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Overnight News Digest: Animals that annoy us reveal far more about us than about the 'pests' [1]
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Date: 2022-10-22
x The climate crisis may explain fights as disappearing ice fuels interspecies competition—with goats nearly always winning.
https://t.co/9H27k77s03 — WIRED Science (@WIREDScience) October 22, 2022
In one corner, there is the agile climber with steak-knife-like horns. In the other is America’s largest wild sheep. They are locked in one-sided combat in the mountains of the US West, scientists have found, in a battle over resources uncovered by the region’s vanishing glaciers. In study sites across a 1,500-mile span of the Rocky Mountains, scientists have documented mountain goats and bighorn sheep competing over mineral deposits among the rocks, at elevations of up to 14,000 feet. These contests, never previously outlined in detail, show that two of the US’s heftiest native mammals are involved in a struggle that may be influenced by the climate crisis, as the mountains’ snow and ice rapidly dwindle. Conflict between such species “may be reflective of climate degradation coupled with the changing nature of coveted resources,” the new study states.🐝
🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝
x Vaccinating the queen bee provides immune protection for all of her offspring.
https://t.co/eYzGXcmA28 — Popular Science (@PopSci) October 22, 2022
The world’s first insect vaccine is here, and it could help with stopping a fatal bacterial disease in honeybees. A study published on October 17 in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science found honeybees born from vaccinated queens were more resistant to American Foulbrood (AFB) infection than hives with unvaccinated queens. Not only would the vaccine help in improving colony health, but it might increase commercial beekeeping to make products, such as honey and medical wax. [...] The recent study tests the safety and effectiveness of an oral breeder vaccine—an immunization that’s passed down from parents—to increase resistance against Paenibacillus larva. The oral vaccine is mixed into a new queen’s food which she ingests before being introduced into the hive. Once digested, the vaccine contents are transferred into the fat body, the storage organ in insects. Vitellogenin, or the yolk proteins that provide nutrients for growing embryos, bind to pieces of the vaccine and deliver it to eggs in the ovaries. “A little piece of vaccine into the ovaries stimulates an immune response and it’s where you need it the most,” says Annette Kleiser, the CEO of biotech company Dalan Animal Health that created the vaccine. “A lot of these diseases are when the larvae get infected in the first few days when they hatch.”
x “We had a few predictions for how they might behave, but this was not one of them.”
https://t.co/p2XHR5ZtPV — Science News (@ScienceNews) October 22, 2022
Some seabirds don’t just survive storms. They ride them. Streaked shearwaters nesting on islands off Japan sometimes head straight toward passing typhoons, where they fly near the eye of the storm for hours at a time, researchers report in the Oct. 11 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This strange behavior — not reported in any other bird species — might help streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) survive strong storms.🐄
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x A lubricant made from mucus in cow salivary glands has shown promise against HIV and a sexually-transmitted herpes virus in a laboratory study.
https://t.co/efgH0O2f9o — New Scientist (@newscientist) October 22, 2022
Personal lubricant made from cow mucus may protect against HIV In a laboratory study, human epithelial cells were treated with the lubricant before being exposed to HIV or a herpes virus, with subsequent infection rates being as low as 20 per cent
x It has to go somewhere.
https://t.co/ATVpO0IuA4 — MIT Technology Review (@techreview) October 22, 2022
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x Certain compounds in our skin determine how much we attract mosquitoes, new research suggests—and those compounds don’t change much over time
https://t.co/8hOvnSB5i7 — Scientific American (@sciam) October 22, 2022
In a new paper published on October 18 in the journal Cell, researchers suggest that certain body odors are the deciding factor. Every person has a unique scent profile made up of different chemical compounds, and the researchers found that mosquitoes were most drawn to people whose skin produces high levels of carboxylic acids. Additionally, the researchers found that peoples’ attractiveness to mosquitoes remained steady over time, regardless of changes in diet or grooming habits.
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x Some professional news, as they say:
Look at HER! My book "Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains" is available for pre-order!
https://t.co/8j6gFOunN8
Quick, get it before it's cool.
Am I mildly in love with the cover? Yes. pic.twitter.com/kQm3DScAFy — Bethany Brookshire (@BeeBrookshire) August 10, 2022
A squirrel in the garden. A rat in the wall. A pigeon on the street. Humans have spent so much of our history drawing a hard line between human spaces and wild places. When animals pop up where we don’t expect or want them, we respond with fear, rage, or simple annoyance. It’s no longer an animal. It’s a pest. At the intersection of science, history, and narrative journalism, Pests is not a simple call to look closer at our urban ecosystem. It’s not a natural history of the animals we hate. Instead, this book is about us. It’s about what calling an animal a pest says about people, how we live, and what we want. It’s a story about human nature, and how we categorize the animals in our midst, including bears and coyotes, sparrows and snakes. Pet or pest? In many cases, it’s entirely a question of perspective. Bethany Brookshire’s deeply researched and entirely entertaining book will show readers what there is to venerate in vermin, and help them appreciate how these animals have clawed their way to success as we did everything we could to ensure their failure. In the process, we will learn how the pests that annoy us tell us far more about humanity than they do about the animals themselves.🌱
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x 'I have been growing seedlings on floating beds for the past five years, growing seedlings of different vegetables,' says Mohammad Mostafa, who has revived his forefathers' farming practice of growing crops on floating rafts pic.twitter.com/NNP6JOjftp — Reuters (@Reuters) October 20, 2022
probably happened because she followed the cdc’s advice, but at least her hands are clean 😷
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