How a Virus Spreads, and How to Avoid It: A Former NASA Engineer Demonstrates with a Blacklight in a Classroom

in Biology, Health | March 20th, 2020

The past few weeks have remind­ed us just why virus­es have been such a for­mi­da­ble ene­my of human­i­ty for so long. Though very few of the count­less virus­es in exis­tence affect us in any way, let alone a lethal one, we can’t see them with­out micro­scopes. And so when a dead­ly virus breaks out, we live our dai­ly lives with an invis­i­ble killer in our midst. Aggres­sive test­ing, as sev­er­al coro­n­avirus-afflict­ed coun­tries have proven, does much to low­er the rate of trans­mis­sion. But how, exact­ly, does trans­mis­sion hap­pen? In the video above, Youtu­ber Mark Rober, a for­mer NASA engi­neer and Apple prod­uct design­er, demon­strates the process vivid­ly by tak­ing a black­light into that most dis­eased of all envi­ron­ments: the ele­men­tary-school class­room.

You can’t see virus­es under a black­light, but you can see the spe­cial pow­der that Rober applies to the hands of the class’s teacher. At the begin­ning of the school day, the teacher shakes the hand of just three kids, touch­ing none of the oth­ers, and by lunchtime — a cou­ple of hours after Rober pow­ders the hands of one more stu­dent dur­ing morn­ing break — the black­light reveals the “germs” every­where.

This despite fair­ly dili­gent hand-wash­ing, albeit hand-wash­ing unac­com­pa­nied by the dis­in­fec­tion of sur­faces, cell­phones, and oth­er objects in and parts of the class­room. “Even if a virus is spread through air­borne trans­mis­sion,” Rober says, “those tiny droplets don’t stay in the air for long. Then they land on sur­faces, wait­ing to be touched by our hands.” This leads him to the dec­la­ra­tion that “the ulti­mate defense against catch­ing a virus is: just don’t touch your face.”

Rober calls your eyes, nose, and mouth “the sin­gle weak spot on the Death Star when it comes to virus­es. That’s the only way they can get in to infect you.” Hence, here in the time of COVID-19, the fre­quent urg­ings not just to wash our hands but to refrain from touch­ing our faces as well. Increas­ing­ly many of us have become hyper-aware of our own “germ hygiene,” as Rober calls it, but the oth­er half of the bat­tle against the pan­dem­ic must be insti­tu­tion­al: school clo­sures, for exam­ple, one of which was announced over the PA sys­tem dur­ing this very video’s shoot. “Because of this virus, we are going to be clos­ing school for three weeks,” says the prin­ci­pal, not with­out a note of excite­ment in his voice — but an excite­ment hard­ly com­pa­ra­ble to the sub­se­quent explo­sion of joy among the third-graders lis­ten­ing. Chal­leng­ing though this time may be, chil­dren like these remind us to take our fun wher­ev­er we find it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Watch Bac­te­ria Become Resis­tant to Antibi­otics in a Mat­ter of Days: A Quick, Stop-Motion Film

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

Jared Dia­mond Iden­ti­fies the Real, Unex­pect­ed Risks in Our Every­day Life (in a Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video)

200 Free Kids’ Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How Humans Domesticated Cats (Twice)

in Biology, History, Nature, Travel | January 27th, 2020

Depend­ing on how you feel about cats, the feline sit­u­a­tion on the island of Cyprus is either the stuff of a delight­ful children’s sto­ry or a hor­ror film to be avoid­ed at all cost.

Despite being sur­round­ed on all sides by water, the cat pop­u­la­tion—an esti­mat­ed 1.5 mil­lion—cur­rent­ly out­num­bers human res­i­dents. The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty are fer­al, though as we learn in the above episode of PBS’ EONS, they, too, can be con­sid­ered domes­ti­cat­ed. Like the oth­er 600,000,000-some liv­ing mem­bers of Felis Catus on plan­et Earth—which is to say the type of beast we asso­ciate with lit­ter­box­es, laser point­ers, and Ten­der Vittles—they are descend­ed from a sin­gle sub­species of African wild­cat, Felis Sil­vestris Lybi­ca.

While there’s no sin­gle nar­ra­tive explain­ing how cats came to dom­i­nate Cyprus, the sto­ry of their glob­al domes­ti­ca­tion is not an uncom­mon one:

An ancient effi­cien­cy expert real­ized that herd­ing cats was a much bet­ter use of time than hunt­ing them, and the idea quick­ly spread to neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Kid­ding. There’s no such thing as herd­ing cats (though there is a Chica­go-based cat cir­cus, whose founder moti­vates her skate­board-rid­ing, bar­rel-rolling, high-wire-walk­ing stars with pos­i­tive rein­force­ment…)

Instead, cats took a com­men­sal path to domes­ti­ca­tion, lured by their bel­lies and cel­e­brat­ed curios­i­ty.

Ol’ Felis (Felix!) Sil­vestris (Suf­ferin’ Suc­co­tash!) Lybi­ca couldn’t help notic­ing how human set­tle­ments boast­ed gen­er­ous sup­plies of food, includ­ing large num­bers of tasty mice and oth­er rodents attract­ed by the grain stores.

Her inad­ver­tent human hosts grew to val­ue her pest con­trol capa­bil­i­ties, and cul­ti­vat­ed the rela­tion­ship… or at the very least, refrained from devour­ing every cat that wan­dered into camp.

Even­tu­al­ly, things got to the point where one 5600-year-old spec­i­men from north­west­ern Chi­na was revealed to have died with more mil­let than mouse meat in its system—a pet in both name and pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment.

Chow chow chow.

Inter­est­ing­ly, while today’s house cats’ gene pool leads back to that one sub-species of wild mack­er­el-tab­by, it’s impos­si­ble to iso­late domes­ti­ca­tion to a sin­gle time and place.

Both arche­o­log­i­cal evi­dence and genome analy­sis sup­port the idea that cats were domes­ti­cat­ed both 10,000 years ago in South­west Asia… and then again in Egypt 6500 years lat­er.

At some point, a human and cat trav­eled togeth­er to Cyprus and the rest is his­to­ry, an Inter­net sen­sa­tion and an if you can’t beat em, join em tourist attrac­tion.

Such high end island hotels as Pissouri’s Colum­bia Beach Resort and TUI Sen­satori Resort Atlanti­ca Aphrodite Hills in Paphos have start­ed cater­ing to the ever-swelling num­bers of unin­vit­ed, four-legged locals with a robust reg­i­men of health­care, shel­ter, and food, served in feline-spe­cif­ic tav­er­nas.

An island char­i­ty known as Cat P.A.W.S. (Pro­tect­ing Ani­mals With­out Shel­ter) appeals to vis­i­tors for dona­tions to defray the cost of neu­ter­ing the mas­sive fer­al pop­u­la­tion.

Some­times they even man­age to send a fur­ry Cyprus native off to a new home with a for­eign hol­i­day­mak­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

A New Pho­to Book Doc­u­ments the Won­der­ful Home­made Cat Lad­ders of Switzer­land

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Medical Student Creates Intricate Anatomical Embroideries of the Brain, Heart, Lungs & More

in Art, Biology, Creativity, Science | January 20th, 2020

My first thought upon see­ing the del­i­cate, anato­my-based work of the 23-year-old embroi­dery artist and med­ical stu­dent Emmi Khan was that the Girl Scouts must have expand­ed the cat­e­gories of skills eli­gi­ble for mer­it badges.

(If mem­o­ry serves, there was one for embroi­dery, but it cer­tain­ly didn’t look like a cross-sec­tioned brain, or a sinus cav­i­ty.)

Clos­er inspec­tion revealed that the cir­cu­lar views of Khan’s embroi­deries are not quite as tiny as the round badges stitched to high achiev­ing Girl Scouts’ sash­es, but rather still framed in the wood­en hoops that are an essen­tial tool of this artist’s trade.

Meth­ods both sci­en­tif­ic and artis­tic are a source of fas­ci­na­tion for Khan, who began tak­ing needle­work inspi­ra­tion from anato­my as an under­grad study­ing bio­med­ical sci­ences. As she writes on her Mol­e­c­u­lart web­site:

Sci­ence has par­tic­u­lar meth­ods: it is fun­da­men­tal­ly objec­tive, con­trolled, empir­i­cal. Sim­i­lar­ly, art has par­tic­u­lar meth­ods: there is an empha­sis on sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and explo­ration, but there is also an ele­ment of reg­u­la­tion regard­ing how art is cre­at­ed… e.g. what type of nee­dle to use to embroi­der or how to prime a can­vas.

