Biology & Evolution
This section contains material that has a strong bent for Biology.
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| Dec 21, 2016 | » | Brainless Slime That Can Learn by Fusing [The Atlantic]
2 min; updated Sep 5, 2022
Brainless Slime That Can Learn by Fusing.
Ed Yong.
Building Transit NetworksCan a cell learn? When a part of the plasmodium touches something attractive, e.g. food, it pulses more quickly and widens. If a part meets something repulsive, like light, it pulses more slowly and shrinks. ... |
| Dec 11, 2019 | » | [BBC] Crows Could be the Smartest Animal Other Than Primates
2 min; updated Sep 5, 2022
Crows Could be the Smartest Animal Other Than Primates.
Chris Baraniuk.
New Caledonian crows make hooked tools from soft twigs to scoop insects out of holes. Other animals that use tools: chimpanzees, parrots, alligators and crabs. The crows found the desired stems even when they had been disguised with leaves from a different plant species. ... |
| Oct 12, 2021 | » | Evolution
3 min; updated Sep 5, 2022
Why Birds Can Fly Over Mount Everestfeatures a good anecdote of insight favoring the prepared. On a jog in London in January, probably primed by reading Nick Lane’s Oxygen, he noticed that there were some bar-headed geese. These geese migrate between India and Kazakhstan/Mongolia, necessitating a flight over the Himalayas, sometimes at 28,000 feet. ... |
uses a captivating narrative style to elaborate on a complex question. The exposition makes the scientific parts memorable.