Philippa Kaur

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Humans

12 January 2022

Josie Ford
Boozing hamsters
Feedback has a soft spot for hamsters, whose hoarding and nesting behaviours are similar to our own. Our feeling of oneness only increases with an article in The Atlantic forwarded to us by Peter Hamer: “You have no idea how hard it is to get a hamster drunk”.
Hamsters have a high tolerance for strong alcohol, we read, scoring low on a special scale of falling over sideways no matter how much they imbibe. We wonder how the statistics are skewed if you’re just going round and round on a wheel at the time, but nevertheless we add hamsters to our pile, accumulated over aeons, of animals that science says can take their booze.
This list includes bonobos, chimpanzees and bats, which is just as well, because getting entangled with an inebriated bat is a thought that doesn’t bear much thinking about. It most definitely doesn’t include cows, horses, rampaging elephants and the cedar waxwing bird. Their frequent collisions with fences and glass windows in the Los Angeles area were shown in 2012 to be down to the fruit of the Brazilian pepper tree fermenting in their internal food storage pouches.Advertisement
Don’t try that at home. This being Dry January, we burrow deeper into our extensive piling system and root out a 1995 paper from the journal Physiology & Behavior that we were saving for bedding material. Entitled “Tomato juice, chocolate drink, and other fluids suppress volitional drinking of alcohol in the female Syrian golden hamster”, it provides a way to get your hamster off the wheel and onto the wagon: ply it with calorie-rich hot chocolate. We rarely say no to that, either.
What’s in a name?
“I know it’s a bit early to get up this year, but nominative determinism won’t go away just because you’re having a lie-in,” writes Mike Egan from County Meath in Ireland, ignoring the squeaking of our treadmill. We have only ever expressed that as a hope, Mike, not an expectation.
Elizabeth Economy is a senior adviser at the US Department of Commerce, he writes. Others point out that Mark Rocket is the chief executive of Kea Aerospace based in New Zealand, and duck lover Alan Gosling was named last week as the first person known to have contracted bird flu in the UK. Vegetation of the Peak District is a book passably reviewed by Nature on publication in 1913 that remarkably appears still to be in print, authored by C. E. Moss. Our sincere thanks to all as ever.
Big in Basingstoke
A tweet from Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council sent in by Gwynneth Page indicates that we may have followers in that jewel of northern Hampshire. “Our street cleansing team have been sweeping leaves from the borough’s streets as part of our annual leaf clearance schedule,” they announced on 5 January. “Since October, the team have collected 560 tonnes of leaves – the equivalent to 112 adult elephants!”
Gwynneth confesses difficulty in visualising a pile of leaves equal to an elephant in weight. Us too, but we reckon that, spread out thinly, the whole lot would cover an area about the size of Basingstoke.
Pitch perfect
How much is that in football pitches? Courtesy, in a convoluted way, of an exchange of letters about measurement standards in the Financial Times drawn to our attention by Michael Zehse, we find ourselves consulting the The FA Guide to Pitch and Goalpost Dimensions for a steer.
If that sounds like fun, it is, revealing a line-up of recommended football pitch sizes ranging from 40 by 30 yards for the little ‘uns to 110 by 70 yards for the fully sized. Pre-revolutionary units still reign supreme in this corner of Merrie Olde England. We make that a full factor 6.4 range in football pitch sizes, which is a satisfyingly variable measurement standard. Just don’t complain about shifting the goalposts, they can be anything from 12 to 24 feet apart.
Ashes to ashes…
Congratulations to “Huntingdon in Bloom” – the Cambridgeshire town has received an Outstanding commendation in the Green Solutions category of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Community Awards 2021. Our thanks to Ralph Platten for pointing out that “of particular note is the recycling of heat generated by the UK’s first electric crematorium to warm a glasshouse that will be used to propagate and grow plants for the town’s flowerbeds, containers and community projects”. Charming.
Elementary, again
“And finally” is a phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of UK TV news viewers, indicating the imminent arrival of Whimsy. So, and finally, Dave Hawke from Devizes, UK, wins some form of kudos, not just for rocking one of the few English place names not stressed on its first syllable (Penzance; Carlisle; the -hamptons; feel free to go on your own mental journey), but for a late-breaking reply to our call for elementary names (11 December 2021).
He introduces us to the Um siblings, Ray D, Barry, (H)erbi, Ceri, Reni, Ruby and Moly B. D., “lastly not to forget Uncle Nick Hall”. Thank you, Dave, although if you’re looking for Pseudo Names, it is Private Eye you’re after. But frankly it’s Dry January, and we’ll do anything for laughs.
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By Gege Li

