The Return of the Dire Wolf?

Monday, April 7th, 2025

Time magazine announces the return of the dire wolf:

The dire wolf once roamed an American range that extended as far south as Venezuela and as far north as Canada, but not a single one has been seen in over 10,000 years, when the species went extinct. Plenty of dire wolf remains have been discovered across the Americas, however, and that presented an opportunity for a company named Colossal Biosciences.

Relying on deft genetic engineering and ancient, preserved DNA, Colossal scientists deciphered the dire wolf genome, rewrote the genetic code of the common gray wolf to match it, and, using domestic dogs as surrogate mothers, brought Romulus, Remus, and their sister, 2-month-old Khaleesi, into the world during three separate births last fall and this winter—effectively for the first time de-extincting a line of beasts whose live gene pool long ago vanished. TIME met the males (Khaleesi was not present due to her young age) at a fenced field in a U.S. wildlife facility on March 24, on the condition that their location remain a secret to protect the animals from prying eyes.

The dire wolf isn’t the only animal that Colossal, which was founded in 2021 and currently employs 130 scientists, wants to bring back. Also on their de-extinction wish list is the woolly mammoth, the dodo, and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. Already, in March, the company surprised the science community with the news that it had copied mammoth DNA to create a woolly mouse, a chimeric critter with the long, golden coat and the accelerated fat metabolism of the mammoth.

If all this seems to smack of a P.T. Barnum, the company has a reply. Colossal claims that the same techniques it uses to summon back species from the dead could prevent existing but endangered animals from slipping into extinction themselves.

[…]

It takes surprisingly few genetic changes to spell the difference between a living species and an extinct one. Like other canids, a wolf has about 19,000 genes. (Humans and mice have about 30,000.) Creating the dire wolves called for making just 20 edits in 14 genes in the common gray wolf, but those tweaks gave rise to a host of differences, including Romulus’ and Remus’ white coat, larger size, more powerful shoulders, wider head, larger teeth and jaws, more-muscular legs, and characteristic vocalizations, especially howling and whining.
The dire wolf genome analyzed to determine what those changes were was extracted from two ancient samples—one a 13,000-year-old tooth found in Sheridan Pit, Ohio, the other a 72,000-year-old ear bone unearthed in American Falls, Idaho.

[…]

Colossal’s dire wolf work took a less invasive approach, isolating cells not from a tissue sample of a donor gray wolf, but from its blood. The cells they selected are known as endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), which form the lining of blood vessels. The scientists then rewrote the 14 key genes in the cell’s nucleus to match those of the dire wolf; no ancient dire wolf DNA was actually spliced into the gray wolf’s genome. The edited nucleus was then transferred into a denucleated ovum. The scientists produced 45 engineered ova, which were allowed to develop into embryos in the lab. Those embryos were inserted into the wombs of two surrogate hound mixes, chosen mostly for their overall health and, not insignificantly, their size, since they’d be giving birth to large pups. In each mother, one embryo took hold and proceeded to a full-term pregnancy. (No dogs experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth.) On Oct. 1, 2024, the surrogates birthed Romulus and Remus. A few months later, Colossal repeated the procedure with another clutch of embryos and another surrogate mother. On Jan. 30, 2025, that dog gave birth to Khaleesi.

[…]

“The idea that we could just take a vial of blood, isolate EPCs, culture them, and clone from them, and they have a pretty high cloning efficiency, we think it’s a game changer,” says George Church, Colossal co-founder, and professor of genetics at both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The less invasive cell-sampling process will make the procedure easier on animals, and the fact that Colossal’s methods worked on this early go-round boosts company confidence that they are on track for much broader de-extinction and rewilding.

Borrowing a name from Game of Thrones for a dire wolf makes perfect sense, but Khaleesi? The actual (fictional) dire wolves in the stories are:

Grey Wind, adopted by Robb Stark.
Lady, adopted by Sansa Stark.
Nymeria, adopted by Arya Stark.
Shaggydog, adopted by Rickon Stark.
Summer, adopted by Bran Stark.
Ghost, adopted by Jon Snow.

Scientific purists will note that the “dire wolves” created by Colossal are merely ordinary wolves with a few gene edits. Previous “dire wolves” have been dogs bred to look like wolves.

