A lack of sex drives flies to drink
If you’re a single male, this situation may be familiar: you spend the evening trying to pick up women at a bar, but after enough rejections, you end up drowning your...
Scientists and tourists put Antarctica at risk for an invasion
In 2007 and 2008, various groups organized a collaborative program that promoted research in the polar regions. Called the "International Polar Year," it brought scientists, tourists, and research projects to Antarctica......
Why humans have computers, and chimps are stuck with sticks
Humankind has made great conceptual and technological advances since we first walked the Earth. Thanks to our ability to build on others' ideas, we've progressed from the abacus to the...
Never mind the polls—we’re convinced our candidate is going to win
Imagine you’re asked to do something out of the ordinary, like carry around a funny sign for a day or eat a food that doesn’t look so appetizing. Then you’re asked how many other...
For cold water corals, warming is beating acidification to drive a growth spurt
The release of excess CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels, deforestation, and other processes doesn’t just affect our air; it also affects our oceans. The oceans absorb as much as 30 percent of the...
For a creativity boost, think outside the box…literally
It happens in schools, cubicles, and boardrooms everywhere: someone working on a project hits a mental block. A boss or teacher might resort to a cliché like "think outside the box" or "put...
Current social networks may have been present in the earliest modern humans
If you ever sit back and wonder what it might have been like to live in the late Pleistocene, you’re not alone. That's right about when humans emerged from a severe population bottleneck and began...
Bowerbirds woo mates with a lot of effort and a little illusion
Inherently, there’s a problem with the way we view the world: our world is three dimensional, while the image projected onto our retinas is just two dimensional. Therefore, without even being aware of...
Pigeons match primates in number sense
By now, we all know that being called a "birdbrain" isn’t really an insult; birds have been shown to have several higher-order cognitive skills that we previously thought only primates had the brains for. ...
In group decision-making, ignorance promotes democracy
How do groups of animals make collective decisions? Last week, we learned that bees reach consensus by headbutting those with opposing views. But in many other species, the decision-making process is a bit...
Rats show empathy, will come to the aid of other rats
Empathy is the ability to feel others' pain or distress; we feel bad when someone else feels bad. It’s what motivates us to give a few dollars to the homeless man on the corner,...
Bees reach consensus by headbutting dissenters
The human brain is wonderfully complex. Within it, there are billions of neurons, each collecting information and determining whether to respond to it. In some cases, groups of neurons compete for an outcome;...
