Audio
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
A sparrow song remix took over North America with astonishing speed
A variation on the white-throated sparrow’s song spread 3,300 kilometers in just a few decades.
- Animals
Southern right whale moms and calves may whisper to evade orcas
Mother-calf whale pairs call to each other quietly to stay in touch while avoiding attracting the attention of predators, a study suggests.
- Ecosystems
Moonlight shapes how some animals move, grow and even sing
The moon’s light influences lion prey behavior, dung beetle navigation, fish growth, mass migrations and birdsong.
- Animals
Parasites ruin some finches’ songs by chewing through the birds’ beaks
Parasitic fly larvae damage the beaks of Galápagos finches, changing their mating songs and possibly causing females to pick males of a different species.
- Health & Medicine
A neural implant can translate brain activity into sentences
With electrodes in the brain, scientists translated neural signals into speech, which could someday help the speechless speak.
- Earth
This volcano revealed its unique ‘voice’ after an eruption
Identifying patterns in a volcano’s low-frequency sounds could help monitor its activity.
- Animals
Here’s what narwhals sound like underwater
Scientists eavesdropped while narwhals clicked and buzzed. The work could help pinpoint how the whales may react to more human noise in the Arctic.
- Animals
A killer whale gives a raspberry and says ‘hello’
Tests of imitating sounds finds that orcas can sort of mimic humans.
- Neuroscience
Jazz improvisers score high on creativity
Jazz musicians’ creativity linked to brain dexterity.
- Animals
Crested pigeons sound the alarm with their wings
Crested pigeons have specialized feathers that signal danger when they flee from an apparent threat.
- Health & Medicine
Moms tweak the timbre of their voice when talking to their babies
Mothers shift the timbre, or quality, of their voice when talking to their babies, a change that happens in many different languages.
- Environment
Peace and quiet is becoming more elusive in U.S. wild areas
Human noise stretches into the wilderness.
