Transcript

11.6.25 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Hello. This Kelly Taylor. I'll be your host for Radioized
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Diary of Science and Nature. We'll have some articles related
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to the topics of science and nature. But first a
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reminder that RADIOI is a reading service intended for people
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who are blind or have other disabilities that make it
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difficult to read printed material. We'll start off with an
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article from Scientific American dated October thirtieth, written by Cody Contier,
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and the headline is Chimps can weigh evidence and update
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their beliefs. Like humans do. You generally have reasons good
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or bad for your beliefs. You can reflect on those reasons.
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Why do I think there's a serial killer in the attic?
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It's because the floor creaked and a paragon of rationality
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that you are. You can also adjust your beliefs when
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additional evidence demands it. Having scoured the attic, baseball bat
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in hand, I must conclude that it's just an old,
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creaky house. This cognitive skill is known as belief revision.
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It's long been considered a hallmark of human rationality that
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distinguishes us from other animals. It relies on a reflective
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awareness of our own thought processes, thinking about thinking or
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metacognition that other species don't obviously possess. But a new
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study published today in the journal Science shows that our
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closest evolutionary relatives also reason in surprisingly sophisticated ways. In
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a series of experiments, researchers tested chimpanzees at the Nungamba
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Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda to see how the animals
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juggle different sources of evidence. Each experiment revolved around food
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hidden in one of several boxes. The chimps would pick
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the box they thought was most promising based on any
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initial clue. Then they'd get another clue that sometimes conflicted
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with the first. Given the chance to update their decision,
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they almost always chose the box predicted by a rational
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choice model, and only changed their mind when the new
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information was stronger than what they already knew. Quote the
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chimps knocked it out of the park, says Brian Hare,
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an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University who was not involved
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in the study. Quote it's obvious this is so easy
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for them. Quote. Most impressively, the animals even accounted for
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clues that undermined earlier evidence. If they heard something bouncing
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around inside box one they would assume at first that
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it was an apple, but then the experimenter would pull
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out a stone. Realizing they had been misled. The chimps
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would immediately opt for box two, even though it appeared
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uninspiring a moment before this was quote the cherry on top,
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says study co author Jan Engelman, a comparative psychologist at
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the University of California, Berkeley. Quote. None of us thought
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they could do it because it's just so complex. Of course,
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lots of animals obey reason without reflecting on it, and
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Amiba is acting rationally in some sense when it follows
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chemical signals toward food. This unreflective responsiveness to evidence, as
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it's been called, is a mere shadow of human rationality,
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But Engelman argues that chimpanzee's ability to scrutinize evidence engage
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the certainty of their own knowledge comes much closer to
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the real thing. It's very hard to explain the chimp's
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behavior without appealing to some notion of reflection, he says.
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Christopher Krupigner, who studies animal cognition at Johns Hopkins University
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and was not involved in the study, agrees he's agnostic
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about the content of that reflection whether language. It's unclear
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how animals could mentally represent the propositions that make up
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human beliefs, like in parentheses. They have hear rattling, so
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there's probably an apple in the box. It's possible that
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chimps think primarily in pictures. Regardless, Kroupigner says, all of
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this suggests they're not just driven by simple emotional responses.
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They have rather complex awareness. Clearly, however, there's still more
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to human rationality. According to study co author Hannah Schleihauf,
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a comparative psychologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, the
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crucial ingredient may be social interaction. We're able to sharpen
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our beliefs through discussion. This is really what makes humans
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so special, she says. We give, give, and ask for reasons. Indeed,
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some cognitive scientists think our reasoning skills evolve so that
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we could argue with one another. This study reminds us
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that those skills evolve from somewhere, namely from cognitive abilities
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that were already present in the common ancestor that we
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share with chimpanzees and bonobos more than one hundred and
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fifty years ago. Charles Darwin predicted that our extraordinary mental
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powers would turn out to be extensions of capacities found
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throughout the animal kingdom. If chimpanzees are truly capable of reflection,
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the gap between us and our primate cousins narrows a
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bit further. As Hair puts it, there's no need to
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search the stars for intelligence. Akin to our own quote,
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we already know we're not alone. He says, there are
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beings here considering the world in a way that we
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think of as being rational. Quote and now staying with
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Scientific American. An article from November third, written by Ashley
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Baltz are vigil and headlined first ever footage shows killer
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whales attacking great white shark nursery. Orcas, or killer whales,
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are not known for their amiable demeanor. The famous bullies
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attack boats and pester other animals for reasons that sometimes
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aren't entirely clear. Now, for the first time, they've been
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spotted repeatedly targeting young great white sharks in a shark nursery.
