----------> https://archive.ph/5FUvT

No matter how hard they try, brain scientists and cognitive psychologists will never find a copy of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the brain – or copies of words, pictures, grammatical rules or any other kinds of environmental stimuli. The human brain isn’t really empty, of course. But it does not contain most of the things people think it does – not even simple things such as ‘memories’.

Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer.

To see how vacuous this idea is, consider the brains of babies. Thanks to evolution, human neonates, like the newborns of all other mammalian species, enter the world prepared to interact with it effectively. A baby’s vision is blurry, but it pays special attention to faces, and is quickly able to identify its mother’s. It prefers the sound of voices to non-speech sounds, and can distinguish one basic speech sound from another. We are, without doubt, built to make social connections.

A healthy newborn is also equipped with more than a dozen reflexes – ready-made reactions to certain stimuli that are important for its survival. It turns its head in the direction of something that brushes its cheek and then sucks whatever enters its mouth. It holds its breath when submerged in water. It grasps things placed in its hands so strongly it can nearly support its own weight. Perhaps most important, newborns come equipped with powerful learning mechanisms that allow them to change rapidly so they can interact increasingly effectively with their world, even if that world is unlike the one their distant ancestors faced.

Senses, reflexes and learning mechanisms – this is what we start with, and it is quite a lot, when you think about it. If we lacked any of these capabilities at birth, we would probably have trouble surviving.

But here is what we are not born with: information, data, rules, software, knowledge, lexicons, representations, algorithms, programs, models, memories, images, processors, subroutines, encoders, decoders, symbols, or buffers – design elements that allow digital computers to behave somewhat intelligently. Not only are we not born with such things, we also don’t develop them – ever.

We don’t store words or the rules that tell us how to manipulate them. We don’t create representations of visual stimuli, store them in a short-term memory buffer, and then transfer the representation into a long-term memory device. We don’t retrieve information or images or words from memory registers. Computers do all of these things, but organisms do not.

Computers, quite literally, process information – numbers, letters, words, formulas, images. The information first has to be encoded into a format computers can use, which means patterns of ones and zeroes (‘bits’) organised into small chunks (‘bytes’). On my computer, each byte contains 8 bits, and a certain pattern of those bits stands for the letter d, another for the letter o, and another for the letter g. Side by side, those three bytes form the word dog. One single image – say, the photograph of my cat Henry on my desktop – is represented by a very specific pattern of a million of these bytes (‘one megabyte’), surrounded by some special characters that tell the computer to expect an image, not a word.

Computers, quite literally, move these patterns from place to place in different physical storage areas etched into electronic components. Sometimes they also copy the patterns, and sometimes they transform them in various ways – say, when we are correcting errors in a manuscript or when we are touching up a photograph. The rules computers follow for moving, copying and operating on these arrays of data are also stored inside the computer. Together, a set of rules is called a ‘program’ or an ‘algorithm’. A group of algorithms that work together to help us do something (like buy stocks or find a date online) is called an ‘application’ – what most people now call an ‘app’.

Forgive me for this introduction to computing, but I need to be clear: computers really do operate on symbolic representations of the world. They really store and retrieve. They really process. They really have physical memories. They really are guided in everything they do, without exception, by algorithms.

Humans, on the other hand, do not – never did, never will. Given this reality, why do so many scientists talk about our mental life as if we were computers?

Europe's seafloor fishing looks profitable until societal costs turn the math upside down

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The first study to measure the full economic value of bottom trawling in Europe's waters calculates that the destructive fishing practice imposes up to €16 billion annually in net costs to society. The research is published in the journal Ocean & Coastal Management.

Pooling data from more than 4,900 European-flagged bottom trawlers—together spending more than 5.5 million hours fishing on average each year in the waters of the European Union, the UK, Norway and Iceland—the research demonstrates that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from disturbed seafloor sediments are a major contributor to these costs. The study concludes that the net costs of bottom trawling to society are 90 times greater than the €180 million in profits raked in by the fishing industry each year.

"Our study makes it clear that bottom trawling in European waters is not just an environmental disaster, it's an economic failure," said Professor Enric Sala, National Geographic Explorer in Residence and one of the authors of the study, titled "The value of bottom trawling in Europe."

"The bottom trawling fleet is decimating marine life in Europe's marine protected areas, from the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean. While we ultimately need to reduce bottom trawling across Europe's waters to unlock societal benefits, banning it in protected areas is a critical first step—a win for the climate, the ocean and even the fishing industry itself," Sala continued.

The study comes as experts and advocates increase pressure on government and industry leaders across Europe to ban bottom trawling, especially in MPAs set aside for safeguarding marine ecosystems. The industrial fishing practice, which involves dragging heavy nets—some as large as twelve Boeing 747s—tears up the seafloor, sweeping up a stunning amount of unintended species, called bycatch.

