Releasing a green and golden bell frog back in the wild - Credit: University of Canberra
Releasing a green and golden bell frog back in the wild – Credit: University of Canberra
This beautiful amphibian is being reintroduced to wetlands around Australia’s capital of Canberra after suffering a population collapse due to chytrid fungus.
Called the green and golden bell frog, these animals were bred in captivity and will be released in groups of 15 into ponds and wetlands having been immunized against a disease caused by the fungus.
They will also be let free in areas where “frog saunas” have been built—basically piles of black bricks covered in a pyramid of rigid plastic sheets. The slots and holes in the bricks are perfect for the frogs to shelter in, and at toasty temperatures lethal to the chytrid fungus.
Chytrid has been responsible for extinctions and population collapses all over the world, and scientists are only just now getting a handle on how to protect amphibians from it.
The green and golden bell frogs have mercifully been spared from such a fate, and scientists working at the University of Canberra to restore them to the wild felt the reintroduction has been a little like watching your children move out of the house for the first time.
Associate Professor Simon Clulow said it was “quite incredible,” for “as far as we’re aware, it went extinct [in the ACT] by about 1981.”
ACT stands for Australian Capital Territory, the special administrative zone around Canberra.
180 of the frog saunas have been installed around the ponds where over 300 captive-bred frogs will be released. Each female can produce around 8,000 eggs in a single mating season, so while the population is predicted to proliferate rapidly, the offspring will not be immune to the chytrid. For them, the saunas should help.
“The pathogen itself is quite susceptible to elevated temperature—it doesn’t like temperatures over 25C; 27 or 28C is quite lethal to it,” Clulow told the Guardian. “A lot of Australian frogs … prefer those temperatures—the green and golden bell frog likes to be about 30C.”
30°C is around 88° Fahrenheit. Outside the ACT, the frogs have clung on in isolated pools where the water contains a little salinity, and these have also been picked out in the ACT as the ideal relocation sites—and named ‘frog spas,’ for their warm, slightly saline water and sauna compliment.
The goal is to quickly reach around 200 of these frogs at each of the 15 ponds.
SHARE These Beautiful Frogs And Their Harrowing Brush With Oblivion…
A study looking at how transcendental meditation affects genetic expression found that this popular form of mediation suppressed the activation of genes associated with stress responses.
Okay, no surprise there—mediation is a calming, relaxing activity. However, the authors report evidence that the same genes found to be associated in stress response have been newly associated with accelerated hallmarks of aging, suggesting that transcendental mediation may also slow the aging process.
Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years, even before the establishment of major religious orders. Entering trancelike states through sitting, consuming psychedelic compounds, or through vigorous activity like dance, predates the established meditational practices of South Asian mysticism and Western hermitage culture.
Today, meditation is practiced across a wide spectrum of beliefs ranging from the entirely atheistic and rational to the deeply spiritual, and from people seeking marginal health benefits as well as those seeking enlightenment.
As surely as Buddha taught it was the key to the latter, modern medical science shows it to be one way to achieve the former.
Acting on various neurophysiological systems, like the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and the “conserved transcriptional response to adversity profile,” regulation of genes through meditation can dampen the human organism’s stress response that is correlated with a host of negative health outcomes from accelerated aging to cardiovascular disease risk.
Faculty at the Maharishi International University in Iowa conducted a study recently that divided a cohort into 4 groups of white students and locals in Fairfield where the university is located. With each group containing 25 participants, the study included young (20-32) practitioners of transcendental meditation, young non-practitioners, old (55-72) practitioners, and old non-practitioners.
In the young meditation group, 13 of 15 genes selected as proxies for stress and aging were downregulated versus the control group, while in the old cohort it was 7 out of 15. Additional examinations included evidence of better cogitative ability among the older practitioners compared to the old controls, and higher mental processing speed.
Resistance to cognitive decline, therefore, seemed another benefit of long-term transcendental meditation practice.
“To summarize the data on reduced gene expression in the [meditation] group, the association of these genes with healthy aging through their roles in controlling inflammation, energy metabolism and mitochondrial function, stability of nuclear DNA, and other key cell functions is clear,” the authors conclude in their paper, published in Biomolecules. “Increased expression of these genes is connected with a number of age-related diseases.”
Transcendental meditation involves the silent repetition of a mantra or sound, and is practiced for 15–20 minutes twice per-day.
It has been used in scientific literature for decades as a proxy for meditation as a whole because of its uniformity in practice, but there’s reason to suspect that other forms of meditation, like mindfulness, Zen, or others with long anecdotal histories of benefit, would create similar benefits.
