Bats can learn to mimic specific sounds, which puts them into an elite group of animals capable of this. Studying how bats can copy noises could help us learn more about humans’ unique capacity for speech and language. (1)
Listen. Speak.
Oh child.
How did you learn to speak?
If not by listening to people who didn’t know how to?
New research indicates mantis shrimp use path integration to find their way back to their burrows after leaving to seek food or mates. That means they can track their distance and direction from their starting point. A series of creative experiments revealed that to do that, they rely on a hierarchy of cues from the sun, polarized light patterns, and their internal senses. (1)
Going home.
From a place far far away.
Not because you understand what home is.
But because you feel it.
And you know that you do not belong there.
But that home belongs to you.
How can you ever leave the cradle?
If you are still feeling its love?
A shrimp can get it.
But you must do more.
And forget about home.
And live alone.
And some day.
Maybe.
You will remember.
And you will know again.
And only then, home will be home.
And you will go back.
Crying.
Not because you saw home again.
But because you will realize…
That you never left.
Domestic animals’ cuteness and humans’ relatively flat faces may be the work of a gene that controls some important developmental cells, a study of lab-grown human cells suggests.
Some scientists are touting the finding as the first real genetic evidence for two theories about domestication. One of those ideas is that humans domesticated themselves over many generations, by weeding out hotheads in favor of the friendly and cooperative (SN: 7/6/17). As people supposedly selected among themselves for tameness traits, other genetic changes occurred that resulted in humans, like other domesticated animals, having a different appearance than their predecessors. Human faces are smaller, flatter and have less prominent brow ridges than Neanderthal faces did, for instance. (1)
We were wild.
Then we domesticated ourselves.
Only to survive.
And live longer.
And create philosophy.
And find out that we die.
And in the face of death we became rough.
And out of fear of death we became wild…
Longing for peace of mind.
Longing for life.
Look at the lion.
Wandering alone.
Seeking chaos.
Seeking blood.
Watch the Moon.
Die in its claws.
Watch the Sun.
(Its the only thing that can go dark…)
The forest will be empty soon.
And the lonely (wild) sound of crickets will terrify you…
Researchers tried to assess the effect of a new road to the local turtle populations.
“It turns out that turtles liked to hang out (a lot) in fun places like thick patches of greenbrier and multiflora rose,” says Weigand, one of the researchers. “Overall, we found that turtles at both roadless and roadside sites used similar habitats, with high volumes of downed woody debris and thick understory, so our initial hypothesis that the bypass was affecting how turtles selected habitat was not validated”.
However, the researchers discovered something rather puzzling — while many turtles used the open roadside habitat created by the new highway for thermoregulation and nesting, no turtles attempted to cross the road. (1)
We like to run. To things! To run!
And because of that we need to run more! And more!
And adapt! And do more things!
And run! And…
Well, you get the meaning.
But here we are.
Still here.
And all this time…
A turtle was looking at us in amazement…
“Poor rabbit, why do you run so hard?”
Don’t you know that at the end the turtle will win?
Please now.
Stop running.
Come. Come.
Cut my nails please…
If ‘Why?’ is the first question in science, ‘Why not?’ must be a close second. Sometimes it’s worth thinking about why something does not exist. Such as a truly three-legged animal. At least one researcher has been pondering the non-existence of tripeds.
“Almost all animals are bilateral,” he said. The code for having two sides to everything seems to have got embedded in our DNA very early in the evolution of life — perhaps before appendages like legs, fins or flippers even evolved. Once that trait for bilateral symmetry was baked in, it was hard to change.
With our built-in bias to two-handedness, it can be hard to figure out how a truly three-legged animal would work — although that has not stopped science fiction writers from imagining them. Perhaps trilateral life has evolved on Enceladus or Alpha Centauri (or Mars!) and has as much difficulty thinking about two-limbed locomotion as we do thinking about three.
This kind of thought experiment is useful for developing our ideas about evolution, Thomson said. (1)
How fascinating.
Everything started with Nothing.
Then One came into existence.
We are still in the phase of Two…
And there is no way to get any further.
For going further means that we get to three.
And from there infinity is one step away.
Leading to nothing more than zero once again…
But there is no infinity.
There is no two.
Not even One.
For only everything exists.
Infinity!
In the palm of a small kid…