Earlier research finds that globally, the churning of seafloor sediment by bottom trawling is responsible for injecting up to 370 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. The new study suggests that nearly a third of this (112 million metric tons) is coming from European-flagged trawlers.

"Not all big is bad, nor all small beautiful, but where there is clear evidence that the economic and/or environmental costs of larger-scale mobile fishing gears outweigh any societal benefits from harvesting the resource, then it is right that alternatives are found and such operations are phased out," remarked Jerry Percy, Sr. Advisor to the Low Impact Fishers of Europe (LIFE). "Small-scale fishers in Europe, on the other hand, prove every single day that we can feed communities by catching fish sustainably—without disturbing spawning grounds or kicking up carbon."

This study calculates that 23% of the continent's bottom trawling effort (in terms of hours spent fishing) takes place in MPAs across the area studied. Authors found that the figures vary by country, with more than a quarter of the annual trawling effort in the EEZs of Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Netherlands, Romania and Spain occurring in MPAs.

Bottom trawling's impacts on marine life in the region's 6,000 MPAs encompassing 900,000 square kilometers (347,492 square miles) are well documented.

A recent study shows that populations of sharks, rays and skates were more plentiful outside the boundaries of MPAs than within the MPAs. Bottom trawling in MPAs undercuts the role these marine reserves play in replenishing fish populations outside their borders, called spillover. The work catalogued more than 3,000 fish species caught in bottom trawls globally, including endangered animals. The impact on ecosystems of so many species being removed from the ocean is not yet fully understood, but it is likely to be highly negative.

The costs of bottom trawling dwarf industry revenue

Researchers analyzed bottom trawling efforts in European waters between 2016 and 2021, then compared its benefits (fishing revenue, protein supply and jobs) to its costs (fuel and labor, discarded fish, subsidies and carbon emissions), finding that the costs of bottom trawling far outweigh its benefits. While net benefits to the fishing industry alone are positive (estimated at €180 million annually), the net benefit to society is negative on the order of €2.25 billion to €16.15 billion (the range reflects the different valuations of the social cost of a ton of CO2 emitted into the air).

The largest single cost of trawling European waters is the social cost of CO2 emissions—an estimate of the future economic damage caused by climate change impacts, including sea level rise and declining labor productivity and human health. The study estimates two CO2 costs associated with bottom trawling: emissions from burning fuel (gasoline or diesel) and emissions from disturbance to carbon on the sea floor.

"Bottom trawl gear scrapes up the seafloor, releasing carbon that's been stored in the ocean seabed for centuries," said Kat Millage, marine researcher for National Geographic Pristine Seas and lead author on the study. "It is clear that the magnitude of emissions from trawling are substantial. Even when we use a very conservative estimate of the social cost per metric ton of emitted CO2, society is left bearing a heavy economic burden."

Beyond carbon, the study identified a series of additional costs stemming from bottom trawling.

• Subsidies: The new research found a significant cost to European taxpayers through subsidies. European governments spend an estimated €1.17 billion on bottom trawling to offset the price of fuel and other costs in the name of food and job security. However, without these subsidies, bottom trawling activity would be unprofitable for some nations, including Belgium, Spain, Great Britain, Portugal and Romania.
• Food waste: The costs of food waste stemming from bottom trawling are massive. Up to 75% of the marine life caught up in bottom trawling nets die and are discarded back into the ocean, valued at €220 million every year. Discarded animals include unwanted juvenile fish, low-value fish, bottom-dwelling sharks like catsharks and dogfish, rays and skates—as well as sponges, sea squirts, sea stars, corals and sea pens.
• Fuel: Bottom trawling vessels require massive amounts of fuel to drag heavy nets across the seafloor. Norway and Iceland spend the most on fuel. At least half the Dutch fleet stayed in port at the end of March 2026 because of soaring diesel costs amid the Iran crisis, demonstrating the tenuous economic viability of bottom trawling.

Fisheries' benefits are often limited to the revenue generated by the fishing industry. For this study, researchers also quantified some of the social benefits:

• Protein: Ultimately, bottom trawling only provides 2% of the animal protein consumed in all of Europe. This provides an estimated social value of €2.46 billion per year.
• Jobs: Bottom trawlers directly employ less than 20,000 people in Europe, providing a social benefit of approximately €1.78 billion per year. For comparison, small-scale fisheries in Europe generate approximately three times more jobs than industrial bottom trawlers.

"The results of our study suggest that cost-benefit analyses used in marine policy evaluations need to move beyond narrow market metrics and embrace the full scope of economic theory on valuation if they are to capture the full consequences of destructive fishing gears such as bottom trawling," remarked Rashid Sumaila, Ocean and Fisheries Economist at the University of British Columbia and co-author of the report.