SHARE This Interesting Finding With Those You Know Who Mediate (Or Need To)…
A red-necked ostrich - credit, Shlomi Chetrit via PikiWiki Israel CC 2.5
A red-necked ostrich – credit, Shlomi Chetrit via PikiWiki Israel CC 2.5
If you pull out a world map to see where you could find some space to stick a few endangered species without the risk of bothering human settlements, the Arabian Peninsula comes to mind as an obvious location.
With virtually the entire population living either on the coast or around oases, huge tracts of land remain uninhabited—something the Saudi Wildlife Authority is taking advantage of.
The red-necked ostrich, known historically as the “camel bird,” was reintroduced by ecologists at Saudi Arabia’s third-largest nature reserve. Critically-Endangered, this bird species once celebrated by Arab poets and Roman scholars has been extinct in the wild on the peninsula for 100 years.
Under a long-term program called ReWild Arabia, the red-necked ostrich was identified as the closest living relative of the extinct Arabian ostrich (sometimes called the Syrian ostrich) and for its ability to survive in extreme desert conditions.
A population of 5 birds were released into the 6-million acres of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Royal Reserve, where this ambitious rewilding attempt is taking place.
The ostrich is the 12th such animal to be reintroduced out of a project goal of 23 that represent a full compliment of native historic megafauna, including leopards, cheetah, and the Arabian oryx.
“Returning such an iconic desert species after nearly a century carries deep emotional, ecological, and cultural significance,” Andrew Zaloumis, CEO of the Prince Mohammed bin Salman Royal Reserve, told Arab News.
Zaloumis was CEO in 2024 when the reserve ended another 100-year absence with the reintroduction of the Persian onager, or Asiatic wild ass.
“Both species had disappeared from what is now Prince Mohammed bin Salman Royal Reserve for generations. Like the onager, the ostrich was revered by Arab poets and symbolized strength, endurance, and speed, appearing in oral histories and traditional storytelling,” he said.
“As a keystone species, its return is essential to restoring full ecosystem functionality, stability, and ecological balance.”
Globally, a mere 1,000 red-necked ostriches (also called the North African ostrich) survive across Africa’s Sahel, and the species remains Critically-Endangered. Given the harsh, out-of-the-way desert landscape and the lack of poaching threats, Arabia will offer the animal a suitable place to proliferate until such a time as its other native range countries become more stable and secure.
In return for the sanctuary, so-to-speak, the ostriches will bring their excellent work as seed-dispersal agents.
“Their nomadic movements across large distances make them highly effective seed dispersers, transporting seeds far from parent plants and increasing plant regeneration, connectivity and genetic diversity across arid landscapes,” Zaloumis said.
“Their foraging behavior supports nutrient cycling by disturbing vegetation, aerating soils, and flushing insects that benefit insectivorous species.”
The dry climate of Arabia makes it a hotbed for neolithic drawings, thousands of which have survived since ancient times and depict the ostrich along with many other animals the reserve’s managers are attempting to return to the wild.
SHARE This Story Of The World’s Largest Bird And Its Return To Arabian Shores…
A walleye caught in the Don River - Photo courtesy of TRCA
A walleye caught in the Don River – Photo courtesy of TRCA
Now, Canada’s National Observer brings us a story of the Don River going from a state of pollution to rival the Thames of London, to a biodiverse ecosystem home to over 20 species of fish.
As with so many rivers that bisect cities all along each side of the border in the Great Lakes Region, Toronto’s River Don was so polluted in once caught fire.
After CAD$1 billion in restoration initiatives, however, for the first time in virtually anyone’s living memory, the river is clean and fishable, with ecologists recently confirming the presence of Atlantic salmon, large mouth bass at every life stage, and the emerald bowfin—a warm-water fish native to Ontario—all at the same time.
Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) undertook a broad survey of the Don River, its watershed, newly-restored wetlands, and tributaries, and the results could best be described as a clean bill of health.
As the Lake Ontario port was industrialized in the 1800s, the meandering path of the Don River was canalized into straight lines featuring an unnatural 90° angle that diverted it away from the inner harbor. The straight lines accelerated the water flow, while the loss of adjacent wetlands reduced the water holding capacity. The result was decades of frequent flooding.
Undoing this was a key part of the river restoration. From out of the land that was infilled all those years ago, wetlands were created, and the river’s course was gradually altered back to something that appeared natural.
The restoration included climate resiliency measures, new levees, and a delta island called Ookwemin Minising, “the place of the black cherry trees” in Ojibwa. Some 5,000 homes will be built on it.
The Don River’s re-bent path around the docks and the artificial island – Photo courtesy of TRCA
For fish, areas of the naturalized river include gravel beds that fish need to spawn, as well as underwater and above water vegetation they use for shelter. In the first year that the river ran through this new, nature-and-man-made valley, the variety of documented fish greatly increased.
“The fish community in general has definitely increased in the area,” Brynn Coey, supervisor of aquatic monitoring and management at TRCA, told the Observer.