The medieval house might have been built to specifications approved by a rodent council

Sunday, February 23rd, 2025

Dozens of rodents carry plague, Ed West notes, but it would only become deadly to humans when Yersinia pestis infected the flea of the black rat (Rattus rattus):

Black rats are sedentary homebodies and don’t like to move more than 200 metres from their nests; they especially like living near to humans, which is what makes them so much more dangerous than more adventurous rodents. Black rats have been our not-entirely-welcome companion for thousands of years, and were living near human settlements in the Near East from as far back as 3000 BC; the Romans and their roads helped them spread across the empire and brought them to Britain, the oldest rat remains here being found from the fourth century, underneath Fenchurch Street in London.

Black rats were especially comfortable in the typical medieval house, and while stone buildings became a feature of life in the 12th century, most were still made of wood and straw. In the words of historian Philip Ziegler, ‘The medieval house might have been built to specifications approved by a rodent council as eminently suitable for the rat’s enjoyment of a healthy and care-free life.’ This type of rat is also a very good climber, so could easily live in the thatched roofs which were common then.

Because of its preferred home, the black rat is also called the house rat or ship rat, while the brown rat prefers sewers. On top of this, the animals are fecund to a horrifying degree; one black rat couple can theoretically produce 329 million descendants in three years. So the typical medieval city had lots of rats, and with them came lots of fleas.

Fleas are nature’s great survivors. They can endure in all sorts of conditions, and some have developed the ability to live off bits of bread and only require blood for laying eggs. The black rat flea, called Xenopsylla cheopis, is also exceptionally hardy, able to survive between 6-12 months without a host, living in an abandoned nest or dung, although it is only active when the temperature is between 15-20 centigrade. As John Kelly wrote in The Great Mortality, the Oriental rat flea is ‘an extremely aggressive insect. It has been known to stick its mouth parts into the skin of a living caterpillar and suck out the caterpillar’s bodily fluids and innards’. What a world.

There are two types of flea: fur fleas and nest fleas, and only the former travels with its host rather than remaining in the nest. The rat flea is a fur flea, and while it prefers to stay on its animal of choice, they will jump on to other creatures if they’re nearby – unfortunately, in the 14th century that happened to be us. (In fact, they will attach themselves to most farmyard animals, and only the horse was left alone, because its odour repulses them, for some reason.)

As part of the great and disgusting chain of being, the rats inadvertently brought the plague to humans, but it wasn’t fun for the rats either, or the fleas for that matter. When the hungry flea bites the rat, the pestis triggers a mutation in the flea guts causing it to regurgitate the bacteria into the wound, so infecting the rat. (Yes, it is all a bit disgusting). Y. pestis can be transmitted by 31 different flea species, but only in a rodent does the quantity of bacillus become large enough to block the fleas’s stomach.

The flea therefore feeds more aggressively as it dies of starvation, and its frantic feeding makes the host mammal more overrun with the bacterium. The fleas also multiply as the plague-carrying rat gets sick, so that while a black rat will carry about seven fleas on average, a dying rat will have between 100 and 150. Rats were infected with the disease far more intensely than humans, so that ‘the blood of plague-infected rats contains 500-1,000 times more bacteria per unit of measurement than the blood of plague-infected humans.’

When the disease is endemic to rodents it’s called ‘sylvatic plague’, and when it jumps to humans it’s called ‘bubonic’ plague. For Y pestis to spread, there will ideally be two populations of rodents living side by side: one must be resistant to the disease so that it can play host, and the other non-resistant so the bacteria can feed on it. There needs to be a rat epidemic to cause a human epidemic because it provides a ‘reservoir’ for the disease to survive. Robert Gottfried wrote: ‘Y pestis is able to live in the dark, moist environment of rodent burrows even after the rodents have been killed by the epizootic, or epidemic. Thus as a new rodent community replaces the old one, the plague chain can be revived’. The rat colony will all be dead within two weeks of infection and then the fleas start attacking humans.

The first human cases would typically appear 16-23 days after the plague had arrived in a rat colony, with the first deaths taking place after about 20-28 days. It takes 3-5 days after infection for signs of the disease to appear in humans, and a similar time frame before the victim died. Somewhere between 20-40 per cent of infected people survived, and would thereafter mostly be immune.

