How animals eating, excreting and expiring is like the world's bloodstream, and more

Quirks and Quarks

Why a detective is studying blood spatters in zero-gravity

There hasn’t been a murder on the International Space Station — yet. But Crime Scene Investigator Zack Kowalske has been studying how blood spatters in microgravity so that when someone does commit the first astro-cide, he’ll be able to use science to figure out whodunit. Kowalske sent a blood substitute for a ride on a parabolic microgravity flight to study how the absence of gravity changes how it moves, and discovered that surface tension takes over to shape how the blood splatters. The research was published in the journal Forensic Science International Reports.

Lifting the fog to let starlight shine through at the cosmic dawn

Not too long after the Big Bang, the universe went dark for many millions of years. Stars, black holes and galaxies began to form, but the universe was full of a cosmic fog in the form of light-absorbing hydrogen gas that blocked light from shining through. Hakim Atek, from the Paris Institute of Astrophysics led a group that used the James Webb Space Telescope to identify what cleared that fog: dwarf galaxies. In his new study in the journal Nature, Atek describes how young and tiny galaxies full of super-bright stars emitted enough radiation to burn through the fog and fill the universe with light.

Do whales get hot flashes? They have menopause

We don’t know if whales experience the same symptoms as human women, but in five known species of toothed whales, females do experience menopause. This is unusual as extended post-reproductive life is very rare in mammals — most of the time animals reproduce until the end of their lifespan. A new study led by Sam Ellis from the University of Exeter suggests that they have it for the same reason humans are thought to: because grandmothers are useful to have around. The research was published in the journal Nature.

Bees can learn tasks that are more complicated than they can invent

Researchers have laboriously taught bumblebees a complex, multi-step task that they never would have learned in nature, and found that once they learned it, other bumblebees could learn to do it from then. This suggests that they share with humans the ability to hold cultural knowledge that exceeds their own innovative capabilities. Behavioural scientist Alice Bridges was part of the team and the research was published in the journal Nature.

Our planet’s circulatory system depends on animals eating, excreting and expiring

Did you know our planet has a circulatory system? It moves vast amounts of nutrients over huge distances, processing them to extract energy and efficiently recycle them as well. It’s called animal life, and in a new book called Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make Our World, biologist Joe Roman explains how it works — and how restoring wild animal populations might be the best nature-based tool we have to beat the climate crisis.