Findings

A jaguar named Salman was sent away from the Delhi zoo for being too fat to mate, and a former meerkat expert at the London Zoo was ordered to pay £800 in restitution for breaking a glass against a monkey keeper’s face during a fight over the affections of a llama keeper. Tuscan primatologists noted that Malagasy lemurs yawn more following an episode of anxiety, the eruption of Cotopaxi threatened to kill off the Quito rocket frog, and climate change was shortening the tongues of bumblebees. Raindrops bounce ants into pitcher plants. South African helmeted turtles were observed grooming the insects off a warthog. Mad cow disease has caused the Galician wolf to eat more wild ponies. The accident-prone ponies of Dartmoor were to be painted reflective blue. American drivers at crosswalks are less likely to yield for black pedestrians.

Officials at Yosemite National Park hoped that designated selfie zones might prevent millennials from falling into rivers and drowning. Restricting access to suicide hot spots reduces deaths by 90 percent. A blood test in combination with a questionnaire can predict suicidal thoughts in bipolar patients with 98 percent accuracy. Austerity increases suicides in male European adolescents. Having a reason to live reduces suicide among the transgendered. Participants in Becoming a Man, a program that seeks to reduce “automatic behavior” among Chicago boys, were 44 percent less likely to be arrested for a violent crime. Mystical experiences are not ineffable. By downregulating posterior-medial-frontal-cortex activity via transcranial magnetic stimulation, an interdisciplinary team reduced subjects’ belief in God. A newly discovered microsnail can easily pass through the eye of a needle, camel’s milk was declared beneficial for autistic children by scientists at India’s National Research Centre on Camel, and the richest 1 percent of humanity was found to possess half the world’s wealth. The tweets of the rich express more anger and fear than the tweets of the poor, which express more disgust, sadness, and surprise; joy does not vary.

by  Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Harper's |  Read more:

Image: Camouflage, Anna Bella Geiger. Courtesy Galería Aural, Alicante, Spain