“And we’re seeing different life stages… very juvenile, just born, pumpkin seed — a sunfish, for example. And then we’re getting underwater video of these massive, largemouth bass in these wetlands.”
The bass are just one of several predatory fish that have returned, which also include northern pike and walleye.
Such outstanding initial results won’t distract Coey and her colleagues, who know there’s still a lot of data to collect on the new river and its habitats.
For a waterway that was declared biologically dead as far back as 1969, it’s a been a mighty-long time coming, but this major artery of Lake Ontario has sunnier, easy-breathing days ahead.
SHARE This River’s Long-Awaited Return To Normalcy With Your Friends…
Quote of the Day: “The price of greatness is responsibility.” – Winston Churchill
Photo by: Oleg Lytvynenko
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
Sheet music for In The Moond - fair use from publisher Shapiro and Bernstein, 1939
86 years ago today, In the Mood, by Glenn Miller reached #1 on the charts in the US. It’s one of those jazz tunes that everybody knows, even if they don’t know it by name. The saxophone opening is iconic, and the recording by Miller (though other versions had existed) was taken for the Library of Congress recording section for being culturally and historically significant to American history. HEAR the song everyone recognizes.. (1940)
MacKenzie Scott and former husband Dan Jewett, Giving Pledge
The only unlicensed photo freely usable by GNN shows MacKenzie Scott with former husband Dan Jewett, Giving Pledge /Yield Giving
Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave $7.1 billion to hundreds of nonprofits and charities last year, a significant increase over previous years.
“Since my post last December, I’ve given $7,166,000,000 to organizations doing work all over the world,” she wrote in a recent blog post on her website Yield Giving.
Scott reported she had donated $2.6 billion in 2024 and $2.1 billion in 2023. The California native has donated $26 billion since 2019—almost the entire fortune she received during her divorce with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
AP news reports that Scott is extremely distant from both the public eye and the eyes of the recipients of her generosity, who are often notified via intermediaries with little or no advance notice of their selection for a donation.
The outlet spoke with one such recipient: Kim Mazzuca, the CEO of the California-based nonprofit 10,000 Degrees, which works to unblock higher education opportunities to underprivileged communities.
“I was just filled with such joy. I was speechless and I kind of stumbled around with my words,” she said, having been notified by a person calling from Fidelity Charitable, which doesn’t handle Scott’s finances.
Ms. Scott pointed out in her blog post that acts of charity she received as a student in university often spring to mind when she is deciding where to donate money.
“Whose generosity did I think of every time I made every one of the thousands of gifts I’ve been able to give? It was the local dentist who offered me free dental work when he saw me securing a broken tooth with denture glue in college,” she wrote.
“It was the college roommate who found me crying, and acted on her urge to loan me a thousand dollars to keep me from having to drop out in my sophomore year.”
Conservation in India successfully doubled the native population of tigers in the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study reveals.
In 2010, the nations that make up the remaining range countries of the tiger set a target to double the number of wild tigers worldwide—a goal called Tx2—10 at the St. Petersburg International summit on tiger conservation.
The idea was that by 2022—the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese zodiac, the countries across the Indo-Pacific, East and South Asia, and Russia, would have enough time to effectively support tiger conservation.
By 2022, the objective was estimated to have been achieved when measured across the animal’s whole range, but within that achievement were several localized triumphs even more impressive—Nepal, but also India, had seen their native populations of tiger double.
Despite being the world’s most populous state, Indian governments were able to make room for tigers across 53,360 square miles. By 2018, India’s native tiger population clawed its way above 3,600. Along with being 75% of the world’s tiger population, it was twice as many as the best estimates guessed in 2006.
Published in a study in Science recently, extensive monitoring of the big cat across 20 Indian states every 4 years revealed this increase in the number of tigers, but also the amount of protected-tiger habitat.
As well as there being twice as many tigers since 2006, there is 30% more habitat where they live. The study presents findings that tigers do better in areas of higher economic development where locals and visitors can afford tiger-tourism and governments compensate for tiger-related losses. In contrast, poorer states see increases of human-tiger conflict that make it difficult for the world’s largest cat to endure.
Sharing land with the growing Indian population is increasingly difficult for both man and tiger, but conflict isn’t as common as you might think.
“We lose 35 people to tiger attacks every year, 150 to leopards, and the same number to wild pigs. Additionally, 50,000 people die from snake bites,” Yadvendradev Vikramsinh Jhala, the study’s lead author, told the BBC. “In fact, within tiger reserves, you’re more likely to die from a car accident than from a tiger attack.”
The WWF, which was very involved with the Tx2 goal, published an article late last year entitled “5 reasons for hope for Tigers in 2025, detailing how the cats were spreading naturally into the forests of northern Thailand, northeast China, and northern Myanmar, as well as the extensive preparations made by Kazakhstan for the reintroduction of the tiger in the south of that country where it has been extinct for over a century.
