The future of freshwater — will we have a drop to drink, and more.

Quirks and Quarks

How animals dealt with the ‘Anthropause’ during COVID lockdowns (1:04)

During the COVID lockdowns human behaviour changed dramatically, and wildlife scientists were interested in how that in turn changed the behaviour of animals in urban, rural and wilderness ecosystems. In a massive study of camera trap images, a team from the University of British Columbia has built a somewhat surprising picture of how animals responded to a human lockdown. Cole Burton, Canada Research Chair in Terrestrial Mammal Conservation at the University of British Columbia, was part of the team and their research was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution

Scientists helping maintain an essential ice road to a northern community (9:40)

The only ground connection between the community of Délı̨nę in the NWT and the rest of the country is a winter ice road that crosses Great Bear Lake. But climate warming in the north is making the season for the road shorter, and the ice on the lake less stable. A team of scientists from Wilfrid Laurier University, led by Homa Kheyrollah Pour, are supplementing traditional knowledge about the ice with drones, sensors, satellites and radar to help the community maintain a safe connection with the world.

Stars nudging the solar system’s planets leads to literal chaos (17:40)

The orbits of the planets in our solar system are in a complex dance, orchestrated by the gravitational pull from the sun but influenced by their interactions with each other. Now, due the findings of a new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, that dance is a lot harder to predict. Nathan Kaib, from the Planetary Science Institute, said the chaos that stars passing by our solar system introduces to simulations deep into the past or far into the future make our planetary promenade predictions a lot less certain.

A freaky fish, the gar, really is a living fossil because evolution has barely changed it (26:33)`

The seven species of gar fish alive today are nearly indistinguishable from their prehistoric fossilised relatives that lived millions of years ago. Now in a new study in the journal Evolution, scientists describe why these “living fossils” have barely changed and why two lineages separated by 105-million years can hybridise. Chase Brownstein, a graduate student at Yale University, discovered the gar’s genome has changed less over time than any other species we know, a finding which could hold the key to fighting human diseases like cancer.

Water, water, everywhere. But will we have enough to drink? (33:47)

To mark world water day, Quirks & Quarks producer Amanda Buckiewicz is looking at the challenges we’re facing with our global freshwater resources. It’s one of Nature’s bounties, and vital to agriculture and healthy ecosystems. But climate change and overexploitation are creating a global water crisis as glaciers melt, snowpack becomes less predictable, rainfall patterns change, and we overdraw the global groundwater bank.

We spoke with:

Miina Porkka, associate professor from the University of Eastern Finland. Related paper published in the journal Nature.

Christina Aragon, PhD student at Oregon State University. Related paper published in the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

Katrina Moser, associate professor and chair of the department of Geography and Environment at Western University.

Scott Jasechko, associate professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Related paper published in the journal Nature.