Scientists taught 23 riding horses of various breeds to look at a display board with three icons, representing wearing or not wearing a blanket. Horses could choose between a “no change” symbol or symbols for “blanket on” or “blanket off.” Previously, their owners made this decision for them. Horses are adept at learning and following signals people give them, and it took these equines an average of 10 days to learn to approach and touch the board and to understand the meaning of the symbols. All 23 horses learned the entire task within 14 days. They were then tested in various weather conditions to see whether they could use the board to tell their trainers about their blanket preferences. The scientists report online in Applied Animal Behaviour Science that the horses did not touch the symbols randomly, but made their choices based on the weather. If it was wet, cold, and windy, they touched the “blanket on” icon; horses that were already wearing a blanket nosed the “no change” image. But when the weather was sunny, the animals touched the “blanket off” symbol; those that weren’t blanketed pressed the “no change” icon. The study’s strong results show that the horses understood the consequences of their choices, say the scientists, who hope that other researchers will use their method to ask horses more questions.
i love everything about this but especially the last sentence
Tag: science!
Extinct tree grows anew from ancient jar of seeds unearthed by archaeologists
“For thousands of years, Judean date palm trees were one of the most recognizable and welcome sights for people living in the Middle East — widely cultivated throughout the region for their sweet fruit, and for the cool shade they offered from the blazing desert sun.
From its founding some 3,000 years ago, to the dawn of the Common Era, the trees became a staple crop in the Kingdom of Judea, even garnering several shout-outs in the Old Testament. Judean palm trees would come to serve as one of the kingdom’s chief symbols of good fortune; King David named his daughter, Tamar, after the plant’s name in Hebrew.
By the time the Roman Empire sought to usurp control of the kingdom in 70 AD, broad forests of these trees flourished as a staple crop to the Judean economy — a fact that made them a prime resource for the invading army to destroy. Sadly, around the year 500 AD, the once plentiful palm had been completely wiped out, driven to extinction for the sake of conquest.
In the centuries that followed, first-hand knowledge of the tree slipped from memory to legend. Up until recently, that is.
During excavations at the site of Herod the Great’s palace in Israel in the early 1960’s, archeologists unearthed a small stockpile of seeds stowed in a clay jar dating back 2,000 years. For the next four decades, the ancient seeds were kept in a drawer at Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University. But then, in 2005, botanical researcher Elaine Solowey decided to plant one and see what, if anything, would sprout.
“I assumed the food in the seed would be no good after all that time. How could it be?“ said Solowey. She was soon proven wrong.
Amazingly, the multi-millennial seed did indeed sprout — producing a sapling no one had seen in centuries, becoming the oldest known tree seed to germinate.
Today, the living archeological treasure continues to grow and thrive; In 2011, it even produced its first flower — a heartening sign that the ancient survivor was eager to reproduce. It has been proposed that the tree be cross-bred with closely related palm types, but it would likely take years for it to begin producing any of its famed fruits. Meanwhile, Solowey is working to revive other age-old trees from their long dormancy.”
***Does anyone in the know have any comments?
(Source: Tree Hugger)
HOLY FUCK
Here’s a ten year update. The scientist, Elaine Solowey, has germinated and grown other ancient date palm seeds and there are a couple of female plants that Methuselah could pollinate.
Young children are terrible at hiding – psychologists have a new theory why
Young children across the globe enjoy
playing games of hide and seek. There’s something highly exciting for
children about escaping someone else’s glance and making oneself
“invisible.”
However, developmental psychologists and parents alike continue to witness that before school age, children
are remarkably bad at hiding. Curiously, they often cover only their
face or eyes with their hands, leaving the rest of their bodies visibly
exposed.For a long time, this ineffective hiding strategy was interpreted as evidence that young children are hopelessly “egocentric” creatures. Psychologists theorized that preschool children cannot distinguish their own perspective from someone else’s.
Conventional wisdom held that, unable to transcend their own viewpoint,
children falsely assume that others see the world the same way they
themselves do. So psychologists assumed children “hide” by covering
their eyes because they conflate their own lack of vision with that of
those around them.But research in cognitive developmental psychology is starting to
cast doubt on this notion of childhood egocentrism. We brought young
children between the ages of two and four into our Minds in Development Lab at USC so we could investigate this assumption. Our surprising results contradict the idea that children’s poor hiding skills reflect their allegedly egocentric nature.It seems like young children consider mutual eye contact
a requirement for one person to be able to see another. Their thinking
appears to run along the lines of “I can see you only if you can see me,
too” and vice versa. Our findings suggest that when a child “hides” by
putting a blanket over her head, this strategy is not a result of
egocentrism. In fact, children deem this strategy effective when others use it.Built into their notion of visibility, then, is the idea of
bidirectionality: Unless two people make eye contact, it is impossible
for one to see the other. Contrary to egocentrism, young children simply
insist on mutual recognition and regard.
