Javan rhinos are among Earth's rarest large mammals, and once roamed from Northeast India to Southeast Asia. Yet despite tireless conservation efforts, these hefty herbivores are now teetering on the brink of extinction.Getting a precise count of the few Javan rhinos left is critical to making decisions about their conservation. The elusive nature of these animals, however, combined with political complexities, complicate this essential task — and the clock is ticking.Of course, the Javan rhin ...read more
Knowing who to trust is part and parcel of everyday life. Instinctively we may trust one person but not fully understand why. Researchers have puzzled over this question for decades, trying to piece together what makes a person trustworthy or not. “Trustworthiness is essentially being a prosocial person,” says Sebastian Siuda, a psychologist who researches the dynamics of trust. “If somebody opens up to you and makes [themselves] vulnerable to you, you don’t use that act for your own goo ...read more
Edy Setyawan, a marine researcher in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, has spent nearly a decade researching manta rays. But he remembers one in particular: a baby that had gone “toe-to-toe” with a shark and was left with a brutal bite on its wing.The baby defended itself with its wing, Setyawan says, knowing that this is one of the few parts of its body that can recover from such an injury. The fact that even a pup knew how to survive in such a situation, he continues, is proof that these gentle giant ...read more
Ötzi the Iceman, the world’s oldest glacier mummy, was a short and slender man (an estimated 110 pounds) who had blackened lungs, presumably from sitting next to camp fires. His skin contained 61 bluish-black tattoos, which the artist may have intended as healing treatments.Researchers have learned many other details of his life because of DNA analysis, including Ötzi’s skin color and ancestry. A new such study has found that Ötzi was much balder than initially believed and had darker ski ...read more
A new discovery concerning Gale Crater mud on Mars increases the likelihood that the planet has developed some form of life in the past. This time, it’s not the composition of the mud, but its dried-out, cracked pattern of neat hexagons that matters.When mud dries, it typically forms a more squared-off pattern. But when mud dries, re-moistens, and dries again repeatedly, the pattern can shift to board-game-like hexagons.“This is the first tangible evidence we’ve seen that the ancient clima ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine