larger pieces of food like leaves to be rasped.

Part of why snails are considered such a pest is that they can severely damage orchards by feeding on ripening and ripe fruit, as well as the leaves and bark growing on young trees. The telltale signs of fruit damage are circular chewed areas of the fruit’s rind, and leaves typically appear chewed along their margins. 

Citrus orchards are particularly vulnerable to becoming snail buffets since their watering methods and weed control creates a moist environment where snails can thrive. Last summer was a particularly rough snail year in South Florida, after snails that can be the size of a fist bounced back after a decade-long battle to eradicate them.  

[Related: It’s still a mystery how snails ended up scattered around the globe.]

Snails are also hermaphroditic—meaning all snails that reach reproductive age can lay eggs. This happens up to six times during a mating season, typically in the late spring and early summer. They lay up to 80 eggs per month in shallow depressions in the topsoil after mating. The eggs hatch after being in the soil for 14 to 40 days, and they will eat their eggs and even the eggs of their siblings to get enough calcium to harden their shells

While many snails are harmless to humans aside from being a garden pest, cone snails contain a paralyzing venom that can even be fatal in humans. When injected, the venom puts the victim into excitotoxic shock, which makes them unable to move within only a few seconds. Then, the snail opens its mouth wide to engulf all of the prey in a slow and painful death. Understanding how this venom works could help scientists produce better pain medication.

If you are keen to keep snails from eating your produce, raking over soil, using study plants in pots instead of seedlings, and searching for the pests during damp and mild evenings and transporting them to a compost heap can help.

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This robot dog learned a new trick—balancing like a cat https://www.popsci.com/technology/robot-dog-balance-beam/ Wed, 19 Apr 2023 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535177
Just a step at a time.
Just a step at a time. Carnegie Mellon University

Without a tail and a bendy spine, nonetheless.

The post This robot dog learned a new trick—balancing like a cat appeared first on Popular Science.

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Just a step at a time.
Just a step at a time. Carnegie Mellon University

We’ve seen how a quadruped robot dog can dribble a ball, climb walls, run on sand, and open doors with its “paws.” The latest test isn’t that of motion, necessarily, but of balance. This time, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have found a way to make an off-the-shelf quadruped robot agile and stable enough to walk across a balance beam.

Even for humans, the balance beam is quite a feat to conquer—something that leaves even gymnasts nervous. “It’s the great equalizer,” Michigan women’s gymnastics coach Beverly Plocki told the Chicago Tribune in 2016. “No other event requires the same mental focus. You stumble on the floor, it’s a minor deduction. The beam is the event of perfection. No room for error.”

[Related: A new tail accessory propels this robot dog across streams.]

But in robot dogs, their legs aren’t exactly coordinated. If three feet can touch the ground, generally they are fine, but reduce that to one or two robot feet and you’re in trouble. “With current control methods, a quadruped robot’s body and legs are decoupled and don’t speak to one another to coordinate their movements,” Zachary Manchester, an assistant professor in the Robotics Institute and head of the Robotic Exploration Lab, said in a statement. “So how can we improve their balance?”

How CMU’s scientists managed to get a robot to daintily scale a narrow beam—the first time this has been done, so the researchers claim—is by leveraging hardware often used on spacecrafts: a reaction wheel actuator. This system helps the robot balance wherever its feet are, which is pretty helpful in lieu of something like a tail or a flexible spine which helps actual four-legged animals catch their balance. 

[Related: This bumblebee-inspired bot can bounce back after injuring a wing.]

“You basically have a big flywheel with a motor attached,” said Manchester. “If you spin the heavy flywheel one way, it makes the satellite spin the other way. Now take that and put it on the body of a quadruped robot.”

The team mounted two reaction wheel actuators on the pitch and roll axis of a commercial Unitree A1 robot, making it so the little bot could balance itself no matter where its feet were. Then, they did two dexterity tests—the first dropping it upside down from about half a meter in the air. Like a cat, the robot was able to flip itself over and land on its feet. 

Second came the balance beam test, this time making the robot walk along a six-centimeter-wide balance beam, which the bot did with ballerina-like gracefulness. This could come in handy in the future, not only for purely entertainment value, but maneuvering tricky scenarios in the case of search-and-rescue, which is often a goal for development across all sorts of robots. The team will be showing off their latest endeavor at the 2023 International Conference on Robotics and Automation this summer in London.

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Why the biggest animals move so slowly https://www.popsci.com/environment/large-animals-heat-travel-climate/ Wed, 19 Apr 2023 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=535161
A polar bear standing on ice.
Larger animals travel at slower speeds to keep their bodies from overheating. Deposit Photos

Analysis of 532 species shows those over one ton travel slowest to keep their cool.

The post Why the biggest animals move so slowly appeared first on Popular Science.

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A polar bear standing on ice.
Larger animals travel at slower speeds to keep their bodies from overheating. Deposit Photos

For animals spread all across the realms–air, land, and water–traveling speed is affected by how well they can cool off. The findings of a study published on April 18 in the open access journal PLOS Biology found that an animal’s traveling speed is limited by how effectively they can shed the excess heat generated by its muscles, particularly for animals that weigh over one ton

Travel is crucial to the survival of many animals, and certain physical features can dictate how far animals can migrate and where they find food. This is becoming even more challenging in a human-dominated world with more fragmented habitats and climate changing limiting food and water resources. 

[Related: We are eating large animals into extinction.]

In this study, the team used data on 532 species to develop a computerized model to look at the relationship between an animal’s size and traveling speed. The data only included freely moving animals in the wild based on radar tracking devices or video recordings, excluding studies on animals in captivity. 

As animals became larger, the traveling speeds increased, until they reached one ton, or about 2,000 pounds. At that point, the traveling speeds leveled off and began to decrease. When looking for possible reasons why the animals were slowing down, they concluded that the larger animals needed to slow down to avoid overheating changed the shape of the curve in the results. 

The results were the same for aquatic animals even though they live in water, which can cool the body down. Medium-sized animals, such as wolves, typically showed the fastest sustained speeds. 

“The new study provides a way to understand animal movement capacities across species and can be used to estimate any animal’s traveling speed based on its size,” co-author and biologist Alexander Dyer from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research said in a statement. “For example, this approach can be applied to predict whether an animal might be able to move between habitats fragmented by human development, even when the details of its biology are unknown.”

[Related: Ceramic ‘igloos’ could keep African penguins cool and cozy.]

In theory, increased temperatures due to climate change will affect all animals and not just the larger ones. Some animals are already evolving smaller bodies in response to the heat. According to the World Meteorological Organization, an eight year period from 2014 to 2022 were the eight warmest years on Earth’s record. 

“We anticipate that large animals are potentially more susceptible to the effects of habitat fragmentation in a warming climate than previously thought and therefore more prone to extinction. But this needs further investigation,” co-author and biologist also at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Myriam Hirt said in a statement.

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The UN’s first high seas treaty could help dwindling Pacific salmon https://www.popsci.com/environment/un-high-seas-treaty-salmon/ Wed, 19 Apr 2023 01:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=534867
Salmon fishing in international waters has been banned since the 1990s, so future protected areas will not reduce fishing.
Salmon fishing in international waters has been banned since the 1990s, so future protected areas will not reduce fishing. Getty Images

In March, conservationists worldwide celebrated the historic agreement, which governs the ocean waters where salmon spend most of their lives.

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Salmon fishing in international waters has been banned since the 1990s, so future protected areas will not reduce fishing.
Salmon fishing in international waters has been banned since the 1990s, so future protected areas will not reduce fishing. Getty Images

This article was originally featured on High Country News.

The high seas — the ocean waters that begin 230 miles offshore — cover 43% of the planet’s surface and are home to as many as 10 million species, yet remain one of the least understood places on Earth. Among the region’s many mysteries are how Pacific salmon, one of the West’s most beloved and economically important fish, spend the majority of their lives — and why many populations are plummeting. Combined with how little we know about what climate change is doing out there, such questions make the area an international research and conservation priority.

These sprawling waters, though, are a mostly lawless zone, beyond the reaches of any national authority and governable only by international consensus and treaties. They face tremendous challenges that no nation can address alone: Climate change is causing marine heat waves and acidification, while overfishing and pollution are crippling ecosystems, even as pressure grows from companies and nations eager to drill and mine the ocean depths. In early March, negotiators representing nearly 200 nations came to a historic agreement aimed at protecting the ocean’s creatures and ecosystems. When the new United Nations High Seas Treaty was announced, marine scientists and conservationists around the globe rejoiced.

But what will the treaty actually mean for conservation in a region about which humanity knows less than the moon? When it comes to Pacific salmon, will the new treaty’s tools — and the international symbolism and momentum involved in agreeing to them — aid efforts to manage and protect them? Do the provisions go far enough? Here’s what the experts say.

The treaty’s protective tools may not be what salmon need

The treaty’s top provision establishes a road map for creating marine protected areas (MPAs) in international waters. Like national parks for the ocean, MPAs are zones that typically limit fishing or other activities to preserve ecosystems and species. When adequately enforced, they are widely considered to be a powerful tool for ocean and coastal conservation. They are also seen as key to reaching the U.N.’s goal to protect 30% of the planet’s oceans by 2030 — a goal the world is woefully behind on, with just 3% to 8% currently protected.

But when it comes to Pacific salmon, it is unclear whether MPAs can do anything at all. Salmon fishing in international waters has been banned since the 1990s, so future MPAs there will not reduce fishing. And while boosting enforcement of fishing bans may benefit other species, many believe illegal salmon fishing on the high seas is extremely low.

Still, some salmon experts believe that high seas marine preserves could provide indirect protection: By limiting other fishing, they could prevent salmon from being caught accidentally. They might also help preserve important marine food webs, though such ecosystems are vast, mobile and hard to monitor.

Fish photo
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the United States. NOAA

“If salmon used those (protected areas) as part of their migration and ocean habitat, then, yes, it could be beneficial,” said Brian Riddell, retired CEO and current science advisor to the Canadian nonprofit Pacific Salmon Foundation. “But to associate changes in marine survival to (an MPA), I think would be very, very difficult.”

MPAs also don’t address climate change or the marine heat waves that many researchers believe are a key factor in recent salmon declines. Matt Sloat, science director at the Oregon-based Wild Salmon Center, said that limiting global emissions would do more to protect salmon.

Although much remains unknown, recent research suggests that salmon ranges in the ocean are shifting or shrinking because of temperature changes. Salmon are also getting smaller, suggesting there may be more competition for fewer resources. “And then (hatcheries) are putting billions more hungry mouths into that smaller area,” Sloat said, referring to the sometimes-controversial state, federal and tribal hatcheries in the U.S. and other countries that raise and release quotas of juvenile salmon each year to maintain local fisheries. He believes that improving international coordination of the scale of those releases, rather than governing remote ocean habitats, might also improve salmon survival in the ocean.

It may boost collaboration and high seas research

Another section of the treaty bolsters collaborative research in international waters. Although the treaty’s language is directed more at support for developing nations — to ensure that new knowledge reflects the priorities of more than just the wealthiest coastal nations — salmon researchers hope that any overall increase in funding and interest in high seas research could help solve the mystery of what actually happens to salmon there.

While much is known about the environmental factors affecting salmon in their coastal and riverine habitats, scientists call the open ocean a “black box” into which salmon disappear for years. “We don’t even know where our salmon are,” said Laurie Weitkamp, a research biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 2022, seeking answers, she led an expedition that was part of the largest-ever high seas salmon research effort in the North Pacific, during which five vessels and more than 60 international scientists surveyed 2.5 million square kilometers (nearly 1 million square miles) in the Gulf of Alaska.

Fish photo
Different populations of Chinook salmon follow different migratory routes in the ocean, exposing them to different conditions affecting their survival. NOAA Climate.gov image adapted from NOAA Fisheries data. NOAA

The open ocean has always been a bottleneck for salmon survival; Weitkamp said that, even historically, “95% of the salmon that enter the ocean never come back.” Once, those numbers were predictable based on coastal and river conditions. Now, she said, scientists’ guesses are often wildly wrong. All known conditions will point to a good return, Weitkamp said, “And then it’s just like, where are they? What happened?”

Researchers have been trying to understand what they’re missing in salmon’s ocean habitats, but work on the high seas is extremely expensive: Expeditions cost tens of thousands of dollars a day, but can collect only small amounts of data because salmon are widely dispersed and hard to find. She said the scale of the information gathered during the 2019-2022 expeditions she was part of was possible only because so many ships and nations worked together. It’s the kind of collaboration the treaty may help to inspire — directly in some cases, and symbolically in others — as nations sign on.

“Collaboration is absolutely essential,” said Riddell, who was also part of the 2019-22 expeditions. “We need a dedicated, ongoing program,” to understand what’s happening to salmon and to strengthen ocean and climate models. He hopes the High Seas Treaty will lead to more support and interest in that work.

Ratification and Indigenous inclusion are not guaranteed

This year, many salmon runs are expected to hit record lows, impacting the ecosystems, economies and communities that depend on them. Chinook returns in Oregon, California and Alaska are forecast to be so low that offshore recreational and commercial fishing this spring has been cancelled in many areas. The Klamath River chinook run, upon which the Yurok Tribe relies for cultural and economic security, is expected to be the lowest in history.

“International effort to preserve and protect ocean habitat is critical to restoring these historic salmon runs,” said Amy Cordalis, an attorney, fisherwoman and Yurok tribal member who has served as the tribe’s general counsel. But “those efforts must accommodate traditional uses of those areas.”

In 2020, during negotiations on what became the High Seas Treaty, a group of scientists published a report calling on the United Nations to better incorporate Indigenous management perspectives, which they said were not adequately represented in discussions at that time. The final treaty, which includes language recognizing Indigenous rights, did better than most to include Indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge, said Marjo Vierros, a coastal policy researcher at the University of British Columbia and lead author of the report. “How that plays out in implementation is of course a different question.”

The draft treaty, which is now being proofread, still must be ratified by member nations — a political process that may yet stall out in the U.S. Due to conservative Republican opposition, the United States has yet to ratify the 40-year-old U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea — the last treaty to govern international waters — though U.S. agencies say the country observes the law anyway.