The pro­ce­dures and tech­niques adopt­ed by sci­en­tists and artists may be very dif­fer­ent. Ulti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, they both have a com­mon aim. Artists and sci­en­tists both want to 1) make sense of the vast­ness around them in new ways, and 2) present and com­mu­ni­cate it to oth­ers through their own vision. 

A glimpse at the flow­ers, intri­cate stitch­es, and oth­er dain­ties that pop­u­late her Pin­ter­est boards offers a fur­ther peek into Khan’s meth­ods, and might prompt some read­ers to pick up a nee­dle them­selves, even those with no imme­di­ate plans to embroi­der a kary­otype or The Cir­cle of Willis, the cir­cu­lar anas­to­mo­sis of arter­ies at the base of the brain.

The Cardiff-based med­ical stu­dent delights in embell­ish­ing her thread­ed obser­va­tions of inter­nal organs with the occa­sion­al dec­o­ra­tive element—sunflowers, posies, and the like…

She makes her­self avail­able on social media to answer ques­tions on sub­jects rang­ing from embroi­dery tips to her rela­tion­ship to sci­ence as a devout Mus­lim, and to share works in progress, like a set of lungs that embody the Four Sea­sons, com­mis­sioned by a cus­tomer in the States.

To see more of Emmi Khan’s work, includ­ing a down­load­able anatom­i­cal flo­ral heart embroi­dery pat­tern, vis­it Mol­e­c­u­lart, her Insta­gram page, or her Etsy shop.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold an Anatom­i­cal­ly Cor­rect Repli­ca of the Human Brain, Knit­ted by a Psy­chi­a­trist

An Artist Cro­chets a Life-Size, Anatom­i­cal­ly-Cor­rect Skele­ton, Com­plete with Organs

Watch Nina Paley’s “Embroi­der­ma­tion,” a New, Stun­ning­ly Labor-Inten­sive Form of Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York: The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Plants Emit High-Pitched Sounds When They Get Cut, or Stressed by Drought, a New Study Shows

in Biology, Science | December 10th, 2019

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Are plants sen­tient? We know they sense their envi­ron­ments to a sig­nif­i­cant degree; like ani­mals, they can “see” light, as a New Sci­en­tist fea­ture explains. They “live in a very tac­tile world,” have a sense of smell, respond to sound, and use taste to “sense dan­ger and drought and even to rec­og­nize rel­a­tives.” We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly high­light­ed research here on how trees talk to each oth­er with chem­i­cal sig­nals and form social bonds and fam­i­lies. The idea sets the imag­i­na­tion run­ning and might even cause a lit­tle para­noia. What are they say­ing? Are they talk­ing about us?

Maybe we deserve to feel a lit­tle uneasy around plant life, giv­en how ruth­less­ly our con­sumer economies exploit the nat­ur­al world. Now imag­ine we could hear the sounds plants make when they’re stressed out. In addi­tion to releas­ing volatile chem­i­cals and show­ing “altered phe­no­types, includ­ing changes in col­or, smell, and shape,” write the authors of a new study pub­lished at bioRx­iv, it’s pos­si­ble that plants “emit air­borne sounds [their empha­sis] when stressed—similarly to many ani­mals.”

The researchers who test­ed this hypoth­e­sis at Tel Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty “found that toma­to and tobac­co plants made sounds at fre­quen­cies humans can­not hear,” New Sci­en­tist reports. “Micro­phones placed 10 cen­time­tres from the plants picked up sounds in the ultra­son­ic range of 20 to 100 kilo­hertz, which the team say insects and some mam­mals would be capa­ble of hear­ing and respond­ing to from as far as 5 metres away.”

The plants made these sounds when stressed by lack of water or when their stems were cut. Toma­to plants stressed by drought made an aver­age of 35 sounds per hour. Tobac­co plants, on aver­age, made 11. Unstressed plants, by con­trast, “pro­duced few­er than one sound per hour.” The sci­en­tists used machine learn­ing to dis­tin­guish between dif­fer­ent kinds of dis­tress calls, as it were, and dif­fer­ent kinds of plants, “cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fy­ing in most cas­es whether the stress was caused by dry­ness or a cut,” and they con­duct­ed the exper­i­ments in both closed acoustic cham­bers and a green­house.

Plants do not, of course, have vocal cords or audi­to­ry sys­tems. But they do expe­ri­ence a process known as “cav­i­ta­tion,” in which “air bub­bles form, expand and explode in the xylem, caus­ing vibra­tions,” the paper explains. These vibra­tions have been record­ed in the past by direct, con­tact-based meth­ods. This new study, which has yet to pass peer review, might be the first to show how plants might use sound to com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and with oth­er liv­ing organ­isms, sug­gest­ing “a new modal­i­ty of sig­nal­ing.”

