Scientists Discover Wild Birds Behaving Suspiciously Like Friends
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways
The ability to cooperate and work together is not unique to humans; indeed, it's one of the most successful strategies for collective survival in the whole tree of life, from the give-and-take between symbionts, to the kindness of strangers in the street.
Friendship – strong and lasting social bonds between unrelated members of the same species – can be a part of that cooperative behavior. It can be pretty hard to confidently identify in non-humans animals, but scientists have just discovered something that looks a heck of a lot like it in birds.
More than 20 years of data on superb starlings (Lamprotornis superbus), analyzed by a team led by biologist Alexis Earl of Cornell University, reveals clear examples of reciprocal helping: offering assistance to unrelated members of the flock, with the expectation that the favor will be returned.
"This is the first real evidence of reciprocity in a cooperatively breeding bird," ornithologist Dustin Rubenstein of Cornell University told ScienceAlert, "and one of the strongest pieces of evidence for reciprocity occurring outside of humans."
Superb starlings live in flocks of up to around 60 individuals. ( Harvey Barrison/Flickr , CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
For social animals that live their lives in large communities, cooperative behavior is necessary. It's common to see animals with familial ties giving each other assistance, but some animals take it a step further.
Cows, for instance, have unrelated companions whose company they seem to favor. Male dolphins may form social bonds based on shared skills. Vampire bats demonstrate reciprocal food-sharing. And, of course, non-human primates forge social bonds. Non-familial social behavior has even been observed in rooks.
"What we really have here are reciprocal social relationships," Rubenstein explained. "In other words, I might help you today and you might then help me at some point in the future. Both individuals benefit from these long-term reciprocal helping relationships. Because they often occur among unrelated individuals, you might think of them as you do a friendship."
Identifying these relationships in wild animals, however, is not very easy to do. The team's work was based on observations collected on wild starlings of eastern Africa, a bird whose flocks consist of between seven and 60 members.
These birds are known as cooperative breeders, where non-parents help to raise the youngsters. The data, collected between 2002 and 2021, cover nine flocks and 40 breeding seasons.
To contextualize the observational data, the researchers also collected DNA from some of the birds to determine the genetic relationships between them.
From the observational data, the researchers cataloged instances of assistance, when the birds were seen either bringing food to a nest, or helping to defend a nest. They then identified the individuals involved in the assistance.
Unsurprisingly, most of the reciprocal helping occurred between related individuals. But reciprocal helping was by no means limited to family groups within the flock.
Animals that live together in groups need to be able to cooperate. ( Никонова Вероника/iNaturalist , CC BY-NC 4.0)
"Other starlings, typically immigrants who come into the group, form these strong social relationships with unrelated individuals and reciprocate helping over time," Rubenstein said. "These immigrants don't have relatives with whom they could help breed, so they have to form new social relationships upon joining the group."
This finding challenges the assumption that birds help each other with their parental responsibilities purely out of altruism due to kin selection, the researchers say. Even when relatives are available to help out, some non-related birds help each other, swapping the parent and helper roles from breeding season to breeding season.
In fact, Rubenstein noted, the birds even seem to form close bonds with just a few other specific individuals, suggesting that the relationships are not random, but chosen deliberately. We probably can't go so far as to call them besties – as doing so might be anthropomorphizing – but it's not entirely dissimilar, either.
"I think this study tells us that birds cooperate for many different reasons. Starlings need to have helpers to raise offspring. They can recruit relatives, who both benefit from the genes they share with the offspring, or they can recruit unrelated individuals by forming long-term social bonds," Rubenstein says.
"These might be considered analogous to forming a friendship."
The research has been published in Nature.
