Temnothorax makora ants are parasitised by the related species Temnothorax kinomurai clurarit/iNaturalist A parasitic species of ant from Japan is the first ever found to have done away with both males and female workers – instead, every individual is a queen that tries to take over the nests of other species. Typically, ant colonies consist…
If you slipped under the covers at 2am, knowing your alarm was set for 6am, how do you think you would feel the next morning? You may be imagining a day of aching eyes and clouded thoughts, but it is perfectly possible to wake up feeling clear-headed and positive, then spend the day happily socialising,…
Illustration of the Iron Age mass grave at Gomolava Sara Nylund Women and children may have been deliberately targeted in one of the largest prehistoric mass killings discovered in Europe. Buried together in one grave more than 2800 years ago, most of the 77 victims suffered violent deaths in what seems to have been an…
Learning to recognise birds may strengthen your cognitive reserve steve young/Alamy Expert birdwatchers have brain differences that may underlie their remarkable ability to identify unfamiliar birds and suggest that birdwatching can reshape the brain in much the same way as learning a language or a musical instrument does. Such activities may bolster cognitive reserve, the…
Dwight Ellefsen/FPG/Archive The Laws of ThoughtTom Griffiths, William Collins (UK) Macmillan (US) FOR nearly 70 years, cognitive researchers have been fighting a civil war. On one side is computationalism, which argues intelligence is best explained by rules, symbols and logic that can be expressed in equations. On the other is connectionism, where intelligence emerges from…
Orlando Gili/Millenium Images Your friends are likely to have more friends than you do. Don’t worry, it’s nothing personal. It’s just about how networks organise. We can represent a friendship group as a network. Draw a node (dot) for each person and a line between two nodes if those two people are friends. By doing…
Your brain has a neurological trick for drowning out chaos olaser/Getty Images Recently, I was scrolling TikTok when my brain failed me. I watched a video of Donald Trump berating CNN journalist Kaitlan Collins for “not smiling”, after she questioned him on matters concerning sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And I scrolled past. I didn’t pause….
“On the spectrum.” These three words have become synonymous with autism, yet behind them lies a common misunderstanding. The idea of “the spectrum” suggests that all autistic people share similar experiences and behave in similar ways – only to a greater or lesser extent. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Some autistic people…
Some pet foods contain potentially harmful PFAS chemicals Cris Cantón/Getty Images Many pet foods – especially those based on fish – have levels of so-called forever chemicals that exceed European health agency thresholds for humans. The findings point to an urgent need for increased monitoring of contaminants in pet products and a better understanding of…
I am currently reading The Big Oyster: History on the half shell, a chronicle of New York City told through its renowned oyster beds. Even though I am a local, I was only vaguely aware of the city’s relationship with the molluscs. I knew there were efforts to boost the oyster population, but I was…
