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problematic not everyone s parents text for example and some interactions might be completed in one message while others take a dozen back and forth volleys we do have data on text messages for this study and are working on it saramäki says but judging from what we have seen so far it looks like the text message data tells pretty much the same story even when people overhaul nearly all their friends at once they seem to just slot the new acquaintances into the old social structure the researchers point out that people have a limited amount of time to spend on their friends and the brain may have a finite capacity for keeping track of others so it s possible that people allot those resources in a consistent way no matter which friends they currently have it seems you can t shake your social network wherever you go there you and they are jari saramäki e a leicht eduardo lópez sam g b roberts felix reed tsochas robin i m dunbar 2013 persistence of social signatures in human communication pnas 10 1073 pnas 1308540110 image mine all mine this post has been edited from an earlier version 2 comments labels education language math snoozing bats tune out traffic noise email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest by elizabeth preston on friday january 03 2014 for an easily crushed animal that rests during the day a highway seems like maybe the worst possible home yet some bats pick roosts that are under bridges or in other spots booming with human noise why subject themselves to that for bats of at least one species the sound of traffic is easy to doze through and the more they hear it the more they ignore it the greater mouse eared bat myotis myotis often turns up under bridges in europe jinhong luo a phd student at the max planck institute for ornithology wanted to know how they can tolerate the noise he and his colleagues trapped male bats from a cave in bulgaria and brought them back to the laboratory for a hearing test which was really a sleeping test well not sleeping exactly like many other bat species the greater mouse eared bat goes into torpor during the day which is like a mini hibernation its metabolism and body temperature drop sharply letting the animal conserve energy in the evening the bats start to stir after waking up gradually they head out from their caves or under bridge roosts to hunt the researchers created several different sound recordings that they would play to roosting bats to try to wake them up there was a recording of the bats own colony another of local bird sounds and one of trees rustling in the wind the authors also created recordings that mimicked highway traffic passing 25 meters 50 meters and 100 meters away each bat was housed by itself for the sound tests over the course of two roosting days the bats heard each recording twice for five minutes by monitoring temperature sensors on the animals skin the scientists could see whether bats started to wake up that is warm themselves after hearing each sound luo and the others tested a dozen bats they started with 15 but two weren t snoozing deeply enough to run all the tests and one somehow pulled the temperature logger off the middle of its back the bats were most likely to wake up after hearing the recording of their colony or the sound of rustling trees but traffic sounds were least likely to wake them bats responded more strongly to all sounds later in the day as it got closer to their normal waking time it s not too surprising that bats respond to the squeaks and shuffles of their own colony which might hold useful information but why the windblown trees a likely answer is that myotis myotis doesn t hunt by echolocation instead it listens for the sounds of beetles walking through the grass since the bats are already attuned to the noise of swishing vegetation it may make a good alarm clock as for the sound of cars passing luo points out that most rumbling traffic is at a lower frequency than the sounds of a bat colony or rustling leaves since bats hear better at higher frequencies this means traffic noise is basically out of the best hearing frequencies for nearly all bat species however luo is quick to add we would never claim that traffic noise is not disturbing to roosting bats or even to torpid bats the bats in his study did respond slightly to traffic noise raising their body temperatures compared to when there was silence and bats might react differently to highway sounds when they re awake or when they re roosting but not in a state of torpor whatever sound they heard bats responded less on the second playback or when it was played continuously for an hour they were especially quick to adjust to traffic sounds like a teenager sleeping through an alarm clock bats can tune out a familiar noise more easily but that doesn t mean they re immune to harm from their noisy human neighbors we just don t know all the ways that living with our roads and other rackets might influence them to be honest we are in the very beginning of understanding the potential effects luo says answers are not always straightforward image usfws ann froschauer luo j clarin bm borissov im siemers bm 2013 are torpid bats immune to anthropogenic noise the journal of experimental biology pmid 24311817 1 comments labels bats clocks environment sound actual top ten animals of 2013 email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest by elizabeth preston on monday december 30 2013 not so much a popularity contest as an altitude contest 10 himalayan jumping spider the fuzzy and springy euophrys omnisuperstes lives on the world s highest mountains it s been found 6 700 meters a little over four miles high on mount everest some birds can fly at higher altitudes but the spider lives there full time apparently subsisting on unlucky insects carried up to it by the wind 9 8 iranian space monkeys twice this year iran announced that it had successfully sent a monkey on a sub orbital rocket flight the trips allegedly happened in january and december both reaching heights of 120 kilometers 75 miles before safely returning their rhesus macaque nauts to earth but the associated press pointed out that the launches couldn t be confirmed by outside sources and that one post launch photo showed an entirely different monkey than pre launch 7 6 5 4 3 russian rocket zoo on april 19 of this year a soyuz rocket took off for space carrying a capsule full of animals called bion m1 the capsule held mice mongolian