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The post Weekly Science Picks appeared first on Australian Science.
]]>Both women, after being given rather distasteful treatment, decided to go public with the matter. This has rightfully sparked some quite heated discussions across the online science writing community. The entire matter is summarised quite well by Priya Shetty at the Huffington Post and Laura Helmuth at Slate. I’d recommend reading Dr Isis’ perspective on all of this too. My personal opinion is that the behaviour of “Ofek” at biology online (who has been fired since the incident in question) and of Zivkovic (who has since resigned from the board of directors and Science Online) is an utter disgrace and humiliation to all of us involved in the science communication community. While it’s reassuring to know that neither of these recent events has occurred without repercussions, it raises the huge concern of precisely how often events like these occur and simply go unreported.
I feel it’s of prime importance to all of us to show our support to Lee and Byrne, not only for their sake but for the sake of all others out there who’ve been similarly marginalised. They need to know that they have our support and that we will listen if they choose to make the remarkably difficult decision to speak out about experiences like these. That is, after all, what a community is all about. Personally, I’d like all of online scicomms to be an open and welcoming forum for discussion of all kinds. I’m not sure if I feel it can be, knowing that things like this are occurring beneath the surface, but I truly hope that such nasty incidents can someday be a thing of the past.
Now… Scandals aside, there have also been some rather remarkable happenings this week in science.
Perhaps most remarkable is the news that amputees may be able to have their sense of touch restored with technology. Much like Luke Skywalker in The Return of the Jedi, people left disabled due to amputations may soon be able to not only control prosthetic limbs directly with their brains, but also feel them. Needless to say, the implications of this are just wonderful!
In my lab at the University of Chicago, we’re working to better understand how the sensory nervous system captures information about the surface, shape and texture of objects and conveys it to the brain. Our latest research creates a blueprint for building touch-sensitive prosthetic limbs that one day could convey real-time sensory information to amputees and tetraplegics via a direct interface with the brain.
Recognising threats is a vital skill in the natural world, and has been a mainstay of evolution in animals since the Precambrian era. And some creatures have evidently gone to great lengths. Latest research shows that the rainbowfish, a fairly humble seeming species, can smell predators when they’re still embryos, a mere 4 days after fertilisation!
Jennifer Kelley, a scientist with the University of Western Australia, explains that predator recognition is required at such an early age because responding to predator cues is absolutely crucial for early survival. For example, detection of “alarm cues” suggests that other fish in the vicinity have been attacked by predators.
Seeming like something taken straight out of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, blood has been discovered inside a fossilised mosquito for the first time ever. While most likely not from a dinosaur, it’s fascinating to finally have concrete proof of such an audacious science fiction concept.
Even if it doesn’t bring us closer to getting an amusement park of death and delight, this is a pretty exciting discovery. We never knew that blood could last so long inside of a mosquito! What other kinds of surprises are hiding underneath Montana?
And finally, as an avid Instagram user myself, I find it rather interesting that a study has found that photographing your dinner can actually make the meal less enjoyable. While this doesn’t look to be a particularly big study, it exposes an interesting little facet of human psychology. And for the record, no, I don’t normally Instagram my food. Though I know a few people who do.
Basically, when we look at photos of say, fish and chips over and over before we eat it, our senses become ‘bored’. The photos ruin your appetite by making you feel like you’ve already experienced eating the fish and chips before… This sensation is measured in levels of satiation, a scientific term for the ‘drop in enjoyment with repeated consumption’. Consumption, in this case can just be viewing a photo of food, not actually eating a food.
And finally, let’s end with something pretty. For some gorgeous botanical images, Botanartist is a brand new blog full of some really rather charming photographs of plants, both close up and extremely close up through a microscope. If you want to enjoy some cool macro photography and scientific explanations of what you’re seeing, you’ll probably find all of this just as marvellous as I do!
I hope everyone has a great week. Until next time, DFTBA and stay curious!
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The post Rare echidna species not so extinct after all? appeared first on Australian Science.
]]>100 years ago, biologists worked a lot differently to the way they do today. Back then, it was common practice to travel to remote places and collect specimens – by way of hunting animals, shooting them, and getting a taxidermist to stuff them. While this bloodthirsty pokemon attitude may seem ghastly to our modern sensibilities, it was once simply the way things were done, and many such specimens are still on display in museums. Though it should be added that such specimen collecting is widely outlawed today.
Nonetheless, one such specimen was found in London’s Natural History Museum. The creature had been “collected” in Australia in 1901, scientifically described, and had subsequently been stored and forgotten about entirely. I have to wonder what those researchers may have done if they’d realised the true significance of this unassuming little creature.
The fascinating thing is really that this little preserved creature is the keystone for the entire study. Just one single specimen. However, it was very well documented and most certainly came from Australia. Its discovery was quite serendipitous too, when zoologist Kristofer Helgen from the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, was paying a visit to the London Natural History Museum.
From the description it was tagged with, this echidna had been found on Mount Anderson, in sparsely populated Northwest Australia. Following up the find, researchers decided to investigate further. In West Kimberley, they spoke to some aboriginal communities where people recounted stories of how their parents used to hunt echidnas which were much larger than the others. Using photographs, they identified those large echidnas as the same long-beaked echidna species still found in New Guinea.
So the big question is, are long-beaked echidnas still found in Australia today? This discovery does give us some more information about how adaptable these spiny little animals are; long-beaked echidnas can evidently survive in both arid Australian scrub land and lush New Guinea rainforests. Until a living animal is found, it’s impossible to make any definite statements. And finding them is no easy task. They’re nocturnal creatures, and the known populations of them in New Guinea are difficult to find. All the same, conservationists can be hopeful that long-beaked echidnas may not be extinct in Australia just yet.
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The post Social networks and culture among dolphins appeared first on Australian Science.
]]>Abstract
Animal tool use is of inherent interest given its relationship to intelligence, innovation and cultural behaviour. Here we investigate whether Shark Bay bottlenose dolphins that use marine sponges as hunting tools (spongers) are culturally distinct from other dolphins in the population based on the criteria that sponging is both socially learned and distinguishes between groups. We use social network analysis to determine social preferences among 36 spongers and 69 non-spongers sampled over a 22-year period while controlling for location, sex and matrilineal relatedness. Homophily (the tendency to associate with similar others) based on tool-using status was evident in every analysis, although maternal kinship, sex and location also contributed to social preference. Female spongers were more cliquish and preferentially associated with other spongers over non-spongers. Like humans who preferentially associate with others who share their subculture, tool-using dolphins prefer others like themselves, strongly suggesting that sponge tool-use is a cultural behaviour.
In Shark Bay, Australia, a subset of the community of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.) procure and wear basket sponges on their beaks while lightly scouring the seafloor for prey in deep (8–13 m) channels (Fig. 1)9, 10, 11, 12. Sponging is the best-documented case of tool use by wild cetaceans and is unique among wildlife in that only a small subset of the population uses tools. This exceptional case of tool-use heterogeneity allows us to test for preferential affiliation based on tool-use. To date, 55 dolphins have been documented habitually using sponges in the eastern gulf of Shark Bay12, although sponging also occurs in the western gulf13. Only calves of spongers become spongers (24 offspring to date), but 8 offspring of spongers never adopted sponging. Sponging is a solitary activity, but calves accompany their mothers during sponging and vertical social learning is strongly implicated as the primary mechanism of transmission10, 11, 14, consistent with mitochondrial DNA analysis13, 15
Full paper link.
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The post Social networks and culture among dolphins appeared first on Australian Science.
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