The pos­si­bil­i­ties for future research are fas­ci­nat­ing. We might learn, for exam­ple, that “if plants emit sounds in response to a cater­pil­lar attack, preda­tors such as bats could use these sounds to detect attacked plants and prey on the her­bi­vores, thus assist­ing the plant.” And just as trees are able to respond to each oth­er’s dis­tress when they’re con­nect­ed in a for­est, “plants could poten­tial­ly hear their drought stressed or injured neigh­bors and react accordingly”—however that might be.

Much remains to be learned about the sen­so­ry lives of plants. Whether their active calls and respons­es to the stim­uli around them are indica­tive of a kind of con­scious­ness seems like a philo­soph­i­cal as much as a bio­log­i­cal ques­tion. But “even if the emis­sion of the sounds is entire­ly invol­un­tary,” the researchers write (seem­ing to leave room for plant voli­tion), it’s a phe­nom­e­non that counts as a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion: maybe even what we might some­day call plant lan­guage, dif­fer­ent from species to species and, per­haps, between indi­vid­ual plants them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

Graph­ic Shows the House Plants That Nat­u­ral­ly Clean the Air in Your Home, Accord­ing to a NASA Study

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Chill Out to 70 Hours of Oceanscape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth

in Biology, Environment, Life, Nature, Science, Television | October 18th, 2019

Those who har­bor a deep-seat­ed fear of the water may want to look for oth­er meth­ods of stress relief than BBC Earth’s relax­ing 10-hour video loops, but every­one else is encour­aged to take a dip in these stun­ning nat­ur­al worlds, pre­sent­ed with­out com­men­tary or back­ground music.

All sev­en 10-hour playlists are salt-water based: coral reefs, coast­lines, deep ocean, open ocean, frozen seas, ocean sur­faces, and sea forests.

As in most com­pelling nature doc­u­men­taries, non-human crea­tures loom large, but unlike such BBC Earth offer­ings as Creepi­est Insect Moments or Ants Attack Ter­mite Mounds, there’s a benign, live-and-let-live vibe to the pro­ceed­ings.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the pho­tog­ra­phy is breath­tak­ing, and the uses of these marathon-length por­traits are man­i­fold: med­i­ta­tion tool, sleep aid, child soother, social media decom­pres­sor, trav­el­ogue, and—less calmingly—call to action.

Sci­ence tells us that many of these life forms, and the ocean in which they dwell, are in seri­ous dan­ger, thanks to decades of human dis­re­gard for the envi­ron­ment. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to immerse our­selves in what we stand to lose while it’s still pos­si­ble to do some­thing about it.

If that thought seems too depress­ing, there’s also strong sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that nature doc­u­men­taries such as these pro­mote increased feel­ings of well­be­ing

What are you wait­ing for?

Click here to trav­el the oceans with polar bears, jel­ly­fish, dol­phins, sea­hors­es, bright­ly col­ored trop­i­cal fish and oth­er crea­tures of the deep, com­pli­ments of BBC’s Earth’s Ocean­scapes playlists.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch­ing Nature Doc­u­men­taries Can Pro­duce “Real Hap­pi­ness,” Finds a Study from the BBC and UC-Berke­ley

Bob Odenkirk & Errol Mor­ris Cre­ate Comedic Shorts to Help You Take Action Against Glob­al Warm­ing: Watch Them Online

Do Octopi Dream? An Aston­ish­ing Nature Doc­u­men­tary Sug­gests They Do

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Download 435 High Resolution Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of America

in Art, Biology, Nature | October 11th, 2019

In our expe­ri­ence, bird lovers fall into two gen­er­al cat­e­gories:

Keen­ly obser­vant cat­a­loguers like John James Audubon …

And those of us who can­not resist assign­ing anthro­po­mor­phic per­son­al­i­ties and behav­iors to the 435 stars of Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca, a stun­ning col­lec­tion of prints from life-size water­col­ors he pro­duced between 1827 and 1838.

Our sus­pi­cions have lit­tle to do with biol­o­gy, but rather, a cer­tain zesti­ness of expres­sion, an overem­phat­ic beak, a droll gleam in the eye.