They didn’t include that camera traps in Sumatra recently recorded 3-times as many sightings of the Sumatran tiger subspecies than ever before.
SHARE This Great News For The World’s Largest Cat With Your Friends…
Mummy Portrait of a Man from Roman Egypt Flavian Period, circa late 1st century A.D. – Courtesy Sotheby's
Mummy Portrait of a Man from Roman Egypt Flavian Period, circa late 1st century A.D. – Courtesy Sotheby’s
Sotheby’s recently sold a painting of a man from Roman-controlled Egypt in the first century CE that experts suggest represents the dawn of realistic portraiture 1,200 years before it appeared in Italy.
The image is part of a family of works known collectively as the Fayum Mummy Portraits, all of which were found during 19th century excavations at a site called Hawara in Egypt’s Fayum region.
The portraits were placed atop mummified remains like masks, and were painted with pigment mixed with melted beeswax on wooden panels. Over 900 have been found, and some have been auctioned.
This portrait of a dark-skinned senior with graying hair, piercing hazel eyes, and a large lower lip recently brought in $889,000 with fees. Though they were painted and entombed in Egypt, the subjects could be Romans, whose nobility could afford both mummification and portrait commissions.
The nose might give the man up as a Roman; the substantial bridge being a feature of the Italian race still today. Others are perhaps less obvious.
What unquestionably stands out is the true air of realism in the work—one gets the feeling all at once that the man truly appeared as he is portrayed.
“It invites you to want to know more about him and to feel his presence,” said Alexandra Olsman, a Sotheby’s specialist in ancient sculpture and works of art.
Roman domination of Egypt came only after Macedonian domination of Egypt under the Ptolemaic dynasty. Whatever skin/eye color and features the ancient Egyptian race had, the population in the major cities would have long been altered by intermarrying with northern Mediterraneans.
It’s not known whether the sitters were painted in death or life, or some state in between of infirmity. Olsman told CNN that with the sincere connection through the eyes, it would seem unlikely to be the artist’s interpretation of a dead man.
Sotheby’s has sold over a dozen Fayum mummy paintings over the years, and this one along with another featuring a curly-headed, younger man, commanded the highest bids.
SHARE This Incredible Look At A 1,900-Year-Old Man With Your Friends…
As the Winter Olympics roars into life in northern Italy, athletes will be sporting state-of-the-art airbag vests that inflate during crashes, protecting speed skiers from the worst injuries.
For those unfamiliar, the Olympics are being held at the renowned ski area called Cortina d’Ampezzo, which is also a stop on the downhill events at the skiing World Cup, and if you didn’t know that, than you wouldn’t know that some of Cortina’s slopes are the fastest on Earth, with skiers routinely hitting freeway speeds.
One wrong turn of the ski could invite disaster, and amid a spate of fatalities in the sport among young Italian skiers, the engineering firm Dainese has worked for several years to perfect a wearable airbag vest.
At the same time, organizers, and the International Skiing Federation (FIS) are re-designing training courses for greater safety, including through measures like installing nets and incorporating larger fall zones.
“You can’t make a sport of speed totally safe… but you can do much more on training pistes [slopes],” the retired Italian downhill skier Kristian Ghedina, told Reuters.
The FIS made airbag vests mandatory for all speed events for the 2024-2025 World Cup circuit. The mandate will also come into affect for the downhill events at the Olympics.
The airbag uses sensors trained on years of runs and GPS technology to monitor an athlete’s motion and trigger only in real crashes. Some athletes have tried to argue their way out of the mandate, suggesting they reduce speed, and don’t want to have their course time put at risk by a misfiring vest, which manufacturer Dainese claims occurs at an extremely low rate.
Just after Christmas, 5 World Cup skiers crashed and suffered serious injuries including a brain hemorrhage on the Stelvio course at Bormio—the site of the Downhill and Super-G events at this year’s Winter Olympics.
Stelvio has several sections where downhill skiers hit speeds of 90mph, and it’s one of the most hair-raising courses on the World Cup circuit. Reuters spoke with some Italian skiers who say that the Dainese airbag will help safety catch up with the last 20 years of innovation in skies, boots, and ski suits—which have had only speed and performance in mind.
Airbags have existed in the sport for over a decade, and post-crash examination and research in some cases has shown that damage would have been worse if not for the deployment.
While some skiers argue the vest impedes their movement, another said it offered peace of mind that allowed him to focus on performance.
The airbag mandate should help protect skiers during the downhill events, and companies are looking at how quick-release ski bindings or boots could help reduce the number of knee and tibia injuries when skies don’t snap off in a crash.