Related News
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Scientists Just Discovered a New Type of Magnetism
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: Researchers have found a way to merge the properties of ferromagnetic materials (whose atoms spin in the same direction) and antiferromagnetic materials (whose atoms spin in opposite directions and cancel out magnetism). By applying just a small voltage, they were able to switch the direction in which the atoms of nickel iodide, an antiferromagnetic material, were spinning. The ability to manipulate the spins of atoms could allow for the development of computer chips whose storage is based on spin rather than charge, allowing for much more space and longevity. Magnetism can be a strange and powerful force. In an almost supernatural way, magnets stick to surfaces with no adhesives, which is why games like Etch-a-Sketch and Operation have fascinated generations of kids. Most of what we see every day is ferromagnetism (think refrigerator magnets), the phenomenon describing how metals like iron and nickel are magnetized in a magnetic field and thus adhere to certain surfaces. There are also paramagnetic materials, like aluminum, which have a weak and almost unnoticeable attraction to magnets. There's even antiferromagnetism—a type of magnetism in which magnetic atoms or ions in a material cancel their magnetism out if they end up next to each other. And then there is a magnetism that is none of the above. By merging properties of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic materials, MIT physicists created a new kind magnetism that may someday revolutionize the memory chips that store data in laptops and smartphones. It's called 'p-wave magnetism,' and it makes use of the spin of atoms in a material rather than their charge to create magnetic properties. '[This discovery] opens new opportunities for developing ultrafast, energy-efficient and high-endurance antiferromagnetic spintronic devices,' the researchers said in a study recently published in Nature. The find is particularly huge for the field of spintronics. It might sound like a DJ spinning tracks on an alien planet—and, to be fair, it's almost as far out—but it's actually a scientific discipline centered around manipulating the spins of atoms in ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic materials. Atoms in ferromagnets are known to spin in the same direction, and as these atoms spin, so do their electrons. Those electrons, spinning furiously around their nuclei, generate magnetic fields that cause ferromagnets stick to some metals. On the other hand, neighboring atoms in antiferromagnets have opposite spins, which means the electrons generating their magnetic fields are spinning in opposite directions. Antiferromagnets do not show visible magnetization, because the spins of their electrons and atoms cancel each other out—but the MIT team found a way around that. They synthesized nickel iodide (NiI2) in a lab and observed the behavior of the electrons in its atoms. Like a ferromagnet, the electrons did have one spin orientation they preferred, and like an antiferromagnet, there were enough electrons spinning in the opposite direction to cancel out magnetism. But there was something more. It turned out that nickel atoms form spiral patterns that mirror each other, which made it possible to manipulate the spins of those atoms with a voltage. This caused some atoms to switch their spiral path from spinning left to right, and vice versa, turning the material into a p-wave magnet. And the electrons had their spins switched right along with the atoms as a whole in the same direction of that voltage. This is how spintronics could seriously level up computer chips. With data taking the form of an electron's spin rather than its charge, it leaves much more space for storage. Spintronics could mean chips able to store amounts of information orders of magnitude greater than anything currently available. 'The reported results represent the first observation of an electrically-switchable unconventional [opposite direction] magnet,' the researchers said. 'These findings open a new frontier to realize symmetry-protected voltage-based switching of non-relativistic spin polarization in a compensated magnet.' You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Mathematicians Are Getting Closer to Translating an ‘Alien Language'
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: First proposed in 2012, the Inter-universal Teichmüller Theory (IUT) is a devilishly difficult math theory that experts describe as an 'alien language.' Although only a few mathematicians around the world understand any small portion of IUT, a 28-year-old tech worker recently made significant gains toward decoding the theory. This could help make progress in understanding math enigmas like the ABC Conjecture and Fermat's Last Theorem. It's likely that you won't understand any of the mathematics in this article, but you'd be in good company—most mathematicians don't understand it, either. That's because we're talking about the famously difficult Inter-universal Teichmüller Theory (IUT), first proposed across 2,000 pages in 2012 by Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki and vigorously debated in the 13 years since: is it a revolutionary way of understanding mathematics or a complete waste of time? The best way to think about IUT is that it's a completely novel understanding of mathematics that makes a drastic departure from the theorems taught in universities around the world. According to mathematics expert Kato Fumimot, speaking to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the theory is almost an otherworldly creation. 'Imagine an alien coming to Earth who can only speak an extraterrestrial language,' Fumimot told the SCMP. 'If he were to give a speech in front of a large group of Earthlings, surely no one would understand what he is saying, and no matter how many times he repeats it, there would be no progress.' Whole branches of mathematics have been set up to try to interpret the secrets of IUT. According to some estimates, only two dozen or so mathematicians in the world can even begin to understand this mysterious language. However, it seems that a promising new mathematician may have recently been added to their number. Zhou Zhongpeng isn't a learned professor or noted mathematician, but a former doctoral student turned tech worker—one that happens to be obsessed with learning IUT. After decoding key elements of IUT and proposing novel refinements and explanations of the ABC conjecture, he sent his work—uploaded to the preprint server arXiv—to the theory's creator, Mochizuki, and Ivan Fesenko, one of the few mathematicians who has made some headway in understanding IUT. According to SCMP and Interesting Engineering, Fesenko immediately reached out to Zhou and told him to fly to his campus in Westlake University in China. Zhou promptly quit his tech job and began working with Fesenko. If mathematicians at large are ever able to truly learn IUT, they could be able to find more efficient solutions to some of the field's most devilish problems. Take, for example, Fermat's Last Theorem. Formulated in 1637 and named after French mathematician Pierre de Fermat, the theorem states that no three positive integers (a, b, and c) can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn where 'n' is greater than two. Although this seems simple, it took more than 350 years to prove it, and the solution ran 130 pages long. Zhou's work could solve such a theorem in fewer steps and also prove useful for other mathematical enigmas. For now, IUT remains a mostly an 'alien language.' And because so many of the theory's adherents live in Japan, New Scientist says that, effectively, the proof is only true in that country. Only time will tell whether that claim spreads to eventually envelop the world. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Medscape
