Life
We summarize the week's science breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
The ‘ratpocalypse’ isn’t nigh, according to service call data
A new study shows that rat-related reports in New York City went down during COVID-19 lockdowns compared with previous years during March and April.
- Genetics
A bacterial toxin enables the first mitochondrial gene editor
Researchers have engineered a protein from bacteria that kills other microbes to change DNA in a previously inaccessible part of the cell.
- Neuroscience
Boosting a liver protein may mimic the brain benefits of exercise
Finding that liver-made proteins influence the brain may advance the quest for an “exercise pill” that can deliver the benefits of physical activity.
- Animals
Calculating a dog’s age in human years is harder than you think
People generally convert a dog’s age to human years by multiplying its age by seven. But a new study shows the math is way more complex.
- Genetics
South Americans may have traveled to Polynesia 800 years ago
DNA analyses suggest that Indigenous people from South America had a role in the early peopling of Polynesia.
- Life
Bizarre caecilians may be the only amphibians with venomous bites
Microscope and chemical analyses suggest that, like snakes, caecilians have glands near their teeth that secrete venom.
- Animals
A sparrow song remix took over North America with astonishing speed
A variation on the white-throated sparrow’s song spread 3,300 kilometers in just a few decades.
- Life
Here’s how flying snakes stay aloft
High-speed cameras show that paradise tree snakes keep from tumbling as they glide through the sky by undulating their bodies.
- Life
Fish eggs can hatch after being eaten and pooped out by ducks
In the lab, a few carp eggs survived and even hatched after being pooped out by ducks. The finding may help explain how fish reach isolated waterways.
- Health & Medicine
Strokes and mental state changes hint at how COVID-19 harms the brain
In a group of people severely ill from the coronavirus, strokes, psychosis, depression and other brain-related changes come as complications.
- Animals
Dolphins can learn from peers how to use shells as tools
While most foraging skills are picked up from mom, some bottlenose dolphins seem to look to their peers to learn how to trap prey in shells.
- Paleontology
Fossil discoveries suggest the earliest dinosaurs laid soft-shelled eggs
Finding soft-shelled dinosaur eggs in the fossil record for the first time has scientists rethinking how dinosaur eggs evolved.