What happened next would have been terrifying. ‘From the bite site, the contagion drains to a lymph node that consequently swells to form a painful bubo,’ or swelling lump, ‘most often in the groin, on the thigh, in an armpit or on the neck. Hence the name bubonic plague.’

Let slip the dogs of (urban) war

Sunday, January 5th, 2025

John Spencer shares some lessons from Oketz, the Israel Defense Forces’ Specialized Canine Unit:

The IDF’s military dog program was heavily shaped by the guiding influence of Professor Rudolphina Menzel, a pioneer in canine psychology. By the 1980s, the program became formally institutionalized as Oketz (“sting,” in Hebrew). Since then, the unit has played pivotal roles in every major conflict involving the IDF, from the 2006 Lebanon War to ongoing operations in Gaza.

Oketz sources nearly all of its military working dogs—99 percent—from breeders in Europe. The dogs are primarily Belgian Malinois, with some German Shepherds and Labradors. Each year, the IDF procures approximately seventy dogs, ensuring they are one year old to strike the right balance between developmental maturity and training flexibility. Their rigorous and multiphase training lasts up to two years and emphasizes bonding between handlers and dogs for operational cohesion.

Each Oketz dog is trained for a specialized role. Some are used tactically as attack dogs to neutralize threats in combat, while others work in explosive ordnance detection. Still others work to locate survivors or find the remains of fallen soldiers or civilians in disaster or combat scenarios. Among the most innovative ways Oketz employs its dogs is training some specifically for underground warfare to operating in tunnels, a frequent feature of combat in Gaza.

A part of me wants to see an underground warfare unit using dachshunds — which were of course bred for badger hunting.

During IDF operations in southern Lebanon in the 1990s, one of the primary threats was the widespread presence of improvised explosive devices planted along key routes by Hezbollah. In response, Oketz developed specialized training and equipment to address these challenges. Dogs were equipped with radio packs — essentially, small receivers and speakers that enabled handlers to transmit commands remotely via radio. This allowed the dogs to operate ahead of their handlers, covering long distances and clearing dangerous routes. This capability was essential in the era before the widespread use of cameras on dogs, and it became a hallmark of the IDF’s dog program.

During operations in Gaza over more than a year, small cameras mounted on dogs have provided real-time intelligence, allowing handlers to assess tunnel systems, detect booby traps, and identify combatants without exposing soldiers to direct risk.

This would take the visual of tactical dachshunds to the next level:

The IDF’s introduction of protective rubberized booties for dogs exemplifies the type of adaptation required by the unique challenges of urban environments. Dogs’ paws are tough — much better able to handle rough ground than the feet of humans, of course. So allowing dogs to work without any protective covering for their paws is often not a problem. But urban areas present unique dangers, with IDF dogs facing injuries from rubble, glass, and other hazards in Gaza’s war-torn streets. Equipping them with booties, along with ensuring teams carry essential training tools like bite sleeves, underscores the importance of anticipating and addressing operational challenges.

California ground squirrels eat voles

Thursday, December 19th, 2024

In addition to seeds and nuts, California ground squirrels also eat voles:

“This was shocking,” said Jenn Smith, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. “We had never seen this behavior before.”

For the study, scientists observed squirrels in a regional park near the San Francisco Bay and consistently saw the creatures hunting down voles. Such sightings, recorded in videos and photographs, coincided with a surge in vole numbers at the height of summer. The research, published in the Journal of Ethology, is the first to find a significant number of squirrels eating meat.

California ground squirrel eats vole by Sonja Wild

“I could barely believe my eyes,” said coauthor Sonja Wild, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis. “From then, we saw that behavior almost every day. Once we started looking, we saw it everywhere.”

Analysis of hair DNA identified giraffe, human, oryx, waterbuck, wildebeest, and zebra as prey

Saturday, October 12th, 2024

Researchers recently identified dietary prey species from hair compacted in the teeth of two Tsavo lions that lived during the 1890s in Kenya — the dreaded Man-Eaters of Tsavo:

Analysis of hair DNA identified giraffe, human, oryx, waterbuck, wildebeest, and zebra as prey and also identified hair that originated from lion.