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According to a new paper published in Frontiers and Marine Science,
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researchers watched two hunts via drone while monitoring orcas in
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the Gulf of California. Newly released footage from August twenty
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twenty shows the first clash, during which five orcas teamed
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up to go great white shark tipping. After shoving a
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shark up to the surface, the orcas rolled it onto
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its back. At that point, the battle is already won.
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Flipping a shark upside down induces a paralyzing state called
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tonic immobility, similar to a case of the twisties for
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a gymnast. It throws off the shark's spatial awareness and
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disrupts the connection between the animal's mind and body. The
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orcas then repeated the process with another young great white shark.
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In both cases, they went to all of that trouble,
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mainly for each shark's liver, because the organ is loaded
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with nutrients and energy. Two years later, in August twenty
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twenty two, the researchers saw repeat five orcas flipped over
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a young great white shark and ate its liver. The
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observations were detailed enough that researchers could identify and track
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individual orcas by their dorsal fin confirming that the same group,
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known as the Montezuma pod after its best known member,
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was behind both attacks. Quote This behavior is a testament
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to orca's advanced intelligence, strategic thinking, and sophisticated social learning,
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as the hunting techniques are passed down through generations within
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their pods, said marine biologist Eric Heghera Rivas, who led
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the new paper, in a recent press release. While scientists
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had previously seen orcas attack great whites, the killer whales
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mainly targeted adults, both for a larger meal and to
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get rid of competition for the same prey. The newly
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reported sighting surpres of the first direct evidence of orcus
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hunting down young great whites specifically. The researchers say the
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strange behavior may be linked to climate change induced warming waters,
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which seem to be pushing shark nurseries into the orcapod's
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hunting grounds. Because baby sharks are on their own from
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day one, their nurseries are really more like orphanages. There
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are no adults around to guard the little ones as
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they mature. That generally works fine because the animals have
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so few predators, but now that they've moved into dangerous waters,
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they may be forced to relocate once again. Quote Nursery
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areas are where young sharks spend time growing and learning
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to forage, so displacing them from those habitats can be disruptive,
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says Alison Towner, marine biologist at Roodes University in South
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Africa who specializes in orcapredation of sharks but wasn't involved
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in the new study. Quote. If the pressure is occasional,
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the impact may be limited, but if it becomes repeated,
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it could force juveniles into less suitable or riskier areas
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and ultimately disrupt the entire ecosystem. And now, sticking with
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Scientific American, we have an article from November the first,
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written by Jonathan O'Callahan. It's nearly time to say goodbye
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to the International Space Station. What happens next human spaceflight
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is on the cusp of an intriguing new dong. For
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twenty five years, astronauts have lived and worked on board
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the International Space Station over the ISS, starting with the
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arrival of its first occupants on November second of two thousand.
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Built through a partnership between the US and Russia in
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the aftermath of the Cold War, the ISS has now
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witnessed five presidential administrations, the advent and demise of the iPod,
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and even the lofting of another orbital habitat China's Changong
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space station, but the ISS's days are numbered. By twenty
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thirty one one, NASA plans to de orbit the space station,
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citing aging hardware and rising costs. The agency will bring
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it back through Earth's atmosphere for a fiery plunge into
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the Pacific Ocean. If all goes as planned, commercial space
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stations outposts operated not by government agencies but instead by
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private companies, will take the ISS's place to build on
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its success. The first of these is set to launch
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next year, with a slew of others scheduled to follow
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soon after. All of them have the same goal of
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fostering a vibrant, human centered economy in Earth orbit and
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ultimately beyond. Quote. We hope to build habitats for the
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Moon and Mars, and eventually even an artificial gravity space station,
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says Max Hout, CEO of Vast, a Long Beach, California
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based company at the forefront of the private sector spacefaring push.
