Quirks and Quarks

How a helpless baby bird protects itself from hungry hunters

There’s not a more vulnerable creature in nature than a baby bird. Tiny and immobile, they’re easy pickings for predators. But the chicks of the white-necked jacobin hummingbird have evolved a unique defence. They disguise themselves as poisonous caterpillars to discourage those that might eat them. Jay Falk, an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado and Scott Taylor, director of the Mountain Research Station and associate professor at the University of Colorado, studied these birds in Panama. Their research was published in the journal Ecology.

Seals have a sense of their oxygen levels, which makes them better divers

Seals can dive at length to tremendous depth thanks to some remarkable adaptations, like the ability to collapse their lungs, and radically lower their heart rate. Chris McKnight, a senior research fellow at the University of St Andrews Sea Mammal Research Unit in Scotland, led a study looking to see if tweaking oxygen and C02 levels changed the seals’ dive times. The researchers discovered that the seals have the unique ability to measure the oxygen levels in their tissues, so they can anticipate when they need to return to the surface before they get into trouble. The research was published in the journal Science.

Fruit flies can show a playful side

As the joke goes, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Researchers recently demonstrated that fruit flies enjoy more than just aged produce. Using a custom carousel built to fly scale, scientists found that some, but not all, of their fruit flies would play on it, enjoying an activity that had nothing to do with the necessities of life. This brings up the possibility  of variability in personality for fruit flies. Wolf Hütteroth is an associate professor at Northumbria  University, Newcastle and was part of the team, whose research was published in the journal Current Biology.

Scaring krill with a dose of penguin poo

Krill, the small, shrimp-like creatures that swarm the world’s oceans and are particularly abundant in southern oceans, play a big role in marine food webs, connecting microscopic organisms with many of the oceans’ larger animal species. Researchers in Australia investigated how krill respond to predator cues, like the smell of their feces. Nicole Hellessey, from the University of Tasmania, said the mere whiff of penguin feces affects the Antarctic krills’ feeding behaviour and causes them to take frantic evasive action. The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. 

Fossils tell us what dinosaurs were. How do we know what they did? 

Dinosaur bones can tell amazing stories about these prehistoric beasts, but how do we piece together how they behaved? A new book dives into the many lines of evidence that can shed light on the behaviour of these extinct creatures. From fossils, to tracks they left behind, to their modern day descendents, paleontologist David Hone from Queen Mary University of London explores how scientists develop robust theories about how dinosaurs lived in his new book, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior: What They Did and How We Know.

A tree has evolved to attract lightning strikes — to eliminate the competition

Scientists working in Panama noticed that a particular tropical tree species was frequently struck by lightning, but was infrequently killed by the strikes. Forest ecologist Evan Gora found that Dipteryx oleifera trees were often the last ones standing after a lightning strike, which can kill over 100 trees with a single bolt. His team discovered the giant trees were more electrically conductive than other species, which allows them to not only survive strikes, but also channel lightning into parasitic vines and competing trees around them. The research was published in the journal New Phytologist.

Anti-anxiety drugs we pee out could be affecting wild salmon

Our bodies only process some of the pharmaceuticals we take, which means when we pee, we’re releasing traces of drugs into the ecosystem. A study of the impact of trace amounts of anti-anxiety drugs on juvenile salmon suggests they might become too brave for their own survival.  Jack Brand is a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and led the research published in the journal Science.

Fossil discovery gives new insight into the mysterious Denisovans

A jawbone pulled up by fishers off the coast of Taiwan in 2008 has proven to be a unique discovery. Analysis of preserved protein in the fossil has proved it is from a male Denisovan — a mysterious species of ancient human known from only fragmentary bones and ancient DNA. This gives new insight into how widespread this mysterious branch of humanity was. The research was led by a team including Takumi Tsutaya and Enrico Cappellini at the University of Copenhagen, and published in the journal Science.

Earth’s inner core is a lot more dynamic and smushy than we previously thought

Scientists used to think the inner core of our planet was a solid sphere of metal, but a new study in Nature Geoscience suggests its softer outer layers shift and deform over time. The researchers used pairs of earthquakes from the same location as X-rays to peer inside Earth to gauge what the inner core is doing; much like a stop-motion film. John Vidale, from the University of Southern California, said this insight can shed light on how a planet like ours evolves. 