That treaty drew the current boundary between state-controlled waters and the high seas, established rights for ships to navigate freely in international waters, and created an international body to develop deep-sea mining rules — a process that also remains, for now, unfinished. 

Researching at sea, “you gain a whole new understanding for how big (the ocean) really is,” Weitkamp said, and how much of its influence on salmon, climate and humanity remains unknown. “The ocean, especially the North Pacific, is just enormous.”

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Spider glue might evolve faster than the spiders themselves https://www.popsci.com/environment/spider-silk-glue-evolution/ Tue, 18 Apr 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=534901
An orb weaver spider spins a web in a forest.
Learning more about the sticky glue that orb weaver spiders use to spin their webs could have wide scientific applications. Deposit Photos

A small study of two orb weaver spider species is unraveling the mysteries of spider silk.

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An orb weaver spider spins a web in a forest.
Learning more about the sticky glue that orb weaver spiders use to spin their webs could have wide scientific applications. Deposit Photos

For spiders, spinning their silky webs is a matter of survival. Those that don’t weave good enough silk to spin an insect-trapping web will have a much tougher, or even impossible, time getting enough food to eat. Since spiders are found throughout world, the more fine-tuned their webs are to their environment, the better they will work. 

In a study published April 18 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, biologists found that the glue that makes orb weaver spiders’ webs so sticky actually evolves faster than the spiders’ genes. 

[Related: Black widows battle their even deadlier cousins in a brutal spider war.]

“Discovering the sticky protein components of biological glues opens the doors to determining how material properties evolve,” study co-author and Washington and Lee University biologist Nadia Ayoub said in a statement. “Spider silk fibers and glues represent a fantastic model for answering such questions since they are primarily made of proteins and proteins are encoded by genes.”

Like the individual threads of a tapestry, each strand in an orb weaver spider’s web works to capture food. The web’s stiff frame absorbs the impact of the prey before it is trapped by the sticky lines so that the spider can tackle its food. A special glue that is synthesized in the spider’s aggregate glands makes the lines of the web sticky by absorbing water from the atmosphere. The glue should be altered to achieve the best stickiness for the amount of humidity in the air in the region where the spider lives. Since there are numerous species of orb weaver spiders living in many environments, the team on this study believed their glue must adapt to humidity levels. 

To investigate this glue adaptation strategy, the team focused on two speciesArgiope argentata (A. argentata) and Argiope trifasciata (A. trifasciata). A. argentata lives in dry environments and is native to Southern California. The team had them build webs in a lab, but were fed a diet comparable to their prey and compared the glue droplet volume found in nature to make sure they were equivalent to what they weave in nature. A. trifasciata lives in humid environments all over the world and the team collected webs from them in the wild. 

They analyzed the proteins in the glue and the droplets’ material properties and found that the droplets from the dry-living A. argentata spiders are smaller than those from the more humidity prone A. trifasciata, and also absorb less water as local humidity increases. A. argentata’s glue also had smaller protein cores that occupied a smaller proportion of the droplet’s volume and absorbed less water from the atmosphere. 

[Related: How researchers leveled up worm silk to be tougher than a spider’s.]

The stiffness of these protein cores in the droplets affected the toughness of the glue droplets and the toughness of A. argentata’s protein core decreased as the humidity went up. A. argentata thread glue droplets were generally sticker and  more closely spaced.

When the team analyzed the proteins in the glue to understand how these differences in their material properties arise from these proteins, they found that the proteins appeared in different proportions, even though they were similar. A. argentata glue had the protein products of four genes which didn’t appear in A. trifasciata glue. The extra proteins and a more balanced ratio of the glue’s key AgSp1 and AgSp2 proteins may explain the greater toughness of this glue and its lower capacity for water absorption.

“Despite the dramatic differences in material properties, the two species share most of their protein components,” co-author and Virginia Tech biologist Brent Opell of Virginia Tech said in a statement. “The sequences of these proteins are also similar between species, but the relative abundance of individual proteins differs. Modifying the ratios of proteins is likely a rapid mechanism to adjust material properties of biological glues.”

According to the team, one of the limitations to this study includes that it only looked at two species, and the relationship between proteins and web material properties are not quite to scale yet. To address this, the team is documenting protein components and the material properties of a diverse set of species.

More study on spider silk and their properties could also have some wider scientific and technological applications. “Spider silks and glues have huge biomimetic potential. Spiders make glues with impressive properties that would have applications in industry, medicine, and beyond,” said Opell.

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The best dog harnesses of 2023 https://www.popsci.com/story/reviews/best-dog-harness/ Wed, 21 Apr 2021 12:59:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/story/?p=283602
best dog harness
Marcus Woodbridge, Unsplash

Is your four-legged friend a puller? Don’t get hot under the collar switch to one of our best dog harness picks.

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best dog harness
Marcus Woodbridge, Unsplash

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Best no-pull Ocean blue and grey dog harness and leash best dog harnesses 2 Hounds Design Freedom No Pull Nylon Dog Harness & Leash
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Best for large dogs Ruffwear Front Range Dog Harness is the best dog harness for large dogs Ruffwear Front Range Dog Harness
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Best for small dogs Red and black dog harness with adjustable chest belt and quick release buckle Puppia Soft Dog Harness
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Collars are great for ID tags and quick out-and-back bathroom breaks, but when it comes to a serious walk they aren’t always the best dog gear. Collars can potentially inflict strain on a dog’s throat, and they do little to reign in exuberant canines. Humans may have no idea why that far patch of grass is irresistible, but a dog may pick up a whiff of something worth pulling against the leash until they choke. To avoid your dog causing self-harm, turn to a dog harness. These distribute pressure evenly over a large area, which makes for a more controlled and comfortable walking experience. So, if your dog is still getting a handle on proper walk etiquette, the best dog harness is the kind of dog gear that can gently discourage pulling and limit strain on your pet, helping your dog feel confident and comfortable no matter how far along they are in their training. Whether you have a big dog or one that’s small, we’ll help you discover the best dog harness to match your pet’s walking style.

The best dog harnesses: Our picks

Best no-pull: 2 Hounds Design Freedom No-Pull Nylon Dog Harness & Leash

2 Hounds Design

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This no-pull dog harness combines two points of contact with your dog: an included double-connection leash attaches to an action loop between the shoulders and a structural ring on the chest. This unique design enables you to redirect your dog’s attention while also reigning them in from the back. The 2 Hounds Design harness works with breeds of all sizes and temperaments, and its stainless-steel hardware and heavy-duty nylon are built to last.

Best for large dogs: Ruffwear Front Range Dog Harness

RUFFWEAR

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Designed with optimal comfort in mind, this large-dog harness has foam padding, wide straps, and four points of adjustment. The Ruffwear harness features an aluminum back clip and a reinforced webbing chest loop for training. Reflective trim and a convenient ID pocket make this harness perfectly suited for nighttime jogs. Ruffwear offers this harness in eight nature-inspired shades and five sizes.

Best for small dogs: Puppia Soft Dog Harness

Puppia

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The Puppia harness is designed to protect your small dog’s delicate skin with soft air-mesh padding and lightweight polyester. This small-dog harness has a back clip leash attachment, an adjustable chest belt, and quick-release buckles for a seamless park-to-couch transition. Puppia offers 14 adorable colors, and its smallest option fits dogs with a neck of 9.5 inches.

Best dog pack: Mountainsmith K-9 Dog Pack

Mountainsmith

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This dog pack has all the essentials: two pannier compartments with zippered accessory pockets, an indestructible metal back clip, and mesh panels with perforated EVA foam for increased ventilation. Made with optimal weight distribution in mind, this pack features a four-point adjustable chest harness, an adjustable back harness, and a non-slip buckle system. The pack also has a padded grab handle that enables you to quickly lift your dog in emergency situations. Mountainsmith packs are weather-resistant and can be worn by dogs that weigh up to 120 pounds.

Best budget: Rabbitgoo Dog Harness

Rabbitgoo

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This hassle-free harness has fast-release buckles, four adjustable straps, and reflective trim. The Rabbitgoo harness features both front and back metal leash rings for versatile training. Rabbitgoo offers its harness in a wide range of vibrant colors and four sizes.

Features to consider when selecting the best dog harnesses

There’s more to the best dog harness than a latch and a catch, so keep these major differences in mind while shopping for your pup. A dog harness is a vest designed to secure your dog with maximum comfort, usually with a triangle of fabric that hugs their torso and fastens in the back. A strap harness is a more lightweight option that features thinner bands of material. Whether you opt for a vest or strap design, you will have to choose between a front-clip, back-clip, or dual-clip system. If you’re working with a stubborn dog that loves to tug, a front-clip harness can help keep your pet under control. Dogs that are already professional heelers might not require a front-clip and will do just fine with a back-clip design.

The best combines durability, comfort, and mobility. You will want to find a harness that can withstand doggie wear and tear but isn’t made of stiff or irritating material. It is also important that your harness is tough under pressure a flimsy harness can stretch or degrade when paired with a serious puller. We know that picking out dog products can get pretty complicated, so here are our picks. Let’s find the perfect fit!

Related: Poop happens. Be prepared with the best bags.

What exactly is a no-pull dog harness?

Some dogs pull on a leash like they’re auditioning for the Iditarod. If you’re using a traditional collar and leash, pull behavior can be frustrating and harmful. This tug-of-war match might seem impossible to resolve, but there are harnesses created to ease the difficulty of training the more tenacious puppy personalities. A no-pull harness is designed to pivot your dog’s energy toward you, often by redirecting their movements with a front-clip or dual-clip design. With a leash attachment at their chest, a dog is deterred from lunging forward and encouraged to walk at your pace. The best no-pull harness helps you control your dog without causing pain or discomfort. There are multiple versatile designs available that combine both front- and back-clip designs for maximum command over your dog’s training, like our favorite no-pull harness here.

What dog harness works for larger breeds?

Big dogs can be a lot to handle, and they need a harness that can match their strength and size. A thin harness might dig into a big dog’s skin, so when shopping for a large-dog harness you will want to look for one with wider bands. Harnesses with a vest shape also work well for larger dogs and distribute pressure equally across their chests. The best large harness combines resilient fabric with durable aluminum leash clips. Yours should be able to handle everything your big dog throws at it, from zealous days at the park to muddy treks in the woods.

What should small dogs wear?

We know that small dogs are infamous escape artists and sometimes slip out of their collars. This might make you lean toward finding the most snug option, but if your small dog is a bundle of energy a collar could also be hurting their neck. A small harness can provide peace of mind while out and about with your tiny pup. Little dogs don’t require the same hardware as big dogs, so you will want to focus on soft fabric, flexibility, and weight when shopping for a small dog. You might also want to consider one that is easily washable little dogs are low to the ground and their gear quickly collects grime. The best small harness should be simple, light as a feather, and soft enough for everyday wear, and our top pick checks all the boxes.

What’s the best harness for hiking with my dog?

Long hikes with your furry friend require a lot of equipment. A dog backpack harness is a wonderful solution for those who spend every weekend exploring new trails with their dogs. The majority of dog packs are saddlebags, which distribute weight evenly on both sides of your dog. With a sturdy pannier compartment on each side, your dog can carry his own gear without losing any mobility. Dog backpacks are perfect for carrying a day’s supply of treats, doggie bags, and first-aid materials. Keep in mind that dog packs are best suited for medium and large breeds, and the majority of backpacks do not accommodate dogs with a ribcage girth under 20 inches. The most important attributes to look for in a backpack harness are durable fabric and adjustable straps. The best dog backpack harness is made of water-resistant materials and allows you to customize the position of the pannier compartments. Check out  our favorite backpack harness before you set out on your next wilderness adventure.

Best dog products if you’re on a budget

Small options tend to be pretty affordable, while dog gear for medium and large breeds can get expensive. There are some options for affordable harnesses that still have all the features you love: reflective fabric, optional front clips, and comfortable padding. When shopping for a cheaper one you will want to ensure that it is still fully adjustable and made of soft, durable material that won’t irritate your dog’s skin. Here’s an affordable, vest-style harness that works with dogs of all sizes.

FAQs

Q: How tight should a dog harness be?

It should fit snug enough that your pup can’t get loose, but not so tight that it constricts them. A good rule of thumb When shopping for fitted dog products is that you should be able to fit two fingers between your dog and their harness at all times.

Q: Are front-clip harnesses good for dogs?

Front-clip harnesses are a great solution for dogs that pull. With a leash attachment on their chest, a dog is kindly redirected when they try to bolt forward. A front clip will safely encourage a dog to walk at your side, rather than barging at the nearest squirrel.

Q: Can I leave my dog’s harness on all day?

If your dog is comfortable in his or her harness, there is nothing wrong with keeping it on during the day. You should remove your dog’s harness at bedtime so that your canine companion can get some air. This also prevents matting in long-haired breeds.

The final word on the best dog harnesses

Daily walks with your canine companion should be a breeze, not a battle. The best dog harness enables both you and your dog to enjoy the outdoors without stress, strain, or risk of injury. Whether you’re seeking a solution for a stubborn puller or selecting gear that keeps your dog comfortable all day, a harness is one of those dog products that is a fantastic addition to your beloved pup’s wardrobe.

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Some coastal critters are thriving in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch https://www.popsci.com/environment/coastal-animals-great-pacific-garbage-patch/ Tue, 18 Apr 2023 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=534854
Examples of floating plastics collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre during The Ocean Cleanup’s 2018 expedition.
Examples of floating plastics collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre during The Ocean Cleanup’s 2018 expedition. The Ocean Cleanup

Geographical boundaries are shifting in the open sea thanks to floating plastic pollution.

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Examples of floating plastics collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre during The Ocean Cleanup’s 2018 expedition.
Examples of floating plastics collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre during The Ocean Cleanup’s 2018 expedition. The Ocean Cleanup

Scientists have found dozens of species of coastal invertebrates organisms thriving Oscar the Grouch style in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Roughly 620,000 square miles long, or twice the size of Texas, the floating garbage heap is located between Hawaii and California. Five large spinning circular currents constantly pull trash towards the center of the patch, and it is considered the largest accumulation of ocean plastic on Earth.