Species Identification from Compacted Hair

A dye that helps to give Doritos their orange hue can also turn mouse tissues transparent

Saturday, September 7th, 2024

A dye that helps to give Doritos their orange hue can also turn mouse tissues transparent, researchers have found:

Applying the dye to the skin of live mice allowed scientists to peer through tissues at the structures below, including blood vessels and internal organs.

[…]

The technique works by changing how body tissues that are normally opaque interact with light. The fluids, fats and proteins that make up tissues such as skin and muscle have different refractive indices (a measurement of how much a material bends light): aqueous components have low refractive indices, whereas lipids and proteins have high ones. Tissues appear opaque because the contrast between these refractive indices causes light to be scattered. The researchers speculated that adding a dye that strongly absorbs light to such tissues could narrow the gap between the components’ refractive indices enough to make them transparent.

[…]

Several candidates emerged, but the team focused on tartrazine, or FD&C Yellow 5, a common dye used in many processed foods. “When tartrazine is dissolved in water, it makes water bend light more like fats do,” says Hong. A tissue containing fluids and lipids becomes transparent when the dye is added, because the light refraction of fluids matches that of lipids.

[…]

The researchers demonstrated tartrazine’s ability to render tissues transparent on thin slivers of raw chicken breast. They then massaged the dye into various areas of a live mouse’s skin. Applying the dye to the scalp allowed the team to scrutinize tiny zigzags of blood vessels; putting it on the abdomen offered a clear view of the mouse’s intestines contracting with digestion, and revealed other movements tied to breathing. The team also used the solution on the mouse’s leg, and were able to discern muscle fibres beneath the skin.

The technique can make tissues transparent only to a depth of around 3 millimetres, so it is currently of limited practical use for thicker tissues and larger animals.

I was immediately reminded of H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man:

“But I went to work—like a slave. And I had hardly worked and thought about the matter six months before light came through one of the meshes suddenly—blindingly! I found a general principle of pigments and refraction—a formula, a geometrical expression involving four dimensions. Fools, common men, even common mathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression may mean to the student of molecular physics. In the books—the books that tramp has hidden—there are marvels, miracles! But this was not a method, it was an idea, that might lead to a method by which it would be possible, without changing any other property of matter—except, in some instances colours—to lower the refractive index of a substance, solid or liquid, to that of air—so far as all practical purposes are concerned.”

“Phew!” said Kemp. “That’s odd! But still I don’t see quite … I can understand that thereby you could spoil a valuable stone, but personal invisibility is a far cry.”

“Precisely,” said Griffin. “But consider, visibility depends on the action of the visible bodies on light. Either a body absorbs light, or it reflects or refracts it, or does all these things. If it neither reflects nor refracts nor absorbs light, it cannot of itself be visible. You see an opaque red box, for instance, because the colour absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest, all the red part of the light, to you. If it did not absorb any particular part of the light, but reflected it all, then it would be a shining white box. Silver! A diamond box would neither absorb much of the light nor reflect much from the general surface, but just here and there where the surfaces were favourable the light would be reflected and refracted, so that you would get a brilliant appearance of flashing reflections and translucencies—a sort of skeleton of light. A glass box would not be so brilliant, nor so clearly visible, as a diamond box, because there would be less refraction and reflection. See that? From certain points of view you would see quite clearly through it. Some kinds of glass would be more visible than others, a box of flint glass would be brighter than a box of ordinary window glass. A box of very thin common glass would be hard to see in a bad light, because it would absorb hardly any light and refract and reflect very little. And if you put a sheet of common white glass in water, still more if you put it in some denser liquid than water, it would vanish almost altogether, because light passing from water to glass is only slightly refracted or reflected or indeed affected in any way. It is almost as invisible as a jet of coal gas or hydrogen is in air. And for precisely the same reason!”

“Yes,” said Kemp, “that is pretty plain sailing.”

“And here is another fact you will know to be true. If a sheet of glass is smashed, Kemp, and beaten into a powder, it becomes much more visible while it is in the air; it becomes at last an opaque white powder. This is because the powdering multiplies the surfaces of the glass at which refraction and reflection occur. In the sheet of glass there are only two surfaces; in the powder the light is reflected or refracted by each grain it passes through, and very little gets right through the powder. But if the white powdered glass is put into water, it forthwith vanishes. The powdered glass and water have much the same refractive index; that is, the light undergoes very little refraction or reflection in passing from one to the other.