Human noise has an impact on wildlife — here are two unique examples

Traffic, aircraft, industry, construction. Our world is saturated with artificial noise. We know noise impacts us and other animals, but new research is shedding light on how past experiences factor into the ways wildlife adapt to our noise pollution. 

Researchers in one study in Animal Behaviour found that yellow warblers in the Galapagos Islands that live closer to traffic become aggressive when defending their territory in noisy conditions compared to birds in quieter areas. Çağlar Akçay, from Anglia Ruskin University, said the birds exposed to more traffic have learned their warning calls aren’t as effective when things get too noisy; and they resort to physical violence. 

Another study in Current Biology shows how spiders that are exposed to loud noises construct their webs differently in ways that could affect their ability to sense vibrations from prey or a potential mate. Brandi Pessman, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, found that spiders tune their webs in noisy environments like a volume dial: city spiders turn their web volume down whereas country spiders turn it up.

An attractive new strategy for brain surgery

A Canadian team is developing minimally-invasive micro-tools for brain surgery that can be operated by magnetic fields from outside of the skull. The tools, including scalpels and forceps, will enter the cranium through small incisions, and then be controlled by focused and precise magnetic fields. Eric Diller is associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Toronto and his research was published in the journal Science Robotics.

Animal tool use is fishy

In recent decades scientists have discovered animals from primates to birds and marine mammals can use tools — a capacity once thought to be exclusive to humans. Now scientists have discovered fish using hard surfaces to crack open hard-shelled prey and get at the meaty meal inside. The research, led by Juliette Tariel-Adam from Macquarie University, included recruiting divers and scientists from around the world to report any sightings of tool use, which led to 16 reports across five species of wrasses. The results were published in the journal Coral Reefs.

Bad news — a long cold bath may be good for you

For a hardy few, soaking in cold water has long been held out as being healthful and invigorating. Well, unfortunately, the latest research suggests that they’re right. Volunteers who soaked in cold water for an hour a day for a week showed improvements in autophagy, an important cellular clean-up function that typically declines with age. Kelli King is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Ottawa and was co-lead on this study, published in the journal Advanced Biology. 

How the unicorn of the sea uses its horn

The Narwhal is a small whale distinguished by its long spiral horn — an elongated tooth. Researchers have long speculated about what the ostentatious bit of dentition is actually for, but the elusive narwhal has, until now, been hard to study. Now scientists, including Cortney Watt from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, have used drones to learn that the horn is used in several ways: to play, explore, and forage. The research was published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

Why your body and brain might be fighting your efforts to get and stay slimmer

New research is revealing why it’s so difficult to keep weight off after you’ve lost it. 

One study in Nature found that genes in the fat cells of people who lost a significant amount of weight through bariatric surgery largely continued to behave as if they were still obese. Ferdinand von Meyenn, from ETH Zurich, said that despite these individuals becoming, in many respects, much more healthy, genes that became active during obesity remained active, and genes that were turned off, remained turned off, predisposing them to regain lost weight. In formerly obese mice, their fat cells remained much better at taking up sugars and fats. 

In addition, another study revealed that neurons in a primitive part of the brain hold onto memories of fat and sugar that can drive our cravings, according to a study on mice in Nature Metabolism. Guillaume de Lartigue, from the Monell Chemical Senses Center and the University of Pennsylvania, said specific neural circuits in the brain light up, depending on whether the gut received sugar or fat. Removing these neurons protected the mice from diet-induced weight gain, something de Lartigue is hoping to translate to humans to dial down impulsive eating behaviour.

One whale’s waste is an ocean organism’s treasure

The nutrients in the ocean are not evenly distributed. Resources tend to be rich around coastlines and near the poles, and are often poorer in the open ocean and the tropics. A new study has explored how urine from migrating baleen whales is a significant way that nitrogen and other nutrients are circulated in the oceans. Joe Roman is a conservation biologist at the University of Vermont. He led the research, published in the journal Nature Communications.