These creatures found thriving in trash like crabs and anemones are normally found along the coasts, but the study published April 17 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution says that dozens of species have been able to survive and reproduce on the plastic garbage.  

[Related: A close look at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch reveals a common culprit.]

“This discovery suggests that past biogeographical boundaries among marine ecosystems—established for millions of years—are rapidly changing due to floating plastic pollution  accumulating in the subtropical gyres,” co-author and marine ecologist Linsey Haram said in a statement. Haram conducted this research while working at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

The team only recently discovered these “neopelagic communities,” or floating communities of organisms living in deep ocean waters. Organic matter in the ocean decomposes within a few years at most. But plastic debris lasts significantly longer, thus giving the animals a place to live and procreate.  

The team analyzed 105 plastic samples that were collected by The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization that is working on scalable solutions to get rid of ocean plastic, during their 2018 and 2019 expeditions. The samples were found in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a large zone that makes up most of that northern Pacific Ocean and is the largest ecosystem on Earth. Incredibly, 80 percent of the plastic trash that the team looked at showed signs of being colonized by coastal species. Some of the coastal species were even reproducing in their plastic homes, such as the Japanese anemone.

A map of the ocean gyre that creates the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The Earth’s oceans have five “gyres,” pull things in like a whirlpool. In each gyre, garbage accumulates in so-called “patches.” The most famous is between Hawaii and California. CREDIT: NOAA.

“We were extremely surprised to find 37 different invertebrate species that normally live in coastal waters, over triple the number of species we found that live in open waters, not only surviving on the plastic but also reproducing,” said Haram. “We were also impressed by how easily coastal species colonized new floating items, including our own instruments—an observation we’re looking into further.”

[Related: Ocean plastic ‘vacuums’ are sucking up marine life along with trash.]

While biologists already knew that coastal species can travel towards the open ocean on floating debris or on ships, it was long believed that these species couldn’t thrive or establish new communities at sea. Differences in temperature, water salinity, and the available nutrients between these two environments seemed too vast, but human-caused changes to the ocean ecosystems have forced marine biologists to rethink these ideas. 

“Debris that breaks off from this [garbage] patch constitutes the majority of debris arriving on Hawaiian beaches and reefs. In the past, the fragile marine ecosystems of the islands were protected by the very long distances from coastal communities of Asia and North America,” co-author and UH Mānoa oceanographer Nikolai Maximenko said in a statement. “The presence of coastal species persisting in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre near Hawai‘i is a game changer that indicates that the islands are at an increased risk of colonization by invasive species.”

According to data from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the world produces roughly 460 million tons of plastic annually and this figure could triple by 2060 if government action is not taken soon. Some individual actions to reduce plastic use is shopping more sustainably, limiting use of single-use plastic like water bottles and plastic utensils, and participating in beach and river clean-ups.

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The mysterious ‘Tully monster’ didn’t have a spine after all https://www.popsci.com/science/tully-monster-spine-fossil/ Mon, 17 Apr 2023 20:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=534621
Discovered in the 1950s and first described in a paper in 1966, the Tully monster, with its stalked eyes and long proboscis, is difficult to compare to all other known animal groups.
Discovered in the 1950s and first described in a paper in 1966, the Tully monster, with its stalked eyes and long proboscis, is difficult to compare to all other known animal groups. Takahiro Sakono, 2022.

300 million years ago, this creature was swimming in the waters of modern-day Illinois.

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Discovered in the 1950s and first described in a paper in 1966, the Tully monster, with its stalked eyes and long proboscis, is difficult to compare to all other known animal groups.
Discovered in the 1950s and first described in a paper in 1966, the Tully monster, with its stalked eyes and long proboscis, is difficult to compare to all other known animal groups. Takahiro Sakono, 2022.

Since its discovery nearly 70 years ago, paleontologists have debated the lineage of the mysterious “Tully monster.” The six-inch-long, stalk-eyed creature lived over 300 million years ago in the seas of modern-day Illinois. Its unique anatomy has long challenged researchers, making it difficult to identify as either a vertebrate or invertebrate–one of the first steps of classification. 

Vertebrates are animals with spines, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Invertebrates are animals without spines, including insects, arachnids, crustaceans, mollusks, annelids, and more. The Tully monster, or Tullimonstrum gregarium, was a soft-bodied marine animal, so its fossilized remains do not show clear evidence of a backbone. In 2016, researchers claimed to have identified a pale gut-like structure as a notochord, a primitive spine, signaling a vertebrate affinity. 

Now, researchers at the University of Tokyo believe they have solved the mystery of Tullimonstrum gregarium’s lineage, finding characteristics that point to an invertebrate identity. Their findings were published in the journal Palaeontology on April 17, 2023.

Amateur collector Francis Tully found the first fossils in Illinois’ Mazon Creek formation in 1955, a fossil bed known for its treasure trove from the Carboniferous period. He then took his unidentified ‘monster’ to the Field Museum of Natural History, where it confounded paleontologists and opened up a debate that would last decades. It was first described in a paper in 1966 and became the Illinois state fossil in 1989.

[Related: A gator-faced fish shaped like a torpedo stalked rivers 360 million years ago]

So far, researchers have been unable to determine whether the fossil was a vertebrate or invertebrate, one of the first bases of taxonomic identification. Invertebrates emerged first in the form of soft-bodied organisms, such as sponges, jellyfish, and worms over 600 million years ago. Vertebrates evolved after, during the Cambrian explosion about 540 million years ago. Both sides of the debate have evidence to support them, and it is still an open discussion. If found to be a vertebrate, the Tully monster would fill a gap in evolutionary history, connecting jawless fish (such as lampreys and hagfish) to jawed fish. 

Recent findings suggest the opposite. Researchers at the University of Tokyo analyzed 3D imaging of 153 Tully monster fossils from Mazon Creek. They found structures that point to it being an invertebrate chordate, like a lancelet, a small eel-like marine invertebrate which evolved 500 million years ago. The Tully monster could also potentially be a radically modified protostome, a clade of animals encompassing insects and crustaceans, which first evolved around 540 million years ago along with vertebrates during the Cambrian explosion. 

“The most important point is that the Tully monster had segmentation in its head region that extended from its body. This characteristic is not known in any vertebrate lineage, suggesting a nonvertebrate affinity,” Tomoyuki Mikami, a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Science at the University of Tokyo at the time of the study and currently a researcher at the National Museum of Nature and Science, said in a press release

The researchers found structures consistent with those of invertebrates, such as body segmentation, vertical tail fins and head shape. They also analyzed body parts thought to prove similar to those of vertebrates, such as a tri-lobed brain, tectal cartilage (supporting the eyes and optic nerves) and fin rays. They found that these structures, though similar, are not comparable to those of vertebrates.

[Related: One wormy Triassic fossil could fill a hole in the evolutionary story of amphibians]

Using three-dimensional imaging techniques, the authors described the morphology of the Tully monster’s proboscis and its stylets—thin, needle-like structures with a similar function as teeth, in depth. According to the research, these structures are inconsistent with the keratinous teeth found in lampreys and hagfish, two vertebrates thought to be distant relatives.

In one of the earliest studies on the unique animal published in 1969, researchers stated that “our conception of the diversity of the organic world is based upon a small sample consisting almost entirely of animals with preservable hard parts.” The Tully monster, however, has few of such parts—not unlike jellyfish and worms, which lack hard skeletal structures and leave only impressions in sediment as they are fossilized. Studying what little evidence we have of ancient soft creatures is crucial for reconstructing the history of life, as a significant number of Earth’s creatures became extinct without leaving any fossils behind.

“More and more research is needed to extract important clues from Mazon Creek fossils to understand the evolutionary history of life,” Mikami said.

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Ancient beetles had a taste for dinosaur feathers https://www.popsci.com/environment/beetles-eaten-dinosaur-feathers/ Mon, 17 Apr 2023 19:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=534696
Two carpet beetles on a white flower.
The relatives of modern carpet beetles may have fed on dinosaur feathers and played an important role in recycling organic matter. Deposit Photos

The 105 million year old beetle remnants are preserved in amber, but may have thrived in dinosaur nests.

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Two carpet beetles on a white flower.
The relatives of modern carpet beetles may have fed on dinosaur feathers and played an important role in recycling organic matter. Deposit Photos

A recent discovery sounds like the beginning of another Jurassic Park reboot—but this time beetles are taking center stage instead of mosquitoes. These new fossils preserved in amber show evidence that beetles fed on dinosaurs about 105 million years ago, according to a study published April 17 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

[Related: Entombed in amber, this tiny crab hails from the age of dinosaurs.]

The most impressive and complete specimen was found in the amber deposit of Rábago/El Soplao in northern Spain. The amber contains shedded fragments–or molts–of small beetle larvae tightly surrounded by some pieces of downy feathers. The feathers once belonged to an unknown theropod dinosaur that was either avian or non-avian. Theropods that flew and those that were more Earth-bound typically shared indistinguishable feather types during the Early Cretaceous period. According to the team, the feathers do not belong to modern birds, since that group of animals appeared roughly 30 million years later during the Late Cretaceous. 

On Earth today, vertebrates and arthropods, like today’s ticks and lice, have a complex ecological relationship that has likely coexisted for more than 500 million years. The interactions between the two are believed to have shaped both vertebrate and arthropod evolutionary history, but evidence of arthropod-vertebrate relationships is still extremely rare in the fossil record, according to the team on this study. 

They found that the larval molts preserved in this study were related to modern skin beetles, or dermestids. These beetles feed on organic materials that decay over time, sometimes bothering dried museum specimens tucked away in closets. However, dermestids do play a key role in recycling organic matter, commonly living in birds nests and in places on mammals where hair, skin, or feathers accumulate.

Animals photo
Molt remains of feather-feeding beetle larvae intimately associated with downy feather portions from an unidentified theropod dinosaur in Early Cretaceous amber of Spain. Insets show the head with powerful mandibles of one of the larval molts (top) and the pigmentation pattern of feather second order branches (bottom), with the main stem of one feather at the right of the amber fragment. The amber fragment is only 6 millimeters across. CREDIT: Geological and Mining Institute of Spain of the Spanish National Research Council (CN IGME-CSIC)

The authors found that some of the feather portions and other remains were in intimate contact with the molts of the dermestid beetles and have some evidence of damage or decay. 

“This is hard evidence that the fossil beetles almost certainly fed on the feathers and that these were detached from its host,” study co-author and Geological and Mining Institute of Spain of the Spanish National Research Council geologist Enrique Peñalver said in a statement. “The beetle larvae lived—feeding, defecating, molting—in accumulated feathers on or close to a resin-producing tree, probably in a nest setting. A flow of resin serendipitously captured that association and preserved it for millions of years.” 

[Related: These beetles sniff out fungus-infected trees to find their next target.]

It is still unclear if the feathered theropod host benefited from the beetle larvae feeding on detached feathers and that it could have occurred in a nest setting, where the host was sitting on eggs.  

“However, the theropod was most likely unharmed by the activity of the larvae since our data show these did not feed on living plumage and lacked defensive structures which among modern dermestids can irritate the skin of nest hosts, even killing them,” co-author and paleobiologist from Oxford University Museum of Natural History Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente said in a statement.

Three other pieces of amber that had isolated beetle molt that were in a different stage of the beetle life cycle were also studied, which allowed better understanding of the role that their feathery diet played.

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Bears can count, take selfies, use tools, recognize supermodels, and even open car doors https://www.popsci.com/environment/are-bears-smart/ Sun, 16 Apr 2023 13:28:16 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=534251
Black bear cub in a berry bush at Glacier National Park
A black bear cub foraging for berries. NPS/Tim Rains

Scientists studying bear intelligence want to know: What else can they learn?

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Black bear cub in a berry bush at Glacier National Park
A black bear cub foraging for berries. NPS/Tim Rains

Selfies occasionally go viral, but they’re not typically taken by an animal. So the fact that a black bear’s encounter with a motion-activated wildlife camera in Boulder, Colorado, in 2022 resulted in more than 400 of them—including an undeniably cute one with its tongue hanging out—is especially intriguing. Most creatures ignore camera traps. The question is: Why didn’t this bear?

​​It may be tempting to think of this selfie moment as an animal blunder, but this anecdote captures more than meets the eye. Research suggests bears, much like elephants and great apes, are more intelligent than previously assumed. The selfie bear is a unique reminder of a type of animal cognition scientists are just starting to understand. 

“Bears are probably more naturally curious about how things work than some other species,” says Jennifer Vonk, a psychology professor at Oakland University. 

Black bear, dubbed "selfie bear" looking directly into Colorado wildlife camera
One of selfie bear’s infamous wildlife camera shots. City of Boulder

Bears are generally impressive. They have an excellent sense of smell, seven times better than a bloodhound’s. Grizzly bears can run up to 35 miles per hour, beating the fastest human sprint by over 25 percent. Despite their bulk, bears are very dexterous—they can open screw-top jars, manipulate door latches, and even operate touchscreen computers with a talent that outpaces animals more closely related to people. 

Vonk discovered this when she and a colleague trained captive-bred black bears to select a larger or smaller set of dots that stayed in place or moved around the screen. Although the ability to count or distinguish between different quantities has been tested in many animals, scientists didn’t think ursines had this ability because they are a solitary, rather than social, species. The “social intelligence hypothesis” suggests social animals are likelier to be smarter than solitary species because interactive environments offer more cognitive challenges. 

[Related: Hibernating bears hold many secrets for better human health.]

The experiment proved otherwise. During the study, the size of the dots varied—in some trials, for example, the larger set of dots covered more area than the smaller set of dots. Conversely, the larger set could also cover a smaller area, which ultimately tested if black bears were making choices based on area or the number of dots. The animals performed above chance on all trials, showing they could use numbers to guide their choices. In other words, they could count. These results were published in the journal Animal Behavior

“I was surprised how quickly the bears took to responding on the computer because we were training animals that had never done any kind of experiments,” says Vonk. “On literally the first day we tested, the dominant male went right to the images that moved around the screen without making any errors. And with almost every task we gave him, he learned faster than the chimps and gorillas I was working with at the same time.”