The researchers could not quantify the economic cost of the ecological damage inflicted on the ocean by bottom trawling (arising from reductions in habitat complexity, permanent changes in the composition of seabed communities and reduced productivity) nor the cost to other fisheries (arising from bycatch). However, a 2024 paper shows remarkable recovery of marine life in areas after banning bottom trawling, including a 95% increase in reef species and a 400% increase in juvenile lobsters.

Reducing bottom trawling makes economic and environmental sense

In the study, the researchers simulated how changes to the bottom trawling effort could impact the balance between costs and benefits. They concluded that reducing bottom trawling activity across Europe by just over half could increase overall benefits. Such a reduction would help restore Europe's overfished seas, avoid large carbon dioxide emissions, and maximize food production by making European fishing more sustainable. The subsidies currently used to support bottom trawling could be directed towards the industry's transition to less damaging practices.

"Ending bottom trawling in Europe's marine protected areas is essential for saving billions in public costs," said Professor Sala. "This move will save taxpayers money, protect marine life, boost the fishing industry and help us reduce global warming. If European governments were to direct just a fraction of the current fisheries' subsidies to help the industry transition away from bottom trawling, society and marine life would win out."

European leaders have already taken steps to ban bottom trawling. In April 2024, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced his commitment to ban bottom trawling in Greek MPAs by 2030; Sweden followed two months later. The European Commission's action plan calls for "gradually phasing out bottom fishing in all MPAs by 2030, in view of their key role in restoration of marine biodiversity and the importance of the seabed for healthy marine ecosystems and climate change mitigation."

"Βy moving to phase out bottom trawling across all Greek Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), Greece is taking decisive action to restore marine ecosystems, support sustainable fisheries and safeguard the long-term health of our seas," noted Prime Minister Mitsotakis. "It is the most effective way to implement the two major Marine Parks in the Aegean and Ionian Seas, bringing Greece closer to exceeding the 30x30 target."

"Banning bottom trawling in all Greek MPAs would represent a transformative step in safeguarding Posidonia seagrass beds and other vulnerable habitats, enhance carbon sequestration, support the rapid recovery of fish stocks and generate positive spillover effects into surrounding waters," added Mitsotakis. "In doing so, it would serve both biodiversity conservation and the long-term interests of fishers and local communities, strengthening the resilience and sustainability of the blue economy in Greece's coastal regions."

https://broughttolight.ucsf.edu/2013/12/03/stones-synchrotron/

This compelling photograph (which, despite appearances, is not a scene from a sci-fi movie) depicts Dr. Robert Stone with the machine he created, the 70MeV electron synchroton. The synchrotron was a type of particle accelerator used to treat cancer patients with radiation from 1956 to 1964. Stone’s work contributed greatly to the safe clinical use of radiation.

Banner image: A pygmy long-fingered possum (Dactylonax kambuayai), photographed in 2023. Image courtesy of Jon Hall/mammalwatching.com.

‘Rediscovered’ species in Papua spotlight importance of Indigenous knowledge

• Two species of marsupial thought by scientists to be extinct for thousands of years still live in the forests of Indonesian Papua on the island of New Guinea, according to recently published research.
• One of the animals, the ring-tailed glider, is sacred to the Tambrauw people, and it’s part of a newly proposed genus, Tous, borrowing the Tambrauw name for the glider.
• The other animal, a pygmy long-fingered possum, was discovered during a mammal-watching trip on the Bird’s Head Peninsula.
• The research involved substantial collaborations with local communities and Indigenous elders.

It started with a set of photographs, taken of an animal captured in 2015 on the Bird’s Head Peninsula in Indonesian Papua, the western half of the island of New Guinea. The smallish animal with “large hands” looked a bit like a slow loris, a small primate that doesn’t live on the island, or perhaps a cuscus, which, like this specimen, is also a marsupial. Further inspection of the photos, however, suggested it might be something else altogether, a species long thought lost to extinction — by scientists, anyway.

Interviews in local communities provided a breadcrumb trail suggesting that a forest-dwelling glider, known — again, to science — only from millennia-old fragments of teeth and bone, might yet live in the forests of Indonesian Papua.

Several years later, Rika Korain was approached by her longtime friend and colleague, Australian mammalogist Tim Flannery, who asked if she might help him get a bead on whether the animal still existed.

Korain, a human rights lawyer and Indigenous Maybrat woman, immediately thought of the elders from the Tambrauw people, a group that lives close to the Maybrat and with whom they share traditions in common.

