Week in wildlife: a lucky osprey, a miraculous hare and a political fox
Dolphins leap out of the water at Thornwick Bay, East Yorkshire, UK Photograph: Rachel Bartle/SWNS
Yellow-eyed penguins compare notes after returning to their colony on Katiki point on New Zealand's South Island Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
A New Zealand fur seal basks in the sun at Katiki Ppint Photograph: Sanka Vidanagama/AFP/Getty Images
Bruno the baby hare is weighed, coming in at 80g – about the same as a basic computer mouse. Hailed a little miracle, Bruno was delivered from his dead mother in an emergency roadside caesarean after she was killed in a farming accident in Dumfries and Galloway Photograph: Scottish SPCA/PA
Flamingos preparing to take flight are reflected on Lake Tuz, which hosts thousands of flamingos every year, in Ankara, Turkey. This year, the lake has seen a decline in flamingo numbers due to drought, prompting the birds to shift their migration route to other wetlands across Turkey Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
A sea lion sleeps on the bow of a container ship at the Port of Los Angeles, California, US Photograph:A hoverfly rests on the seed pod of a poppy flower in Dunsden, UK Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock
Minister of cunning … a fox plots its next move in Downing Street, London, during ministerial arrivals for a cabinet meeting at Number 10. Photograph: Zuma Press/Alamy Live News
One of the four lynx that were illegally released into the Cairngorms National Park, Scotland, in January and rescued by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. The three lynx that survived the ordeal have settled in to their new homes at the nearby Highland Wildlife Park, where this picture was taken. They have been named Caledonia, Cardrona and Bluebell, following a competition involving school children and charity donors Photograph: RZSS/PA
A lucky puffin with a beakful of fish on Great Saltee Island off County Wexford. The island, one of Ireland's major bird sanctuaries, is home to puffins, gannets, guillemots, razorbills, cormorants, great black-backed gulls, kittiwakes and manx shearwaters Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
An alligator swims near the entrance to a temporary migrant detention centre in Ochopee, Florida, US, known as 'Alligator Alcatraz' , on the day of Donald Trump's visit Photograph: Octavio Jones/Reuters
A kestrel finds food for its newly hatched chicks in Konya, Turkey Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
A muskrat swims in Lake Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan Photograph: Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP/Getty Images
A weasel, rarely seen in the wild and under legal protection, peeks out from the rocks in Kars, Turkey Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
A tawny owl and a wasp meet in West Yorkshire, UK Photograph: David Driver/SWNS
A tussock moth rests on a leaf in a forest near Tehatta, West Bengal, India Photograph: Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
A gannet carrying nesting material takes flight at Bempton Cliffs in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, UK Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA
A bee collects pollen from a thistle flower along the Thames Path near Reading, Berkshire, UK Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock
A sand lizard on Farnham Heath, Surrey, UK. The area, which is also home to nightjars, adders and natterjack toads, has been designated a protected area by Natural England: the 2,766-hectare Wealden Heaths national nature reserve Photograph: Amphibian and Reptiles Conservation Trust/PA
Cygnets get a bird's-eye view of the golf during the first round of the US Senior Open championship in Colorado Springs, Colorado, US Photograph:Two humpback whales breach off the coast of Port Stephens, north of Sydney, Australia Photograph: Mark Baker/AP
An osprey flies with a fish clutched in its talons in Apopka, Florida, US
Photograph: Ronen Tivony/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
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Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
No more excuses! Men DON'T sleep through the sound of a baby crying, experts reveal