While bears have one of the largest relative brain sizes of any carnivore, there’s surprisingly little research regarding their cognitive abilities. This oversight may be due to logistics more than anything else. Most cognitive research happens in a laboratory; the animals that do well in these environments are smaller creatures, like rats, mice, and pigeons. Facilities that allow controlled testing with bears are scarce. 

Captive black bear on a rock sticking out her tongue
Migwan the bear was able to communicate her snack preferences. Jennifer Vonk

Despite these challenges, Vonk’s lab at Oakland University has worked to fill this gap in our understanding of bears since 2012. Another study conducted by Vonk suggests bears also recognize images on computer screens as real objects: During it, a captive black bear named Migwan was able to show that she prefers grapes over beets. While bears can recognize features of real objects in their virtual images, the researchers emphasized this doesn’t necessarily mean bears fully grasp what pictures are. 

Another touchscreen study from the Vonk lab suggests bears can distinguish between different categories of things, such as animals versus non-animals. The bears were trained (with the help of a few treats) to choose between two rather odd and different groups: supermodels and Planet of the Apes characters. After that task was mastered, the bears were tested on more difficult subjects. For instance, the studied black bears could tell polar bears from other species of bears, primates from hoofed animals, or a chameleon from a car. They performed surprisingly well, even for the most abstract categories of distinguishing animals from non-animals.

Four captive black bears playing behind a fence
The clever black bears the Vonk lab studied. Jennifer Vonk

Other research suggests black bears aren’t the only intelligent bear. For example, in a study of tool use published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, brown bears had to manipulate logs and boxes to reach a tempting reward: glazed donuts. Six of the eight bears in the study successfully completed the pastry-acquiring task and usually did so out in less than two minutes, explains lead author Lynne Nelson, a professor of veterinary cardiology at Washington University. 

For decades, tool use was considered to be the defining characteristic of humans—something that proved how smart we are. The fact that bears can also use tools subsequently suggests some advanced intelligence.

Several factors may explain why bears are smart, though “more work needs to be done before we really know whether social structure or foraging ecology better predicts overall intelligence,” Vonk says. 

“I think people are only starting to recognize that it’s an interaction of all these things,” she adds.

For now, there are some promising theories. Overall most animals living in social groups, like primates, exhibit high levels of intelligence. Scientists hypothesize that social animals evolved to have mental abilities that help them cooperate and understand others’ intentions. But bears, generally, are solitary. Their brains are less of a response to their social situation and more of a response to the challenging environments that they live in. Their ability to make quick, adaptive responses to these conditions may explain why their brains are relatively large compared to their body weight—a proportion that suggests intelligence

Bear intelligence may also be the result of their early development; cubs start off life as curious little troublemakers. Gordon Burghardt, a professor of animal behavior at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, experienced this firsthand when two rescued black bear cubs stayed in his house for several weeks. He describes the inquisitive youngsters opening kitchen cabinets and sliding glass doors, climbing into the shower, and running off with purses. The cubs were also fond of playing with each other, which he posits helps with their development. Play is often thought to facilitate learning and mental development, as well as being a method of exercise and stress relief. 

Black bears and brown bears are both generalists, showing great versatility in the food they eat, how they get it, and where they find it, Vonk explained. They hunt, scavenge, and also seek out plants, nuts, and fruit. Bears also adjust to a seasonally changing environment, gaining weight in the fall and hibernating in winter. This variable and unpredictable environment may have led to bears’ greater intelligence. 

“Bears live in a vast range of environments from the deserts to the tropics and the Arctic,” Nelson adds. “Animals must exhibit a certain level of intelligence to be able to earn a living almost anywhere on the earth.”

[Related: What an ancient jawbone reveals about polar bear evolution]

The giant mammals face considerable challenges because of people too: the development of their habitats, hunting, pollution, cars, and climate change all put them at risk. Studying bear intelligence, in turn, does more than explain a natural wonder—it increases the likelihood that they’ll survive. Some scientists argue that people are more likely to protect animals when they realize the species are intelligent. 

Bears, meanwhile, will continue to be as curious as ever. After the selfie black bear went viral, Canadian park rangers tweeted out their own celebrity: the selfie polar bear.

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Baby cod seem to be drawn to the lullaby of wind turbines https://www.popsci.com/environment/baby-cod-offshore-wind-turbines/ Sat, 15 Apr 2023 23:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=534107
Offshore wind power is a booming slice of the renewable energy mix. But like everything else, building machines in the ocean has some side effects.
Offshore wind power is a booming slice of the renewable energy mix. But like everything else, building machines in the ocean has some side effects. Photo by Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images

Experiments show larval cod will orient themselves toward the simulated sound of a turbine.

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Offshore wind power is a booming slice of the renewable energy mix. But like everything else, building machines in the ocean has some side effects.
Offshore wind power is a booming slice of the renewable energy mix. But like everything else, building machines in the ocean has some side effects. Photo by Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Offshore wind is one of the fastest-growing sources of renewable energy, and with its expansion comes increasing scrutiny of its potential side effects. Alessandro Cresci, a biologist at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway, and his team have now shown that larval cod are attracted to one of the low-frequency sounds emitted by wind turbines, suggesting offshore wind installations could potentially alter the early life of microscopic fish that drift too close.

Cresci and his colleagues made their discovery through experiments conducted in the deep fjord water near the Austevoll Research Station in Norway. The team placed 89 cod larvae in floating transparent mesh chambers that allowed them to drift naturally, then filmed as they subjected half the fish in 15-minute trials to the output of an underwater sound projector set to 100 Hz to mimic the deep thrum put out by wind turbines.

When left to their own devices, all of the cod larvae oriented themselves to the northwest. Like the closely related haddock, cod have an innate sense of direction that guides their ocean swimming. When the scientists played the low-frequency sound, the baby fish still had a northwest preference, but it was weak. Instead, the larvae favored pointing their bodies in the direction of the sound. Cresci thinks the larvae may be attracted to the 100-Hz sound waves because that low frequency is among the symphony of sounds sometimes part of the background din along the coastline or near the bottom of the ocean where the fish might like to settle.

A time-lapse video shows larval cod orienting themselves toward the direction of a low-pitched 100-Hz sound meant to mimic one of the frequencies emitted by offshore wind turbines. Video courtesy of Alessandro Cresci

As sound waves propagate through water, they compress and decompress water molecules in their path. Fish can tell what direction a sound is coming from by detecting changes in the motion of water particles. “In water,” says Cresci, fish are “connected to the medium around them, so all the vibrations in the molecules of water are transferred to the body.”

Like other creatures on land and in the sea, fish use sound to communicate, avoid predators, find prey, and understand the world around them. Sound also helps many marine creatures find the best place to live. In previous research, scientists have shown that by playing the sounds of a thriving reef near a degraded reef they could cause more fish to settle in the area. For many species, where they settle as larvae is where they tend to be found as adults.

Even if larval fish are attracted to offshore wind farms en masse, what happens next is yet unknown.

Since fishers typically can’t safely operate near turbines, offshore wind farms could become pseudo protected areas where fish populations can grow large. But Ella Kim, a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego who studies fish acoustics and was not involved with the study, says it could go the other way.

Kim suggests that even if fish larvae do end up coalescing within offshore wind farms, the noise from the turbines and increased boat traffic to service the equipment could drown out fish communication. “Once these larvae get there,” Kim says, “will they have such impaired hearing that they won’t be able to even hear each other and reproduce?”

Aaron Rice, a bioacoustician at Cornell University in New York who was not involved with the study, says the research is useful because it shows that not only can fish larvae hear the sound, but that they’re responding to it by orienting toward it. Rice adds, however, that the underwater noise from real wind turbines is far more complex than the lone 100-Hz sound tested in the study. He says care should be taken in reading too much into the results.

As well as noise pollution, many marine species are also at risk from overfishing, rising ocean temperatures, and other pressures. When trying to decide whether offshore wind power is a net benefit or harm for marine life, says Rice, it’s important to keep these other elements in mind.

“The more understanding that we can have in terms of how offshore wind [power] impacts the ocean,” he says, “the better we can respond to the changing demands and minimize impacts.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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A plant-based diet full of leaves may have helped apes stand upright https://www.popsci.com/environment/grassland-east-africa-early-humans-diet/ Fri, 14 Apr 2023 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=533910
An artistic rendering of the open woodland habitat reconstruction at Moroto II with Morotopithecus bishopi vertically climbing with infant on back and Mount Moroto, an active, in background.
An artistic rendering of the open woodland habitat reconstruction at Moroto II with Morotopithecus bishopi vertically climbing with infant on back and Mount Moroto, an active, in background. Corbin Rainbolt

Snacking on leafy greens may have had more of an impact than scouring treetops for fruit.

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An artistic rendering of the open woodland habitat reconstruction at Moroto II with Morotopithecus bishopi vertically climbing with infant on back and Mount Moroto, an active, in background.
An artistic rendering of the open woodland habitat reconstruction at Moroto II with Morotopithecus bishopi vertically climbing with infant on back and Mount Moroto, an active, in background. Corbin Rainbolt

Two new studies are shedding light on not only early hominid evolution, but are turning back the evolutionary clock on how early grassy woodlands appeared on the African continent.

The first new study, published April 13 in the journal Science, suggests that life in the open woodlands of Africa and a leafy diet may have influenced the upright stature of humans’ ape ancestors. 

[Related: Ancient DNA confirms Swahilis’ blended African and Asian ancestry.]

Anthropologists had long believed that our ancestors evolved an upright torso to pick fruit in forests, since some of our favorite produce grows on the spindly peripheries of trees. Large apes would have needed to distribute their weight on the branches stemming up from the trunk and then reach up with their hands to grab the fruit. Performing this task is easier if an ape is upright, since it can grab the branches better with their hands and feet. If an ape’s back is horizontal, the hands and feet are typically underneath the body, which makes it harder to move outward to the smaller branches of the tree. 

However, new research using a 21-million-year-old fossilized ape called Morotopithecus suggests that early apes actually ate the leaves in a seasonal woodland with a broken tree canopy and open grassy areas. The team believes that this landscape, and not fruit in closed canopy forests, possibly drove the ape’s upright structure.   

“The expectation was: We have this ape with an upright back. It must be living in forests and it must be eating fruit. But as more and more bits of information became available, the first surprising thing we found was that the ape was eating leaves. The second surprise was that it was living in woodlands,” co-author and University of Michigan paleoanthropologist Laura MacLatchy said in a statement.

Both papers grew out of a collaboration of international paleontologists called the Research on Eastern African Catarrhine and Hominoid Evolution project (REACHE). MacLatchy’s study focused on the a 21-million-year-old site in eastern Uganda called the Moroto site. Here, the team found fossils in a single rock layer. Fossils of other mammals and evidence of plant life were found in this layer and these lines were used to recreate Morotopithecus’ environment.

In a companion paper, also published April 13 in Science, another team used environmental proxies to reconstruct nine fossil ape sites across Africa, including the Moroto site during the early Miocene. The proxies revealed that grasses were actually all over the area 21 million years ago, instead of the previously determined 7 to 10 million. 

The team then found that the plants in this landscape were “water stressed,” which means that they lived in seasonal periods of rain and of aridity. These shifts mean that apes would have had to rely on something other than fruit to survive. These findings indicate that Morotopithecus likely lived in an open woodland that was punctuated by broken canopy forests made up of shrubs and trees. 

[Related: The ‘granddaddy’ of all early hominins walked on Earth a lot longer than we thought.]

“For the first time, we’re showing that these grasses are widespread, and it’s this general context of open seasonal woodland ecosystems that were integral in shaping the evolution of different mammalian lineages, including and especially in our case, how different ape lineages evolved,” study co-author and University of Michigan biological anthropologist John Kingston said in a statement.

The nine sites in both studies are scattered across eastern equatorial Africa, which is an area large enough for the team to develop a better regional picture of what these landscapes looked like 23 million to 16 million years ago during the early Miocene. At this time, the East African Rift forming the region saw huge change in topography. This upheaval as the Earth was pulling apart resulted in regional climate and its vegetation.  

“These open environments have been invoked to explain human origins, and it was thought that you started to get these more open, seasonal environments between 10 and 7 million years ago,” MacLatchy said. “Such an environmental shift is thought to have been selected for terrestrial bipedalism—our ancestors started striding around on the ground because the trees were further apart. Now that we’ve shown that such environments were present at least 10 million years before bipedalism evolved, we need to really rethink human origins, too.” 

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Cyborg cockroaches could one day scurry to your rescue https://www.popsci.com/technology/cockroach-cyborg/ Thu, 13 Apr 2023 20:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=533937
Madagascar hissing cockroach balanced on human finger against green backdrop
Imagine this, but with a tiny computer strapped to its back. Deposit Photos

Here's how hacking bug brains could one day help save lives.

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Madagascar hissing cockroach balanced on human finger against green backdrop
Imagine this, but with a tiny computer strapped to its back. Deposit Photos

Imagine yourself trapped in a building’s rubble following an earthquake. It’s a terrifying prospect, especially if time is of the essence for search and rescue operations. Now imagine  one of your rescuers turns out to be a cyborg cockroach. 

Regardless of how you feel about insects, a team of scientists at Osaka University in Japan apparently believe these resilient little bugs can come in handy in times of disaster. According to the researchers’ paper recently published within the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, society is closer than it’s ever been to deploying cybernetically augmented bugs to aid in real world scenarios such as natural disasters and extreme environment explorations. And everyone owes it all to their legion of semi-controllable cyborg Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

[Related: Spider robots could soon be swarming Japan’s aging sewer systems.]

Insects are increasingly inspiring robotic advancements, but biomimicry still often proves immensely complex. As macabre as it may seem, researchers have found augmenting instead of mechanically replicating six-legged creatures can offer simpler, cost-effective alternatives. In this most recent example, scientists implanted tiny, stimulating electrodes into the cockroaches’ brains and peripheral nervous systems, which were subsequently connected to a machine learning program. The system was then trained to recognize the insects’ locomotive states—if a cockroach paused at an obstacle or hunkered down in a dark, cold environment (as cockroaches are evolutionarily prone to do), the electrodes directed them to continue moving in an alternative route. To prevent excess fatigue, researchers even fine-tuned the stimulating currents to make them as minimal as possible.

