Science news of the day thread.

[Brian Peacock]

[pErvinalia]

[Tero]

Reptiles invade Australia!

Scientists have discovered the oldest recorded reptile-like footprints, a study revealed yesterday. The fossilized claw tracks near Melbourne, Australia, date back 354 million to 358 million years. They suggest animals evolved the ability to walk on land much earlier than previously thought.

[Svartalf]

that's not dinosaurs, it's just JimC

[JimC]

[Brian Peacock]

:tehe:

[Brian Peacock]

Chimpanzees Perform First Aid on Each Other, Study Finds

Chimpanzees use medicinal plants to perform first aid on others, according to a new study that points toward the origin of health care in humans.

Researchers combined 30 years of written observations of chimpanzees in Uganda’s Budongo Forest with eight months of their collected data and suggest the animals provide care—not just to themselves, but to other chimpanzees.

Overall, they documented 41 cases of medical care in the animals. Most involved instances of the chimpanzees practicing self-care and hygiene, such as using a leaf to wipe themselves after an excretion or chewing a plant and applying it to a wound. But seven of the instances involved chimpanzees providing care to others, and in four of those cases, the animals weren’t closely related. The work was published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution this week.

The study challenges assumptions about non-human animals’ ability to provide altruistic care, write the authors.

“One of the things humans have clung onto is that we’re this very special species, because we are capable of altruism and we’re capable of empathy,” says Elodie Freymann, a primatologist at the University of Oxford in England and lead author of the study, to Evan Bush at NBC News. “Animals are helping each other out. They’re capable of identifying others in need and then addressing those specific needs.”...

[Svartalf]

well, it looks like hominini are actually hominids who did not evolve as fast as we did

[macdoc]

One just has to spend some time with Youtube shorts to see amny instances of animals acting altruistically tho many are normally human adverse or falt out dangerous animals seeking human help for themselves, their progeny or others of their species.
Some are quite remarkable.

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-07/ ... /105379398

Two hours from Canberra, Eurobodalla Shire Council (ESC) trialled a virtual fence along a strip of road north of Batemans Bay in 2023.

Green fence posts, distributed every 25 metres, form a virtual fence along the roadside, sensing approaching vehicles and emitting a light and beep.

A sensor detects oncoming cars and emits a high pitch noise and blue light to alert animals. (ABC South East NSW: James Tugwell)
It is designed to warn wildlife about oncoming traffic and make animals pause before they step out and become startled by the blinding headlights of an oncoming car.

The technology works best with vehicles travelling at up to 80 kilometres per hour.

ESC reported incidents down from five per week to just five in the first year.

Mayor Mat Hatcher said the fence cost $10,000 per kilometre to install, but he said it reduced insurance claims by drivers, council staff call outs and wildlife deaths.

"It's a great return on investment for the ratepayer," he said.

"The numbers speak for themselves — we've seen a decrease of around 90 per cent of incidents."

A clever idea...

[macdoc]

Indeed - most animals catch on quick too - I can see why higher speeds are problematic but then more critters along the 80 kph roads too.
We were in the Blue Mountains a couple years back and appalled at the wombat carnage along part of the route. These are big animals but slow and it was very sad and very smelly.

[L'Emmerdeur]

How about some worm towers to brighten your day?

The article doesn't mention slime molds but it may be that this is something along the lines of convergent evolution.

'Worms Use Their Bodies to Build Towers as a Wild Survival Strategy'

One bizarre activity glimpsed in past lab experiments has now been recorded under natural conditions, proving once and for all that some worm species will construct towers from their own squirming bodies to catch a ride out of town when the going gets tough.

Positioning a digital microscope over rotting fruit, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany watched the itty-bitty scavengers feed until it was time to migrate to greener pastures by climbing atop one another and stretching for the sky.

"I was ecstatic when I saw these natural towers for the first time," says animal behaviorist and senior author Serena Ding.

"For so long natural worm towers existed only in our imaginations. But with the right equipment and lots of curiosity, we found them hiding in plain sight."

Though rare, there are a few examples of animal collectives that link their bodies in creative ways to move around. Ants can make bridges and rafts, for example. Spider mites will sacrifice themselves in the centers of silk balls to help siblings flee on the breeze.

...

"A nematode tower is not just a pile of worms," says biologist and lead author Daniela Perez. "It's a coordinated structure, a superorganism in motion."

Knowing at least some species of Caenorhabditis can work together to escape overcrowding or famine blurs the lines further between social organisms like bees, ants, and even ourselves.

In my opinion that last sentence seems to be stretching with 'blurs the lines.'

For the terminally curious the paper is open access.

[pErvinalia]

I for one welcome our Nematoda overlords.

[Brian Peacock]

...

For the terminally curious...

For the worminally curious....

[JimC]

It would be very likely that the clusters of nematodes are closely related in a genetic sense, making cooperative behaviour easily selected for...