WATCH the story below from Reuters…
SHARE This Safety Innovation That Doesn’t Compromise Performance…
Quote of the Day: “The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.” – William Inge
Photo by: Natalia Blauth For Unsplash+
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
152 years ago today, American Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet Amy Lowell was born. During a career that spanned just over a dozen years, she wrote and published over 650 poems, yet scholars cite Lowell’s tireless efforts to awaken American readers to contemporary trends in poetry, including by substantially aiding the rise of Ezra Pound’s work, as her more influential contribution to literary history. READ some of her verse… (1874)
Artist Gary Harper uses cremation ashes to make personalized paintings for grieving families – SWNS
Artist Gary Harper uses cremation ashes to make personalized paintings for grieving families – SWNS
An artist is using cremation ashes in his paintings to create unique memorial landscapes that grieving families can personalize as a way to remember loved ones.
Gary Harper began painting professionally just two years ago and was inspired by the loss of his cousin to respectfully experiment with blending a small amount of ashes into his artwork.
He holds consultations with families to learn about the deceased and any their favorite memories, focusing on landscapes with a personal connection.
The 33-year-old from Liverpool began painting while at college and developed a love for still life and landscapes.
It wasn’t until he became an occupation therapy assistant in a psychiatric hospital that he saw first-hand the profound effect art could have on people.
“I held an art therapy session with a patient and we made so many paintings together,” said the 33-year-old. “I was guiding her through the process and I realized how much I enjoyed it.
“A month later, I picked up the brush and started painting for myself. The piece was abstract sunflowers and the feedback I got was overwhelming.”
Artist Gary Harper uses cremation ashes to make personalized paintings of landscapes or still life – SWNS
While painting in his free time in December 2024, his cousin Donna passed away from cancer.
“It was so close to Christmas and it was really emotional.
A year later, he was painting some seascapes when the thought crossed his mind that he could add some ashes.”
In November 2025, Gary painted his first Ashes to Art commission, aiming to provide a personalized memorial in acrylic paint for the bereaved.
“It was lovely the family trusted me,” he told SWNS news agency. “It’s a respectful process.”
“I do a consultation with the loved one, learning everything about the person and what they enjoyed.
“With a painting, when it’s done, the family can feel the painting texture with the ashes, so they can still ‘feel’ the person in the painting, especially if it’s a place they used to love.”
Chester Zoo saves Bermuda snail (Poecilozonites bermudensis) from extinction
Chester Zoo saves Bermuda snail (Poecilozonites bermudensis) from extinction
A button-sized snail once thought extinct has been officially saved after conservationists bred and released more than 100,000 into the wild.
The greater Bermuda snail (Poecilozonites bermudensis) was believed to be lost forever until a small surviving population was rediscovered in an alleyway in Bermuda’s capital, Hamilton, a decade ago.
Now, following an international effort, the species has been confirmed as safe and secure—a moment conservation experts describe as “once in a career.”
The landmark success announced yesterday has been achieved through a partnership between the government of Bermuda, a conservation researcher from the Canada-based organization Biolinx Environmental Research and England’s Chester Zoo, where thousands of snails were carefully bred before being returned to Bermuda.
“It’s every conservationist’s dream to help save a whole species – and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” said Tamas Papp, an invertebrates manager at Chester Zoo.
“The greater Bermuda snail is tiny, but this is one of the biggest success stories in conservation.”
“This scientific confirmation that we’ve saved them is testament to the role zoos can play in preventing extinction, and in the power of collaboration, and is something everyone involved will carry in their heart.”
Six colonies of the released snails have successfully established in Bermuda, an archipelago situated in the north Atlantic Ocean, a fact that was confirmed by an assessment of how the snails are faring, which is forthcoming in Oryx, The International Journal of Conservation.
“It is remarkable to think we only began with less than 200 snails and have now released over 100,000,” said Dr. Mark Outerbridge, a Wildlife Ecologist at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Bermuda.
Bermuda snail (Poecilozonites bermudensis) – Courtesy of Chester Zoo
To boost population numbers, an expert group of scientists and keepers at Chester Zoo were entrusted with several of the snails in hope they could be bred off-site and returned to the wild.
Gerardo Garcia, Animal & Plant Director at Chester Zoo, was among the team that bred the snails in specially designed pods at the zoo and painstakingly released them in protected woodland habitats.
“The fact the snails are firmly established in six areas is massive,” he said. “These are the ones where the colonies are growing and expanding in range. That itself is really important information, because not much was known about P. bermudensis.”
Keepers adapted existing snail husbandry methods to find the best conditions for P. bermudensis to multiply. Their findings are now part of the first conservation breeding guide for the species.
“They nearly vanished, so being able to say the snails are now safe from extinction is amazing. It’s an incredibly good feeling to make a huge difference for a species, and something conservationists might get to say only once in their whole career,” said Dr. Garcia.