Scientists Just Discovered There Are ‘Bees’ in the Oceans
For the first time, researchers have found evidence that underwater ecosystems have pollinators that perform the same task as bees on land.
Just like their terrestrial cousins, grasses under the sea shed pollen to sexually reproduce. Until now, biologists assumed the marine plants relied on water alone to spread their genes far and wide. But the discovery of pollen-carrying ‘bees of the sea’ has changed all of that.
Over several years from 2009 to 2012, researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico filmed the spring nocturnal wanderings of crustaceans among beds of turtle seagrass, Thalassia testudinum.
Looking through the videos, they spotted more invertebrates visiting male pollen-bearing flowers than those that lacked pollen – just like bees hovering around pollen-producing plants on land.
“We saw all of these animals coming in, and then we saw some of them carrying pollen,” lead researcher Brigitta van Tussenbroek told New Scientist.
The concept was so new, they invented a new term to describe it: zoobenthophilous pollination. Before that, researchers had never predicted that animals were involved in pollinating marine plants.
MERMAID BEES.
MERBEES.
@seananmcguire mermaid bees seem relevant to your interests…
EARTH NOW HAS A QUASI-MOON
Astronomers have detected a small asteroid that doesn’t seem to want to go away. Called a quasi-satellite, this new companion circles around the Earth as it orbits the sun—and it’s going to stay that way for the next few hundred years.
reblogging because it’s awesome
npr:
In 2015, Lida Xing was visiting a market in northern Myanmar when a salesman brought out a piece of amber about the size of a pink rubber eraser. Inside, he could see a couple of ancient ants and a fuzzy brown tuft that the salesman said was a plant.
As soon as Xing saw it, he knew it wasn’t a plant. It was the delicate, feathered tail of a tiny dinosaur.
“I have studied paleontology for more than 10 years and have been interested in dinosaurs for more than 30 years. But I never expected we could find a dinosaur in amber. This may be the coolest find in my life,” says Xing, a paleontologist at China University of Geosciences in Beijing. “The feathers on the tail are so dense and regular, this is really wonderful.”
He persuaded the Dexu Institute of Palaeontology to buy the artifact.
After analyzing the delicate tail, Xing and his colleagues in China, the U.K. and Canada now have an idea of what type of dinosaur it is, and of the evolutionary clues it holds. Their research was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.
They say that 99 million years ago, a baby dinosaur about the size of a sparrow got stuck in tree sap and never made it out. Had the young dinosaur had a more auspicious day, it would have grown up to be a little smaller than an ostrich.
Baby Dinosaur’s 99-Million-Year-Old Tail, Encased In Amber, Surfaces In Myanmar
Photo: Ryan McKellar/Royal Saskatchewan Museum
Caption: A baby dinosaur’s tail is encased in amber along with ants, a beetle and plant fragments.
Scale model showing how mangrove forests protect the coast from wave erosion. This is a huge deal, because mangrove forests worldwide are under serious threat. Beside providing habitat and supporting unique ecosystems themselves, they also protect the a large amount of coastal areas from coastal erosion, a serious threat in many coastal areas.
All of these women are Jewish. Let’s not erase that.
NO ONE GIVES A FUCK IF THEY’RE JEWISH OR HISPANIC OR WHITE OR BLACK OR ASIAN OR MUSLIM OR HINDU, WHY CAN’T WE JUST APPRECIATE THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS.
because representation is important, and not to mention that two of these women are actively practicing jews
mayim bialik is a modern orthodox jewish woman who would read the torah on set between filming scenes for The Big Bang Theory, and natalie portman grew up studying at jewish schools and speaks hebrew, and often speaks about how important judaism is to her in interviews
i’m a jewish girl and i “give a fuck” that these cool ladies are all jewish too
recognizing that facts takes nothing away from their achievements: if anything, it makes those achievements even grander when you consider they all belong to an extreme minority that has been shunned and faced hatred around the world
not to mention that Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-Jewish woman inventing this tech and starring in movies during the era of Nazi fucking Germany
so that’s why stating their ethnicity matters
universalequalityisinevitable:
Robert Sapolsky about his study of the Keekorok baboon troop from National Geographic’s Stress: Portrait of a Killer.
Thiiiiiiis, people, thiiiis!
1. Kill alpha male types
2. Achieve world peaceGot it.
I’ve actually read a lot of Sapolsky’s work. He’s one of my favorite scientists in the neuro/socio world.
I just watched the documentary and there is so much more about the troop that isn’t in this photoset—not only does the troop have a culture of little aggression and greater cooperation, but any incoming jerk baboons learned within a few months that their shitty behaviour was in no way acceptable, that the troop only rewarded sociability, and they changed accordingly.
I read about a study once (can’t remember where) that found matriarchal tribes tend to have more equality.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 