Science
Animals
A.I. can find meaningful patterns in otherwise unintelligible noise, so scientists are starting to wonder: Can A.I. help humans interpret animal sounds? Scientist Karen Bakker and machine-learning expert Aza Raskin talk to “Unexplainable” podcast host Noam Hassenfeld about remarkable scientific discoveries and possibilities for interspecies communication.
Knowledge about the human microbiome, those trillions of bacteria, viruses, and other microbes that inhabit our bodies, is revolutionizing medicine just as mapping the human genome continues to do. Indeed, what we are learning could take us even further because the microbiome can be altered by diet, exercise, and stress control. Computational biology, DNA sequencing, and o...
Anyone who has ever had a pet understands how deeply connected human beings are to the animals who serve as our companions, lessen our stress, and perhaps offer a buffer against cognitive decline. Puppy play date, anyone? Honeybees help to protect our food supply, vision-impaired people rely not only on seeing-eye dogs but also on seeing-eye horses, and animal research has...
The science is clear that humans are not alone in their capacity to think and feel. Studies and anecdotes reveal similarities between human and non-human beings in self-awareness, empathy, communication, and even grief. From the whale who guides a lost sailor home in the fog, to the wild elephants who presciently appear at the fence of a reserve before the arrival of rescu...
Luckily for us, a truly sustainable world already exists. Life on Earth had been in perfect balance for 3.8 billion years, and the secrets to that sustainability are still all around us. Biomimicry is the emulation of nature’s genius in design, engineering, even business. Today, biomimics are learning to repel bacteria like a shark, gather fog like a desert beetle, and cir...
Human survival depends on an extraordinarily complex dance with animals. From the bees whose pollinating habits give us much of our food supply to the primates who testify to the power of evolution, from the animals that transmit diseases to humans to those that contribute to therapeutic research, our lives are completely intertwined with the millions of other species inha...
The killing of Harambe, the gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo, caused uproar around the country, raising questions about the value of human vs. non-human life and whether we have the right and duty to sacrifice the life of a gorilla for the life of a child. These are questions that have been raised at various moments since 1975, when Peter Singer made "animal liberation" a sub...