“I’m from the Bird’s Head area,” she says. “I told [Flannery], let’s find out from my clan, from my people’s side. Let’s try to talk with the elders or especially the hunters who always go to the jungle to find out whether they see this particular animal.”

So in 2023, she and Flannery spoke with two Tambrauw elders, Barnabas Baru and Carlos Yesnat. They confirmed that they know the glider from nearby forests and that it had once been more widespread before forests closer to the town of Sorong had been logged.

The photos from 2015, along with the elders’ testimony, proved that this animal, the ring-tailed glider, still exists in forests on the Bird’s Head Peninsula, despite scientists having concluded that it had gone extinct some 6,000 years ago.

Flannery, Korain and their colleagues recently reported their findings in the journal Records of the Australian Museum. The team calls the glider Tous ayamaruensis, borrowing the Maybrat and Tambrauw name. It also differs enough from related species to justify designating Tous as a new genus among marsupials that includes several other gliding species identified from fossils.

In the same issue of the journal, Flannery was also the lead author of a report on the existence of another species scientists thought was extinct: the pygmy long-fingered possum (Dactylonax kambuayai).

Scientists thought the pygmy long-fingered possum had gone extinct 6,000 years ago, until a group of mammal watchers photographed one in 2023. Image courtesy of Jon Hall/mammalwatching.com.

“It’s been a massive joint effort,” Flannery says. He and his co-authors on the research acknowledge “the fundamentally important approach of integrating both indigenous ways of knowing and understanding the world, and scientific approaches” in the paper describing the ring-tailed glider. For Flannery, that lesson comes from more than 45 years working on mammal zoology in New Guinea.

“My career really is a result of the cumulative knowledge that’s been passed on to me by tribal elders all across the island,” he says. “They really are my great professors. They’re the people that I learn from.”

Decades of listening, building trust and working with local communities and Indigenous groups have helped Flannery shine a light on the wondrous diversity of mammals living in what one scientist describes as a “natural laboratory of diversification.” But New Guinea and the people who call it home also face the threats of the modern world from development, agriculture and logging. Flannery says he hopes a similar spirit of collaboration will ensure these species persist.

A map showing where the ring-tailed glider is found. Image courtesy of Flannery et al., 2026.

‘Something sacred’

In the elders’ descriptions, Korain noticed something different in the way they talked about the animal they called tous wan. Often, her questions were met with a deferential way of speaking in a “low tone.” The women typically wouldn’t use its name at all, instead referring to it as “that animal.”

That deference tipped off Korain that “it is probably something that’s sacred in our culture,” she tells Mongabay. Soon, she was mining the recesses of her memory, thinking back to stories her father told her of initiation rites that would take boys into the forest for a year or more for “traditional education” — in hunting, medicinal plants and sacred rituals, Korain says.

In their interviews with Baru and Yesnat, she and Flannery uncovered not just the animal’s existence but its role in Tambrauw cosmology.

“It really seems to be at the center of knowledge in a complex series of initiations that bring cultural prestige with them,” says Flannery, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Australian Museum. That made it challenging to discern whether it still existed because, he explains, “Initially, we didn’t understand that it was such a sensitive animal, such an important animal culturally.”

As Korain and Flannery spent time with Baru and Yesnat, the elders began to open up about the glider, its behavior and where to find it, and why it was sacred to them.

What the women referred to as “that animal” was a gliding possum, with a curled, prehensile tail and the bulging eyes that befit its nocturnal habits. (The team is deliberately vague in describing the precise locations of these sightings, to protect the species from wildlife trafficking.)

An artist’s rendering of the pygmy long-fingered possum (Dactylonax kambuayai). Image by Peter Schouten courtesy of Flannery et al., 2026.

New Guinea’s varied topography and terrain have led to bursts of differentiation among species on the island. Robin Beck, a professor of biology at the U.K.’s University of Salford, who wasn’t involved in this research, calls New Guinea an “engine of speciation,” owing to its unique geological history and diverse habitats. That makes it a fascinating place for scientists to study.

What’s more, the fossil record shows that the ancestors of the two species have ancient genealogical ties to Australia. Geologically, the Bird’s Head is part of the Australian continent and is “very different from the rest of New Guinea,” Flannery says.

The peninsula is also a place where unusual traits evolve, at times converging with those of other species from distant parts of the globe — like the pygmy long-fingered possum, for example. They have “specialized ear regions” that allow them to zero in on where beetle larvae are tucked away in rotting wood, Flannery says, along with robust incisors to tear away wood and get at their quarry. Most eye-catching is the possum’s wildly extended fourth digit and curved claw, a remarkable adaptation used “as a sort of fishing rod … to go in and hook the grub and pull it out of the burrow.” Flannery thinks of long-fingered possum as “marsupial woodpeckers, in a way.”