The Audubon Society’s new­ly redesigned web­site abounds with trea­sure for those in either camp:

Free high res down­loads of all 435 plates.

Mp3s of each specimen’s call.

And vin­tage com­men­tary that effec­tive­ly splits the dif­fer­ence between sci­ence and the unin­ten­tion­al­ly humor­ous locu­tions of anoth­er age.

Take for instance, the Bur­row­ing Owl, as described by self-taught nat­u­ral­ist Thomas Say (1787–1834):

It is delight­ful, dur­ing fine weath­er, to see these live­ly lit­tle crea­tures sport­ing about the entrance of their bur­rows, which are always kept in the neat­est repair, and are often inhab­it­ed by sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als. When alarmed, they imme­di­ate­ly take refuge in their sub­ter­ranean cham­bers; or, if the dread­ed dan­ger be not imme­di­ate­ly impend­ing, they stand near the brink of the entrance, brave­ly bark­ing and flour­ish­ing their tails, or else sit erect to recon­noitre the move­ments of the ene­my.

The notes of ornithol­o­gist John Kirk Townsend (1809 – 1851) sug­gest that not every­one was as tak­en with the species as Say (who was, in all fair­ness, the father of Amer­i­can ento­mol­o­gy):

Noth­ing can be more unpleas­ant than the bag­ging of this species, on account of the fleas with which their plumage swarms, and which in all prob­a­bil­i­ty have been left in the bur­row by the Bad­ger or Mar­mot, at the time it was aban­doned by these ani­mals. I know of no oth­er bird infest­ed by that kind of ver­min. 

The Com­mon Gallinule, above, sug­gests that there’s often more to these birds than meets the eye. His some­what sheep­ish look­ing coun­te­nance belies the red hot love life Audubon recounts:

… the man­i­fes­ta­tions of their ama­to­ry propen­si­ty were quite remark­able. The male birds court­ed the females, both on the land and on the water; they fre­quent­ly spread out their tail like a fan, and moved round each oth­er, emit­ting a mur­mur­ing sound for some sec­onds. The female would after­wards walk to the water’s edge, stand in the water up to her breast, and receive the caress­es of the male, who imme­di­ate­ly after would strut on the water before her, jerk­ing with rapid­i­ty his spread tail for awhile, after which they would both resume their ordi­nary occu­pa­tions.

Being that we are firm­ly plant­ed in the sec­ond type of bird lover’s camp, this ornitho­log­i­cal cor­nu­copia main­ly serves to whet our appetite for more Falseknees, self-described bird nerd Joshua Bark­man’s beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered web­com­ic.

Yes, Audubon’s Indi­go Bird, aka Petit Pape­bleu, “an active and live­ly lit­tle fel­low” who “pos­sess­es much ele­gance in his shape, and also a cer­tain degree of firm­ness in his make” was sep­a­rat­ed by a cen­tu­ry or so from “Mood Indi­go”—we pre­sume that’s the tune stuck in Barkman’s bird’s head—but he does look rather pre­oc­cu­pied, no?

Pos­si­bly just think­ing of meal­worms…

Explore Audubon’s Birds of Amer­i­ca by chrono­log­i­cal or alpha­bet­i­cal order, or by state, and down­load them all for free here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

Mod­ernist Bird­hous­es Inspired by Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright and Joseph Eich­ler

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 7 for her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Free: Download the Sublime Sights & Sounds of Yellowstone National Park

in Biology, Life, Nature | October 10th, 2019

Moments before writ­ing these words I was feel­ing a lit­tle stressed—a not uncom­mon expe­ri­ence for most every­one these days. Then I watched the 25-sec­ond video of a bighorn sheep, above, and some­thing hap­pened. Not an epiphany or moment of Zen. Just a momen­tary sus­pen­sion of human woe as the ani­mal silent­ly munched, a crea­ture so unlike myself and yet so moti­vat­ed by the same basic needs.

How much bet­ter to observe the sheep first­hand, in its home at Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park? But per­haps we can, through our com­put­ers, touch into a lit­tle of the rem­e­dy Oliv­er Sacks sug­gest­ed for our mod­ern trau­mas. Nature gives us “sense of deep time,” the neu­rol­o­gist wrote, which “brings a deep peace with it, a detach­ment from the timescale, the urgen­cies of dai­ly life… a pro­found sense of being at home, a sort of com­pan­ion­ship with the earth.”