It's a well-worn trope that mothers will wake at the slightest stir from their baby while fathers peacefully doze on. But scientists now say that dads have no excuses for missing midnight nappy changes. Scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark found that men were just as likely to be woken by the sounds of crying as women. While women were slightly more likely to be woken by 'whisper level' sounds, computer modelling shows this cannot explain why they do so much more of the care. The researchers monitored 142 non-parents while they slept and recorded how often they woke up in response to the sound of a baby crying. Women were, on average, about 14 per cent more likely to wake up to sounds between 33 and 44 decibels - about as loud as birdsong or a library. However, men and women woke with the same frequency as soon as the volume started to approach that of a real baby's crying. Lead researcher Professor Christine Parsons told MailOnline: 'We had participants all waking up and we didn't have evidence that men were sleeping through.' Scientists have busted the myth that men are more likely to sleep through a baby's crying than women, finding only minor differences in how the sexes respond to nighttime noises Although the idea that men can sleep through their baby's crying is a myth, there are real reasons to think that women might wake up more frequently in the night. Studies have shown that women tend to report more disturbed sleep overall, regardless of sounds. Likewise, research suggests that women might be more sensitive to high-pitched sounds. However, Professor Parsons' research, published in the journal Emotion, shows that any differences only translate into small changes in waking patterns when the sounds are very quiet. More importantly, these small statistical differences cannot explain the large gap in care burdens. In a second trial, the researchers gave 117 first-time Danish parents an app to log their nighttime care over a week. Then, the researchers used simulations to predict what that distribution of nighttime care would look like if the only factor were those differences found by the first study. Professor Parsons says: 'What we found was that women did 75 per cent of the nighttime caregiving. 'If we estimate how much caregiving would emerge from that small difference [in sound responses], it would look much more equal between men and women.' What this shows is that inherent biological or psychological differences in how men and women respond to sounds in the night cannot explain why women do more of the care. These findings come in stark contrast to the extremely widespread myth that men aren't as easily woken by their children. In particular, Professor Parsons singled out an influential but unscientific survey funded by Lemsip, which claimed that the sound of the wind or the buzz of a fly were more likely to wake men than the sound of a child crying. While these findings weren't peer-reviewed and had no scientific merit whatsoever, these ideas have spread extremely far. Professor Parsons says: 'When I talk to scientists at conferences, they have actually heard of it and say, "Wasn't there that paper on waking behaviour?"' 'But these are phantom papers and phantom ideas, and if an idea confirms a suspicion or a belief that people have, then it is very difficult to change people's minds about it.' The study focused on adults without children in order to see whether pre-parenthood gender differences alone affected nighttime care patterns. However, pregnancy and childbirth cause massive hormonal changes that might affect waking times. There are also good reasons why new mothers might get up more in the night, especially if they are breastfeeding. Similarly, men in the OECD receive an average of 2.3 weeks of parental leave compared to 18.5 weeks for women. This means women get more practice caring for babies at night and don't have to wake up for work in the morning. All of these other factors, alongside societal expectations, are likely to be important in explaining why women do so much more of the nightly care. Professor Parsons says: 'I'm not excluding any of those things, but this is not really what our paper is about. 'What we were trying to test is a very specific question about how men and women can or cannot sleep through different types of sounds.' ABOUT CIRCIDIAN RHYTHMS Our internal circadian rhythms, or circadian clock, is responsible for waking our bodies up in the morning and ensuring they get a good night's rest. In a healthy person, cortisol levels peak at around 8am, which wakes us up (in theory), and drop to their lowest at 3am the next day, before rising back to its peak five hours later. Ideally, this 8am peak will be triggered by exposure to sunlight, if not an alarm. When it does, the adrenal glands and brain will start pumping adrenaline. By mid-morning, the cortisol levels start dropping, while the adrenaline (for energy) and serotonin (a mood stabilizer) keep pumping. At midday, metabolism and core body temperature ramp up, getting us hungry and ready to eat. After noon, cortisol levels start their steady decline. Metabolism slows down and tiredness sets in. Gradually the serotonin turns into melatonin, which induces sleepiness. Our blood sugar levels decrease, and at 3am, when we are in the middle of our sleep, cortisol levels hit a 24-hour low.
Medical News Today
3 days ago
- Medical News Today
Could a single brain scan predict the risk of age-related conditions like dementia?
