Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2024 i Muse: The magazine of science, culture, and smart laughs for kids and children

LETTER of the MONTH Double Trouble “Hello, Muse Crew!!!!” “This is your nightmare...” “Beckett! I told you not to say anything weird like that!! This is a professional letter!” “Um, hello? Weird is my signature trait! I had to say something after the way you started the letter! All cheery and happy...eww.” “Ugh, sorry about my brother, everyone. Anywho, I am Adelaide, and—” “And I am her amazing brother...BECKETT!!!!!” “Stop interrupting me!” “For those who can’t see—which is everyone because this is a letter—my sister is giving me her signature glare where she wants to act like she is mad, but she actually is trying not to laugh, and the result makes her look like a duck. See! There it was! Did you hear that laugh sneak out…

The great apes are among the most popular animals in most zoos. Their actions, facial expressions, and family life remind us so much of ourselves. Have you ever wondered, though, how we might look to them? A modern, statistically based system of classification called cladistics reveals a surprising possibility: Not only are humans apes, but we are more closely related to chimpanzees than chimpanzees are to orangutans or gorillas. In other words, the chimpanzees’ closest living relatives are—us! A gorilla, looking past our culture and technology, might see us humans as just another type of chimpanzee. Cladistics is a mathematical representation of a simple idea—that all living things are related. The more they are related, the more recently they had a common ancestor. These relationships are expressed in diagrams called…

A group of test-takers are all focused on a math exam. It consists of one problem, which most people cannot solve. Yet some of the test-takers get the right answer quickly and easily every time. Now here’s the surprise. The test-takers who can’t get the answer are all humans, and the ones who do get the answers are all chimpanzees. This remarkable math test, which chimps can ace but humans fail, is the brainchild of Tetsuro Matsuzawa. He’s a primatologist and former director of the Primate Research Institute at Japan’s Kyoto University. There, generations of chimpanzees live in a lush re-creation of a West African rainforest. His work to understand how chimpanzees think about and use numbers is helping scientists better understand these primates’ mathematical skills—and our own. Other Animals…

Science@Work When you’re feeling sick, it probably doesn’t occur to you to try eating tree bark. But that’s precisely what some chimpanzees may do. You might already know that chimpanzees share plenty of similarities with humans: They play, they fight, they form communities. But did you know that they also use medicine? Elodie Freymann is a primatologist who studies how chimpanzees self-medicate with plants. While pursuing her PhD at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, she spent several months working at the Budongo Conservation Field Station, living in the middle of the Budongo Forest in Uganda. While there, she observed wild chimpanzees up close to learn more about how they interact with the plants in their environment. Freymann is also an artist who uses nature drawing to help her deepen…

A Closer Look Palm oil is all around you. It’s in sugary snacks like cookies and candy bars. It’s in lipstick and shampoo and pet food. This cheap and versatile vegetable oil is everywhere. But in order to meet the worldwide demand for palm oil, large companies create palm oil plantations. They clear away large tracts of diverse jungle and replace it with endless acres of oil palm trees. This creates monocultures, where rich biodiverse habitats are replaced by a single species. Palm oil plantations may look like large, green open space, but they are biodiversity deserts. No place is feeling the effects of palm oil production more than the Asian countries of Indonesia and Malaysia. That’s where roughly 85 percent of the world’s palm oil is produced. Between 1997…

TALKING ANIMALS First Ever Chat with a Humpback Whale? In August 2021 off the coast of Alaska, researchers had what may have been the first ever “conversation” with a humpback whale. The team included scientists who study whales, as well as one astronomer who works at the SETI Institute in Northern California. (SETI is short for the “Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence,” aka aliens.) The idea is that learning to communicate with whales could make it easier to talk to extraterrestrials—if we ever encounter any of their talk. That’s because whales are so different from us, they may as well be from another planet. Whether or not any whales actually have language is a controversial question. But many whale species, including humpbacks, use complex sounds for communication. The researchers first recorded…