“You make the glass invisible by putting it into a liquid of nearly the same refractive index; a transparent thing becomes invisible if it is put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. And if you will consider only a second, you will see also that the powder of glass might be made to vanish in air, if its refractive index could be made the same as that of air; for then there would be no refraction or reflection as the light passed from glass to air.”

“Yes, yes,” said Kemp. “But a man’s not powdered glass!”

“No,” said Griffin. “He’s more transparent!”

The bear had at least 13 adult parasitic worms pulled from its eyes

Thursday, August 22nd, 2024

Researchers have reported the first known infection of an exotic eye worm in a black bear in the US, which was killed in Pennsylvania in November 2023:

The bear had at least 13 adult parasitic worms pulled from its eyes, and the researchers identified them as the invasive, potentially blinding species Thelazia callipaeda, which was only first detected in the US in 2020.

Thelazia callipaeda adult in the eye of a cat

T. callipaeda is a nematode previously known for spreading in Asia and Eastern Europe, where it plagues carnivores, rabbits and hares, rodents, and primates (including humans). But it has recently undergone a swift and massive expansion in its range, including to Western Europe and North America. The initial 2020 detection in the US was in an eye of a pet dog in New York that had no travel history. Since then, it has shown up in at least 11 dogs — in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Nevada — and two cats in New York, according to a study published in February. (The travel history of the Nevada dog is unknown, so it’s unclear where that infection occurred.)

In the new study, the UPenn researchers noted that the adult female bear with the T. callipaeda infection was “legally harvested” in Monroe County. The infection was detected as it was being processed for taxidermy. The researchers noted that two other bears harvested in the area had similar eye worm infections, but those cases were not investigated to determine the type of worms.

[…]

The worm spreads via a variegated fruit fly, Phortica variegate, that feasts on the tears and salty eye secretions of various mammals. There’s only limited data on P. variegate‘s distribution in the US. But it’s clearly an effective vector for the worm and efficient at delivering the parasite to new hosts.

The fruit fly’s role is not just to transport T. callipaeda, but also to help it grow. The life cycle of the worm starts in a host’s eye, where early-stage (L1) larvae are released by adult female worms and picked up by a male fly. The fly then becomes infected, with the larvae going through two developmental stages in the fly’s testes. When they’re ready, the third-stage (L3) larvae migrate to the fly’s mouthparts, where they can be transferred to a new host.

A fireworm sting can leave you in pain for several hours and can even cause dizziness and confusion

Wednesday, August 21st, 2024

Everything in Australia is trying to kill you, but Texas now has Australia-worthy fireworms washing up on its beaches:

They really do sound like a sci-fi or fantasy monster:

The marine creatures are also known as bristleworms because they have hair-like bristles that are hollow and full of venom, so you can probably guess how they earned their other name.

“The reason it’s called a fireworm is because when it stings you, it feels like fire,” said Jace Tunnell, director of community engagement for the HRI in a video posted to the institute’s YouTube page.

[…]

A fireworm sting can leave you in pain for several hours and can even cause dizziness and confusion.

“As far as I know they can’t kill you, which I guess is the good news,” Tunnell said.

The bristles are hollow spines that are filled with venom. They break off and embed into your skin if you brush up against them.

And if they don’t already sound terrifying enough, Tunnell said the worms can produce asexually — if you cut one in half, it will regenerate into two worms.

The cameramen were warned that it would only take the bats a few minutes to warm up and become active again

Thursday, June 13th, 2024

Swarm Troopers by David HamblingAn arsonist can do tremendous damage with one lighted match, David Hambling explains (in Swarm Troopers), and incendiaries may be the weapon of choice where the payload is limited:

Even a small fire can quickly spread to engulf a building, a city block, or a forest. This was how the Japanese hoped to inflict serious damage with the Fu-Go balloon bombs mentioned in Chapter 1.

