Is this the first fish ever caught using tools?

Via io9′s Alasdair Wilkins:   This blackspot tuskfish, found in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, held a clam in its mouth and smashed it against a rock to reach the food inside. This photo is the first incontrovertible proof that fish are capable of tool use. While tool use was once seen as a uniquely human [...]

Your mother made tremendous sacrifices for you*

But she never fed you her skin. *If you’re reading this, even the shittiest of my readers’ mothers can be said to have carried their child to viability, which is always a sacrifice.

African Gray Parrots can solve simple logic puzzles

Via MSNBC: Parrots are capable of logical leaps, according to a new study in which a gray parrot named Awisa used reasoning to figure out where a bit of food was hidden. The task is one that kids as young as 4 could figure out, but the only other animals that have been shown to [...]

Checkmate

Thinking with your gut

Via Science Daily: For the first time, researchers at McMaster University have conclusive evidence that bacteria residing in the gut influence brain chemistry and behaviour. The findings are important because several common types of gastrointestinal disease, including irritable bowel syndrome, are frequently associated with anxiety or depression. In addition there has been speculation that some [...]

The material soul

The body confuses its ideas for sensations, and confuses its sensations for ideas.

Public and scientific understandings of genes

Via  Lena Groeger, writing at Scienceline: An Austrian monk sits alone with his garden pea plants, recording if they’re yellow, green, round or wrinkly. He starts noticing simple patterns in how various traits appear in each generation: a yellow parent often produces yellow offspring, but two yellow parents can produce green offspring, and yellowish-green offspring simply [...]

Monkeys reason about their own thoughts, know self-doubt

Via HuffPo’s Joanna Zelman: Apparently humans aren’t the only ones filled with self-doubt and uncertainty. A recent study found that certain monkeys question their own thinking as well. Professor John David Smith and Michael Beran trained macaques, which are of the Old World group (native to Africa, Asia, and Europe), to play a computer game [...]

Study claims testosterone dysfunction may cause autism, prevalence of ASD in males

There’s a lot of controversy on basically every aspect of autism research. Just 68 years ago, “autism” didn’t exist as a diagnosis. It would be another few decades before the condition was fully differentiated from schizophrenia. The full diversity of its expression and functionality was not be recognized until the 1980′s when Asperger syndrome was taxonomized. And ten years ago, it was believed [...]

Humans were not the first farmers

And it might be the case that ants weren’t, either. A Rice University graduate student may have discovered proto-agricultural behavior in amobeas: It’s too bad they don’t make microscopic overalls. The amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum could use a pair. A new study finds that the single-celled organism is a farmer of sorts. It picks up bacteria, carries [...]