7 hours ago
- Medscape
Study Reveals Malaria Parasite's Secrets
Malaria parasites can hide in people's bodies for years or even decades without causing symptoms by shutting down the genes that make them visible to the immune system, a new report found. This discovery explains how people can remain infected years after developing malaria and spread the disease through mosquitos that bite them, said Kirk W. Deitsch, PhD, professor with the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York City, and co-author of a study published in Nature Microbiology . 'What's probably happening in a place like Africa, where there's a lot of malaria transmission, is that people we thought didn't have malaria actually had these invisible parasites at really low levels in their system,' Deitsch told Medscape Medical News . The implications for elimination campaigns are significant. Currently, 'when we try to do a malaria elimination campaign, [we] treat the kids, the ones who are sick,' he said. The study suggests 'that we need to treat all asymptomatic people, the adults, because they're carrying these cryptic parasites that nobody knew about before.' Sticky Proteins and Spleen Avoidance The researchers sought to better understand how malaria persists in the body. 'There were these weird cases where a person who grew up in, let's say, Africa, had malaria several times, were no longer infected, and moved to the States. They lived in the States for a decade, maybe 12 or 13 years, and then they give blood for a transfusion, and the recipient of the transfusion gets really bad malaria,' Deitsch said. 'So clearly, those parasites have been hiding in this person for more than a decade, and nobody knew why. How are they hiding? Where are they?' Study authors focused on the var gene, which expresses an adhesive surface protein on the infected red blood cells in malaria. The protein is 'sticky,' allowing infected cells to attach to blood vessel walls and avoid being filtered out by the spleen, Deitsch said. But the parasite pays a price because the immune system can detect the sticky protein. Previous methods of analyzing the genetics of malaria looked at millions of parasites together. 'If you want to know which gene is being turned on in that population, you take all those parasites, you extract all the RNA from the population, and you look at which gene is turned on,' Deitsch explained. For the new study, researchers analyzed the malaria parasite at the single-cell level. 'We isolated single parasites and then looked at which gene is being expressed by just that individual parasite,' he said. 'We found there was always a group of parasites that had turned off the entire [ var ] gene family and were expressing no genes at all.' As a result, the red blood cells didn't produce the surface proteins, allowing them to be 'invisible' and evade the immune system. Like a Criminal The parasites don't turn invisible right away, Deitsch said. Instead, they constantly switch to different sticky proteins, like a criminal changing disguises, as the immune system swings into action. 'As soon as your antibody titer begins to rise, they just switch to a different adhesive protein.' 'The parasite only has so many copies of this adhesive protein that they can put out to the surface over their lifetime. So they run out of genes after about a year and a half or so.' Scientists used to think this meant the infection would be cleared. 'Everybody always assumed that once the parasite runs out of these genes, that the infection is over. You clear the infection, and then you're okay.' Deitsch used the metaphor of a criminal who has a closet full of 50-60 disguises. 'When you get to the last one, then you've run out, and the cops have figured out all your previous disguises. At the back of the closet, there's an invisibility cloak. They can put that on, and then the cops can't see you at all.' These invisible parasites exist at very low levels. 'Those parasites don't go to very high levels because your spleen is continuously filtering them,' Deitsch explained. 'But what they're able to do is maintain this low level of infection for a long time.' The only sign of continued infection may be a slightly enlarged spleen 'because the spleen is continuously clearing a lot of these invisible parasites by filtration,' Deitsch noted. Changes in Malaria Prevention Strategy? The findings suggest that anti-malaria efforts should treat entire populations with anti-malaria drugs, even healthy people, Deitsch said. And drugs could be developed to make the hidden parasites become visible to the immune system. However, neither strategy is simple, he said. What's next? 'We're going to continue working on the molecular mechanisms that mediate this process [and explore] how the parasites control their chromosomes and their genes to go into this silent, invisible state and then switch back out into a different state,' Deitsch said. Researchers are also studying basic questions about how parasites coordinate their disguise changes. 'There are literally trillions of parasites in the circulation of a sick individual, and they seem to coordinate switching their disguise,' Deitsch said. 'They all know to go to the same next disguise.' Outside Experts Weigh In Karine Le Roch, PhD, MS, director of the Center for Infectious Disease and Vector Research, University of California, Riverside, who was not involved with the paper, told Medscape Medical News that it's 'a rigorous, innovative, and impactful study that advances a long-standing question in malaria biology.' The report 'addresses a major paradox in malaria biology and offers a compelling explanation for asymptomatic chronic infections, which have long been poorly understood,' she said. Anna Bachmann, PhD, a research group leader at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, also praised the study. Bachmann, who didn't work on the paper, said it suggests 'that P falciparum may possess even more sophisticated strategies to maintain long-term infections than previously understood.' She added that the findings have implications regarding whether migrants need more extensive screening and treatment for acute and chronic infections. 'Many parasitic infections in refugees from sub-Saharan Africa have been found to be clinically almost silent, leading to the recommendation that screening practices need to be improved, particularly with respect to parasitic infections,' she said. 'This is primarily to improve the health of migrants, but it could also become relevant in the context of a potential reintroduction of malaria in nonendemic regions as currently being observed in parts of the United States and southern Europe.' The National Institutes of Health supported Deitsch and another author via grants. Deitsch is a Stavros S. Niarchos Scholar and recipient of a William Randolph Hearst Endowed Faculty Fellowship Grant, and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation supported his institution. Another author received support from the Swiss National Science Foundation. The other authors had no disclosures.