The military have preferred to use incendiaries on a gigantic scale. In WWII in Europe, massed Allied bombers would attack first with high explosives to break open buildings, followed by a wave of incendiaries to start fires. In Japan the buildings were less solid, and Boeing B-29 Superfortresses carried out pure incendiary raids on Tokyo and other cities. They dropped the M-69, a hexagonal steel pipe three inches across and twenty inches long filled with a newly-invented jellied gasoline mixed with phosphorus known as napalm. The pipe was heavy enough to break through roof tiles and penetrate into the rooms below; a few seconds after impact, the M-69 threw out flaming gobbets of napalm, which stuck to anything and burned whatever they touched.

[…]

Thirty-eight M-69s were bundled together in a “cluster bomb” that split apart midair and scattered its contents over a wide area. Each B-29 carried forty clusters, making over fifteen hundred M-69s per aircraft.

The plan was to start so many fires at the same time that it would be impossible to extinguish them. It worked exactly as intended.

[…]

“We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night of March 9-10 than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined,” claimed General Curtis LeMay. Although not quite accurate (the atomic bombs killed over 130,000, the Tokyo firebombing about 100,000), it shows how the atomic bomb was merely an extension of existing bombing.

[…]

In the right place, even a tiny incendiary would be practically guaranteed to start a fire. One ounce of napalm could be more effective than a dozen M-69s scattered at random, just as one aimed bullet is more effective than a thousand sprayed aimlessly.

This led to one of the most bizarre plans of the war, which makes even the Fu-Go look ordinary. It all started when biologist Dr. Lytle Adams noted that the humble bat might be capable of carrying “a sufficient quantity of incendiary material to ignite a fire.”

Project X-Ray involved capturing thousands of bats and putting them into a state of hibernation by refrigeration, taking advantage of the bats’ natural tendency to sleep when the temperature drops. Each bat could then be fitted with a tiny bomb. The bats were packed into special trays which were in turn fitted into bomb casings, which would be dropped on Japanese cities. Released mid-air the bats would naturally seek refuge and roost in the eaves of houses – after which the incendiary bomb carried by each bat would burst into flames.

The researchers found that a half-ounce bat could carry a load weighing more than itself. A suitable incendiary device was devised, a celluloid capsule filled with napalm with an igniter the size of a match head. It worked in a similar fashion to the static line used by parachutists that automatically pulls the ripcord. In this case, as soon as the bat flew free from the bomb it pulled a pin, releasing a chemical that ate through a wire and triggered the napalm in fifteen minutes.

[…]

Disaster struck at Carlsbad Auxiliary Airfield in a test when the bats were not supposed to be released. The X-Ray team was filming the effects of the bat bomb indoors. Live bombs were attached to six hibernating bats. The cameramen were warned that it would only take the bats a few minutes to warm up and become active again. Unfortunately the cameramen did not realize just how active bats can be. Frantic efforts failed to net any of the six armed bats and they flew off, seeking places to roost.

At least one of the six headed for a new control tower, another for a newly-built and unoccupied barracks building. Exactly fifteen minutes after the bombs were armed, both structures burst into flames. The fire rapidly spread in the dry desert conditions, consuming hangars and offices. It was too late to save the airfield buildings, but not too late to maintain security. Baffled firefighters who arrived to tackle the blaze were turned back from the gates while the buildings continued to burn. A few days later the burned remains were bulldozed to hide the evidence.

As a last step, he fully covered the wound with the chewed leaves

Saturday, May 4th, 2024

There is widespread evidence of such self-medication in non-human animals — whole-leaf swallowing, bitter-pith chewing, and fur rubbing in African great apes, orangutans, white handed gibbons, and several other species of monkeys — but there had been only one report of active wound treatment in non-human animals, namely in chimpanzees, until scientists spotted the active self-treatment of a facial wound with a biologically active plant by a male Sumatran orangutan:

We observed a male Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) who sustained a facial wound. Three days after the injury he selectively ripped off leaves of a liana with the common name Akar Kuning (Fibraurea tinctoria), chewed on them, and then repeatedly applied the resulting juice onto the facial wound. As a last step, he fully covered the wound with the chewed leaves. Found in tropical forests of Southeast Asia, this and related liana species are known for their analgesic, antipyretic, and diuretic effects and are used in traditional medicine to treat various diseases, such as dysentery, diabetes, and malaria. Previous analyses of plant chemical compounds show the presence of furanoditerpenoids and protoberberine alkaloids, which are known to have antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, antioxidant, and other biological activities of relevance to wound healing. This possibly innovative behavior presents the first systematically documented case of active wound treatment with a plant species know to contain biologically active substances by a wild animal and provides new insights into the origins of human wound care.

