This month, a pair of viruses seized the headlines. First came a hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship, which caused as many as 13 infections, three of which were fatal. Then an Ebola outbreak flared in Africa, so far leading to more than 900 infections and 220 deaths.

In both cases, the news has been not only frightening but also confusing, even to scientists. The hantaviruses didn’t seem to be acting like hantaviruses, and the Ebola viruses weren’t behaving like Ebola viruses.

Continue reading “Why the Ebola and Hantavirus Outbreaks Have Confounded Scientists” →

In 2021, a disabled parrot named Bruce made headlines worldwide for creating his own prosthetic beak. He didn’t stop there: Scientists reported on Monday that Bruce has now become the alpha male of his group.

And he did it by learning to joust.

The new research, published in Current Biology, is an important addition to a small but growing number of observations that demonstrate just how resilient animals with disabilities can be, said Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna who was not involved in the study.

Continue reading “How Bruce the Parrot Landed Atop the Pecking Order, Without a Beak” →

Many scientists have contended that humans have evolved very little over the past 10,000 years.

A few hundred generations was just a blink of the evolutionary eye, it seemed. Besides, our cultural evolution — our technology, agriculture and the rest — must have overwhelmed our biological evolution by now.

A vast study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, suggests the opposite. Examining DNA from 15,836 ancient human remains, scientists found 479 genetic variants that appeared to have been favored by natural selection in just the past 10,000 years.

Continue reading “Nature Is Still Molding Human Genes, Study Finds” →

Since 1995, scientists have tracked a huge group of chimpanzees living in the forests of Uganda. The sustained research, featured in the 2023 documentary “Chimp Empire,” has led to profound insights about our closest living relatives and, by extension, our own ancestors.

In one line of research, the scientists studied deep bonds among male chimpanzees in the Ngogo group, named for a hill in the Kibale National Park where they live. The males spend years hunting together and patrolling the boundaries of their range. The female Ngogo chimps, scientists discovered, may experience menopause, never previously documented in primates aside from humans.

Continue reading “These Chimps Began the Bloodiest ‘War’ on Record. No One Knows Why.” →