Fear!

Just heard a great BBC documentary on the power of fear, covering, amongst other things, the crippling effects of predator cues on song sparrow reproduction (cool work from up the road at Western), and the strange genetic quirks (somewhat like the pain-free woman) that can lead a few rare people to have no fear at all. Click here to listen!

Amnesty for vulture accused of spying

Heart-warming story (in the end) from war-torn Yemen:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47974725

 

Oakland’s new outfit

He doesn’t seem entirely certain about his new outfit, but hey, I love it: one of several gifts Andrea and I gleefully bought Oakland from the ever-wonderful Nippaz with Attitude.

Oh ha bloody ha

From the ever-funny Doug Wey (I did laugh honest Doug, but with some strange sort of crying mixed in).

Stereotypies in space?

And here is the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40789-y  (N.B. It’s not entirely clear to me how the mice can be said to be expressing a “full range of species-typical behaviors”, when they’re living in a wire mesh box. By “full” the authors must mean “limited” I guess)

One degree of separation from Jane Goodall

My amazing friend Sarah got to meet Jane Goodall on Friday, thanks to a friend of hers who’d worked at one of the chimp sanctuaries; so while some of us finished our supper before the lecture (which turned out to be strangely in support of OVC Pet Trust rather than anything conservation-related), Sarah got to hang out with this icon. (P.S. Incidentally, apparently the whole ‘six degrees of separation’ idea — that that’s what separates us from everyone — may be a myth).

 

 

Ten simple rules towards healthier research labs

Fantastic, humane and very sensible paper in one of the PLoS journals this week:

https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006914