gerbils geckos fish and snails the mice were shared between russian scientists and nasa whose researchers would study the effects of low gravity on cell growth blood flow joint movement and sperm motility among other body functions the mission orbited earth for 30 days nasa writes all of the mice that russian scientists had shared with their u s colleagues returned from space in good health the russian scientists must have kept the dead ones for themselves then because 29 out of the 45 mice didn t survive all 8 gerbils perished too along with the fish there appeared to have been technical problems with the systems built to feed and keep the animals alive onboard 2 1 imaginary mars rock animals nasa curiosity rover spots iguana on mars declared a fox news headline in november it was actually a rock shaped vaguely like a lizard but someone from a website called ufo sightings daily was calling it an animal and doing news interviews back in may the same paranormal website had announced the discovery of a mars rat in another one of the rover s photos it was of course also a rock will any earth animals travel farther from the planet s surface in 2014 if they do here s hoping they fare better than a mongolian gerbil honorable mention for effort nasa launchpad frog 0 comments labels earth headline itis space why it s nearly impossible to castrate a hippo email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest by elizabeth preston on monday december 23 2013 chances are you ve never wondered how difficult it is to remove the testes of a hippopotamus other people have been thinking hard about it though because in fact it s almost impossible before sitting down to emasculate a common hippopotamus hippopotamus amphibius it would be reasonable to ask why they re a threatened species so usually conservationists try to make more baby hippos not fewer but in zoos hippos turn out to be prolific baby makers females can live for 40 years and may birth 25 calves in that time this would be great news in the wild but zookeepers don t always have someplace to store a new two ton animal male hippos can also be aggressive toward each other at least while they have all their man parts for both of these reasons zoos may want to have their male hippos fixed but there are a few factors working against them explains a new paper in the journal theriogenology that s reproductive science for vets by an international group of authors the first challenge is that hippopotamuses hide their genitals the testes are inside the body instead of outside in a scrotum other mammals in the internal testes club since you asked include the armadillo sloth whale and platypus this makes the hippo s testes totally invisible from the outside combined with a penis that the paper s authors describe as discreet it means it s hard to tell males from females at a distance another problem is that testes aren t in the same place from one hippo to the next and they may retract even farther during surgery hippopotamuses are also difficult to safely put to sleep in the past hippopotamus anesthesia has been fraught with serious complications the authors explain after moving past the anesthesia problem they used an apparently safer blend of drugs delivered via a dart to the hippo s ear the researchers turned to the anatomical problems their answer was ultrasound once they had positioned the animal they used ultrasound imaging to find the testes then used it again after cutting into the hippo if the testis they were looking for had scooted farther away from them even after finding the sneaky organs the procedure wasn t simple the depth of the testes hiding places varied by as much as 16 inches from one hippo to the next everything had to be done deep inside the animal s body making it hard to see what was going on grasping the testicle with forceps proved laborious in most of the animals the authors write they also mention using a two handed technique and moderate traction the whole hour and a half procedure based on a method for castrating horses is described in detail for anyone who wants to try it themselves all ten hippos in the study were successfully castrated though one died shortly afterward following a complication from a unknown pre existing condition over the next six months the authors checked in with the zoos housing the hippos to see whether their behavior or interaction with other animals had changed there were four cases where zoos wanted their hippos fixed to ease aggression between males in all four the problem seemed better one zoo though reported that castrated males were harassed more by females overall the authors think their technique will help zoos take better care of their hippos the final challenge to hippopotamus surgery what should be a challenge anyway is that the animals spend most of their time in a pool of water packed with feces the animals in the study lowered their stitched up bellies into this infectious slurry as soon as they had a chance yet all of them healed from surgery without trouble hippos in general seem to be especially good healers the authors write a possible explanation for the animals healing superpower is the red sweat or blood sweat that oozes from their skin it s not really sweat and it doesn t contain blood though it is red the pigments in this skin secretion have been found to absorb uv light making the sweat a potential sunscreen the pigments can also keep bacteria from growing so a built in antibiotic may be what keeps hippos from getting infections after they tussle and bite each other or after meddling vets come and cut out their manhood however the red sweat works it shows that a hippo s secrets don t end with the location of his testicles images charlesjsharp via wikimedia commons drawings by eva polsterer from walzer et al walzer c petit t stalder gl horowitz i saragusty j hermes r 2013 surgical castration of the male common hippopotamus hippopotamus amphibius theriogenology pmid 24246424 12 comments labels boys and girls medicine poo posts that will bring me creepy internet traffic weird animals older posts home subscribe to posts atom who s inkfish profile hi i m elizabeth i live near boston and work as the editor of muse a kids science magazine that s not otherwise related to this blog my writing has also appeared in national geographic slate and other publications read more here if you like inkfish like it on facebook too inkfish tweets follow inkfish subscribe 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