Orangutan Facial Wound Healing

Skeins of geese gain a 70% range advantage by flying in formation

Wednesday, May 1st, 2024

Swarm Troopers by David HamblingSwarms of drones, David Hambling explains (in Swarm Troopers), might follow the model of flocks of geese to fly further together:

Large birds are often seen flying in skeins, V-shaped formations, with the birds spaced at regular intervals.

[…]

The tip of a wing, whether it is a goose or an Airbus 380, generates a whirlpool of air known as a tip vortex. This produces a downwash beneath the wings and an upwash just outside the wing. The vortex is actually a miniature tornado that may contain airspeeds of 100mph and may be about the same size of the span of the wing that produces it. The vortex from an airliner can be dangerous, as it is strong enough to flip a light aircraft right over. Close to the ground, the vortex from an aircraft taking off may persist for more than a minute.

[…]

By flying just to the side and behind, a following goose gets the benefit of the updraft provided by its companion. This gives it free lift, equivalent to flying downhill.

[…]

Naturalists’ estimate that skeins of geese gain a 70% range advantage by flying in formation rather than individually. A detailed aerodynamic study by the US Air Force Air Vehicles Directorate found that formations of nine aircraft could achieve an 80% increase in range over the distance they could fly alone.

This zig-zagging slows it down

Wednesday, April 24th, 2024

Swarm Troopers by David HamblingSwarms of drones, David Hambling explains (in Swarm Troopers), might follow the model of pack-hunters like wolves:

Wolves are unusual among carnivores in that, in some areas, they prey largely on animals larger than themselves. Not only are moose and bison several times bigger than wolves, they are also faster. But a pack of wolves can bring down a large prey animal by working in a pack and using a set of heuristics — simple hunting tactics from a combination of instinct and experience.

[…]

During the approach, each wolf moved towards the prey until it reached a certain distance; it then moved away from any other wolves that were the same distance. The net effect was that the wolf pack spread out and enveloped the prey. If the prey tries to circle around, the pack keeps homing on it, and in simulations the prey often ended up running towards one of the pursuers and was “ambushed” by it. Even though the prey may be faster than the wolves, it keeps turning to get away from the nearest wolf. This zig-zagging slows it down so that another member of the pack travelling in a straight line can catch it.

Harris hawks provide another model:

Harris hawks are medium-sized hawks native to the Americas, found from the southwestern US to Chile and Argentina, which use a variety of approaches to attack prey. They are among the few birds of prey that work cooperatively, often in family groups of four to six birds. The most common tactic is a simultaneous attack with multiple Harris hawks diving in from different directions; a rabbit or other prey may dodge the first hawk or two before getting picked up by the third or fourth.

When prey goes to ground, the hawks switch tactics. The birds perch around the cover where their target has hidden, surrounding the prey, and then take turns attempting to penetrate the cover. As soon as the prey is flushed out, the surrounding birds swoop in and take it.

Finally, Harris hawks also carry out “relay attacks” in which multiple birds swoop down one after the other, each chasing the prey for a short distance. As it escapes one hawk, the next one in the flock takes over. Researchers have recorded up to twenty swoops in one chase over half a mile before the exhausted prey was finally taken.

At first, they thought it was blood from one of the sperm whales

Saturday, March 23rd, 2024

During a tourist excursion in Bremer Canyon, a whale-watching hotspot off the coast between Albany and Hopetoun, scientists witnessed a pod of sperm whales forming a “rosette” — that is, forming a circle with their heads together — as orcas attacked, before unleashing their defense defecation:

They described seeing a “cloud of diarrhea” permeate the water, and this rarely seen defense mechanism seemed to help the sperm whale pod escape what could have been a fatal attack by at least 30 killer whales, ABC News Australia reported.