Research has found that watch­ing nature doc­u­men­taries can bring on real con­tent­ment, con­firm­ing what mil­lions of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic devo­tees already know. Now, at the Nation­al Park Service’s site, you can immerse your­self in vir­tu­al vis­its with not only our silent bighorn sheep friend, but the song of a moun­tain blue­bird, or cho­rus­es of howl­ing wolves. The audio library con­tains dozens more such melo­di­ous and haunt­ing sounds from Yellowstone’s bio­pho­ny.

The video library is replete with not only short clips of ani­mals doing what ani­mals do, but also video tours like that above, in which we learn how park rangers cap­ture and han­dle bison in their con­ser­va­tion efforts at the park. Then there are stun­ning land­scape videos like that below of Low­er Falls viewed from Look­out Point in the spring of 2017, with sooth­ing nat­ur­al white noise from the rush­ing water and blow­ing wind.

All of this con­tent is avail­able for down­load and free for any­one to use. Remix the sounds of falling snow, gey­sers, and moun­tain lions; make as many nature gifs as you desire. As you do, bear in mind that while humans might great­ly benefit—both psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly and culturally—from the dig­i­tal preser­va­tion of the nat­ur­al world, the true pur­pose may be to help us under­stand why we need to step back and pre­serve the real thing.

Just above see a (non­down­load­able) video from Yel­low­stone on the impor­tance of lis­ten­ing to and con­serv­ing the land’s nat­ur­al soundscapes—a fea­ture of the world that best thrives in the near absence of human involve­ment.

Enter the sound library here, and the video library here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Where Did Human Beings Come From? 7 Million Years of Human Evolution Visualized in Six Minutes

in Biology | October 10th, 2019

One vul­gar con­cep­tion of human evo­lu­tion holds that we “come from mon­keys.” You don’t have to be a bona fide evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist to know that’s not quite how we cur­rent­ly under­stand it to have hap­pened, but how clear­ly do you grasp the real sto­ry? The ani­ma­tion from the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry above goes over sev­en mil­lion years of evo­lu­tion in a mere six min­utes, and it’s cer­tain­ly not a straight line down from “mon­keys” to us. The video does, how­ev­er, start its sto­ry with apes, and specif­i­cal­ly chim­panzees, “our clos­est liv­ing rel­a­tives” with whom “we share a com­mon ances­tor that lived sev­en mil­lion years ago.”

But we once had “much clos­er rel­a­tives, hominins, who are no longer liv­ing.” These we know about through the fos­sils they left behind in Africa, from which the first known hominin emerged those sev­en mil­lion years ago. Dif­fer­ent bones from dif­fer­ent species of hominins found else­where on the con­ti­nent sug­gest small teeth, upright walk­ing, and bipedal­ism, some of the qual­i­ties that dis­tin­guish humans from apes.

And though hominins may have walked upright, they also climbed trees, but even­tu­al­ly lost the grasp­ing feet need­ed to do so. Lat­er they com­pen­sat­ed with the very human-like devel­op­ment of mak­ing and using stone tools. Two mil­lion years ago, the well-known Homo erec­tus, with their large brains, long legs, and dex­trous hands, made the famous migra­tion out of Africa.

We know that by 1.2 mil­lion years there­after Homo erec­tus’ brains had grown larg­er still, fueled by new cook­ing tech­niques. Only about 200,000 years ago do we, Homo sapi­ens, enter the pic­ture, but not long after, we inter­breed with the var­i­ous hominin species already in exis­tence as we spread out­ward to fill “every geo­graph­ic niche” of the Earth. Ulti­mate­ly, hominins could­n’t keep up: “Cli­mate pres­sures and com­pe­ti­tion with Homo sapi­ens may have wiped them out.” Now that we’ve seen their sto­ry and ours reca­pit­u­lat­ed, let’s pour one out for the once-mighty hominin who pre­ced­ed us, lived along­side us, and influ­enced us in ways genet­ic and oth­er­wise — at least if it has­n’t giv­en us too much pause won­der­ing when the evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly inevitable suc­ces­sor to Homo sapi­ens will appear in our midst.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 570 Mil­lion Years of Evo­lu­tion on Earth in 60 Sec­onds

550 Mil­lion Years of Human Evo­lu­tion in an Illus­trat­ed Flip­book

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

New Ani­mat­ed Web Series Makes the The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion Easy to Under­stand

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

10 Mil­lion Years of Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in an Ele­gant, 5‑Foot Long Info­graph­ic from 1931

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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