People age at different rates, partly due to genetics but largely because of lifestyle.A person's rate of aging can indicate how likely they are to develop age-related disorders, such as researchers have developed a method based on a single brain scan in middle age that could predict how fast a person is likely to suggest that their method, which can predict the aging rate of both brain and body, may detect who should implement lifestyle changes to reduce their risk of age-related people appear to age more slowly than others. This is partly due to genetics, which studies suggest accounts for around 25% of the variation in longevity but is largely due to lifestyle and the in lifestyle, such as following a healthy diet, exercising regularly, getting adequate sleep, not smoking, and not drinking alcohol to excess, can help slow a person's rate of aging and delay or prevent age-related disorders.A person's rate of aging is often referred to as their biological age — how old their cells are — which can vary greatly from their chronological age, or the number of years since their birth. Measuring this can be a group of researchers from Duke, Harvard, and the University of Otago, New Zealand, have developed a method of predicting how fast a person will age, based on a single brain scan performed around the age of 45. In their study, which is published in Nature Aging, the researchers suggest that the Dunedin Pace of Aging Calculated from NeuroImaging (DunedinPACNI) could help researchers determine how aging affects health, and help them evaluate the effectiveness of anti-aging strategies.'The study developed and validated a new MRI-based biomarker called DunedinPACNI which shows not only a score for brain age, i.e. how old the brain looks, but also shows connections to cognitive decline and other health measures, allowing to perhaps predict how quickly a person ages and how their health will evolve later in life,' Madalina Tivarus, PhD, associate professor of Imaging Sciences and Neuroscience at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester, not involved in the study, told Medical News scan can predict biological aging'The idea of using a routine MRI brain scan to do a 'aging check-up' is very interesting and exciting,' Tivarus told study builds on the Dunedin Study, previous research conducted in the same cohort of participants. This study, which followed a group of 1,037 people born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1972–'73, looked at age-related changes in gene methylation to create an epigenetic the Dunedin Study, researchers regularly tested participants' blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), glucose (blood sugar) and cholesterol levels, lung and kidney function, and even gum recession and tooth almost 20 years, they used the overall pattern of change across these health markers to generate a score for how fast each person was the latest study, researchers used a single MRI scan of the brain performed when participants were aged 45, which they correlated with the Dunedin Study aging data. They then developed their DunedinPACNI to estimate rate of aging using only information from the MRI evaluate the Dunedin PACNI as a tool for predicting age-related health outcomes, they analyzed it against datasets from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), UK Biobank, and Latin American Brain Health found that their prediction accuracy was in line with more established epigenetic with faster DunedinPACNI scores had several indicators of more rapid aging, including:worse balance, slower gait, weaker lower and upper body strength, and poorer coordinationself-reported worse health and more physical limitations poorer performance on cognitive function tests greater childhood-to-adulthood cognitive declineolder physical MacSweeney, MD, CEO and consultant Neuroradiologist at Re:Cognition Health, who was not involved in this research, highlighted how important brain imaging could be, telling MNT that:'The researchers observed that individuals with higher DunedinPACNI scores, indicating faster brain aging, were also more likely to experience health deterioration in other organ systems, such as cardiovascular and respiratory health. The fact that brain imaging can reflect systemic aging suggests the brain may serve as a biomarker for overall biological age, offering a non-invasive, accessible measure of aging processes throughout the body.'Novel brain scan better predictive tool than existing MRI measuresTivarus enthused that:'This study is exciting because it shows that MRI scans might be used not just to detect disease, but also to track how the brain is aging long before problems begin. However, it's still early days. While promising, DunedinPACNI still needs to be tested more widely in larger and more diverse populations across different ages, ethnicities, and health backgrounds. It did perform well across multiple large datasets, but more global validation is needed.'The researchers compared the DunedinPACNI with measures of hippocampal and ventricular volume, which are commonly used MRI-based measures of brain aging, using UK Biobank and ADNI found that faster DunedinPACNI was more consistently and strongly associated with poor cognition, poor health, frailty, and risk of dementia, disease and mortality than either of these was impressed by the study structure.'The study methodology has some important strengths such as it is using a robust, decades-long longitudinal dataset, uses sound statistical methods, and has been validated extensively using imaging data from other large studies,' she she also pointed out that there were 'some limitations, such as the specific population data used to train the model (mostly European ancestry, from a specific geographical location), its performance in younger or pediatric populations is untested, [and] it infers dynamic processes from one static image (one MRI snapshot).' 