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Vast plans to launch its Haven one space station as
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soon as May twenty six. On Haven one's heels will
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be several other habitats from Axium Space, Blue Origin and
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Starlab Space all of them are intended to reach orbit
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by the end of the decade and are still somewhat
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reliant on NASA as a paying customer. The ISS will
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leave behind an important legacy, says Bill Nelson, who is
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formerly a US Senator and a Space Shuttle crew member
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as well as NASA's administrator from twenty twenty twenty one
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to twenty twenty five, and formalize the timeline for the
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nation's pivot to commercial space stations. Quote. The station has
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done incredible things, he says, from establishing how to live
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safely in space to exploring the promise in peril of
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microgravity environments. All the while, the ISS has been a
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shining beacon of global cooperation. NASA's shift from operator of
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the ISS to a tenant on space stations, Nelson's says,
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should help the agency focus on more innovative and daring
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explorations deeper in the Solar System. It's part of the
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evolution of space, he adds. It used to be all government.
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Now we have commercial partners and international partners. Some have
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argued that the ISS could still have a long life
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ahead if it were to be boosted to a higher
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orbit where it could endure intact for decades or centuries. Quote.
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I think it's the most amazing thing humanity has ever constructed,
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says Greg Autry, a space policy expert at the University
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of Central Florida. It's kind of like deorbiting Buckingham Palace.
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It's an amazing historical structure and it should be recognized
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for that. NASA, however, determined that rescuing the ISS would
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be too costly and complex. Instead, the space agency opted
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to pay SpaceX nearly a billion dollars to develop a
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vehicle that will push the station back into Earth's atmosphere
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in twenty thirty one, leaving China's Tiangong Space Station as
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the only government run an outpost in orbit. By the
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time that happens, multiple commercial space stations could be active.
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Haven one, the first of them, is a singular camp
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or van sized structure that will be launched on a
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SpaceX Falcon nine rocket. Initially lofted uncrewed, the station will
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offer stays of up to ten days for both governmental
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and private sector visitors, all of whom are planned to
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reach Haven One via a SpaceX driving capsule. The cost
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of a private booking is undisclosed at present. Quote. Our
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core business model is eighty five percent sovereign space agencies,
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including NASA, and then maybe fifteen percent private individuals, says
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out on Board four, occupants will have private sleeping berths
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with inflatable beds, a domed window to observe Earth, and
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high speed Internet provided by SpaceX's Starlink service. A built
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in science lab will allow them to conduct research at
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the station. Ie one is a precursor to a much
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bigger construct planned by Vast called Haven two, which is
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expected to launch by the time the ISS is abandoned.
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Haven two will comprise multiple Haven one style modules arranged
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in a cross shape to enable a continuous human presence
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in orbit, rather than short stays like Haven one will host.
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It will be joined by the other commercial ventures Axiom Station,
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Blue Origins, Orbital REEF and Starlab. New priorities may come
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with any new private era in Earth orbit. Whereas the
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ISS was notionally a station focused on science, private habitats
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will inevitably have a broader purview, from acting as proverbial
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space hotels to being manufacturing hubs for products imported back
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to Earth. Quote, you can make much better silicon crystals
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for semiconductors in space, says Autry, listing one of several
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perennial arguments for more industrial activity in orbit. Quote, there
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are a lot of different economic drivers that I think
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will eventually pay off, and the space tourism business will
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be much larger than most people believe in quote. Autrey
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points to Blue Origins new Shepherd rocket, which launches paying
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customers straight up and down on suborbital rides lasting just
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ten minutes, but has already flown about eighty people, including
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some repeat customers. There's a really strong demand, he says,
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arguing that an increase in rides to space and destinations
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to reach shows space tourism can absolutely be as accessible
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as other extreme environments such as the deep sea. Quote,
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there's no reason you can't get suborbital ticket prices into
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the thousands of dollars and orbital ticket prices under a
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million dollars, he says, I think it will happen in
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the next ten to twenty years. Quote. What role science
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will play on commercial space stations will to some degree
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depend on the tools customers can use on board. Already,
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the major players have suggested that an assortment of relevant,
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high grade laboratory equipment will be the norm Fabrizio Fiore,
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and astrophysicist at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste in Italy,
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says this means more opportunities for scientists to conduct research
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that was logistically impossible on the ISS. Quote. Even putting
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a small thing on the ISS is very, very time
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consuming and difficulty. Says, if we're going to have space
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stations that are not dedicated to governmental astronauts, it'll be
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much easier to build experiments on them. Research institutions and
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universities could increase their access to space two, perhaps by
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sending their own astronauts. Earlier this year, For example, Purdue
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University booked tickets for a twenty twenty seven flight on
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Virgin Galactic's suborbital space plane for a pair of its researchers.
