Researchers at QMUL have discovered that bees can be taught to pull a string for food, a behavior previously thought too advanced for insects
Credit: Depositphotos/Irochka
Apes and birds have long been known to demonstrate their intelligence by pulling a string to access food, but now researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have discovered that bumblebees can also learn the skill. Not only is this the first time insects have been seen to use this kind of strategy, but the trained bees also spread the ability throughout the colony, prompting questions about social learning, culture and intelligence in animals.
The researchers began with three artificial flowers containing sugar water and attached to pieces of string. These were placed under a clear Plexiglas panel with the strings poking out, to test whether the bees could work out how to solve the puzzle and get to the prize. Out of a […]
You say potato and I say potahto. You say tomato and I say tomahto — potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto — and so do cod, kind of, according to British scientists who launched a study Wednesday into the regional accents of the cold-water fish species.
“Recordings of American cod are very different to those from their European cousins, so there is a precedent,” said Steve Simpson, a professor of marine biology at the University of Exeter, who is leading the research. “This species is highly vocal with traditional breeding grounds established over hundreds or even thousands of years, so the potential for regionalism is there.”
Simpson, who specializes in bioacoustics — sounds produced by living organisms — said previous underwater recordings of cod have shown they make different sounds in different regional spawning grounds just like birds, bears and other animals. “They have have quite a diverse range,” he said. Cod found in U.S. waters display a deep thumping sound while those taped in Norway have a higher-pitched sound, with a long growl.
“These sounds are key for the cod because it is effectively the love song of the male trying to persuade the female to release her eggs. It carries a lot of information about who he is, what condition he is in and how big he is, and it’s only if he gets those things right […]
Bones with Marijuana “shroud”
Credit: Hongen Jiang / University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Archeologists in China have uncovered a 2,500-year-old gravesite that contains the bones of a man draped in freshly harvested marijuana plants—with the budding tops lopped off. As first reported in National Geographic, researchers say the “extraordinary cache” helps deepen our understanding of the plant’s ritual and medicinal use in ancient Eurasian cultures.
According to research findings reported in the journal Economic Botany, a team led by archeologist Hongen Jiang unearthed the burial site of a man, approximately 35 years old with Caucasian features, from a cemetery in China’s Turpan Basin. At the time of the man’s death, the area was known as the Gushi Kingdom and the desert oasis there was an important stop on the Silk Road.
The remains of the man rested on a wooden pallet with a reed pillow beneath his head. Thirteen marijuana plants up to three feet […]
One of the most obvious (and ubiquitous) lies in American political rhetoric is that the United States is the only country where poor kids sometimes grow up to become wealthy politicians.
“I live in an exceptional country where even the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who come from power and privilege,” Marco Rubio said when he launched his presidential campaign last year. Barack Obama has similarly claimed that his own story of upward mobility would have been possible “in no other country on earth.”
But even as our leaders assure us that only America has escaped the grip of feudal rule, study after study has shown that bartenders’ sons born in Canada and Western Europe have a better chance of growing up to see bartending as a lowly profession than ones born here.
The tension between our self-conception as an exceptionally meritocratic society — and the reality that America’s deep poverty and threadbare social safety net makes it exceptionally socially immobile — is reflected in the bipartisan obsession with restoring “equality of opportunity.”
