Mar 9: How disabled primates thrive in the wild, a beetle feasting on dino feathers and more... - CBC.ca

Quirks and Quarks54:00How disabled primates thrive in the wild and more…

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On this episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald:

Nature's nurturing side — disabled primates thrive in the wild with community support

Quirks and Quarks7:56Nature’s nurturing side — disabled primates thrive in the wild with community support

Survival of the fittest for primates in the wild often includes them going out of their way to accommodate those with physical disabilities. In a study in the American Journal of Primatology, scientists reviewed 114 studies of a wide range of non-human primates that spanned more than nine decades. Brogan Stewart, a PhD candidate from Concordia was part of the team that found that more often than not, the physical disabilities arose as a result of human activities, and in the face of those pressures, primates show a remarkable resilience in how they care for those with malformations or impairments.

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Beetle larvae feeding on dino feathers left signs of that relationship trapped in amber

Quirks and Quarks7:52Beetle larvae feeding on dino feathers left signs of that relationship trapped in amber

Bits left behind from a beetle larvae feasting on dinosaur feathers shed by a theropod became trapped in tree resin that preserved evidence of this relationship for 105 million years. The beetle larvae is related to a beetle that's known to live in birds' nests and feed on their feathers. Ricardo Perez de la Fuente, the senior author of the PNAS study from Oxford University Museum of Natural History, said finding dinosaur feathers is a find in itself but to find evidence of two organisms in deep time interacting is incredibly rare. 

Fossilized bits of a beetle larvae that were intimately associated with downy feather from an unidentified theropod dinosaur are preserved in amber. Insets show the head with powerful mandibles from a larval moults, top, and the pigmentation pattern of feather second order branches, bottom. (CN IGME-CSIC)

Jellyfish demonstrate how it's possible to learn and remember even without a brain

Quirks and Quarks7:52Jellyfish demonstrate how it’s possible to learn and remember even without a brain

A jellyfish the size of a pinky nail can learn to spot and dodge obstacles using their visual system with 24 eyes but no centralized brain. By simulating their natural murky mangrove environment in a lab, scientists discovered how quickly the box jellyfish learned to maneuver around roots in their path. Jan Bielecki, a biologist at Kiel University, said their findings in the journal Current Biology suggest that learning is an integral function of neurons.

The box jellyfish, Tripedalia cystophora, has the capacity to learn and remember despite its simple nervous system. Instead of a centralized brain, it has four visual sensory centres that each had 1,000 nerve cells and six eyes. (Jan Bielecki)

Bottlenose dolphins sense their prey's electrical fields through their whisker dimples

Quirks and Quarks6:29Bottlenose dolphins sense their prey’s electrical fields through their whisker dimples

Dolphins were once thought to be acoustic specialists due to their hearing ability and how they detect prey through their reflected pings using echo-location. But when their next meal is hiding in the sand, bottlenose dolphins also seem to be able to hone in on their prey by sensing their electrical fields. Tim Hüttner, a biologist at Nuremberg Zoo, said dolphins likely use echo-location to detect from afar and electroreception to close in on their prey. His research was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

A bottlenose dolphin waits for an electrical stimulus in this experimental apparatus. Scientists at the University of Rostock discovered the dolphins can sense electrical fields faint enough to detect fish in the immediate area. (Tim Hüttner)

How documenting the disappearance of the great auk led to the discovery of extinction

Quirks and Quarks17:24How documenting the disappearance of the great auk led to the discovery of extinction

Before a fateful trip in 1858 when two biologists traveled to Iceland in search of the rare penguin-like great auk, the word "extinction" had never been used to describe a species that humans wiped out of existence. After being unable to locate any living great auks, John Wolley and Alfred Newton turned their attention to documenting the demise of this flightless bird. The new book, The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction, Icelandic anthropologist Gísli Pálsson explores the case that ushered in our modern understanding of extinction. 

Read More about Gísli Pálsson's The Last of Its Kind

The great auks, a short-winged seabird of the Alcidae family, spent their breeding months on rocky coastal islands known as skerries. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Listener question

Quirks and Quarks2:36Listener question: Has Betelgeuse already gone supernova?

Chris Corbett from North Sydney asks: If we see the star, Betelgeuse, that's 642 light years from Earth, going supernova, does that mean it might have already gone supernova? 

For the answer, we went to Jess McIvor, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia.

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse, in the constellation of Orion, as seen in this image of the star’s surface, taken with the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. (ESO/M. Montargès et al)

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