SPONSORED BY  | | | | January 30, 2024: Whale songs could help us communicate with aliens, families across the globe are shrinking and the best way to defend ourselves from misinformation. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | In the summer of 2021, a group of researchers on a ship in Frederick Sound, Alaska, had a prolonged encounter with a female humpback whale named Twain. They used an underwater speaker to play a series of recorded humpback vocalizations, and for 20 minutes Twain circled their boat and repeated the calls back to them. The team used a communication pattern called latency matching, deliberately shifting the timing between their broadcasts in hopes that the whale would match the temporal delays. The whale did exactly this and kept calling even after the researchers had stopped.
Why this is interesting: The researchers–some of whom are astronomers for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)--see the encounter as a compelling case of inter-species communication and a learning opportunity for how we might speak with alien life, if we ever encounter any. Other experts are treating the "conversation" with Twain with some skepticism. It's difficult to determine successful communication across species, let alone a "conversation." Plus, other animals—Alex the parrot, Koko the gorilla and many less famous creatures—have shown evidence of symbolic communication, but perhaps don't have the same star factor as whales, scientists say.
What the experts say: We have much to learn about improving communication between different species on Earth, let alone with E.T. "Maybe we need to think about animals differently on this planet. They themselves can be quite alien to us in many ways," says Brenda McCowan, an animal behaviorist at the University of California, Davis. | | | Extended families around the world will keep getting smaller as people live longer and have fewer children. Demographic researchers calculated that a woman anywhere in the world who is 65 years old in 2095 will have only 25 living relatives, compared with 41 relatives in 1950 and about 43 relatives in 2023.
Why this matters: Shrinking families means fewer available caregivers for children and the elderly. This is particularly problematic in countries that lack social security or other institutional support systems. Caring for populations falls on families. In any country, women are usually the ones who drop out of the workforce to care for family members.
What the experts say: Societies have been built around the expectation that supportive family networks will always exist, says Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, a social scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. "That is going to change in the near future." | | | Credit: Credit: Amanda Montañez; Source: "Projections of Human Kinship for All Countries," by Diego Alburez-Gutierrez et al., in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Vol. 120, No. 52; December 19, 2023 | | | • Researchers developed a test for genetic material in the leftover media used to grow embryos created using in vitro fertilization to determine which are the most viable. | 10 min listen | | | • Infants exposed to COVID in the womb are at a higher risk of respiratory distress. Vaccination in the mothers greatly lowers the risk. | 4 min read | | | SPONSORED CONTENT BY BAYER | Many women suffer from untreated menopause symptoms, which have been poorly understood. New science on the biological drivers of hot flashes, disturbed sleep, mood disorders and more could lead to novel therapies that make mid-life easier. Learn More. | | | • The way to prevent harm from rampant misinformation (about climate, vaccines and other sturdy facts) is not censorship or harassing its creators, write researchers Stephan Lewandowsky, Sander Van Der Linden and Andy Norman. The "inoculation" technique boosts people's information discernment skills so that they can identify false information before it has the chance to spread. "Studies rolled out to millions of people on social media have shown that inoculation in the form of brief informational videos makes people more skilled at identifying manipulation techniques common in misinformation, such as false dilemmas and scapegoating," they say. | 4 min read | | | Talk to any dog owner and they will probably tell you without hesitation that yes, of course, they've had real conversations with their best friend (usually accompanied by those cute head tilts). Dogs and other animals like orcas and elephants have also demonstrated a startling capacity for emotions like grief. Even if we never converse with words, it does feel like we're speaking the same language. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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