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It's not unfathomable to think the same might occur on
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commercial space stations, especially if the cost of visiting them
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can be brought down to a reasonable level. In the
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bigger picture, some see the rise of private space stations
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as part of a turning point for life itself. Caleb Sharf,
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an astrobiologist in the US, argues in his new book
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The Giant Leap that space exploration is a next step
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in the evolution of humankind. Quote. The capacity to put
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objects into orbit around Earth and study Earth from space.
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Is this unique perspective that no other organism has ever
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had in the history of life on Earth in the
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last four billion years, he says. Quote getting into space
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is another major evolutionary transition point. You can imagine if
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we do spread out across the Solar System in the
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centuries to come, that will induce fundamental changes on us
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as a species. It will dilute us, it will disperse us.
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We will undergo speciation. While we now call ourselves humans
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as a single species, the future may be many species
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that were derived from what we are today. Commercial space stations,
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Sharf says, might be the next step in this journey,
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but he's not quite ready to buy a ticket or
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the hype. Quote. Maybe we'll learn that commercial space stations
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are the best thing ever, he says. Or perhaps we'll
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discover that this isn't actually the be all and end all.
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It's absolutely possible that commercial space stations, for economic or
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financial reasons, do not yield what is expected or hopedote.
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By the end of the decade, humans are also planned
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to return to the Moon in competing efforts, when led
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by the US and the other led by China. Ian Crawford,
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a planetary scientist at Birkbeck University of London, has previously
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argued that space stations can be a distraction from this endeavor. Quote.
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To talk about space exploration properly, we have to move
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away from low Earth orbit, he says, how space hotels
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and Earth orbit really feed into that. I don't know.
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Whatever direction these new stations take, they will mark the
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end of a history experiment. A full quarter century and
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counting of humans living and working off world the feet
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is all the more remarkable for how unremarkable it now appears.
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More than forty percent of all the people on Earth
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are younger than the ISS, having never known a world
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without it. For many of them, the station's quiet technical
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triumph of unbroken orbital occupation is understandably banal, boring, and routine.
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That is to say, like so many wondrous things we
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take for granted, it seems the ISS won't really be
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understood for its good until it's gone. And now we're
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going to turn to the BBC Science Focus magazine and
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they have for their question of the month, how many
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spiders are in my house. Pest control companies will often
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give a figure of forty spiders in an average house,
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but it's hard to find anything in the published literature
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that directly backs this up. Sixteen shis study of fifty
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houses in North Carolina, US found cobweb spiders in sixty
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five percent of all rooms sampled, but this was looking
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at biodiversity and didn't count the number of individual spiders.
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If a typical house has five or six rooms plus hallways,
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the average figure would be around ten spiders per room,
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which seems like a lot. To add some research of
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my own. I've just hovered or hoovered I'm sorry, hoovered
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with a vacuum my entire house, a rare event, and
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only found twenty six spiders. But that's just the parts
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of the house that we can easily scrutinize. If you
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consider under the floorboards, behind the fridge, the law off
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the garage, and so on, there could easily be that
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many more still hiding if we consider the average density
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of spiders outdoors. A widely sighted figure from Kneifeler and
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Berkhoff's twenty seventeen paper is one hundred and thirty one
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spiders per square meter. That's of the order of ten
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quadrillion spiders worldwide, or about a million spiders for every human.
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A typical house has actually relatively little spider food available,
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but it also has almost none of a spider's main predator,
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such as centipedes and birds, so each spider may live
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longer indoors than out. Spiders also lay anything from ten
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to two hundred and fifty eggs at a time, and
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house spiders may lay as many as five clutches per year.
