March 23, 2009
Sixty-five million years ago, life on Earth was sorely tested. One or more catastrophic events including a massive asteroid strike and increased volcanic activity, created wildfires on a global scale and dust clouds that cut the planet's surface off from the sun's vital light. The majority of…
March 21, 2009
Walking on two legs, or bipedalism, immediately sets us apart form other apes. It frees our arms for using tools and weapons and is a key part of our evolutionary success. Scientists have put forward a few theories to explain how our upright gait evolved, but the 'savannah theory' is by far the…
March 20, 2009
There are so many fascinating stories about parasitic wasps that they have become a regular feature in this blog. Usually, their prey come off poorly in these tales, with caterpillars being reduced to little more than living, paralysed larders for macabre wasp grubs. But not always - some hosts don…
March 19, 2009
Want to know how much you'd enjoy an experience? You're better off asking someone who has been through it, even if they're a complete stranger, than to find out information for yourself. This advice comes from Daniel Gilbert from Harvard University, who espoused it in his superb book Stumbling on…
March 18, 2009
What happens when you find a feathered dinosaur that really isn't meant to have feathers? That's the question set by a spectacular new fossil that adds a confusing dimension to the origin of feathers.
The concept of dinosaurs with feathers is no longer surprising. Birds certainly have them and…
March 17, 2009
The giant cephalopods (squids and octopuses) of the deep sea have captured the imagination for centuries. But despite our fascination with these creatures, they are still enigmas, their behaviour illuminated only by the occasional lucky video or the presence of scars on animals they fight with. For…
March 16, 2009
Farmers and herders have known for centuries that herds of cattle have an uncanny ability to all point in the same direction. Last year, a group of German and Czech scientists discovered the reason behind this alignment - unbeknownst to humans for thousands of years of domestication, these animals…
March 16, 2009
The effect that violent films and games have on our minds, and the implications for their place in society, has been a source of much heated debate. Now, a new study looks set to fan the flames even further. Several studies have found that violent media can desensitise people to real acts of…
March 14, 2009
Have you ever looked at a piano keyboard and wondered why the notes of an octave were divided up into seven white keys and five black ones? After all, the sounds that lie between one C and another form a continuous range of frequencies. And yet, throughout history and across different cultures, we…
March 13, 2009
The songs of birds certainly sound beautiful to our ears but listen closely and you'll hear a world of conflict and subterfuge. Take the Preuvian warbling antbird (Hypocnemis peruviana). Males and females live in pairs and they will defend their territories from other duos by singing beautifully…
March 12, 2009
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about propranolol, a drug that can erase the emotion of fearful memories. When volunteers take the drug before recalling a scary memory about a spider, it dulled the emotional sting of future recollections. It's not, however, a mind-wiping pill in the traditional…
March 11, 2009
Tigers can no more change their stripes than leopards can change their spots. That's a good thing too, for their unchanging patterns, as individually distinct as a human fingerprint, make it easier to track any single tiger over time.
That process is about to become even simpler with a computer…
March 10, 2009
We won an award
Some of you may know that I write for another blog - Cancer Research UK's Science Update blog - as part of my day job. There, I write about new cancer research together with my colleagues Kat and Henry. Tonight, we won a Science Communication award from the Association of Medical…
March 10, 2009
You're looking at the face of a new species of fish and judging by the two fearsome fangs, you'll probably understand how it got its scientific name - Danionella dracula. The teeth do look terrifying but fortunately, their owner is a tiny animal just 15 millimetres long. Ralf Britz from London's…
March 10, 2009
If you wanted to turn a rat into a fearless critter, unfazed by cats or bigger rats, the best way would be to neutralise a small pair of tiny structures in its brain called the dorsal premammillary nuclei, orPMD. According to new research by Simone Motta at the University of Sao Paolo, these small…
March 9, 2009
Pregnant women are generally advised to avoid drinking alcohol and for good reason - exposing an unborn baby to alcohol can lead to a range of physical and mental problems from hyperactivity and learning problems to stunted growth, abnormal development of the head, and mental retardation.
But…
March 9, 2009
In 1997, Swedish inspectors found several stockpiles of missiles hidden in a local zoo. Apparently, the arsenal had been gathered together for the express purpose of being used against civilians. And who was the mastermind behind this collection? A 19-year-old chimpanzee called Santino.
Santino…
March 8, 2009
Imagine that you're driving along a country lane. As often happens, the road suddenly transforms from a well-paved street to a pothole-ridden nightmare. As your suspension and your stomachs start to tire, your friends in the back suddenly force you to stop the car.
To your amazement, they jump…
March 7, 2009
Most of us could easily distinguish between spoken English and French. But could you tell the difference between an English and a French speaker just by looking at the movements of their lips? It seems like a difficult task. But surprising new evidence suggest that babies can meet this challenge…
March 5, 2009
The world of genetics is filled with stories that are as gripping as the plot of any thriller. Take the IRGM gene - its saga, played out over millions of years, has all the makings of a classic drama. Act One: setting the scene. By duplicating and diverging, this gene thrived in the cells of most…
March 5, 2009
The nice thing about writing features is that they're often solicited miles in advance so I can write something, totally forget about it and then be surprised when I open my weekly copy of New Scientist to find my name in a byline.
This week's issue has a feature by me entitled "Beyond east and…
March 4, 2009
Earlier this year, I wrote about how the human obsession with size is reshaping the bodies of other species at an incredible pace. Unlike natural predators that cull the sick, weak and unfit, human fishermen prize the biggest catches and throw the smallest ones back in.
As a result, fish and other…
March 3, 2009
In the Goualougo Triangle of the Republic of Congo, a chimpanzee is hungry for termites. Its prey lives within fortress-like nests, but the chimp knows how to infiltrate these. It plucks the stem from a nearby arrowroot plant and clips any leaves away with its teeth, leaving behind a trimmed,…
March 2, 2009
I live in London. According to Google Analytics, 96% of this blog's readers make their homes in a different city and 91% live in another country altogether. The fact that most of you are reading this post at all is a symptom of the globalised state of the 21st century.
Through telecommunications,…
March 1, 2009
If you've ever complained about having bad sex, you really have no idea. Human women may have to complain about poor stamina or incompetent technique but the female seed beetle (or bean weevil; Callosobruchus maculatus) has to contend with her partner's nightmarish penis - an organ covered in hard…
February 28, 2009
Conspiracy theories, TV thrillers and airport novels are full of the idea that the world is secretly run by a hidden society. We have come up with many names for this shadowy cabal of puppet-masters - the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and more. But a better name would be 'parasites'.
Every animal and…
February 27, 2009
Both objects and behaviour can be described as disgusting. The term could equally apply to someone who cheats other people out of money as it could to the sight of rancid food or the taste of sour milk. That's not just a linguistic quirk. Some scientists believe that the revulsion we feel towards…
February 26, 2009
During elections, what affects our decision to vote for one politician over another? We'd like to think that it's an objective assessment of many different factors including their various policies, their values, their record and so on. But in reality, voters are just not that rational.
In the past…
February 25, 2009
Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia in the world, affecting more than 26 million people. Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (CJD), another affliction is far less common, but both conditions share many of the same qualities. They are fatal within a few years of diagnosis, they are…
February 25, 2009
Imagine that a massive hole appeared in a wall of your house, and you'd decided to fix it yourself. You head over to a DIY store and load up on plaster, tools and paint and look forward to many hard and tedious hours of work. If that seems like a chore, you might get some perspective by considering…
