An adult female stops mid-path on the upper slopes of the Rock of Gibraltar, crouches against a roadside cutting of exposed red clay, and begins picking small fragments loose with a precision grip, bringing them to her mouth one by one. Seven minutes earlier, she had finished someone’s ice cream. A Cambridge University researcher notes … Read more
Three days after swallowing a rat whole, a Burmese python’s blood is doing something extraordinary. Its heart has expanded by roughly a quarter. Its metabolism has accelerated thousands of times over. And coursing through its circulatory system is a molecule that, until now, nobody in the field of obesity research had thought to look for. … Read more
The dromedary camel has spent millions of years being battered by bacteria, viruses and parasites across some of the harshest terrain on Earth. It rarely loses. While sheep and goats in the same Omani pastures fall to foot-and-mouth disease, tetanus and other common infections, camels shrug them off with an equanimity that has long puzzled … Read more
Jean Giacomotto had 18 days to find an answer. Two newborns, one in Australia, one in Germany, carried genetic mutations nobody had seen before. Each baby also carried a known deadly mutation for spinal muscular atrophy, making them prime candidates for treatment. But the novel mutations were wildcards, and without knowing whether they were harmful, … Read more