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Less than one percent will reach adulthood, but even so,
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if we count baby spiders in our household population census,
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the figure may be as many as a couple thousand
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spiders at any one time. And now we'll go to
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BBC Wildlife for an article written by James Fair dated
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November third, and the headline is people are cynical about
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making money out of nature. We desperately need to rewild
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the world, but who's going to foot the bill. The
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fields at Slight Farm near Bath in England are not
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much to look at. Is bare earth and deeply rutted,
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reminiscent of land that has been subjected to the rootling
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behavior of wild boares. This says environmental consultant Dominic. Woodfield
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was the most rubbish, overgrazed and compacted, and it's had
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fertilizers too. To start the process of ecological recovery, Woodfield
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site manager Simon Nash and farm manager James Fowles introduced
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a couple of Tamworth pigs to the field. The pig's
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rooting behavior creates ruts and exposes a soil, giving seeds
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other than grass the chance to germinate. Exactly what happens
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next the team isn't really sure, but the action of
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the pigs should be a kickstart precipitating natural processes that
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can bring the field back to life in time. One
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can imagine its supporting nesting skylarks, vole hunting barn owls,
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and the occasional mad march hare. This field is a
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perfect example of why the United Kingdom ranks in the
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bottom ten percent of all countries in bout, but it
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is also on the front line of a revolution because
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the transformation being plotted at Slight Farm isn't born purely
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out of altruism or from government subsidy, but because the
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landowners have received money from a developer. There is arguably
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no more extential question for the human race than how
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we halt and reverse declines in nature and wildlife. There
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is a basic premise that if we destroy nature, we
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destroy ourselves because we rely on it for so much food, water,
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protection from flooding, and mitigation of climate change. It was
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once thought the solution was a question of raising awareness though,
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for example, wild through for example, wildlife documentaries. Then there
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was hope that governments would sort things out through international agreements,
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and to a certain extent they did. The Rio Conference
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on Biodiversity in nineteen ninety two and the Paris Agreement
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of twenty fifteen were both hailed as game changers at
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the time. Yet none of this seems to have worked.
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In the past decade or so, a potential news savior
24:04
has emerged, somewhat alarmingly. Perhaps it's the very same entity
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that has arguably played the biggest role in waking environmental
24:12
destruction in the first place, the private sector companies, investors,
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pension funds. But this new funding model for nature has
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not taken off either, not yet anyway. Take the UN's
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RIEDD Plus program, which aims to help developing countries maintain
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carbon rich tropical forests by paying them not to chop
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them down. It was initially funded by international governments, but
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as long as a decade ago it was hoped that
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the private sector would step in and take on more
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of that burden. Sadly that hasn't happened, and after all,
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if the private sector doesn't have to contribute, then why
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should it. Some big companies like to demonstrate they are
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environmentally responsible by contributing too, for instance voluntary carbon offsetting scheme.
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The problem with such schemes is that they are often
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accused of being little more than greenwashing. In general, the
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money paid is a tiny percentage of turnover, and the
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schemes themselves often achieve only marginal benefits for the environment.
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But in England there is now a policy that requires
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developers to compensate for the nature lost to their development.
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It's called Biodiversity Net Gain or BNNG, and became mandatory
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in twenty twenty four. B NG is complex, but the
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legislation essentially requires developers to assess how much wildlife is
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on the land they are building on in the form
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of biodiversity units. They then either recreate the same number
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of units plus ten percent on site, or pay for
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enhancement or restoration of nature elsewhere. While BNG is being
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forced on developers, some business people see it as an opportunity.
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Take brothers Philip and Ds the Brainan, owners of the
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aforementioned Slight Farm, and co founders of Biofarm, a company
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that helps both landowners and private companies with BNG deals. Quote.
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Working in BNG appealed because it address three big issues,
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says Andy Brainan, climate and nature being in a disastrous state,
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the need to build more housing without harming nature, and
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farming becoming unviable for landowners. The Brainans are creating habitat banks,
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essentially parcels of enhanced nature, and selling the resulting biodiversity
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units to companies in need. Given the government's target to
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build three hundred thousand homes a year, it's estimated that
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annually BNG could result in the enhancement or restoration of
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fifteen thousand hectares of new wildlife habitat and drive one
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hundred and thirty five to two hundred and six many
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million euros into conservation. Or at least those were the
27:04
figures that Labor recently announced it could ease or drop
27:08
BMNG requirements for small and medium sized housebuilders, which could
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nearly have the amount of money going towards conservation. That
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is perhaps the biggest weakness of the policy. Again, if
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the private sector doesn't have to spend money enhancing wildlife,
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it probably won't. It's also not clear how the proposed
27:25
Planning and Infrastructure Bill will impact the new policy. But
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what if you could persuade private sector companies that safeguarding
27:32
biodiversity was in their interest rather than something being foisted
27:37
upon them. That's the concept that Rebalance Earth, a boutique
27:41
fund manager, is working on. Here's how it works. Pension
27:45
funds need to invest clients money in something that will
27:48
provide a return. That could be companies listed on the
27:51
start market or government bonds. Managing director Robert Gardner believes
27:57
Rebalance Earth can provide a return earned by investing in
28:01
nature because the private sector is increasingly impacted by natural events.
28:06
Well that's all for today's Diary of Science and Nature.
28:09
Your reader was Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for further
28:12
programming on RADIOI