Snails are among the least researched animals on the planet, and among the most vulnerable to extinction.
Endemic snails in Bermuda have been affected by habitat loss and climate change, and their decline was accelerated by the introduction of predatory ‘wolf snails’, and carnivorous flatworms which ate the much smaller native species. This had a broader impact on the Bermuda ecosystem.
“The snails function both as prey for larger animals and as consumers of live and decaying vegetation, so they are vital for turning over nutrients within their habitat,” said Dr. Kristiina Ovaska from Biolinx.
In the future, climate change and environmental issues may affect the newly established P. bermudensis snail colonies, but the team is confident they now know how to reinforce the population quickly and effectively.
It’s another example of what is possible when conservationists collaborate across borders to reverse biodiversity loss and restore nature’s balance.
DON’T MOVE SO SLOW: Share The Good News on Social Media Today…
43-year-old bonobo named Kanzi – Courtesy of Ape Initiative / Johns Hopkins / SWNS
43-year-old bonobo named Kanzi – Courtesy of Ape Initiative / Johns Hopkins / SWNS
Apes share the human ability to imagine and pretend, suggests new research that included a series of tea party experiments.
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, called it the first study to show the capacity for pretending is not unique to mankind.
They learned that apes can use their imagination and play pretend. One bonobo engaged with cups of imaginary juice and bowls of pretend grapes “consistently and robustly” across three experiments, challenging long-held assumptions about the abilities of animals.
The findings, published this week in the journal Science, suggest that the capacity to understand pretend objects is within the cognitive potential of, at least, an “enculturated ape”, and likely dates back six to nine million years, to our common evolutionary ancestors.
“It really is game-changing that their mental lives go beyond the here and now,” said study co-author Dr. Christopher Krupenye.
“Imagination has long been seen as a critical element of what it is to be human, but the idea that it may not be exclusive to our species is really transformative.
“Jane Goodall discovered that chimps make tools and that led to a change in the definition of what it means to be human—and this, too, really invites us to reconsider what makes us special and what mental life is out there among other creatures.”
He said that, by the age of two, human children can engage in pretend scenarios, like tea parties. Even at 15-months-old, infants show measures of surprise when they see a person “drinking” from a cup after pretending to empty it.
Credit: Getty Images For Unsplash+
There had been no previous studies of pretend behavior in non-human animals, despite several reports of animals seemingly engaging in pretending behavior from both the wild and in zoos or captivity.
For instance, in the wild, young female chimps have been observed carrying and playing with sticks, holding them like mothers would hold their infants. And a chimp in captivity seemed to drag imaginary blocks along the floor after playing with real wooden blocks.
Dr. Krupenye and co-author Amalia Bastos, a former Johns Hopkins postdoctoral fellow who is now a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, wondered if they could test the capacity to pretend in a controlled environment.
They created experiments similar to a child’s tea party to test Kanzi, a 43-year-old bonobo living at Ape Initiative in Iowa, is the world’s only research center and sanctuary dedicated exclusively to the study and conservation of bonobos, our closest primate relative.
Kanzi had been anecdotally reported to engage in pretense, and could respond to verbal prompts by pointing.
In each test, a researcher and Kanzi faced one another, tea party-style, across a table. In the first task there were two transparent cups on the table, both empty, alongside an empty transparent pitcher.
Kanzi – Courtesy of Ape Initiative / Johns Hopkins / SWNS
The researcher tipped the pitcher to “pour” a little pretend juice into each cup, then pretended to dump the juice out of one cup, shaking it a bit to really get it out.
The researcher then asked Kanzi: “Where’s the juice?”
The bonobo pointed to the correct cup that still contained pretend juice, even when the researcher changed the position of the cup filled with pretend juice.
In case Kanzi thought there was real juice in the cup, even if he couldn’t see it, the team ran a second experiment, during which a cup of real juice was placed alongside the cup of pretend juice.
When Kanzi was asked what he wanted, he pointed toward the real juice almost every time.
A third experiment repeated the same concept, except with grapes. A researcher pretended to sample a grape from an empty container, then placed it inside one of the two jars.
After pretending to empty one of the containers, he asked Kanzi: “Where’s the grape?”
Kanzi again indicated the location of the pretend object. The researchers said Kanzi wasn’t perfect, but he was consistently correct.
“It’s extremely striking and very exciting that the data seem to suggest that apes, in their minds, can conceive of things that are not there,” said Dr. Bastos.
“Kanzi is able to generate an idea of this pretend object and, at the same time, know it’s not real.”
The researchers now want to test whether other apes and animals can engage in pretend play or track pretend objects. They also hope to explore other facets of imagination in apes, perhaps their ability to think about the future or to think about what’s going on in the minds of others.
