Are four treats better than two? Not if you’re a crow picking a favorite snack. Crows and ravens hold off on gobbling a tidbit when they can see a better one coming after a short wait. But they’ll only act with restraint if the future treat is something they like more than what they already…
A version of this post can be found at the AGU GeoSpace Blog and at NASA Landsat Science. California’s persistent drought is forcing grape growers to keep a more-attentive-than-normal eye on their vines, as water shortages and elevated temperatures alter this year’s growing season. “This year, we’re going to have to be more vigilant than ever,”…
Fossilized feces may sound gross, but its hidden lessons about microbes certainly don’t stink. A petrified piece of poop—called a “coprolite”—from the 14th century has unveiled the earliest evidence of antibiotic resistance genes in the human gut microbiome. The findings reveal how these genes were swapped among bacteria long before the era of antibiotics and…
Stacy Lopresti-Goodman, a psychologist the Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, studies individuals who have lived in solitary confinement, and who suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder. But these individuals aren’t human – they’re chimpanzees who lived in biomedical research facilities. One focus of Lopresti-Goodman’s research is trans-species psychology. Researchers in this field find commonalities between the cognitive…
Remember playing “The Oregon Trail” computer game in middle school? As a pioneer leading your family westward in a covered wagon, you hunted virtual deer, rabbits and bison—but not too many. You had to leave enough game animals alive to sustain your party until you reached Oregon. And along the way, you were subject to chance events…
If feet gross you out, skip this post. As I peeled the skin off the arch of my foot, its texture reminded me of plastic wrap. Only it was softer and made a slightly different ripping sound as I separated it from the pink flesh underneath. My boyfriend was not nearly as amused as…
As pressure mounts to extract minerals from the deep sea, a growing group of scientists is calling attention to the gap between mining momentum and scientific know-how. Dozens of mining projects have been proposed, but the regulatory and scientific framework to evaluate these projects is still preliminary, said Cindy Van Dover, a deep-sea biologist at…
Watch a trail of ants march off bearing morsels of food, and you might think the insects are experts at gathering prey. But sometimes the makeup of a food can confound a particular species of supersized ants, new research shows. Bullet ants – giant tropical ants named for the strength of their sting – forage…
He’s grown bigger since the last video. Chico chopped off his own tail a few months back (I think maybe he was upset about being in his cage). Such is a life in captivity for a sailfin dragon as retold on YouTube, where there are over 1,400 videos of Hydrosaurus lizards. The vibrant reptiles are often…
A version of this post can be found at the AGU GeoSpace blog. The polar vortex dropped the jet stream and made large parts of the country miserable this year with freezing cold Arctic air. But, air temperatures over much of the Arctic were above average, and climate change continues to march on. The…
