Bonobos Help Strangers Without Being Asked
A passer-by drops something and you spring to pick it up. Or maybe you hold the door for someone behind you. Such acts of kindness to strangers were long thought…
evolution
Teaching Bats to Say ‘Move Out of My Way’ in Many Dialects
Wild fruit bats, living in crowded roosts, are exposed to calls from hundreds of fellow bats from birth. Most often these calls are made in response to unsolicited physical contact,…
How Neanderthals Influenced Human Genetics at the Crossroads of Asia and Europe
When the ancestors of modern humans migrated out of Africa, they passed through the Middle East and Turkey before heading deeper into Asia and Europe. Here, at this important crossroads, it’s…
Nature or Nurture? Innate Social Behaviors in the Mouse Brain
Adult male mice have a simple repertoire of innate, or instinctive, social behaviors: When encountering a female, a male mouse will try to mate with it, and when encountering another…
Humans Still Evolving, Large-Scale Study of Genetic Data Shows
In a study analyzing the genomes of 210,000 people in the United States and Britain, researchers have found that the genetic variants linked to Alzheimer’s disease and heavy smoking are…
Geneticists Trace Humble Apple's Exotic Lineage All the Way to the Silk Road
It is a lunchbox staple so ubiquitous as to have become mundane. But the apple we know today is the fruit of an extraordinary journey, researchers have revealed. Scientists studying…