“Imagination is one of those things that in humans gives us a rich mental life,” said Dr. Krupenye.
“And if some roots of imagination are shared with apes, that should make people question their assumption that other animals are just living robotic lifestyles constrained to the present. We should be compelled by these findings to care for these creatures with rich and beautiful minds and ensure they continue to exist.”
SHARE THE FASCINATING NEWS With Friends on Social Media…
A would-be thief was caught by police after a herd of llamas cornered the suspect in a field until officers could arrive.
It was dark outside when a man was alerted to an intruder on the couple’s farmland by animals making a loud alarm call last Monday evening.
The crook was fleeing the scene after stealing from a woman in Derbyshire, England, and he decided to squeeze through a fence onto farmland belonging to Heidi Price and Graham Oliver.
But his escape from police officers did not go according to plan, after eight llamas galloped over to him as he was running through the field and surrounded him.
Their warning cry alerted Graham who then discovered that the crime-fighting llamas had made a “citizens arrest”.
Graham went into the field with his dog to find the “terrified” suspect encircled by the 6-foot animals before police arrived on the scene.
SWNS
“We’ve got eight llamas and llamas don’t like people entering their personal space after dusk,” said Heidi, who arrived home to find police officers gathered on the road.
“Our llamas galloped over to him and surrounded him. They literally made a circle around him, and then started releasing their warning cry, which sounds like an old man laughing.
“He didn’t know what to do next and looked absolutely terrified,” she told SWNS news agency.
The dog started barking around the intruder’s feet, which scared him even more.
“My partner led him back across the field, to where he’d come from, and back over the fence where the police arrested him.
Heidi speculated the man’s demise could have been a lot scarier. If he hadn’t been caught by the llamas, he might have ventured further into the field and been met by five huge bulls—and his fate could have been a nasty one.
“But the llamas made a citizens arrest,” she joked. “I was wondering if they would get some sort of citizens recognition award!”
Since reluctantly rescuing the llamas 10 years ago when a farm was closing down, Heidi has become a member of the British Llama Society and learned a lot.
The eight animals weren’t accustomed to being touched by people at all, but during Covid, she worked with them until they could be handled—and now, thanks to Heidi’s support and patience, the llamas are calm and confident about being around people and even work as therapy animals supporting patients with mental health issues.
She told SWNS news that a description of her llama therapy program has even been published in the the British Journal of Occupational Therapy.
“Llamas are really interesting animals. Their only defense mechanism is spitting… and they were close to extinction before it was recognized that they have these incredible guard dog abilities—and people started using them to guard sheep and chickens.”
Quote of the Day: “The rose and the thorn, and sorrow and gladness, are linked together.” – Saadi
Photo by: Edward Howell
With a new inspirational quote every day, atop the perfect photo—collected and archived on our Quote of the Day page—why not bookmark GNN.org for a daily uplift?
58 years ago today, Planet of the Apesstarring Charlton Heston was released in theaters. In the film, an astronaut crew crash-lands on a strange planet in the distant future. Although the planet appears desolate at first, the surviving crew members stumble upon a society in which apes have evolved into creatures with human-like intelligence and speech. The film was a box-office hit, earning a lifetime domestic gross of $33.3 million. It was groundbreaking for its prosthetic makeup techniques by artist John Chambers and was well received by audiences and critics, particularly for the score. READ more about the (spoiler) “statue in the sand moment”… (1968)
Brown Hairstreak (Thecla betulae) – by Iain H Leach / Butterfly Conservation
Brown Hairstreak (Thecla betulae) – by Iain H Leach / Butterfly Conservation
Numbers of rare butterfly eggs have skyrocketed in South Wales after landowners let their hedgerows grow wild.
Volunteers for the UK nonprofit Butterfly Conservation have counted record tallies of Brown Hairstreak eggs this winter around the Welsh county of Carmarthenshire.
The success, they say, is down to two partner organizations that agreed to reduce the amount they cut back on their hedgerows, which has allowed the Brown Hairstreak to thrive.
“After a decade of heartache for Brown Hairstreaks in Carmarthenshire’s Tywi valley, there is at last signs of an upturn,” said Richard Smith, who has volunteered with Butterfly Conservation for more than 30 years.
Once abundant across the UK, the butterfly declined substantially due to farmers and landowners cutting back their preferred shrubbery, called ‘flailing’, which destroys young shoots of the spiky blackthorn bush.
The species will only lay its eggs on these green shoots, and since 2010, they—and the butterflies—had almost totally disappeared in the region.
Brown Hairstreak egg hunting by Paul Taylor / Butterfly Conservation
“When we found a small remnant population in 2021 just west of Llandeilo, we conducted annual egg counts after help from two key partners, the National Trust team at Dinefwr and the South Wales Trunk Road Agency, who both got more blackthorn planted on their respective estates and got those two sites completely protected from annual flailing,” said Smith.