[…]

As the event unfolded, onlookers noticed a large, “dark bubble” pop up to the water’s surface. At first, they thought it was blood from one of the sperm whales, potentially a small calf. But when the team later reviewed footage of the plume, they realized it was actually whale poop.

“Because [a] sperm whale’s diet consists mostly of squid, they actually have this really reddish colored poo,” she said.

Modern dogs have a bigger neocortex

Wednesday, December 13th, 2023

Because domestication was relatively recent, modern dog breeds live alongside ancient breeds, making comparison possible:

“About 80 percent of the dogs living on the planet today are what’s known as village dogs. These are free-ranging animals that live as human commensals. So they’re living within human society, but they’re not pets,” Hecht said.

Some initial findings from the lab include the discovery of neurological differences in dog breeds, including that premodern dogs on a whole have larger amygdala — the part of the brain that controls emotional processing and memory. Such heightened environmental-monitoring skills would come in handy for dogs deciding which humans to steal scraps from and which to avoid.

Modern dogs have a bigger neocortex — the part of the brain that controls motor function, perception, and reasoning. It may play a part in modern dogs’ increased behavioral flexibility, or ability to adapt to new environments.

Hecht’s lab connects personality and skill differences in dogs to six different parts of the brain: the regions controlling drive and reward; olfaction and taste; spatial navigation; social communication and coordination; fight or flight; and olfaction and vision

[…]

More than breed itself, pathways are impacted by a dog’s head shape and size. For example, Hecht’s lab has found that bigger dogs have larger neocortices than their smaller counterparts, and therefore generally are more trainable and less anxious. Dogs bred for their narrow skulls may see that impact their behavior.

“It stands to reason that if you’re manipulating the shape of a skull, you’re going to be manipulating the shape of the brain,” Hecht said.

Bullying was considered a virtue

Monday, October 2nd, 2023

Elon Musk by Walter IsaacsonWalter Isaacson’s Elon Musk biography explains that when Elon was twelve he was taken by bus to a wilderness survival camp, known as a veldskool:

“It was a paramilitary Lord of the Flies,” he recalls. The kids were each given small rations of food and water, and they were allowed — indeed encouraged — to fight over them. “Bullying was considered a virtue,” his younger brother Kimbal says. The big kids quickly learned to punch the little ones in the face and take their stuff. Elon, who was small and emotionally awkward, got beaten up twice. He would end up losing ten pounds.

Near the end of the first week, the boys were divided into two groups and told to attack each other. “It was so insane, mind-blowing,” Musk recalls. Every few years, one of the kids would die. The counselors would recount such stories as warnings. “Don’t be stupid like that dumb fuck who died last year,” they would say. “Don’t be the weak dumb fuck.”

Another heartwarming childhood story:

The Musk family kept German Shepherd dogs that were trained to attack anyone running by the house. When he was six, Elon was racing down the driveway and his favorite dog attacked him, taking a massive bite out of his back. In the emergency room, when they were preparing to stitch him up, he resisted being treated until he was promised that the dog would not be punished. “You’re not going to kill him, are you?” Elon asked. They swore that they wouldn’t. In recounting the story, Musk pauses and stares vacantly for a very long time. “Then they damn well shot the dog dead.”

And another:

“If you have never been punched in the nose, you have no idea how it affects you the rest of your life,” he says.

[…]

They came up from behind, kicked him in the head, and pushed him down a set of concrete steps. “They sat on him and just kept beating the shit out of him and kicking him in the head,” says Kimbal, who had been sitting with him. “When they got finished, I couldn’t even recognize his face. It was such a swollen ball of flesh that you could barely see his eyes.” He was taken to the hospital and was out of school for a week. Decades later, he was still getting corrective surgery to try to fix the tissues inside his nose.

[…]

After the school fight, Errol sided with the kid who pummeled Elon’s face. “The boy had just lost his father to suicide, and Elon had called him stupid,” Errol says. “Elon had this tendency to call people stupid. How could I possibly blame that child?”

When Elon finally came home from the hospital, his father berated him. “I had to stand for an hour as he yelled at me and called me an idiot and told me that I was just worthless,” Elon recalls. Kimbal, who had to watch the tirade, says it was the worst memory of his life. “My father just lost it, went ballistic, as he often did. He had zero compassion.”