“It’s endlessly fascinating,” he says of the decades he’s spent studying New Guinea’s animals. “Sometimes you just do sit back and think, ‘Wow, how likely is it that anything like this would ever evolve?’”

Beck calls the Flannery-led research “really fantastic” and notes the cooperation necessary to bring these findings to the attention of the scientific world.

“It’s wonderful that local people have been involved in the discovery,” he tells Mongabay. For scientists, that collaboration is critical to finding the animals, but also to understanding how they live and behave.

“How do they find out about the biology of these organisms? Yes, they go out and observe them,” Beck says. “But at least as valuable is to talk to the local people and say, ‘Well, tell me about this animal.’

“They’re essential, really,” he adds.

For Flannery and his team, the intimate knowledge that the Tambrauw elders had of the ring-tailed glider opened a window into their habits. For instance, a mated pair of gliders has a single baby each year, Flannery says. And it lives in tall trees and will trim the leaves that are in its glide path from tree to tree, which the Tambrauw see as a type of gardening.

“In a sense, this animal is the ideal for humans. It’s monogamous, has one wife, has a small family that it looks after, and it looks after its environment,” Flannery says. “And I think that is the central story for young men during initiation.”

The ring-tailed glider (Tous ayamaruensis) holds a sacred place in Tambrauw culture. Image courtesy of Dewa/FFI.

A question of perspective

In 2023, University of Oxford biologist James Kempton led an expedition to the Cyclops Mountains in Indonesian Papua. The team revealed with camera-trap photographs that the egg-laying Attenborough’s echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi), a species that scientists believed had gone extinct since it was last seen in 1961, still plied the mountains’ forests.

These findings, of the echidna, as well as those around the ring-tailed glider and the pygmy long-fingered-possum, are often framed as “rediscoveries” of “lost” or “Lazarus” species. But that doesn’t tell the full story, Kempton says.

“When we use terms like ‘Lazarus species’ and ‘rediscoveries’ and ‘lost species,’ that is only within the perspective of a subset of people” — namely, the Western scientists who didn’t know these species still existed, he says.

“They are not actually ‘rediscoveries,’” Kempton adds. “They’re just reports of knowledge that Indigenous communities have had for a long time.”

For the Cyclops expedition, he worked with Yayasan Pelayanan Papua Nenda (YAPPENDA), an Indonesian NGO that he credits with helping to find “common ground” between scientists and communities that made the echidna expedition a success.

Without that trust, such success can be elusive, says Malcolm Kobak, co-founder of YAPPENDA. He recounts a “humbling” story about his team’s role in searching for Attenborough’s echidna in 2023: An elder from the community of Yongsu Sapari, who are traditional owners of part of the Cyclops Mountains, said they had “misled” prior expeditions because they didn’t trust them. The echidna is sacred to the people of Yongsu Sapari, just as the ring-tailed glider is for the Tambrauw. YAPPENDA, by contrast, had taken the time to build relationships with the community’s people, obtain their consent and include them in the expedition, the elder said, which demonstrated the organization’s care for his people.

A research camp on the Bird’s Head Peninsula in Indonesian Papua. Image courtesy of Shane McEvey.

Those community members played invaluable roles that contributed to finding the echidna, Kobak says.

“All the Western scientists commented [that] these guys would be the best field biologists in the world,” he adds. “They’re just unbelievable in the forest,” whether it was finding or spotting animals, or shimmying up a tree.

Kempton says he sees a future in which Indigenous-led fieldwork is the norm.

“In the case of Tim Flannery and his co-authors, that is exactly the kind of approach that they take,” says Kempton, who wasn’t involved in the work on the Bird’s Head Peninsula. “Tim has always been a very responsible individual on this front and has always cultivated very strong and trusting relationships with Indigenous people.”

The work continues for Flannery. He and his teammates aim to search for more species that are unknown or poorly understood by scientists, and to better understand the habits of the possum and the glider, to be sure. But they’re also focused on working with scientists, Indigenous peoples and the Indonesian government to keep these places intact.

The Bird’s Head’s relatively extensive road network, its deepwater port and its accessibility to the rest of Indonesia mean that the forests there are vulnerable to logging — the logging that the Tambrauw say caused the disappearance of the ring-tailed glider in parts of its former range.

Elsewhere on the peninsula, plantation companies have eyed the primary lowland forests of the Klasow Valley as sites for oil palm, says Isai Onesimus Paa, a local guide from the village of Klalik. It was in the nearby lowland forests that co-author Carlos Bocos snapped the first photos of the long-fingered possum during a 2023 mammal-watching tour led by Bocos and Jon Hall.

Even before finding the possum, ecotourism has brought economic prosperity to the village, Paa tells Mongabay by WhatsApp message. The benefits that come from visiting tourists have provided more options and new opportunities for young people, who are now more likely to stay in Klalik, he adds. And now those visitors can see the long-fingered possum along with echidna, cuscus and tree kangaroo.

Still, communities in the Klasow Valley face an uncertain future, Paa says, if their customary land rights aren’t respected.

“Besides legal enforcement, indigenous communities must unite to defend their territories,” he writes.

A young ring-tailed glider (Tous ayamaruensis). Image courtesy of Arman Muharmansyah.

The next steps for Flannery involve supporting those customary land rights in ways that complement broad-scale protections like national parks, he says.

“We believe that unless you involve the local, traditional owners of the forests, you don’t have a long-term future in terms of conservation,” Flannery adds.

Rika Korain, who’s spent a career focused on environmental protection and human rights, sees the benefit of incorporating traditional values into conservation. She notes that for the Tambrauw, hunting the ring-tailed glider is taboo because the animal represents a connection to their ancestors.

Finding ways to uphold those values as part of the approach is a way to get people “excited about conservation,” YAPPENDA’s Malcolm Kobak says. “So why not design it as your strategy?”

What’s critical, he adds, is the involvement of communities from the beginning and throughout the process, just as it is for the success of research expeditions.

“You can’t protect the forest without the people,” Kobak says, “and you can’t protect the people without the space that they live in.”

Scientists believe that the forests of New Guinea likely hold species of mammal that are new — or have been ‘lost’ — to scientists. Image courtesy of Shane McEvey.

Honeybees pass their math test, upending an animal intelligence debate

Credit: Dr. Scarlett Howard/Monash University

We've run the numbers and the verdict is in: Honeybees do have the ability to process numerical information. New research led by Monash University has now addressed recent international debate over whether bees are truly assessing numbers or simply reacting to visual patterns.

The study highlights the necessity of designing cognitive experiments that align with an animal's specific sensory and biological constraints. When stimuli are evaluated from a bee's-eye view, the evidence for numerical cognition is strengthened rather than diminished.

The study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, re-examined previous critiques of bee intelligence by accounting for the honeybee's unique sensory and perceptual constraints. By evaluating experimental stimuli from a biologically relevant perspective, researchers demonstrated that previous criticisms, which suggested bees were merely sensitive to visual cues like spatial frequency, do not hold up.

Monash University Senior Lecturer Dr. Scarlett Howard, from the Monash School of Biological Sciences, said the findings underscore the importance of avoiding human-centric biases in animal research.

"We must put the animal's perspective first when assessing their cognition or we may under or overestimate their abilities," said Dr. Howard. "We see and experience the world quite differently from animals, so we must be careful of centering human perspectives and senses when studying animal intelligence."

The research team argues that to accurately assess cognitive abilities, experiments must be designed to match the natural sensory capacities of the subject species.

Dr. Mirko Zanon, from the Center for Mind Brain Sciences at the University of Trento and first author on the study, said that ignoring how an animal perceives the world risks leading scientists to the wrong conclusions.

"There has been a debate about whether bees are really 'counting' or just reacting to visual patterns. Our results show that this criticism doesn't hold when you consider the biology of the animal," said Dr. Zanon. "When we analyze the stimuli in a way that reflects how bees actually see the world, what remains is actual sensitivity to number."

Dr. Howard added, "It can be challenging to put ourselves in the mind of a bee to imagine how they see the world, but trying to see the world through an animal's eyes is an essential part of our work. The bees always surprise us with how they move through the world, interpret our questions, and make decisions."

Banner image: Kungaka in Mutawintji National Park. Image by Tom Parkin (CC BY-ND 4.0).

Indigenous knowledge helps identify new, highly threatened skink in Australia

Researchers have described a new-to-science species of skink that may be one of Australia’s most threatened reptiles.

The small population of the skink, possibly fewer than 20 individuals, lives in a pocket of rocky gorge within the arid Mutawintji National Park in New South Wales state, the researchers report in a new paper.

The skink has been named Liopholis mutawintji, in a nod to the park, the only place it’s currently known from. Its common name is Kungaka, meaning “the Hidden One” to Wiimpatja Aboriginal Owners. This refers to the species’ habit of hiding in crevices and burrows.

Scientists from the Australian Museum Research Institute (AMRI) partnered with Wiimpatja Aboriginal Owners and the New South Wales National Parks & Wildlife Service to confirm the Kungaka as a distinct species.

Thomas Parkin, the study’s lead author with AMRI, told Mongabay by email that the Kungaka was previously thought to be a highly isolated population of White’s skink (L. whitii), a species widely distributed in southeastern Australia.