What might happen if roles were reversed, and apes, rather than humans, were dominant? Planet of the Apes, one of the first science fiction movie franchises, has explored this question in depth from different angles. The first film, Planet of the Apes, based on the novel by French author Pierre Boulle, debuted to critical acclaim and box office success in 1968. It starred Charlton Heston as one of four astronauts who crash-land on a planet where apes rule over humans. The film’s make-up artist, John Chambers, received an honorary Oscar, or Academy Award, for his work on the film—before an award for make-up was regularly presented. This movie spawned multiple feature films, as well as live action and animated TV series, books, and comics. Most recently, a successful trilogy of…

Science@Work Classic On April 3, Jane Goodall has a big birthday: She turns 90 years old. Goodall is the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees. Her impressive career began more than 60 years ago! Today, she continues to keep a busy schedule, speaking often. As the Jane Goodall Institute puts it, she discusses the threats facing chimpanzees and the environment. She urges each of us “to take action on behalf of all living things and the planet we share.” How does she do it? Jane says, “As I get older…I have to do more and more, because there’s so much more to do. But the main thing is to inspire others.” Jane Goodall first arrived in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in eastern Africa in July 1960. She spent months…

In a steamy rainforest, an orangutan scales a tree, gripping and grabbing with fingers and toes. Palm fronds rustle. At the top, it uses its teeth and hairy hands to rip away the bark, revealing the ivory-colored center, the “heart of the palm.” High in the sky, the creature crunches on the tender stalk. In a field nearby, Serge Wich, biologist, ecologist, and professor at Liverpool John Moores University in England, is studying orangutans. Wich and his colleague, Lian Pin Koh, are working in Sumatra, an Indonesian island in Asia. They’re running a series of tests with one of the first drones ever used to study wildlife. It’s 2011, and drones aren’t yet common. They cobbled this one together from spare parts. They need to count orangutan nests to monitor…

A lot has happened for modern humans to get to this point. We lost most of our hair, learned how to make tools, established civilizations, sent a person to the Moon, and invented artificial intelligence. Whew! With all of these changes, our bodies have changed, too. It’s only taken us about six million years. It all comes back to one key idea: evolution. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species, in which he explained his theory of evolution. He described the process of “descent with modification,” where physical parts—and even behaviors—of animals may change over multiple generations due to natural selection. If certain traits—such as sharp teeth or thick fur—helped the animal survive in the wild, then these favorable traits would be “selected for” and…

What do you have in common with the aye-aye, sifaka, siamang, and potto? If you said your collarbone, you’re probably a primatologist—a person who studies primates. If you’re not, read on. Physical Adaptations and Abilities Just like those animals with the weird names, you belong to the group of mammals called primates. This group also includes the more commonly known gorillas, chimpanzees, and monkeys. Among other things, it’s the structure of your shoulder that earns you membership in that club. In primates, the upper arms are linked to the chest by the collarbone (also called the clavicle). That construction allows you and other primates to do something most mammals can’t: hang by your arms. Watch kids crossing a jungle gym hand-over-hand. They share that ability with monkeys and apes, but…

Science@Work Serge Wich’s favorite days at work are spent out in the forest, studying orangutans in Sumatra and Borneo or chimpanzees in Tanzania. When he’s not out in the field, he teaches primate biology and does research at Liverpool John Moores University in England. Wich has pioneered the use of new technology in conservation. In 2011, he and his colleague Lian Pin Koh of the National University of Singapore (NUS) in Asia built and tested one of the first drones used to study wildlife. One year later, the pair founded ConservationDrones.org. This organization helps wildlife researchers around the world use drone technology. In 2019, Wich started another technology project, called Conservation AI. This time, he partnered with some of his colleagues at Liverpool John Moores University: computer scientists Carl Chalmers…

A CHIMPANZEE STICKS ITS FINGER THROUGH A HOLE IN ITS ENCLOSURE. Next, a researcher attaches a heart rate monitor to the finger. As the chimp sips on a juice reward for cooperating, a camera records its face. The images feed into an artificial intelligence (AI) model. This model is watching for tiny but regular movements in the animal’s face. These facial movements happen every time its heart beats, meaning they could reveal a heart rate. Would the AI model’s measure of heart rate agree with the finger monitor? In the summer of 2023, Danyi Wang and other researchers at the University of South Australia reported that, yes, the AI model works. They can monitor a chimp’s heart rate from a distance. That could be helpful because it’s difficult and time-consuming…