Insects photo
Cyborg cockroaches could help save lives. Credit: Osaka University

Importantly, the setup didn’t reduce the insects to zombie cockroaches, but instead simply influenced their movement decisions.  “We don’t have to control the cyborg like controlling a robot. They can have some extent of autonomy, which is the basis of their agile locomotion,” Keisuke Morishima, a roboticist and one of the study’s authors, said in a statement. “For example, in a rescue scenario, we only need to stimulate the cockroach to turn its direction when it’s walking the wrong way or move when it stops unexpectedly.”

[Related: This bumblebee-inspired bot can bounce back after injuring a wing.]

While the scientists currently can’t yet control their cockroaches’ exact directions this way, their paper concludes the setup “successfully increased [their] average search rate and traveled distance up to 68 and 70 percent, respectively, while the stop time was reduced by 78 percent.” Going forward, they hope to improve these accuracy rates, as well as develop means to intentionally direct their enhanced cockroaches. Once that’s achieved, then you can start worrying about the zombie cyborg cockroach invasion.

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Pygmy zebra octopus stripe patterns are as unique as human fingerprints https://www.popsci.com/environment/pygmy-zebra-octopus-stripe-human-fingerprints/ Thu, 13 Apr 2023 19:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=533894
An adult Pygmy Zebra Octopus
Adult pygmy zebra octopus (Octopus chierchiae). Photo Credit: Tim Briggs

No two specimen look the same—and that could be a big deal for researchers.

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An adult Pygmy Zebra Octopus
Adult pygmy zebra octopus (Octopus chierchiae). Photo Credit: Tim Briggs

It’s hard to identify individual members of another species, unless they have sufficient visual distinctions. Every squirrel looks more or less the same, herd animals seem like a hoard of clones, and you may have once mistaken a lookalike stray for your pet. But when you look closely, small details characterize an individual from the rest of their species. Researchers at the University of California Berkeley proved the same applies for a rare species of octopus. 

The team discovered that the Pygmy zebra octopus has stripe patterns as unique as human fingerprints, allowing even humans to tell them apart. They also found that after about two weeks of age, their stripe patterns become permanent and distinctive. They published their recent findings in PLOS One.

[Related: What human and octopus brains have in common]

Octopuses’ intelligence, complex behavior, and color-changing abilities have led the animal into the limelight, both inside academia and out. There are over 300 species that live off the coasts of every continent. One is the Pygmy zebra octopus (Octopus chierchiae), also known as the lesser pacific striped octopus, coming in at about the size of a grape when fully grown. It has brown and tan stripes, fitting its name, and is native to the Pacific coast of Central America. 

Researchers confirmed that each individual has a stripe pattern unique to them by photographing 25 Pygmy zebra octopuses in a lab for nearly two years. They took photos of the specimens every week, from hatching to adulthood. Then, they gathered 38 untrained volunteers to participate in a survey to see whether or not they could identify individual octopuses based on their stripes. The survey consisted of 20 photo comparisons, each taken no more than 25 weeks apart.

The volunteers’ average accuracy was 84.2 percent, and about half of all participants scored at least 90 percent. Additionally, no individual question was answered incorrectly by a majority of participants. By analyzing stripe patterns, the volunteers’ accuracy shows that a majority of people can discern one individual from another. Given the time difference between photos, the results also indicate that people can identify an individual after several months have passed, even between juvenile to adult life cycle stages. 

[Related: Female octopuses will chuck seashells at males who irk them]

Tracking wild animals is a challenge for many researchers, but octopuses are especially challenging to monitor. Their reclusive and mysterious behavior make them hard specimens to track. And without some sort of tag or marker, researchers struggle to identify individuals if seen again. Cephalopod researchers employ various, sometimes invasive identification techniques, including tagging, tattooing, and branding. All these practices at the very least risk harming octopuses’ soft, delicate tissues and causing unnecessary pain. Tagging, one of the least harmful options, is also imperfect. Octopuses can easily slip out of tags without bones, and if it’s attached to their flesh, they can even rip them off.

If researchers could track octopuses by photography alone, it could be a game changer for the field. In the study, the researchers highlight photography as a “a largely inexpensive, non-invasive, non-extractive, and widely accessible technique to produce high-quality data” and recommend it as an identification and tracking method for future research. 

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Hibernating bears hold many secrets for better human health https://www.popsci.com/environment/bear-hibernation-human-health/ Thu, 13 Apr 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=533873
Brown bear paw in summer for blood clotting study
Brown bear blood changes between hibernation and more active months. Dr. Ole Frobert and Dr. Tobias Petzold

To avoid blood clots in the winter lull, brown bear bodies react in a similar way to people who are paralyzed.

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Brown bear paw in summer for blood clotting study
Brown bear blood changes between hibernation and more active months. Dr. Ole Frobert and Dr. Tobias Petzold

Sitting for too long is harmful to your health—even if you don’t feel it at the moment, your body will remember. Staying motionless for at least four hours has been linked to an increased risk of blood clotting in humans

But there are some exceptions. People with permanent paralysis don’t show an elevated risk for blood clotting while those who are temporarily immobile—like being stuck in a hospital bed or in a cramped airplane seat—are more susceptible to clot formation. 

A new study published today in the journal Science probes this blood-circulation question in brown bears, a species known to withdraw in their dens for five to eight months out of the year and emerge clot-free. Hibernating bears avoided blood clots by reducing a protein in their body that triggers the blood clotting process. Humans also have this protein, it turns out, and can regulate it under certain circumstances.

[Related: Scientists stuck grizzly bears on treadmills and confirmed they hate hills as much as we do]

“I would have never thought to go to bears, but it’s an excellent idea to turn to nature for studying human biology,” says Mirta Schattner, the director of the Instituto de Medicina Experimental del CONICET in Argentina who wrote an accompanying perspective piece on the study, but wasn’t involved in the research. 

An international team led by scientists from Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich ran tests on brown bears and people who have long-term mobility issues to compare anti-clotting strategies. They collected blood samples from 13 free-ranging brown bears during hibernation and again when they were awake during spring. When analyzing the contents of the blood samples, the authors noticed hibernating bears showed more signs of an anti-clotting mechanism. It worked by lowering several protein levels, including heat shock protein 47 (HSP47), which regulates immune responses. Reducing HSP47 tamps down inflammation that would have otherwise started the process of blood clotting.

Blood sample from brown bear lung stained green and purple on black background
Blood sample from a brown bear’s lung under a microscope. Dr. Ole Frobert and Dr. Tobias Petzold

To see if chronically immobilized humans have a similarly helpful reaction, the authors extracted blood from 23 people with spinal cord injuries and compared it to the blood of 23 able-bodied adults. Just like with the hibernating bears, people with spinal cord injuries showed a decrease in HSP47 levels and fewer clumped platelets that form clots. 

The similar process in bears and humans suggests prolonged immobility is the trigger that switches on the anti-clotting strategy. In situations where you might be bedridden for only a couple of days, Schattner says the inflammatory proteins are more powerful than this protective mechanism. “It would be interesting to know if it’s worth blocking the clotting mechanism in patients with acute immobilization,” she theorizes. “It’s a new pharmacological target to access.”

[Related: Heart disease-related deaths rise in extreme heat and extreme cold]

Anti-clotting mechanisms are one of many adaptations biologists can study from bear hibernation. The ursine body has developed different tactics to remain dormant throughout the winter without waking up to a horde of health problems. For example, bears use their fat to break down energy without reducing their muscle mass. They also limited the renewal of damaged bone cells to prevent osteoporosis in their sleep. Another feature includes changing biological processes like heart rate when entering hibernation. Studying how bears lower their heart rate for months at a time could help doctors better understand the mechanisms that drive cardiac diseases in humans.

Brown bear tranquilized on mossy forest floor as researcher in black shirt takes a blood sample
Sampling blood from a tranquilized brown bear in summer. Dr. Ole Frobert and Dr. Tobias Petzold

But the opportunity to look at these body-regulating strategies might be short-lived. Warmer temperatures and shorter winters from climate change are affecting bear hibernation patterns, says Heather Johnson, a wildlife biologist for the United States Geological Survey Alaska Science Center who was not involved in the study. “We’re seeing that bears are hibernating for a shorter period and having longer active periods.” The warmer winters signal to bears that there is less of a need to sleep when the conditions are fine to go foraging for food. 

There have also been a few anecdotal observations of bears not needing to hibernate at all, for example, because they have access to human food all winter. Johnson says that while it’s too soon to predict how climate change will affect bear survival, we are already seeing indirect effects by having more bears awake during open hunting season and getting into more conflicts with humans. As bears adjust to the changing climate, there’s no telling how their bodies will adapt. The anti-blood-clotting mechanisms they have today may be gone tomorrow—a disadvantage for the animals and a loss for potential thrombosis treatments.

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Oldest bat skeleton ever found by paleontologists finally has a name https://www.popsci.com/environment/oldest-bat-wyoming-eocene/ Thu, 13 Apr 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=533818
Skeleton of paratype of Icaronycteris gunnelli, the oldest bat skeletons ever found.
Skeleton of paratype of Icaronycteris gunnelli, the oldest bat skeletons ever found. Rietbergen et. all 2023/Mick Ellison/AMNH

The newly-discovered species lived in the Western US 52 million years ago.

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Skeleton of paratype of Icaronycteris gunnelli, the oldest bat skeletons ever found.
Skeleton of paratype of Icaronycteris gunnelli, the oldest bat skeletons ever found. Rietbergen et. all 2023/Mick Ellison/AMNH

A team of scientists from the United States and the Netherlands have discovered a new species of bat based on the oldest bat skeletons ever discovered. The findings are described in a study published April 12 in the journal PLOS One

The new species is named Icaronycteris gunnelli (I. gunnelli) in honor of the late Gregg Gunnell, a Duke University paleontologist who died in 2017 and is remembered for his contributions to understanding fossil bats and evolution. 

[Related: How killing vampire bats to slow rabies can go wrong.]

The now extinct I. gunnelli lived in Wyoming roughly 52 million years ago and the current scientific consensus is that bats rapidly diversified on multiple continents during this time in history. There are currently over 1,460 living bat species  found almost all over the world, except for the Earth’s polar regions and a few remote islands. 

The bat skeletons are about 1.5 inches long and were found near Kemmerer, Wyoming in the Green River Formation. The formation spans parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah and is home to an extensive fossil deposit from the early Eocene—about 56 million to 47.8 million years ago.  Scientists have found more than 30 bat fossils in the last 60 years within the formation. Until finding this new species, however, they believed all of them were from the same two extinct species, Icaronycteris index and Onychonycteris finneyi.

“Eocene bats have been known from the Green River Formation since the 1960s. But interestingly, most specimens that have come out of that formation were identified as representing a single species, Icaronycteris index, up until about 20 years ago, when a second bat species belonging to another genus was discovered,” study co-author Nancy Simmons, curator-in-charge of the American Museum of Natural History’s (AMNH) Department of Mammalogy said in statement. Simmons helped describe the second species named Onychonycteris finneyi in 2008, but always thought that there might be even more Eocene bats out there. 

Recently, scientists from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands began to look closely at Icaronycteris index by collecting measurements and other data from museum specimens to put together a dataset.

“Paleontologists have collected so many bats that have been identified as Icaronycteris index, and we wondered if there were actually multiple species among these specimens,”  co-author and evolutionary biologist Tim Rietbergen said in a statement. “Then we learned about a new skeleton that diverted our attention.”

[Related: Both bats and humans test out talking as infants.]

The well-preserved I. gunnelli skeleton in this study was purchased by a private collector in 2017 and was subsequently purchased by AMNH. The team compared the skeleton with Rietbergen’s extensive bat dataset and saw that it clearly stood out as a new species.

A second fossilized Icaronycteris gunnelli skeleton that was discovered at this same quarry in 1994. It eventually made its way to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and was also identified as this new species. 

While there are fossilized bat teeth from Asia that are slightly older than these skeletons, the two I. gunnelli fossils represent the oldest bat skeletons ever found, according to the team. The I. gunnelli skeletons are also the oldest bat fossils that have been recovered from the Green River Formation, but they are not the most primitive, meaning not the earliest on the bat evolutionary tree. According to the team, this supports the idea that the bats in the region evolved separately from other Eocene era bats.

“This is a step forward in understanding what happened in terms of evolution and diversity back in the early days of bats,” said Simmons.

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The alluring tail of the Luna moth is surprisingly useless for finding a mate https://www.popsci.com/science/luna-moth-bat-tails/ Wed, 12 Apr 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=533617
Luna moth resting on a tree.
A Luna moth (Actias luna). They can be found from Southeastern Canada to Texas. DepositPhotos

What is gorgeous to humans might mean little to other animals.

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Luna moth resting on a tree.
A Luna moth (Actias luna). They can be found from Southeastern Canada to Texas. DepositPhotos

Plenty of species have traits evolved for more than one purpose. Deer antlers are built-in weapons as well as seductive doe-magnets. Octopus suckers can trap prey in their suction but also taste and smell. Bright colors in frogs signal danger to predators while flaunting reproductive viability to potential mates. The Luna moth has uniquely shaped wings that thwart predation from bats, but what else might they be good for? How does one determine the evolutionary role of a trait? 

In two recent complementary studies published in Behavioral Ecology and Biology Letters earlier this year, researchers expanded our understanding of the adaptation by testing the role of wing tails against sexual selection and bird predation.

Luna moths are native to the Eastern half of North America. Like all silk moths, they have distinctive long, trailing tails on their hindwings, or “twisted, cupped paddles” as lead author of both studies and doctoral student at the Florida Museum of Natural history Juliette Rubin said in a statement. Bats use echolocation to detect the position of objects with reflected sound, but the moth’s wing shape reflects sound waves in a way that makes the flying mammals aim for the ends of their wings. In a flap of a wing, the moth just barely dodges their predators. 