But with Mutawintji roughly 500 kilometers (300 miles) away from the closest White’s skink population, the team decided to revisit the reptile’s taxonomy. The team analyzed DNA samples and compared physical traits of White’s skinks from different populations across Australia.

Their analyses revealed that White’s skink is not one species, but three deeply divergent lineages. The three species in the revised taxonomy are the southern White’s skink (L. whitii), northern White’s skink (L. compressicauda), and the Kungaka.

Parkin said the Kungaka can be distinguished from the other two White’s skinks “by the presence of dark-tipped scales on the palms of its hands and feet, a proportionately longer tail, and subtle differences in overall body proportions.”

Alex Slavenko, a member of the Skink Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, who wasn’t involved in the analysis, told Mongabay by email: “The team here have done a fantastic job bringing together genetics, morphological data from museum specimens, Traditional Owner knowledge and ecological data to resolve a long-standing taxonomic issue.”

Monitoring of the skinks over 25 years suggests the Kungaka may already be critically endangered, the authors say. Threats include damage to their habitat from feral goats, drought, and introduced predators like feral cats.

“[T]he formal description of Kungaka as a distinct species will allow its listing under state and federal threatened species lists, which is a crucial first step for planning and implementing management plans,” Slavenko said.

Parkin said efforts are underway to manage threats and that captive breeding and genetic management are also being considered.

Warlpa Thompson, study co-author from the Mutawintji Board of Management, said in a statement: “Our people have been leading the way for looking after this extremely rare lizard. Now that it’s about to be given the name Kungaka, the Hidden One, in Wiimpatja parlku, the world will soon know how special they are.”

Banner image: An image of a male Hemiphyllodactylus ziegleri. Courtesy of Pham A.V. et al (2026) under Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0).

New ‘cryptic’ gecko species discovered in Vietnam’s imperiled karst forests

In the rugged karst forests of northern Vietnam, researchers have identified a new gecko species, Vietnam’s 12th known species of gecko. The discovery highlights how much diversity the often-overlooked landscape holds.

Ziegler’s Slender Gecko (Hemiphyllodactylus ziegleri) was discovered during surveys in the Copia Nature Reserve, in Son La province. The species was named in honor of Thomas Ziegler from the University of Cologne, Germany, “for his outstanding contribution to biodiversity research and conservation in Vietnam,” the study said.

These small, yellowish-grey geckos were observed at night on limestone cliffs and, in one instance, an electric pole in a cornfield.

While study co-author Minh Le from Vietnam National University called the find “exciting,” he noted the team was not shocked.

“Because we acknowledge, based on our research, that the diversity of this group of cryptic geckos is substantially underestimated,” he told Mongabay by email. “We expect that more new species will be described in the future.”

In this case, the term ‘cryptic’ refers to species that appear nearly identical to others. Despite their physical similarities, genetic testing revealed a 14% divergence between the new gecko and its closest relatives, a significant gap that represents a major evolutionary distinction between the new species and its relatives.

This finding is part of a broader trend; 85% of species in this genus have been described only in the last decade. Though many of them have been newly described, their habitat and ecosystems are already under threat.

For now, researchers recommend that the new slender geckos should receive a “data deficient” status on the IUCN Red List. They say more research is needed to understand the full impact of human activity on its tiny known range which spreads across less than 50 square kilometers (31 sqm).

“The main threat to the species is habitat loss and degradation,” Le said. He explained that Vietnam’s limestone habitats, frequently overlooked for their biodiversity, are often quarried for the cement industry. “However, recent research has shown that limestone harbors unique biodiversity with many endemic and threatened species.”

Even within the protected Copia Nature Reserve, the gecko’s habitat is being degraded by road construction and timber logging, the study noted.

Le added that it’s “crucial to raise public awareness” before these ecosystems are lost to overexploitation.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11435420

Archive link: https://archive.ph/bYxBK

The new amphibian species, with the scientific name Gastrotheca mittaliiti, measures 2.7 to 3.3 centimeters (1 to 1.3 inches).

Scientists have discovered a new species of miniature marsupial frog in the Peruvian Amazon that carries its young in a natural pouch on its back, a research institute reported Wednesday.

The new amphibian species, with the scientific name Gastrotheca mittaliiti, measures 2.7 to 3.3 centimeters (1 to 1.3 inches) and was discovered in a mountainous ecosystem in the Amazonas region bordering Ecuador.

The frog is bright green and has small protuberances on its back. The number of specimens in the wild is not known.

Its pouch enables the marsupial frog to nurture its young rather than, as other frogs, rely on aquatic environments for egg development.

The study says the amphibian is at "high risk" because its habitat is suffering the effects of climate change and the impact of fires started by farmers clearing the region.

