animals – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 The Cellular Secret to Resisting the Pressure of the Deep Sea https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-cellular-secret-to-resisting-the-pressure-of-the-deep-sea-20240909/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-cellular-secret-to-resisting-the-pressure-of-the-deep-sea-20240909/#respond Mon, 09 Sep 2024 14:18:08 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=140436 The post The Cellular Secret to Resisting the Pressure of the Deep Sea first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> The bottom of the ocean is cold, dark and under extreme pressure. It is not a place suited to the physiology of us surface dwellers: At the deepest point, the pressure of 36,200 feet of seawater is greater than the weight of an elephant on every square inch of your body. Yet Earth’s deepest places are home to life uniquely suited to these challenging conditions. Scientists have studied how the...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-cellular-secret-to-resisting-the-pressure-of-the-deep-sea-20240909/feed/ 0 Ecologists Struggle to Get a Grip on ‘Keystone Species’ https://www.quantamagazine.org/ecologists-struggle-to-get-a-grip-on-keystone-species-20240424/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/ecologists-struggle-to-get-a-grip-on-keystone-species-20240424/#respond Wed, 24 Apr 2024 14:27:09 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=137485 The post Ecologists Struggle to Get a Grip on ‘Keystone Species’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Anne Salomon’s first week as a graduate student in 2001 was not what she had anticipated. While other new students headed to introductory lectures, Salomon was whisked away by van and then motorboat to Tatoosh Island, which sits just offshore of the northwestern tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Among the tide pools of this isolated island, Salomon peered at the web of life on the rocks...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/ecologists-struggle-to-get-a-grip-on-keystone-species-20240424/feed/ 0 Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare https://www.quantamagazine.org/insects-and-other-animals-have-consciousness-experts-declare-20240419/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/insects-and-other-animals-have-consciousness-experts-declare-20240419/#respond Fri, 19 Apr 2024 14:00:10 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=137344 The post Insects and Other Animals Have Consciousness, Experts Declare first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In 2022, researchers at the Bee Sensory and Behavioral Ecology Lab at Queen Mary University of London observed bumblebees doing something remarkable: The diminutive, fuzzy creatures were engaging in activity that could only be described as play. Given small wooden balls, the bees pushed them around and rotated them. The behavior had no obvious connection to mating or survival, nor was it rewarded...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/insects-and-other-animals-have-consciousness-experts-declare-20240419/feed/ 0 How Is Flocking Like Computing? https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-is-flocking-like-computing-20240328/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-is-flocking-like-computing-20240328/#respond Thu, 28 Mar 2024 13:00:00 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=136659 The post How Is Flocking Like Computing? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. Within assemblies of organisms that seem as though they could get chaotic, order somehow emerges. The collective behaviors of animals differ in their details from one species to another, but they largely adhere to principles of collective motion that physicists have worked out over centuries. Now, using technologies that only recently became available...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-is-flocking-like-computing-20240328/feed/ 0 Tiny Tweaks to Neurons Can Rewire Animal Motion https://www.quantamagazine.org/tiny-tweaks-to-neurons-can-rewire-animal-motion-20240311/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/tiny-tweaks-to-neurons-can-rewire-animal-motion-20240311/#respond Mon, 11 Mar 2024 14:00:03 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=136114 The post Tiny Tweaks to Neurons Can Rewire Animal Motion first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In March 2019, on a train headed southwest from Munich, the neuroscientist Maximilian Bothe adjusted his careful grip on the cooler in his lap. It didn’t contain his lunch. Inside was tissue from half a dozen rattlesnake spinal cords packed in ice — a special delivery for his new research adviser Boris Chagnaud, a behavioral neuroscientist based on the other side of the Alps. In his lab at the...

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