[Related: What bats and metal vocalists have in common]

First, the researchers wanted to see if the wing tails also played a role in sexual selection. When female Luna moths are ready to mate, they perch in one spot and release pheromones. Males, with extremely sensitive antennae, can detect and follow a pheromone trail, according to the University of Florida’s entomology department. Then, the female has her pick of suitors. 

In the first experiment, researchers placed a female moth in a flight box with two males: one with intact wings and one with the wing tails removed. Initial data suggested that females preferred tails over no-tails, but further trials demonstrated otherwise. When researchers removed tails by clipping them, the resulting damage may have hindered these males’ performance in the first trial, allowing the intact males to mate successfully.

They recreated the tail/no-tail experiment by removing tails from both males, and re-gluing them to one male, while placing glue only on the hindwings of the other. Researchers found no significant difference in mating success between them. 

To ensure the glue did not confound the results, researchers conducted an additional experiment with two intact males, one with glue on the hindwings. Similarly, they had equal mating success.

Though their elegance is attractive to us humans, the experiment revealed that Luna moth wing tails aren’t the result of sexual selection. 

Then, researchers wanted to see if the moths’ tails had any obvious drawbacks. They help moths to survive bats, a species that relies on echolocation, but what about visually-oriented predators? 

Luna moths sit still during the day, since flying in broad daylight with their large bright green wings would make them easy targets. To test whether or not their tails would have any impact on daytime predation, researchers wrapped pastry dough around mealworms and molded them to the size and shape of real Luna moths. They attached full wings and wings without tails to each half. They placed the replicas around branches and leaves in an aviary, and introduced Carolina wrens. 

The wrens ate the fake moths at the same rate regardless of wing type, indicating that the tails had no effect on whether or not birds could locate them. Some research suggests that birds rely on search images, mental representations of objects, when they are searching for prey. They use visual cues, such as the shape of moth wings, to distinguish between the prey from patterns in the background. So, the wrens may ignore the hindwing tails, using the overall shape of Luna moths to identify food, according to the press release.

[Related: A new technique reveals how butterfly wings grow into shimmery wonders.]

These experiments show that despite being a noteworthy feature to humans, the Luna moths’ tails do not play a role in attracting a mate, nor do they affect predation by birds.

“When we see these really obvious physical features in animals, we’re often drawn into stories we’ve heard about them,” Rubin said in the statement. “A trait that’s obvious to us, as visual creatures, might not stand out to the predators that hunt them, and the traits that we think are dynamic and alluring might not seem that way to a potential mate.”

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Sea cucumbers have a Spiderman-esque superpower—and it involves their butts https://www.popsci.com/environment/sea-cucumbers-butt-goop-predators/ Wed, 12 Apr 2023 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=533527
A black sea cucumber on the floor of the Indian Ocean.
A black sea cucumber on the floor of the Indian Ocean. Deposit Photos

Mess with the cuke, get the goop.

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A black sea cucumber on the floor of the Indian Ocean.
A black sea cucumber on the floor of the Indian Ocean. Deposit Photos

If the black long sea cucumber  (Holothuria leucospilota) was a superhero, they might have quite a bit in common with a famous blue and red web slinger from Queens, New York. This sea cucumber has a comedic, but incredibly useful, way to ward off the hungry predators that stalk these strange creatures. When provoked, they will tear a hole in the wall of their butts and shoot out a tangle of sticky, noodle-like goo.  

The process is described in a study published April 10 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and the unique defense mechanism can entangle and stop predators in their tracks. The expendable tangles are called the Cuvierian organ and look like a mass of white spaghetti that the cucumber has expelled from its butt. 

The organ is made of amino acids in repeating sequences. These proteins give the organ some strength and have unique arrangements of the proteins. Repeating amino acid sequences are also found in silkworm threats and spider webs. 

The Cuvierian organ is at the bottom of the sea cucumber’s respiratory tree, where the cucumbers breathe as well as poop. The organ contains hundreds of dangling tubes, and the sea cucumber can self-amputate it and fully regrow it in as quick as 15 days.

[Related: Sea cucumbers have a secret superpower.]

For the study, the team followed the molecular pathway that triggers the Cuvierian organ’s deployment, and found that piercing the area with a needle or grazing the skin activated the goopy sensation. However, applying direct pressure didn’t cause the reaction.  

The long black sea cucumber expels Cuvierian tubules toward a crab and the crab is tied up. CREDIT: T. Chen et al., PNAS 2023.

These tubules can expand up to 20 times their original length with water pumping inside from the respiratory tree. The tubules become sticky upon contact with any surface and cling to the who or whatever is touching it. After being entangled in the butt goo, the aggressor sometimes even dies of starvation. 

Once a sea cucumber is safe from attack, it will likely crawl away from the deadly butt goo web. Scientists often find them partially hidden under clumps of seaweed, corals, or boulders. They then go back to their usual behaviors,  filtering organic matter from the sand and recycling nutrients like calcium back into the water by pooping them out. Corals and other animals can then eat up the nutrients. 

[Related: Watch these tiny bugs catapult urine with their butts.]

The team also found amyloid-like patterns in the proteins located within the Cuverian organ’s outer membrane. The brains of human patients with Alzheimer’s disease typically contain higher levels of amyloid plaques, but these proteins are used by marine organisms like barnacles as a strong adhesive. 

“This study provides the first genomic insights into defensive ensnarement in a representative species of [sea cucumber],” they write.

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Delaying departure may help birds migrate around climate change https://www.popsci.com/environment/migratory-birds-climate-change-american-redstart/ Tue, 11 Apr 2023 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=533233
A bird called an American Redstart sits on the branch of a tree.
The American redstart can migrate up to 43 percent faster to get to their breeding grounds if they delay migration, according to a new study. Deposit Photos

These adaptations come at a steep price, however.

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A bird called an American Redstart sits on the branch of a tree.
The American redstart can migrate up to 43 percent faster to get to their breeding grounds if they delay migration, according to a new study. Deposit Photos

Climate change has deteriorated the habitats of many migratory birds, permanently altering the timing of their expeditions. However, birds may be fighting back by changing their own plans. 

A study published April 11 in the journal Ecology finds that birds can partially compensate for these changes. They do so by delaying the start of spring migration and completing the journey faster, but this strategy does come with the cost of a decline in overall survival. 

“We found that our study species, the American redstart, can migrate up to 43 percent faster to reach its breeding grounds after delaying departure from wintering grounds in Jamaica by as much as 10 days,” co-author and Georgetown postdoctoral fellow Bryant Dossman said in a statement. “But increased migration speed also led to a drop of more than 6 percent in their overall survival rate.”

[Related: Migratory birds in the Eastern US are struggling to adapt to climate change.]

American redstarts breed in the trees and woodlands of southern Canada and the northeastern United States. They can lay two to five eggs at a time and both parents feed their young. According to the National Audubon Society, warblers like the redstart are often called ‘the butterflies of the bird world,’ for their ability to flit among treetops. The iconic redstart may live up to that nickname more than other warblers for its speed and colorful wings.

Some of the ways that birds like the redstarts can speed up the migration are by flying faster and making fewer or shorter stops to refuel. The speedier voyages  help compensate for the delayed departures, but can’t entirely make up for the lost time. According to the team on this study, individuals can recover about 60 percent of the lost time to a 10-day delay, but the birds will still be late to their breeding grounds. 

Birds photo
American redstart population trends during breeding seasons 2007-2017. Red indicates a declining population trend. Blue shows an increasing trend. CREDIT: eBird Status and Trends, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Jamaica, where some of the redstarts spend their non-breeding seasons, has become an increasingly dry climate in recent decades. The dryness means fewer insects, which are the mainstay of the redstart’s diet. It now takes the birds longer to get into the physical condition needed for the rigors of migration. Climate change is also causing the plants to bloom sooner and the insects to emerge sooner on the breeding grounds. 

“On average, migratory songbirds only live a year or two, so keeping to a tight schedule is vital. They’re only going to get one or two chances to breed,” said Dossman. “Longer lived birds are less likely to take the risk of speeding up migrations because they have more chances throughout their lives to breed and pass on their genes.”

The team from Cornell University, the University of Maryland, and Georgetown University used 33 years of American redstart migration departure data in tandem with automated radio tracking and light-level tags. They compared the birds’ expected departure date with their actual departure date to see how it has changed over time. 

[Related: Birds are so specialized to their homes, it shows in their bones.]

“Understanding how animals can compensate is an important part of understanding where the impacts of climate change will play out,” said co-author and Georgetown University biologist Peter Marra, in a statement.  “In this case, we may not lose a species entirely, but it is possible that populations of some species may go extinct locally due to climate change.” 

Activities at the redstart’s wintering grounds, such as not having enough food to eat, also carry over into the bird’s breeding season. While the redstart population is stable and increasing in much of its breeding range, eBird trend maps show that the species is declining in southern Quebec, Canada, and the northeastern US. 

“The good news is that birds are able to respond to changes in their environment,” Dossman said. “They have some flexibility and variation in their behaviors to begin with, but the question is, have they reached the limit of their ability to respond to climate change?”

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Rainbow trout are vulnerable to viruses—and microplastics make them even sicker https://www.popsci.com/environment/fish-trout-virus-microplastic-disease/ Tue, 11 Apr 2023 01:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=533080
What do you get when you combine a bunch of common plastics and a familiar virus? Lots of dead rainbow trout.
What do you get when you combine a bunch of common plastics and a familiar virus? Lots of dead rainbow trout. Photo by Daniel Thornberg

Higher death rates, bigger viral loads, and more viral shedding—plastic causes big problems for rainbow trout trying to fend off a common disease.

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What do you get when you combine a bunch of common plastics and a familiar virus? Lots of dead rainbow trout.
What do you get when you combine a bunch of common plastics and a familiar virus? Lots of dead rainbow trout. Photo by Daniel Thornberg

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Microplastics wreak havoc on fish in myriad ways, disrupting everything from eating behavior to brain development. While it’s clear these pesky particles can cause animals a world of trouble, scientists have found it much harder to pin down exactly how they cause so many problems.

“We know that if you expose animals to plastics, then oftentimes we’ll see pathology,” says Andrew Wargo, a disease ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). “But what we don’t really know are the secondary effects.”

That, however, is starting to change.

In controlled laboratory experiments, Wargo and his VIMS colleagues have shown how microplastics leave rainbow trout more vulnerable to a common salmonid disease, infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV). The effect can be dramatic: by exposing trout to a high concentration of either polystyrene beads or nylon microfibers for one month and then subjecting them to IHNV, the scientists found that fish were three to six times more likely to die, respectively, than IHNV-infected fish that hadn’t been exposed to plastics.

As well as increasing the lethality of IHNV, the microplastics also caused the exposed fish to have higher viral loads and shed more virus.

Taking tissue samples from the fish at different points in the experiment, the scientists found that the plastics were damaging the fish’s gills and provoking an inflammatory response. This likely makes it easier for the virus to invade the fish’s body, leading to more severe disease.

“There’s this kind of priming happening with some plastics,” says Meredith Evans Seeley, an environmental chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the study’s lead author. “That allows the pathogens to be more successful at colonizing the host.”

“Understanding the mechanism of how microplastics can increase the virulence of a virus? That’s pretty new,” says Bettie Cormier, an aquatic ecotoxicologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who was not involved in the work.

The deadly synergy between microplastics and viruses could be especially troubling in aquaculture operations, Wargo says. Infections spread easily on fish farms, and farmed fish frequently encounter plastics such as nylon and polystyrene, which are used for buoys and nets.

Wild fish encounter microplastics and viruses, too, Cormier adds, so similar interactions between microplastics and pathogens could be having ecosystem-level effects.

“Plastics and pathogens are everywhere,” Wargo says. “I think if we want to understand the effects of both, we probably need to consider them together.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

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Pang Pha the elephant learned to peel bananas by mimicking humans https://www.popsci.com/environment/banana-peel-elephant/ Mon, 10 Apr 2023 19:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=533074
A juvenile elephant named Ko Raya (left) with Pang Pha (right) at the Berlin Zoo. Scientists believe that Pang Pha taught herself how to peel bananas.
A juvenile elephant named Ko Raya (left) with Pang Pha (right) at the Berlin Zoo. Scientists believe that Pang Pha taught herself how to peel bananas. Günter Peters/ullstein bild via Getty Images

Who needs an opposable thumb, anyway?

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A juvenile elephant named Ko Raya (left) with Pang Pha (right) at the Berlin Zoo. Scientists believe that Pang Pha taught herself how to peel bananas.
A juvenile elephant named Ko Raya (left) with Pang Pha (right) at the Berlin Zoo. Scientists believe that Pang Pha taught herself how to peel bananas. Günter Peters/ullstein bild via Getty Images

Unlike most primates, elephants will happily munch on a banana without removing its peel. However, one special female elephant at the Berlin Zoo named Pang Pha has taught herself how to peel a banana, according to a new study published April 10 in the journal Current Biology. Pang Pha reserves the task for bananas that are yellow-brown in color and first breaks the fruit before shaking it out and then collecting the pulp. The thick peel is left behind, possibly for for someone else to slip on.  

The authors of the study believe that she likely learned this peeling behavior by watching her caretakers feed bananas to her, and the findings show how elephants in general have some special manipulative and cognitive abilities.

[Related: Scientists may have figured out why elephants exhibit complex emotions.]

“We discovered a very unique behavior,” co-author and Humboldt University of Berlin neuroscientist Michael Brecht said in a statement. “What makes Pang Pha’s banana peeling so unique is a combination of factors—skillfulness, speed, individuality, and the putatively human origin—rather than a single behavioral element.”

Pang Pha peeling a banana. CREDIT: Current Biology/Kaufmann et al.

Pha eats green or yellow bananas whole, completely rejects the brown ones and peels the brown spotted bananas that are typically perfect for baking banana bread before eating them. The team first noticed this after Pha’s caretakers mentioned this unusual banana peeling talent, but when they brought her nice green and yellow bananas, she didn’t peel them 

“It was only when we understood that she peels only yellow-brown bananas that our project took off,” said Brecht.

Additionally, Pha will change her behavior when yellow-brown bananas are offered to a group of elephants, and she will eat many whole bananas first and save the last one to peel later. Anecdotal reports and online videos have shown other elephants peeling bananas, but more studies and observations are needed to determine how common a phenomenon it really is. None of the other Berlin Zoo elephants engaged in peeling, according to the study

[Related: Ivory poaching has triggered a surge in elephants born without tusks.]

Earlier studies show that some African elephants can interpret human pointing gestures and even classify people into different ethnic groups. The team on this study believe that human-derived manipulation behaviors like peeling a banana appear to be unique. “Elephants have truly remarkable trunk skills and that their behavior is shaped by experience,” said Brecht.
The team found it surprising that Pha alone picked up on the behavior and are curious if habits like this are passed down in elephant families. They are now looking into other sophisticated trunk behaviors like tool use.

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Easy ways to stop carpenter bees from remodeling your home https://www.popsci.com/diy/get-rid-of-carpenter-bees/ Thu, 02 Sep 2021 15:41:17 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=394504
A carpenter bee on a white flower. If you're trying to figure out how to get rid of carpenter bees, it's best not to kill these crucial pollinators.
You can get all the pollination benefits of carpenter bees without the burrowing problems. Diane Helentjaris / Unsplash

None of these tips for getting rid of carpenter bees involve extermination.

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A carpenter bee on a white flower. If you're trying to figure out how to get rid of carpenter bees, it's best not to kill these crucial pollinators.
You can get all the pollination benefits of carpenter bees without the burrowing problems. Diane Helentjaris / Unsplash

Carpenter bees are some of the largest bees native to the US. They resemble bumblebees, but you’ll be able to tell them apart because they will burrow in fences, telephone poles, dead trees, and other types of wood. These insects are major pollinators, but they’ve earned a bit of a bad rap thanks to the damage they do to human structures.

If these bees have decided to call your home their home, it can be tempting to simply exterminate them, but you should take a more peaceful route. Because of how hugely beneficial they are to local ecosystems, many beekeepers say it’s important to safely move them instead.

Where to find carpenter bees and how to identify them

Unlike honeybees, carpenter bees do not live in large groups. They tend to make individual nests in which to lay their eggs and nurture new generations. Although there are some ground-dwelling species, most do what their name suggests: they burrow into soft, untreated wood like redwood, cedar, and pine.

The female bees start crafting these nests in the spring, laying their eggs inside for the males to visit and fertilize. The hatchlings emerge in late summer and leave the nests in search of flowers, before spending the winter inside the nest tunnels. You can identify a carpenter bee’s nest by the sawdust around or below it.

[Related: City gardens are abuzz with imperiled native bees]

The bees themselves are generally larger than bumblebees, often between a half-inch and 1 inch long, and do not have yellow stripes. You’re more likely to see the male bees, especially during mating season because they’re extremely territorial and hover around the nests. They can be intimidating, but they have no stingers and are unlikely to hurt you—the aggressive buzzing is all an act to protect their nests. Female carpenter bees, on the other hand, do have stingers, but won’t attack unless confronted directly.

Because they create tunnels, and may come back to them year after year, these bees can cause structural damage to load-bearing fence posts and other wooden constructions. They may also cause indirect damage, as woodpeckers like to go after carpenter bee larvae and can splinter the wood in their search for food.

How to safely get rid of carpenter bees

Despite the issues carpenter bees can cause, they are extremely effective pollinators. Nick Hoefly, a beekeeper at Astor Apiaries in Queens, New York, says that thanks to their size, these hefty bugs are excellent “buzz” pollinators. “This is a type of pollination where the insect vibrates the blossom to dislodge pollen, allowing it to fall onto the female parts of the plant,” he says. “Many vegetables and fruits, including tomatoes and some berries, rely on this type of pollination.”

Use almond, citrus, or another scented oil

That’s why it’s best to get rid of carpenter bees without hurting them. Hoefly recommends applying a drop of almond or citrus oil inside any nest holes you find. Since they don’t like the smell, they will most likely vacate and search elsewhere for a less-stinky place to build a nest. After they leave, you’ll need to fill the holes with wood putty or steel wool. If you have wood the bees haven’t found yet, take some time to sand it down, wipe away any excess sawdust with a wet sponge, and then paint it. Carpenter bees are attracted to unfinished wood.

Install wind chimes

If you have no interest in keeping these pollinators around, Hoefly suggests using wind chimes. The bees don’t like the noise and the constant jangling might convince them to seek other accommodations. If you’ve been reading a lot about how to get rid of carpenter bees, you may have seen suggestions involving loud music. Although doing so may bother the bees, it may also bother you (and your neighbors). Wind chimes are a more peaceful option that you’ll never have to turn on or off.

Give them a home of their own

But if you do want them to stay, you can provide homes specifically for them. This will keep them around, pollinating your garden and local plants. You can place simple blocks of wood around that you wouldn’t mind them burrowing into, but Bruce Shriver, a beekeeper at the Gowanus Apiary in Brooklyn, New York, prefers “insect hotel-style habitats.” 

You can find these at any home goods or hardware store or even make them yourself out of scrap wood and naturally hollow material. “As long as the habitat includes a block of soft wood in addition to the reeds, bamboo, straw, and other materials… it should serve well as a decent carpenter bee habitat,” Shriver says. You’ll have all the benefits of these super-pollinators without them hovering around and burrowing into your fences.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on September 2, 2021.

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A warming climate is driving salmon to switch streams https://www.popsci.com/environment/salmon-glaciers/ Sat, 08 Apr 2023 23:00:00 +0000 https://www.popsci.com/?p=532250
He’s seen insects move in, alders and willows spring up, and spawning fish arrive in thousands.
He’s seen insects move in, alders and willows spring up, and spawning fish arrive in thousands. LESLEY EVANS OGDEN

Ecologist Sandy Milner has traveled to Alaska for decades to study the development of streams flowing from melting glaciers.

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He’s seen insects move in, alders and willows spring up, and spawning fish arrive in thousands.
He’s seen insects move in, alders and willows spring up, and spawning fish arrive in thousands. LESLEY EVANS OGDEN

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.

Pushing off from the dock on a boat called the Capelin, Sandy Milner’s small team of scientists heads north, navigating through patchy fog past a behemoth cruise ship. As the Capelin slows to motor through humpback whale feeding grounds, distant plumes of their exhalations rise from the surface on this calm July morning. Dozens of sea otters dot the water. Lolling on backs, some with babes in arms, they turn their heads curiously as the boat speeds by. Seabirds and seals speckle floating icebergs in this calm stretch of Alaska’s Glacier Bay.

Some two hours later, the craft reaches a rocky beach where Wolf Point Creek meets the sea. The creek is a relatively new feature on the landscape: Land at its mouth first became ice-free in the 1940s due to the melting and retreat of a glacier. It took shape through the 1970s, fed by a mountain lake that slowly formed as an isolated chunk of glacier ice slowly melted. Wolf Point Creek is special because almost its entire life span — from the first, sparse trickles melting out under the ice edge to a mature stream ecosystem teeming with aquatic life, from tiny midge larvae to small fish, and with willows and alder weaving along its edges — is known in intimate detail, its history painstakingly documented.

Milner, a stream ecologist at the University of Birmingham in the UK, has returned almost annually to this spot since the 1970s to catalog how life — particularly aquatic invertebrates — has arrived, thrived and changed over time. He was here to observe meager midges in 1977 and to spot a hundred prospecting pink salmon in 1989. A decade later, his team cataloged 10,000 of the fish spawning in Wolf Point Creek.

The creek now supports all manner of creatures that make their living on its riches, from tiny algae to midges to salmon and their predators. Salmon will soon be arriving, and some of their ardent fans are here today. As National Park Service boat captain Justin Smith idles the motor, preparing to let the crew wade ashore, he casually mentions that a mother brown bear and cubs were recently sighted. Sweeping the crescent-shaped shoreline from left to right with binoculars, he stops and announces, “There she is,” pointing to the far side of the beach. Perhaps 500 meters away, a massive, sandy-brown head chomps on tall grass as three dark brown cubs scamper at her feet.

“Do you still want me to drop you off?” Smith asks. Milner nods and vocalizes consent. The wader-clad crew disembarks into shallow water and heads to the beach, backpacks loaded with collecting gear.

This spot — where Wolf Point Creek meets Muir Inlet — is a dynamic place. Once entirely icebound, Muir Inlet is now a watery expanse over 20 miles long. The inlet is part of the even more massive Glacier Bay that boasts more than a thousand glaciers — at least for now. Over the past 200 years, the glaciers here have receded rapidly as the planet has warmed. Alaskan glaciers are among the fastest-shrinking on Earth, making this place a natural laboratory for ecologists.

Fish photo
Researchers Sandy Milner (right) and Fred Windsor (left) eat lunch on the Capelin as the boat departs Wolf Point Creek for the team’s next sampling site in Glacier Bay National Park.
CREDIT: LESLEY EVANS OGDEN

How will the ecosystems change? Glacial melting is shining a spotlight on the science of ecological succession, the name given to the patterns of arrival of one species after another as they show up in habitats previously lacking in life. There are longstanding ecological debates around succession that the work by Milner and others may help to settle.

And how will salmon adapt? Though wild salmon are known for their homing instincts, not all return to their natal streams. That’s important in a warming climate, because the fish that stray can colonize new streams that form where glaciers are melting — places long covered in ice. As streams in traditional salmon spawning grounds to the south become increasingly inhospitable with warming waters, some fish are, indeed, dispersing to new regions, filling new niches that open up.

New streams are creating conundrums, too, including for Indigenous people whose livelihoods depend heavily upon salmon. Some now find salmon shifting to spawn in places unprotected from development. Tribes and nations may be excluded from fishing access to these new habitats, even when their rights, on paper, are legally enshrined.

Succession: An ecological obsession

Milner first arrived in Glacier Bay in 1977 as a University of London graduate student in his mid-twenties, lured by a Time-Life book about the region and captivated by the opportunity to witness a fundamental ecological process in real time. He wanted to better understand how natural systems gradually change: how species arrive, survive and persist to form communities in brand new habitats like these young streams, how one community gives way to another.

Known as primary succession, this process of change is one of the oldest concepts in ecology, engrossing scientists since the discipline’s dawn. After the dramatic 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens, for example, life in the volcanic blast zone started fresh. At first, the catastrophically altered landscape appeared lifeless. But over time, lightweight seeds and insects swept in on the breeze. Seeds grew into plants, attracting more insects, plus birds, deer and elk. Heavier seeds got carried in on droppings or feathers. Today, some of that formerly barren landscape is regaining its forest.

Fish photo
A historic painting of Muir Glacier, circa 1887/1888. Today, the glacier terminates on land and an alder- and willow-flanked creek meanders down to the waters of Muir Inlet.
CREDIT: THOMAS HILL / PUBLIC DOMAIN

When the young Milner first arrived, there had been no studies of stream succession, he says. Glacier Bay seemed the perfect spot to start such a project. Today, his is the longest-running research program in Glacier Bay National Park, a protected area of mountain peaks, lush temperate rainforest and shifting glaciers melting into cavernous fjords. This dynamic birthplace for new waterways is the site of one of the longest continuous studies anywhere of stream community formation.

Milner has returned most summers since then, missing one to get married, one when he was in Japan and two when travel was pandemically paused. Documenting the aquatic invertebrates lurking on Wolf Point Creek’s riverbed each year and sampling less frequently in other streams of various ages, he has cataloged the minutiae of incremental change for more than four decades. His silver-stubbled face and slow gait underscore this passage of time as he wades the stream again on this summer’s day.

A century ago, the beach where we stand bore the weight of the ice of Muir Glacier, thousands of feet thick. But even then, Muir was in rapid retreat. An 1888 note in the journal Science reported that this ice river was melting out at a rate of 65 to 72 feet per day. As late as the 1980s, tourists on boats could see icebergs from Muir Glacier calving into the bay, but today Muir no longer meets the tidewater. It terminates on land, about a mile from the sea.

As our team plods upstream from the creek’s mouth, the stream is flanked by alder and cottonwood trees. When Milner first walked here, “there was no vegetation,” he says. Now its banks support a forest. To get upstream, we forcefully maneuver through dense brush. Shouting is futile, inaudible above the rushing river, so Milner periodically sounds an air horn, warning wildlife of human interlopers.

Fish photo
En route to sample stream invertebrates at Wolf Point Creek, Sandy Milner’s team navigates through a dense alder thicket. Lush vegetation has grown up in the decades since Muir glacier melted and receded.
CREDIT: LESLEY EVANS OGDEN

So much has changed here, a point underlined as we push and shove our way through eye- and leg-poking alder thickets. First detected in the stream after the stream mouth emerged from glacial ice were larvae of chironomids, cold-loving midges. Later, other invertebrates came. Arriving in the 1980s were mayflies, stoneflies and caddis flies; stream ecologists call this trio EPT, from the orders Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Tricoptera.

The first plant life to establish near the stream was a few mats of mountain avens, a hairy, nitrogen-fixing Dryas plant with delicate white-petaled flowers, related to the rose. On top of the Dryas mats, Milner later found clumps of tiny alder and willow trees establishing themselves. Young cottonwood and Sitka spruce began taking hold on the wider floodplain. What happens in the stream and beside it is tightly linked, Milner found: Willow catkins are food for caddis flies, and alder roots provide chironomids with safe homes.

The year of 1987 brought a critical event, the first appearance of fish — insect larva-loving Dolly Varden char. Two years later, coho and pink salmon showed up.

The salmon sighting came in 1989, during a regionally massive pink run. That year, a hundred pink salmon found their way to the stream. “Then it really took off,” says Milner. By 1997, he counted more than 10,000 spawning pinks. Now they consistently return to Wolf Point Creek in the thousands. Pink salmon don’t need food in the stream in order to establish, explains Milner, just a place to lay their eggs, since their fry make their way straight to the ocean after emergence. But other salmon, like sockeye, need streams that lead up to lakes, and food in the water that feeds their babies, like plankton or insects. Wolf Point Creek’s waterfalls more than 30 meters high mean sockeye will never live here. They need more gradual, navigable paths to lakes in order to feel at home.