'While I don't think it is ready for clinical use, DunedinPACNI appears to be a promising imaging biomarker of biological aging,' Tivarus told us.'The tool empowers people to take proactive steps'As people are living longer, but not necessarily healthier, lives, the ability to predict who is more likely to develop dementia or other age-related illness is becoming increasingly important. The researchers hope that their tool might eventually help clinicians do that well before symptoms, allowing interventions to reduce the risk of conditions developing.'Identifying accelerated aging in midlife provides a critical window of opportunity for intervention. Knowing one's biological age, as distinct from chronological age, could motivate individuals to adopt healthier habits, such as improved diet, increased physical activity or better sleep. By highlighting risk decades in advance, the tool empowers people to take proactive steps that may slow or even reverse aspects of biological aging.' – Emer MacSweeney, MD
The Sun
3 days ago
- The Sun
Moment 5-ton killer whale seen giving GIFT to human as scientists capture dozens of baffling orca ‘acts of kindness'
KILLER whales have been spotted giving gifts to humans in "extremely unusual" behaviour, baffled scientists say. Dozens of instances of orcas approaching humans with offerings have been recorded – and even caught on camera. 6 6 Gifts recorded by scientists so far include fish, mammals, and even a turtle. The massive 5-ton orcas would swim up to people, drop the item, and then wait for a response. It's a common behaviour between killer whales – but scientists are only now seeing the trend for human interactions too. Importantly, it's not just a local event: the whales have been spotted handing over gifts in Norway and even New Zealand. "Orca are very social and we frequently see them food-sharing," said study author Dr Ingrid Visser. "To document and describe behaviour of them attempting to food-share with humans in various places around the globe is fascinating." The cat-like behaviour sees the orcas carrying their gifts in their mouths. They would then release them and let them float in front of the humans as part of the "offering" – and wait to see what happens. "There appears to be a prosocial element to these cases," said lead author Jared Towers. He explained that it's "extremely unusual to witness any non-human animal". Never-before-seen moment two frisky killer whales are filmed KISSING in incredible footage - and they even use tongue It's a behaviour commonly seen in cats and dogs. But this is one of the first detailed descriptions of similar behaviour for animals that haven't been domesticated. Researchers think that it shows how intelligence and social orcas use food sharing to build relationships with their own kind as well as "unrelated individuals". And scientists note that orcas can sometimes have food to spare. 6 "Orcas are apex predators that often eat other large mammals," said study author Vanessa Prigollini. "But when it comes to people, they occasionally prefer to share, indicating their interest in building relationships outside their own species." As many as 34 incidents of food-sharing were collected as part of the research. For 11 of those, the humans were in the water during the orca approach. And in 21 of the instances, the people were on boats – with a further two incidents where the humans were on the shore. "Of the many and varied minds in the sea, likely the greatest are those of orcas," said ecologist Dr. Carl Safina. "After living millions of years in the sea, to them we in our boats must seem like visiting aliens. "And indeed, we are strangers in a strange place we hardly know, about which we have almost everything to learn." For it to be recorded as an incident, the killer whale needs to have approach the people on their own. 6 And the item needs to have been dropped right in front of them. For all but one of the cases, the orcas waited to see what would happen after the offering. And for seven of the cases, the orcas tried to offer food repeatedly after it was refused by the humans. The research was published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology. 6 ORCAS - HOW DANGEROUS ARE THEY? ORCAS - also known as killer whales - are the largest member of the oceanic dolphin family. The creatures are dubbed "killer whales" as they hunt and eat other smaller species of dolphin. Some also feed exclusively on fish, while others hunt marine mammals like seals and other dolphins. They're known as apex predators meaning they're at the top of the food chain and no other animals feed on them. There are no recorded incidents of orcas attacking humans before the bizarre boat-bashings, but they have been known to feast on other land-dwelling mammals like moose who swim between islands. It comes just days after two killer whales were filmed "kissing" in stunning never-before-seen footage. The orca smooching was filmed by scientists during a snorkelling trip in northern Norway. It shows the whales engaging in three separate episodes of "kissing", lasting 10, 26, and 18 seconds each. And it was described as "tongue-nibbling" and "exceptionally rare" by scientists. 6
