Margaret Thatcher and the Evolution of Face Recognition

Research from Emory University this week shows that we, and our ancestors, have been recognising faces in much the same way for 30 million years or more. By watching how Rhesus Macaques respond to a well known optical illusion called the Thatcher effect, professor Robert Hampton and colleagues were...

Serial killer sharks

Scientists have shed light on how those iconic ocean predators, great white sharks, go about catching their prey. It turns out they have something in common with human serial killers. Great white sharks lurk in spots that don’t just guarantee them the best chance of encountering seals but they try ...

In-Flight Mind Reading

In a first study of its kind, researchers have recorded what’s going on in a pigeon’s brain during flight. Writing in the journal Current Biology, researchers at the University of Zurich wanted to know if familiar landmarks could be associated with changes in brain activity. The exact methods th...

Flying dolphins

Scientists have uncovered the secret behind some dolphin’s amazing aquatic acrobatics: they have flippers that work in the same way as delta wing, those characteristic triangular-shaped wings on fighter jet planes, or that feat of 20th century engineering, Concord. So, dolphins can literally fly thr...

This week in science history - The birth of Hans Spemann

This week in science history saw, in 1869, the birth of Hans Spemann, a German embryologist who won a Nobel Prize for his work on embryonic development and discovery of ‘organiser’ areas in the embryo...