Fish photo
Pink salmon arrive to spawn in an Alaskan stream. Sandy Milner first spotted pink salmon at Wolf Point Creek in 1989. Since then, salmon numbers have exploded.
CREDIT: KENTARO YASUI, USFWS / FLICKR

After more than an hour of wading and bushwhacking, we arrive at the sampling site. Our quarry are macroinvertebrates — backboneless animals like midge, mayfly and stonefly that are visible to the naked eye.

Ecologist Fred Windsor of Wales’ Cardiff University, Milner’s former graduate student, is brimming with excitement to see this legendary stream for the first time. He teaches National Park intern Sofia Elizarraras to brace a square-rimmed sampling trap against streambed rocks. Reaching down, long gloves protecting arms from frigid waters, Windsor gently shakes and rubs trapped rocks to dislodge clinging creatures. The flow of water sweeps the harvest to the back of the net. Windsor takes the catch to Milner, seated on gravel nearby. Milner extracts the critters and their twiggy sludge, then preserves and bags them.

EPT are today’s main haul. These are useful indicator species of stream health and community complexity, explains Windsor, because of their sensitivity to things like water flow, temperature and oxygen. Back at the lab, Milner will microscopically examine them and identify the species.

In the Rockies, more change

Living things farther down the ecological food chain also change as streams mature. Almost a thousand kilometers to the south, ecologist Karson Sudlow clambers the Rocky Mountains examining algal diversity in glacial streams.

Sudlow lights up about algae. “Algae are amazing!” he says. At multiple stream sites, his team has an unusual technique for systematically scrubbing rocks to collect them: an electric toothbrush run through one 30-second brushing cycle. Scrubbings are rinsed into a tray, then poured into a storage vial for microscopy and analysis.

Streams coming straight from glaciers are cold, nutrient-poor, turbid and fast-flowing. “All of this creates an ecosystem that is extremely hard to live in,” says Sudlow. So these newborn streams have very limited algal diversity, supporting mostly diatoms — species of small, single-celled algae with glass-like silica shells. Clinging tightly to rocks, “they can handle the worst conditions,” says Sudlow. Streams less influenced by glaciers have more diverse communities with more green algae and cyanobacteria, but with fewer cold-tolerant diatoms. Glacial streams become more akin to them as the ice recedes. Sudlow’s research underlines what others have found, too: Over time, as glaciers melt and streams warm, we gain stream diversity.

Fish photo
Karson Sudlow and Simonne Tremblay examine algae clinging to a rock in a glacial stream coming off the Bow Glacier in Banff National Park, Canada.
CREDIT: LESLEY EVANS OGDEN

These Rocky Mountain streams melting out from glacial ice, with algae their main life form, may be what Wolf Point Creek was like in its very early days, before Milner arrived.

There are gaping holes in our understanding of ecological change after glaciers recede, says zoologist Gentile Francesco Ficetola of the Università degli Studi di Milano in Milan, Italy, who co-wrote an article about the ecology of glacial retreat in the 2021 Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. His own work in the Alps, where the shrinking and disappearance of glaciers has been hard to ignore, is that “every glacier is different,” he says. Compounding the challenges of understanding ecological patterns as glaciers disappear is that the ecosystems that form afterwards are complex, like puzzles that build over time by assembly of thousands of pieces.

And though plants, microbes, insects and larger organisms all interact, field studies — for practical reasons — tend to focus on just one puzzle piece, generating an incomplete understanding of the ecosystem as a whole.

Succession as a theory has changed, and continues to change. As Ficetola explains, early work on succession was largely focused on plants. And it was proposed that succession led eventually to a “climax” community — a single stable endpoint based on an area’s climate and geography. Ecologists today recognize that succession is less predictable. Three different successional models dating back to the 1970s were put forward to explain how communities change. Early on, ecologists ardently defended one model over another, but today it seems that these models, and newer ones, are not mutually exclusive or universally supported: Some arrivals fit one model and others, another.

One model, facilitation, argues that early arriving “pioneer” species modify the environment to make it more suitable for later colonizers. Pioneer species do this by increasing habitat suitability and likelihood of survival. For example, when a glacier first recedes there is no soil, explains Ficetola. So if an arriving plant or microorganism can convert nitrogen from the abundant but inaccessible nitrogen gas in the air to its biologically useful ammonia form, this pioneer can facilitate establishment of more plant species later on because of improved soil nutrition. Those later species often, in turn, make life tougher for the pioneers.

A second model, inhibition, suggests that early colonizers make the environment less suitable for later arrivals. In this model, species that reproduce quickly and disperse easily are likely to get there first, but which of those organisms win real estate over time is a matter of chance. An example of inhibition in action is early-arriving plants that release growth inhibitors into the soil.

In a third model, tolerance, interactions among arriving organisms are more neutral. Any species, and not specifically pioneers, can start the succession. Under tolerance, later arriving species are more likely to successfully establish and persist if they can live with limited resources, enabling them to outcompete or exist alongside species already there. So succession under the tolerance model sees the steady arrival of species over time, with a progressive tolerance of incoming species to the changing environment.

Fish photo
Karson Sudlow and colleagues dislodge algae from rocks in a glacial stream. They use an electric toothbrush for a systematically timed scrub over a rectangular template.
CREDIT: LESLEY EVANS OGDEN

Milner has found that what matters most to stream life gradually shifts. Physical factors are the most important at first — especially water temperature and channel stability. Once the water warms, other factors may come into play. And once vegetation takes hold near the stream, it helps to buffer changes in water flow and to facilitate the development of stream ecosystems.

His catalog of the shifts in macroinvertebrates in Wolf Point Creek, made through season after season of trapping and painstaking lab microscopy for identification, provides what he and colleague Anne Robertson argue is a rare example of tolerance.

If facilitation had been occurring in Wolf Point Creek, there would have been more extinctions — species disappearing. If inhibition had been a major driver, the number of species would have remained stable or increased only slowly with stream development. That’s not what they found. Instead, they found marked increases in diversity, with few extinctions. With the exception of the stream’s cold-tolerant first colonizers that disappeared due to competition as waters warmed, Milner’s team found that once organisms arrived, they tended to stay, unless disturbed by a dramatic event such as periodic flooding.

On the second day of fieldwork in Glacier Bay, we head to another stream Milner has studied over decades. Rush Point Creek is more than two centuries old, much older than Wolf Point Creek. This stream lost its glacial source long ago. Unlike Wolf Point, it has no high-elevation lake moderating its drainage. That makes it prone to severe flooding, and as we wade up its course, the carnage is obvious. This stream is strewn with mammoth conifers felled into the water as the banks were violently undercut.

Lakes above streams, including those fed by glaciers, help to regulate whether stream communities can remain stable and maintain the species gains made little by little. Flooding, Milner and colleagues found, acts like a stream time machine. A major flood in 2005 at Wolf Point Creek washed out species and reset stream life to a simpler community like the one in existence 15 years earlier. For salmon, though they’re adapted to breed in fast-flowing streams, the extreme flows of floods can scour and wash away eggs and tiny fish.

Milner’s team has found that the timing of arrival for species in a new stream is partly due to chance, and partly due to distance from a source. It took nearly half a century after stream formation for salmon to colonize Wolf Point Creek, for example, but they colonized another stream in Milner’s study more quickly. At Stonefly Creek, which emerged from a glacier in the 1970s, pink salmon were counted just 10 years after stream formation.

Milner also discovered that the arrival of fish represents a pivotal moment for new streams. To spawn, salmon dig small depressions called redds to lay their eggs. This disturbance can evict some invertebrates, like chironomids, from streambed homes, but favor persistence of others, like blackfly larvae, which spin silken tethers to affirm their rocky grip in fast-flowing waters. And because salmon die after spawning, their carcasses contribute nutrients like nitrogen to the stream, especially when trapped by woody debris that falls in as bankside trees mature.

Ghosts of last year’s salmon bounty are still visible along Wolf Point Creek as skeletons and bones in the gravel bars. Nutrients that salmon bring after formative years in the ocean stimulate algae production, supporting an entire community of algae, invertebrates, small fish and bigger fish — all the way up the food chain.

Fish photo
Salmon bones from the previous spawning season dot the stones alongside Wolf Point Creek.
CREDIT: LESLEY EVANS OGDEN

Climate change, salmon and the new north

As climate change marches on, how widespread are new salmon habitats in deglaciating areas? Kara Pitman and Jon Moore at Simon Fraser University, along with 10 colleagues including Milner, examined exactly that. With a computer model, they digitally peeled back the ice from 46,000 glaciers in southern British Columbia, Canada and south-central Alaska. Taking into account ice thickness, they could examine the land terrain underneath and apply mechanical movements and physics to see what future streams might have a path with a gradient not too steep for salmon to swim up.

They estimated from this exercise that glacier retreat will create over 6,000 kilometers of new Pacific salmon streams by 2100. That could mean, within the area that they studied, 27 percent more salmon habitat compared with today. “We hear so much about loss of salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest,” says Milner. But melting glaciers are “creating unique opportunities for new salmon populations to form.”

Will salmon habitat gains outweigh habitat losses? “This is a key piece in understanding salmon futures,” says Pitman. Of course, salmon success depends on more than just the freshwater habitats where they spawn — conditions in the oceans where they pass their adult lives matter keenly, and those waters are warming too, bringing with them the ecological turbulence and uncertainty of climate change. But broadly speaking, it appears as though salmon that spawn in some northern regions like Glacier Bay are poised to be climate change winners, gaining more streams to breed in following their youthful years at sea.

Northern gains will be paralleled by southern losses, though. Indeed, farther south in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California, salmon streams are already rapidly warming, leaving cold-loving salmon like sockeye physiologically challenged. And on a local scale, that may make a food source people once relied on reliable no longer.

Some 300 miles to the south of Wolf Point Creek, that’s a reality already being experienced by the Gitanyow First Nation in northern British Columbia. The Gitanyow have long depended on the sockeye salmon spawning habitat of the Hanna and Tintina rivers, and a land use plan signed in 2012 by the Gitanyow and the British Columbia government protects these streams.

But in the decade since protection, salmon preferences have changed. In three out of eight recent summers, returning salmon have found the Hanna and Tintina rivers dry. Now streams to the west, like Strohn Creek, fed by the rapidly melting Bear glacier near British Columbia’s Alaskan border, provide new, more favorable spawning habitat. So salmon have begun going there instead.

“We’ve just completed a glacier study in our entire territory,” to examine changes expected by 2050 or 2100 due to glaciers melting, said Chief Malii/Glen Williams, Gitanyow president, in a press conference. The study predicts that Hanna and Tintina creeks will continue to warm and to dry out more frequently. Strohn creek, more shaded and fed by north-facing slopes, is likely to remain cooler into the future.

Recognizing this salmon shift, and to safeguard this increasingly important habitat for salmon and food security, in August 2021 the Gitanyow declared the Meziadin Indigenous Protected Area to protect the region including Strohn Creek. But the British Columbia government has yet to recognize this new protected area or fulfill the Gitanyow request to prohibit mining near the stream. Retreating ice also exposes tantalizing mineral riches that mining companies have their sights on.

Succession: The human story

Back at the beach, our days of sampling complete, we board the Capelin to head back to base. En route, Smith points to a recently fractured mountainside; evidence of a gigantic landslide. As glaciers recede here, it’s not just new streams that form. Sometimes the underlying land, no longer covered in ice, gives way to instabilities as water and gravity take their toll. Melting glaciers are changing our world in myriad ways.

Glaciers are, by nature, on the move, I’m told by glaciologist Taryn Black, a recent doctoral graduate at the University of Washington who studied glaciers in Greenland and Alaska. People often think of them as moving slowly, she says, at “a glacial pace,” but they are actually really dynamic. And the dynamics of glacial advancement and recession have profoundly affected human ecology.

For thousands of years, from time immemorial, Huna Tlingit people lived year-round on the rich lands that today lie in Glacier Bay National Park. Khudeiyatoon/Darlene See, cultural program manager for the Huna Indian Association, explains that the land near National Park headquarters and the dock at Bartlett Cove, where we set off on our boat trip, was once wide open marshland by a key salmon river. “We had a year-round village there,” she says, called S’é Shuyee (Edge of the Glacial Silt).

“In the mid-1700s, the glacier came down and destroyed the village site,” says See. The Huna Tlingit fled. By 1750, the peak of the Little Ice Age, Glacier Bay was entirely filled with ice. From their new home 30 nautical miles southeast in Xunniyaa (Hoonah) meaning “sheltered from the north wind,” scouts would periodically check the glacial ice, says See. In the early to mid-1800s, Huna Tlingit did return to Sít’ Eeti Gheeyí, the “Bay in Place of the Glacier,” finding a land transformed.

But the declaration of a national monument, then national park, kept the Huna Tlingit out. National parks were a conception for protecting wildlife and plants, not Indigenous people.

Fish photo
This photograph shows the interior of Xunaa Shuká Hít, the Huna Ancestors’ House that was built in a joint venture between the National Park Service and Huna Tlingit, near Glacier Bay National Park Headquarters.
CREDIT: LESLEY EVANS OGDEN

The icy relationship between the National Park Service and the Huna Tlingit has begun to warm with collaboration on building projects like commemorative totems and the park’s Huna Tribal House. Though the tribe still requires the park’s permission to harvest traditional foods like the salmon that are recolonizing streams on their ancestral homeland, there have been small advances — such as reestablishment of the annual Huna Tlingit harvest of glaucous-winged gull eggs.

As our boat approaches the dock at Bartlett Cove one last time, Milner is reticent when asked whether he will return next year. He is equipping Windsor, his young protégé, to succeed him and take this project into the future. I ask Milner why his research matters. “It helps us better understand one of the most fundamental concepts in ecology,” he says. Yet it is much more than that. Succession following glacial retreat is not only a scientific curiosity. It affects countless living beings, including ourselves.

Glaciers are transient. Climate is changing. Some streams are drying up. Others are forming. In our warming world, there is much still to learn about the enigmatic ways succession ushers in new life, upturning our ancient ways.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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