October 25, 2024: The foxy science of animal domestication, babies use multiple senses to perceive their world, and Earth is going to blow past a critical temperature limit. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | An illustration, drawn and engraved, of an eastern whip-poor-will, by Richard Polydore Nodder. Florilegius/Universal Images Group via Getty Images | | | • Whip-poor-will birds make iconic appearances in American horror literature. But their populations are in steep decline. | 5 min read | | | • The world is well on track to blow past 1.5 degrees C of warming--a goal many countries have set as a limit for managing the effects of global warming. | 3 min read | | | Lyudmila Trut with a fox. Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) | | | Lyudmila Trut was a Russian geneticist who led a decades-long experiment that domesticated hundreds of foxes on a farm in Novosibirsk, Russia. The premise of the experiment was that certain traits including floppy ears, a curly tail, juvenilized facial and body features and mottled fur were linked to genes associated with calmness and tameness, even in foxes. Trut and her colleagues showed that, by breeding silver foxes for these traits, they could create gentle and domesticated individuals within 15 generations of foxes. Trut died this month at the age of 91. Why this matters: Trut identified the stretches of fox DNA, called quantitative trait loci (QTLs), associated with genes underlying the traits that are linked to tame behavior. In many cases the QTLs on particular fox chromosomes were similar to QTLs previously shown to be at work in the domestication of dogs. Trut's research has become the gold standard for the science of animal domestication.
Her legacy: Trut was a diligent scientist, devising testing protocol for the more than 23,000-day experiment, even scrambling to secure funding for the work during upheaval in the government after the fall of the Soviet Union. But she was also a thoughtful host to her American guests, writes Lee Alan Dugatkin, who visited Trut in 2012 to observe the experiment and who co-wrote a book with her about the work. | | | Researchers recorded the brain activity of 50 infants between four and 12 months old while the babies watched a stream of six images per second. Whenever the babies saw an image of a face their brain activity spiked. The scientists also gave the babies T-shirts that were either clean or infused with their mother's body scent. Presence of the mother's scent triggered even stronger brain responses to faces in the youngest infants.
Why this matters: Newborns need a way to help process the sensory information they receive, and so they use multiple senses at once. Researchers had previously shown that babies categorize faces better if the visual image is accompanied by a voice.
What the experts say: "To help infants learn, we should use all the senses," says Arnaud Leleu, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Burgundy in France. "The way we start to recognize things with our senses is the building block to developing concepts, language, memories." | | | • We can anticipate many false claims as we get close to Election Day—including untrue allegations of mass voting by noncitizens or of "suspicious vans" outside polling booths. "Social-media platforms are primed to facilitate the rapid spread of political rumors, including a whole theater of influencers who work with their audiences to synthesize 'evidence' to fit pre-existing narratives," writes Kate Starbird, a computer scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Such falsehoods should be quashed as quickly as they arise, she says. Here's what to look for in the coming weeks. | 4 min read | | | How well did you read science news this week? Test your knowledge with today's science quiz. Also, here's today's Spellements puzzle. Remember to send any science words that are missing from the puzzle to games@sciam.com. This week, Jen from Halifax spotted intron (a noncoding sequence of DNA). Impressive, Jen! | | | MOST POPULAR STORIES OF THE WEEK | | | • Long COVID Is Harming Too Many Kids | 5 min read | • An Ancient Asteroid Impact Both Harmed and Helped Life | 8 min read | • How Your Brain Processes Zero (It's Not Exactly 'Nothing') | 3 min read | | | • Biologist Katherine Lynch led a team of ecologists to restore the hyporheic zone of Seattle's Thornton Creek, which had been straightened from its original path and polluted. The hyporheic zone is beneath the waterway, including the bed of the stream and extending up the bank. It operates like a stream's liver, filtering water, infusing oxygen into the water and providing habitat for crucial creatures. The cleaned-up Thornton Creek welcomed Chinook Salmon back to spawn in 2018, the first time in decades. | 17 min read | | | Stream team led by biologist Katherine Lynch (foreground) revived Thornton Creek by rebuilding its gut—a thick layer of wet earth, rich in microbes, hidden underneath the streambed. Jelle Wagenaar | | | Lyudmila Trut's fox breeding experiment reached a heart-warming crescendo with the fox she called Pushinka (Russian for "tiny ball of fuzz"). Trut wanted to see if after 15 generations of breeding for tameness, a fox could cohabitate with humans and bond, as dogs do. Pushinka turned out to be a loving companion, sleeping next to Trut in her bed, barking like a dog at intruders, and even bringing her own newborn pups into Trut's lap. In less than 20 years, this wild and fierce animal species had turned into the most devoted of pets.
| Thank you for sharing your favorite apples with me! I now have a list of varieties I'm on a mission to try, including SnapDragons and Gravensteins. Other popular apple varieties from Today in Science readers:
Cosmic Crisp (most mentioned!) Envy Grimes Golden Cortland Winesap Newton Pippin Goldrush
Have fun trying new apples this fall and tell me how they are (plus any other feedback): newsletters@sciam.com. See you on Monday! | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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