The Ed's Up #216

Captive Orangutans Are Curious (But Wild Ones Are Not)

"When Carel van Schaik reached the top of his rope ladder, his first thought was: “Oh shit, there’s an orangutan here.” He was trying to measure the climate in the canopy of the Sumatran rain forest, using sensors that he had hoisted into the treetops. The devices were incredibly delicate: “You’d touch them and they’d break,” van Schaik recalls. So when he saw an orangutan ambling around, he feared the worst. Fortunately, the animal was completely uninterested in the equipment. Van Schaik was surprised. It didn’t jibe with the behavior he saw in rehabilitation centers, where orangutans are rescued or confiscated from smugglers, and cared for in captivity. There, the apes were a curious lot, and would fish through garbage cans, raid stockrooms, and even steal laundry from lines. “The wild ones never did that,” van Schaik says." (Image: Edgar Su)
 

Do Adult Brains Make New Neurons? A Contentious New Study Says No

"In 1928, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, proclaimed that the brains of adult humans never make new neurons. “Once development was ended,” he wrote, “the founts of growth and regeneration ... dried up irrevocably. In the adult centers the nerve paths are something fixed, ended and immutable. Everything must die, nothing may be regenerated.” Ninety years later, it’s still unclear if his statement is true. In a new study, and one of the biggest yet, a team led by Arturo Alvarez-Buylla at the University of California at San Francisco completely failed to find any trace of young neurons in dozens of hippocampus samples, collected from adult humans. “If neurogenesis continues in adult humans, it’s extremely rare,” says Alvarez-Buylla. “It’s not as robust as what people have said, where you could go running and pump up the number of neurons.”" (Image: Reuters)
 

The Fish That Makes Other Fish Smarter

"The wrasse are remarkably savvy about how they perform their services. Redouan Bshary, from the University of Neuchâtel, has shown that they sometimes cheat their clients by taking illicit bites of the protective mucus covering their skin. If the clients are watching, the wrasse restrain themselves from such shenanigans, in an effort to maintain their reputation. If disgruntled clients chase them, they try to make amends by offering a complementary fin massage. If high-status clients pop by—large, visiting predators like sharks or groupers—the cleaners prioritize them over smaller fish that live in the area. They’re surprisingly intelligent for fish. And it seems that, by removing parasites, they also make other fish more intelligent." (Image: Rand McMeins)
 

Hawaii: Where Evolution Can Be Surprisingly Predictable

"Most people go to Hawaii for the golden beaches, the turquoise seas, or the stunning weather. Rosemary Gillespie went for the spiders. Each of Hawaii’s islands has species of stick spider that come in three distinctive colors—shiny gold, dark brown, and matte white. Time and again, these spiders have arrived on new islands and evolved into new species—but always in one of three basic ways. A gold spider arrives on Oahu, and diversified into gold, brown, and white species. Another gold spider hops across to Maui and again diversified into gold, brown, and white species. “They repeatedly evolve the same forms,” says Gillespie." (Image: Suzanne Cummings)
 

Friends of the Ed's Up

Here's where I promote the work of people I care about--people who make incredible art that I think is worthy of your attention and support, but whose fierce intelligence is also match by a genuine warmth of spirit. 

Story Collider features true personal stories about science. In the latest episode of the podcast, Adam Ruben and his friends create a Rube Goldberg machine for a school project, and science writer Leah Shaffer discovers an interesting way to manage her chronic illness -- hookworms. Directors Liz Neeley and Erin Barker also run workshops teaching storytelling skills to scientists. And there are live shows coming up in  Atlanta (Mar 12), Cambridge, UK (Mar 14), Providence (Mar 16), New York City (Apr 3), and Cambridge, MA (Apr 15).

Flash Forward is a podcast about the future run by Rose Eveleth. It's part radio drama, part science journalism, and a lot of fun. The latest episode is a retrospective on the amazing third season.

Gastropod is a food, science, and history podcast run by Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley. The latest episode is on mustard.  

The Brain Scoop is a video show about natural history, museums, and occasionally taxidermy, hosted by Emily Graslie. The latest episode is about a new species of butterfly with a cool twist.  
  
 

More good reads

This is likely one of the best pieces of science writing you’ll read this year. It’s long. It’s about stinkbugs. It’s by Kathryn Schulz. It is pure delight.

 “The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t a galvanizing event, but the premature end of a movement that had only just begun.” Vann Newkirk II on the whitewashing of King’s legacy.

Something mysterious is killing captive gorillas. Krista Langlois investigates.

The largest ever study on fake news is… not encouraging. By Robinson Meyer

How to lose your job from sexual harassment in 33 steps, by Deborah Copaken. An original, poignant look at how harassment manifests as a pattern of behavior.

“Sixteen rigorous studies have shown that people’s coworkers are better than they are at recognizing how their personality will affect their job performance.” By Adam Grant.

A look back at all the bullshit reasons offered for why women shouldn’t be astronauts. By Marina Koren.

An ex-Russian spy was recently poisoned in Britain by a nerve agent. Sarah Zhang explains what those are and how they work

SkyKnit: How an AI took over an adult knitting community, by Alexis Madrigal

Maryn McKenna on how the long supply chain for medical goods and supplies threatens America.
 



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And that's it. Thanks for reading.

- Ed