"This is further evidence of the enormous natural wealth we possess... If we continue our research, there are many species still waiting to be discovered," Manuel Oliva, director of the Ceja de Selva Research Institute for Sustainable Development, part of the Toribio Rodriguez de Mendoza National University, told AFP.

The discovery was published in the New Zealand scientific journal Zootaxa and undertaken in collaboration with research departments at Florida International University and the University of Seville in Spain.

An Atlantic Forest treefrog, Aplastodiscus leucopygius, at the edge of a rocky forest stream in Brazil's Atlantic Forest, transitioning between aquatic and terrestrial environments. New research led by Penn State biologists found that amphibians in connected natural forests and aquatic habitats were more likely to host beneficial skin microbes that inhibit a deadly fungal pathogen. Credit: Shannon Buttimer, Penn State

Maintaining connections between natural habitats may support beneficial microbes that help wildlife defend against disease. In a new study of tropical amphibians, a team led by Penn State biologists found that amphibians in connected natural forests and aquatic habitats were more likely to host beneficial skin microbes that inhibit a deadly fungal pathogen. But when these habitats become spatially separated due to planted crops, infrastructure development or other human land use, those microbial defenses weaken and pathogen infection levels can increase with potentially deadly results.

The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal a previously underappreciated link between landscape connectivity, beneficial microbes and disease resistance in wildlife, according to the researchers.

"Animals rely not only on their immune systems, but also on beneficial microbes that live on their bodies and help protect them from pathogens," said Gui Becker, associate professor of biology in the Eberly College of Science at Penn State and senior author of the study.

"Our results show that when natural habitats become disconnected, these microbial defenses can be disrupted."

The researchers explained that habitat loss and fragmentation are widely recognized as major drivers of biodiversity decline, but scientists are increasingly realizing that environmental change can also alter the microbiome—the community of microbes that live in and on animals and often play key roles in health and immunity.

A fragmented rainforest landscape in Brazil's Atlantic Forest. Credit: Renato Martins

"Our study provides evidence that connectivity among habitats is essential for maintaining multiple levels of biodiversity, from host-associated bacteria with protective functions to their respective host species," said first author Daniel Medina, previously a postdoctoral scholar in Becker's lab at Penn State and currently a lecturer in tropical forest ecology and resource management at The School for Field Studies.

"It highlights a critical link between environmental disturbance, microbial defenses and disease dynamics."

To investigate the connection between habitat fragmentation and animal microbiomes, the researchers studied amphibian populations in Brazil's Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot that has experienced extensive habitat alteration. Many amphibians depend on both forest habitats and aquatic breeding sites, requiring them to move between these environments during different stages of their life cycle.

The researchers focused on a phenomenon that Becker—a member of the Penn State One Health Microbiome Center—previously coined as "habitat split," where natural forests and aquatic habitats become separated by agriculture, development or other land uses.

Across multiple frog species—collected from 40 sampling sites during the amphibian breeding season—the team found that animals living in landscapes with higher habitat split hosted fewer bacteria known to inhibit the deadly fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which has caused dramatic amphibian declines worldwide. In some species, infection levels of the fungus also increased as habitat split intensified.

"We showed such a link by indicating that spatial separation between critical habitats, such as natural forests and aquatic breeding sites, may impair amphibians' ability to recruit protective skin bacteria that defend against the fungus," Medina said.

Becker Lab researchers conducting fieldwork in Brazil's Atlantic forest. Credit: Augusto Gomes / João Marcos Rosa

The researchers propose that in intact landscapes, animals regularly encounter both environmental microbes and low levels of pathogens, which may help maintain microbial communities capable of suppressing disease. When natural habitats become disconnected, those ecological interactions can break down.

Although the study focused on amphibians, the researchers said the findings could extend to many other animals that depend on multiple habitats throughout their life cycles.

"These results suggest that connected landscapes allow animals to maintain microbiomes that are better equipped to fight pathogens," Becker said.

"Many species—from migratory birds to fish and large mammals—move among different habitats as they feed, breed or disperse. When those habitats become disconnected, it may not only affect movement but also alter how animals interact with beneficial microbes and pathogens."

Tropical treefrog Boana faber along an Atlantic Forest stream. Credit: Augusto Gomes / João Marcos Rosa

Restoring and maintaining ecological connectivity between multiple classes of natural environments could serve as a critical strategy not only for fostering genetic diversity in wildlife populations but also for supporting the natural microbial defenses that help them resist disease.

This could include habitat restoration strategies such as protecting riparian zones—vegetation-rich areas at the edges of bodies of water—and reconnecting riparian habitats to larger areas of natural terrestrial vegetation, according to Becker.

"Protecting habitat connectivity may help preserve multiple layers of biodiversity, from the animals we see to the microbial communities that help keep them healthy," Becker said.

do you think it works on people