Learn about non-human animals that say hello and goodbye; life on Snowball Earth; and how to learn skills twice as fast. Apes use their own form of hello and goodbye, the first time we've seen that in non-human animals by Steffie Drucker Heesen, R., Bangerter, A., Zuberbühler, K., Iglesias, K., Neumann, C., Pajot, A., Perrenoud, L., Guéry, J.-P., Rossano, F., & Genty, E. (2021). Assessing joint commitment as a process in great apes. IScience, 102872. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102872 Like humans, apes communicate to start and end social interactions. (2021, August 11). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/924594 Schultz, I. (2021, August 11). Bonobos Appear to Say “Hello” and “Goodbye” to Each Other. Gizmodo; Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/bonobos-appear-to-say-hello-and-goodbye-to-each-other-1847464864 Conor Feehly. (2021). Apes Have Been Observed Starting And Ending Interactions Just Like Humans Do. ScienceAlert. https://www.sciencealert.com/apes-observed-using-purposeful-signals-to-start-and-end-interactions Life survived on "Snowball Earth" despite the ice; a new study says Earth's orbit explains why by Briana Brownell Changes in Earth’s orbit enabled the emergence of complex life. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-07/uos-cie070721.php Mitchell, R. N., Gernon, T. M., Cox, G. M., Nordsvan, A. R., Kirscher, U., Xuan, C., Liu, Y., Liu, X., & He, X. (2021). Orbital forcing of ice sheets during snowball Earth. Nature Communications, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24439-4 Buis, NASA’s, A. (2021, February 24). Milankovitch (Orbital) Cycles and Their Role in Earth’s Climate. Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2948/milankovitch-orbital-cycles-and-their-role-in-earths-climate/ Scientists Found a Technique That Can Help You Learn Skills Twice as Fast by Joanie Faletto first aired April 26, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/freezer-burn-science-a-giant-flying-reptile-and-ho Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about non-human animals that say hello and goodbye; life on Snowball Earth; and how to learn skills twice as fast.
Apes use their own form of hello and goodbye, the first time we've seen that in non-human animals by Steffie Drucker
Life survived on "Snowball Earth" despite the ice; a new study says Earth's orbit explains why by Briana Brownell
Scientists Found a Technique That Can Help You Learn Skills Twice as Fast by Joanie Faletto first aired April 26, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/freezer-burn-science-a-giant-flying-reptile-and-ho
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/apes-say-hello-life-on-snowball-earth-learn-twice-as-fast
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about the first time we’ve seen a non-human animal use a form of hello and goodbye; how our planet’s orbit helped life survive back in the day of Snowball Earth; and a technique that could help you master certain skills twice as fast.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
If you ran into an acquaintance on the street, you’d probably say hello before launching into a conversation — and you’d probably also say goodbye when it was over. To do otherwise would be rude! Well, for the first time, scientists have observed apes following their own unwritten rules of politeness. It turns out that our primate cousins use versions of hello and goodbye, too.
For this study, scientists wanted to find out whether apes had what’s called “joint commitment.” That’s a mutual sense of obligation individuals have when they’re working on a shared goal. In humans, that process can be anything from two children agreeing to play together to a venture capital firm agreeing to fund a startup. Scientists thought that joint commitment was unique to humans, but this new study finds otherwise.
To find this out, scientists analyzed more than 1,200 recordings of chimpanzees and bonobos grooming or playing with one another. These interactions often began with some signal of initiation, like locking eyes, butting heads, or holding hands. Chimps greeted each other 69 percent of the time and bonobos did it 90 percent of the time.
It was even more common for the apes to give a “goodbye” signal that told their partner they were ending playtime. The chimps gave a formal signoff 86 percent of the time, and the bonobos did it 92 percent of the time.
Bonobos used greetings and goodbye gestures more than chimps in both cases. Researchers say that has to do with their social system. Chimps establish and maintain their ranks through physical violence whereas bonobos tend to be more peaceful.
Bonobos were also more flexible with their etiquette. They abbreviated or completely skipped greetings and goodbyes with closer companions. You probably do this too: You’re more likely to give a quick nod when you meet up with a friend, but you’d give a more formal “hello” and handshake to someone you’ve just met.
Both chimpanzees and bonobos are closely related to us, so studying their behavior teaches us about our own. Communicating intentions and getting buy-in from others is key to human innovation. It’s allowed us to do everything from building families to establishing nations to going to the moon! Learning that our closest primate cousins have similar customs is a big step in understanding where they came from.
So cut yourself some slack if you can’t stop doing a goofy wave at the end of your Zoom meetings — your primate brain is primed for it!
With how hot our summers have been, it’s hard to believe that the planet could ever have been in a state scientists called “Snowball Earth.” But that’s exactly what many scientists think: around 700 million years ago, the entire surface of the Earth was completely frozen solid. The conditions were harsh, yet life survived. And a new study may explain how.
In the 1960s, scientists found rocks that showed evidence of vast sheets of ice near the equator in the Precambrian period, 700 million years ago. That’s how the Snowball Earth theory came to be.
But, then new evidence exposed some problems with the theory. Mineral formations were found from the same time period with what looks like evidence of flowing water. According to the Snowball Earth theory, the Earth should have been too cold for the water to melt.
There were other problems with the theory too. If Earth was indeed completely frozen, it would be tough to explain how life survived during that time. Yet, the hypothesized Snowball Earth period is in the Precambrian era — the time period that came immediately before the Cambrian explosion, where the complexity and variety of animal life skyrocketed.
So there’s evidence that the Earth was frozen at one point — and evidence that it wasn’t. To solve this conflict, scientists started looking for a new theory. And now an international team of scientists has found one.
They looked at kilometer-thick iron and silica rocks in the Australian outback. These massive rocks formed on the ocean floor from hydrothermal vents back when Australia was much closer to the equator than it is now.
Because ice sheets cut off the ocean from the oxygen in the atmosphere, the iron didn’t oxidize — and that meant it was able to accumulate in the rocks. Those rocks show evidence of ice all the way to the equator. But they also preserved some additional information about Earth’s orbit. That’s because the iron becomes magnetized when it’s a magnetic field, like from the solar radiation that reaches Earth from the sun. They found that the Earth’s orbit changed during that time.
But they also showed evidence of something else: climate cycles. These climate cycles would have caused the ice sheets to advance and retreat.
The research suggests that despite the frozen environment, there were actually pockets of liquid water that would have allowed life to survive during this extreme period.
There are still many questions about Snowball Earth that scientists have yet to answer. But this new evidence is improving our scientific knowledge of the history of our planet.
CODY: Researchers have found a technique that could help you learn certain skills twice as fast. This is one of the first stories we ever covered on Curiosity Daily, so we remastered it in case you missed it the first time around. So here it is!
[ASHLEY: Clip 2:34]
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Steffie Drucker, Briana Brownell, and Joanie Faletto.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!