“Results have been improving year on year, and this winter has seen 50% increases on such protected land.”
Butterfly Conservation volunteers went out each winter for years, armed with magnifying glasses, and spent hours hunting the hedges for the tiny white eggs.
This winter, their years of hard work have paid off.
Brown Hairstreak eggs on branches by Paul Taylor / Butterfly Conservation
“Small changes to the way we look after our hedges can help wildlife thrive and hedges function better for nature and people,” said Dan Hoare, Butterfly Conservation’s Director of Nature Recovery.
“We don’t want to stop anyone managing their hedgerows, but we would love more landowners to try cutting back on their cutting back.
“If hedgerows are only trimmed once every two years, or even every three years, it could make an enormous difference to the survival of the Brown Hairstreak and help many other species as well. The lovely Brown Hairstreak is an indicator of getting that balance right.”
FLY THIS GREAT NEWS to Nature Lovers on Social Media…
Visitors sniff the ‘Scent of the Afterlife’ card at the Museum August Kestner in Hannover, Germany – SWNS
Visitors sniff the ‘Scent of the Afterlife’ card at the Museum August Kestner in Hannover, Germany – SWNS
Scents from the past are being recreated using state of the art technology to give museum visitors a whiff of history.
Bio-molecular archaeology can bring ancient odors to life and allow people to breathe in the past.
Advances in the field have shown that ancient objects can retain the “molecular fingerprints” of past aromatic practices—and scientists say those molecules provide “unprecedented” insight into ancient perfumery, medicine, ritual, and daily life.
In a new study, published this week in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, researchers showed how museums can use molecular evidence to engage audiences with the sensory worlds of the past.
The team, led by archeo-chemist Dr Barbara Huber, combined their expertise to create a new way of converting bio-molecular data into accessible, visitor-ready olfactory recreations.
“This research represents a significant shift in how scientific results can be shared,” said Dr. Huber this week, from the Max Planck Institute of Geo-anthropology and the University of Tübingen, Germany.
Dr. Huber collaborated with scent-based consultant Sofia Collette Ehrich to breathe life into scientific data with perfumery practices.
Building on that foundation, perfumer Carole Calvez developed a series of formulations that translated ancient chemical signatures into a scent suitable for museum environments.
“Bio-molecular data provide essential clues, but the perfumer must translate chemical information into a complete and coherent olfactory experience that evokes the complexity of the original material, rather than just its individual components,” she said.
Moesgaard Museum exhibit ‘Ancient Egypt–Obsessed with Life’ in Aarhus, Denmark – SWNS
“The real challenge lies in imagining the scent as a whole,” she said.
The team developed two ways for presenting ancient odors in public settings.
Most recently, they created a scented card, which quickly became an integral part of guided tours at the Museum August Kestner in Hanover, Germany. The paper holds the essence of the reproduced scent after it is inserted onto the card via scent printing.
The Scent of the Afterlife scented card at the Museum August Kestner in Hannover, Germany – SWNS
They also erected a fixed scent diffusion station (pictured above the card) that was integrated into an exhibition two years ago called, The Scent of the Afterlife, to provide a recreation of the aromas that accompanied the ancient Egyptian mummification process.
The team’s aroma analysis centered on the mummification substances used to embalm the noble lady Senetnay in the 18th dynasty, circa 1450 BCE.
“We analyzed balm residues found in two canopic jars from the mummification equipment,” said Dr. Huber. The team found that the balms contained a blend of beeswax, plant oil, fats, bitumen, Pinaceae resins (most likely larch resin), a balsamic substance, and dammar or Pistacia tree resin.
“These complex and diverse ingredients, unique to this early time period, offer a novel understanding of the sophisticated mummification practices and Egypt’s far-reaching trade-routes,” says Christian E. Loeben, Egyptologist and curator at the Museum August Kestner.
“The ingredients in the balm make it clear that the ancient Egyptians were sourcing materials from beyond their realm from an early date,” says Prof. Nicole Boivin, senior researcher on the project. “The number of imported ingredients in her balm also highlights Senetnay’s importance as a key member of the pharaoh’s inner circle.”
“Scent provides a new approach to mummification, moving away from the scare factor and horror movie clichés towards an appreciation of the motivations behind the actions, and the desired results.”
The fixed scent station was installed in the Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, to accompany the exhibition Ancient Egypt – Obsessed with Life.
“The scent station transformed how visitors understood embalming,” said curator Dr. Steffen Terp Laursen.
“Smell added an emotional and sensory depth that text labels alone could never provide.”
This work demonstrates how molecular traces of the past can be transformed into meaningful cultural experiences.
Ms. Ehrich says they can offer museums compelling new tools for bringing visitors closer to past environments and their peoples through engaging the senses.