The underground economy: Fungi and plants trade have a network under our feet

Scientists have used a custom robot to track the growth of a complex underground supply-chain network that forms between more than 80 per cent of the plant species on Earth and symbiotic fungus. This allowed them to trace the flow of carbon and nutrients across this network,  that draws about 13 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the soil each year. Toby Kiers, from Vrije University in Amsterdam and the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks led the work, published in the journal Nature.  

Researchers capture wild sharks to get sperm samples for captive breeding

In a world-first, a team of marine biologists and veterinarians collected semen from endangered wildsharks in an effort to maintain a population of genetically healthy sharks. Christine Dudgeon, from the University of Queensland and the Sunshine Coast and the Biopixel Oceans Foundation, used some of that sperm to artificially inseminate captive females. 

Watching planets form in a baby solar system

370 light years away, around a newborn star only five million years old, two planets are forming from the disk of gas and dust still orbiting around the star. Canadian researchers are using instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope to observe this process, and understand how the nascent planets are competing with the star for material as they grow. Dori Blakely, a PhD candidate at the University of Victoria, was the lead researcher on this article published in The Astronomical Journal. 

Butterfly populations are declining. Meet the people moving a forest to save them.

A new study is bringing hard data to help us understand how butterfly numbers have declined steeply in recent years, due to the combination of habitat loss, climate change, and pesticide exposure. The research, co-led by Elise Zipkin, found that overall, across the United States, butterfly numbers are down 22 per cent over the past 20 years. The research was published in the journal Science.

A different group of scientists is hoping to fix at least one of these problems for one species, by moving an entire forest in Mexico. The sacred fir trees, where monarch butterflies spend their winters, are struggling under climate change. Recently a team of researchers planted a thousand sacred fir trees at a new location at higher elevations to kickstart a new, future-proof forest for the butterflies to overwinter. After a few years, the researchers report the trees are doing well, in a recent paper published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.

Quirks producer Amanda Buckiewicz spoke to Cuauhtémoc Saénz Romero, a forest geneticist at the University of Michoacán in Mexico, and Greg O'Neill, a climate change adaptation scientist with the BC Provincial Government in the Ministry of Forests.

Is our universe inside a black hole? New evidence from JWST galaxy images

New images from the James Webb Space Telescope of distant galaxies could support a mind-bending idea: that our universe was born in a black hole. The images show more of these galaxies spin clockwise, than counterclockwise. Lior Shamir, a computational astrophysicist from Kansas State University, says that may mean our universe inherited the spin of the black hole we’re currently living in, though he thinks its more likely that there’s something wrong with how we’re measuring objects in deep space. The study is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 

Modern-day Antarctic explorers go where no-one has gone before

CBC Reporter Susan Ormiston spent a month on the Canadian Navy ship HMCS Margaret Brooke as it took a team of 15 scientists on a research trip to Antarctica. She brings us the story of Kevin Wilcox, a researcher using an uncrewed sonar vehicle to map the previously inaccessible near-shore waters of the icy continent.

Finding out what juvenile sea turtles do during their ‘lost years’

Once baby sea turtles swim away from their natal beaches, they enter what marine biologists call their “lost years,” a time of critical growth spent wandering the open sea. A new study is filling in the picture of what they do during this time. The research, led by marine ecologist Katrina Phillips, involved playing a game of oceanic hide and seek to find and track over 100 sea turtles as they moved through the ocean. The work was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Concrete plans to transform cement production’s CO2 waste into new building materials

Cement production is responsible for five to eight per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. A new study suggests that waste could be made into even more construction materials. Inspired by the way sea creatures build shells, Allesandro Rotto Loria — a civil and environmental engineer from Northwestern University — says they can use CO2 to boost the process to produce carbon-negative materials that could be used in materials like plaster, cement and as a replacement for sand in concrete. Their research is in the journal Advanced Sustainable Systems. 

A Dinosaur expert goes green — with a deep look at plant evolution

Paleontologist Riley Black has authored several books on dinosaurs. But she realized she had been neglecting the organisms that made dinosaurs – and all other animals – possible: plants. Her new book, When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance, looks at how plant fossils are telling the billion-years old tale of the evolution of complex life on Earth, from creating the oxygen that we breathe, to coaxing us out of the water and onto land, and even forming the forests that humans evolved in, which shaped our very anatomy from long arms and grippy toes.