The Divine Breath, The Grail, and The Light of the Soul, c. 1930, by Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, from the Meditation Drawing Screenprints series © The Eranos Foundation, Ascona, Switzerland. Courtesy The Gallery of Everything, London
Ecologists were concerned about the colonization of the Magdalena River by Pablo Escobar’s hippos, five thousand fecal samples collected over eight years in eighteen countries suggested a higher than expected degree of genetic connection among chimpanzees, and data from the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program indicated that the lungs of green tree frogs provide auditory spectral contrast enhancement. Common pipistrelle bats, but not soprano pipistrelle bats, appear to be more active around wind turbines. A degraded montane rainforest in Madagascar was found to be home to the world’s smallest reptile, a nano-chameleon, whereas micro-pigs proved only marginally competent at video games. Extreme temperature changes will cause the hearts of rabbits, but not those of alligators, to fibrillate. Saltwater crocodile sperm become increasingly motile in the post-testicular stage, as they transit the epididymis. Veterinary pathologists examining a camelpox outbreak among male dromedaries in India noted pendulous lips and scrotal pox. Machine learning identified the palm civet and greater horseshoe bat as the species likeliest to transmit novel coronaviruses to humans. Of 180 British pheasants surveyed, 179 had been shot with lead. Captive-bred pheasants with allocentric maze-navigating styles are more likely to seek open habitats when released into the wild than those with egocentric maze-navigating styles, and three species of shark collected from the Chatham Rise were found to glow. Cuttlefish are capable of delaying gratification.
Rivers of gold in the illicit mining pits in Madre de Dios were observed from space, and exploding craters were proliferating in the Siberian permafrost. The trunks of ancient kauri trees indicated that the Laschamp Excursion caused major extinctions. Humans and woolly mammoths coexisted in Vermont. The Pazyryk carpet was made with fermented wool. Shuar households that are more integrated into Ecuador’s market economy have lower levels of pathogen infection and are more easily disgusted. Among thirty-nine countries, Morocco was identified as having the highest risk of SARS-CoV-2 via the fecal contamination of rivers. Dried corn syrup can be used to create edible holograms.
Antipsychotic medication dosage can be reduced by as much as 75 percent if mixed with a crab-derived polymer, and grafting autologous pluripotent stem cells into monkey brains relieves Parkinson’s-related dyskinesia and depression. Duchenne smiles indicate intensity rather than genuineness, and stuttering is linked to astrocytes in the striatum. Male mice have a special sperm variant that poisons competitors in its ejaculatory cohort, but mice with too many such sperm are infertile. Male superb lyrebirds sometimes imitate the alarm call of a mobbing flock while copulating with females, possibly to frighten them into submission. A study of Reddit posts revealed an increased use of pronouns three months before to six months after a romantic relationship. The tendency of daughters to produce divorces manifests only once they enter their teens. Canadian child marriage was being driven underground, and child marriage across much of the world was being encouraged by the pandemic. Italian researchers enumerated the distinguishing features of idiopathic and acquired pedophilia. It is difficult to establish whether cognitive impairment contributes to depression among HIV-positive Zambian children. A Dutch engineer debuted a booth in which people can be tested for respiratory infections by screaming.