HAVE you ever become angry about something that, in hindsight, had more to do with the fact that you were having a bad day? Most of us have had moments like this, where we let our emotions get the better of us or allow them to influence our decisions. It isn’t necessarily ideal, and we often assume that the involvement of emotions – intended or otherwise – is always detrimental to our ability to make good choices.
Not so, says physicist and author Leonard Mlodinow in his book Emotional: The new thinking about feelings. He argues that while it might seem like getting emotional is a bad idea, our feelings actually play an essential role in shaping our thoughts and decisions, helping us to react flexibly to situations and motivating us to pursue our goals.
Drawing on the latest research, Mlodinow guides us through the ways in which neuroscientists are changing their understanding of human feelings – what he calls “the emotion revolution”.
One of the breakthroughs in the science of emotion is the finding that rational thought alone isn’t enough to process the masses of information that we are exposed to in our environment. To think effectively, we also need to feel. “Emotion is not at war with rational thought but rather a tool of it,” writes Mlodinow.
This challenges two well-worn assumptions laid out long ago by some of history’s greatest thinkers, such as Plato: that the human mind can be split into rational and non-rational parts, reason and emotion, and that harnessing the former while taming the latter holds the key to success and making good decisions.
But now that we have the technology to probe the human brain more deeply than ever before, modern science is uncovering the complex neural dynamics that are involved in generating our emotions, and in turn reshaping our knowledge of their importance.
Mlodinow explores how and why feelings evolved in the first place, arising initially from purely reflexive behaviours to environmental stimuli before the “upgrade” of emotion occurred, which provided a more flexible and effective way for organisms to react to the challenges they encountered.
The research also illustrates the universality of emotion and its benefits – scientists have seen emotion-guided behaviours at play in not only humans, but also rodents, fruit flies and bees.
Towards the end of the book, readers are given the chance to determine and reflect on their own emotional profile, using various questionnaires that were developed for research into specific feelings like happiness and anxiety. This is one of the more provocative elements of the book: the idea that we can gain power over our emotions by learning to understand and navigate them better. It is a tantalising concept that Mlodinow backs up with numerous studies and anecdotes. He also gives advice on how we can better manage our own emotions and gain more control over our lives.
Though the message of controlling your feelings to ultimately improve your well-being is an important one, it did get repetitive at times. What’s more, regular readers of New Scientist or of popular neuroscience in general may find the research and the solutions Mlodinow offers, such as meditation and exercise, to be a little predictable.
Emotional may occasionally seem like a self-help book, but it is nevertheless an illuminating read that deals well with the complexity of emotion, the emerging science behind it and the fascinating workings of the brain itself. It might just help you remain calm and collected, even on a bad day.

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By Sally Adee

Even a post-apocalyptic Earth retains a certain charm for humankindgremlin/Getty Images
Goliath
Tochi Onyebuchi
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SCI-FI dystopias of a ruined Earth are thick on the ground these days, filled with the wreckage of climate change: drowned continents, great extinctions and air that is no longer safe to breathe. In the more hopeful, people leave the planet in search of another world where they can start again, with lessons learned and a determination not to repeat the same mistakes.
In Tochi Onyebuchi’s Goliath, human nature is eternal. So, while the rich predictably leave for pristine space colonies, abandoning those who can’t afford to escape, there is money to be made from tourism to the ruins left behind. Some tourists find themselves captivated by the communities that have emerged, and decide to return to Earth. Gentrification ensues.
The premise is wry and au courant. In a lesser writer’s hands, it could lead to lazy and cynical caricatures, but Onyebuchi uses it only as a jumping off point into a deeper examination of the idea of home, and what we will do to get there.
Onyebuchi started out writing sci-fi for young adults before reaching a wider audience with the multi-award gobbling novella Riot Baby in 2020. He has a master’s degree in screenwriting, which is on vivid display in his hypnotic descriptions of Goliath’s two new human worlds.
We explore these through the eyes of several characters, including colony-dweller Jonathan, who looks out into star-spangled black space from a window in a sterile space station straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. On Earth, we meet Sydney, who watches a dandelion’s seeds get nibbled away by wind under a poisoned red sky.
“By detailing the two worlds, Onyebuchi makes it obvious why people start yearning for Earth”
The style is more than matched by the substance of the story, in which Onyebuchi takes his time to explore the main themes. The gentrification issue, for example, is treated not as an easy punchline but as a way into deeper questions about what we need.
When Jonathan travels from the colonies to Earth, he tours destroyed homes looking for one to fix up. Onyebuchi shows us what he starts with – a shell of a house filled with geological layers of detritus. Then, months later, Jonathan is accepted into the community, which allows him to connect to the lone cable still bringing electricity to the neighbourhood. His wonder and joy at something so ordinary as a working light switch is infectious, especially after the technological marvels he has been taking for granted in the colonies.
By detailing the contrasting textures of the two worlds, Onyebuchi makes it obvious why colony-dwellers start yearning for Earth. Home inspires such longing that people living in the clean, metallic colonies pay handsomely for individual bricks to be salvaged from demolished houses on Earth and sent into space. They fight on auction sites for tiny cacti.
Back on Earth, there are different tensions. Returning residents bring back things that Earth’s citizens were only too happy to see the back of, not least social inequality. Even in space, the richest live in the part of the space station with a view of the galaxies, while everyone else faces the unrecyclable detritus – including dead bodies – that surrounds the colonies in a ring.
What will the prodigal Jonathans bring back to Earth apart from their longing for home? And will the people they left behind be interested in anything they have to offer?
Sally also recommends…

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A concoction of vilca seeds and fermented alcohol may have provided a mild hallucinogenic experience, enabling Wari leaders in South America to bond with their people

Humans

12 January 2022

By Michael Marshall
Anadenanthera colubrina, a tree species common to nearly all regions of South AmericanMatt Lavin/Flickr
Get high, make friends. Members of the Wari society, who lived in the Peruvian Andes more than 1000 years ago, may have mixed hallucinogenic seeds into their beer. Such a mind-bending drink might have offered a way for society leaders to create bonds with ordinary people.
“Being able to provide that experience would create heightened social status among Wari leaders,” says Matthew Biwer at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
The Wari culture flourished in what is now Peru between around AD 550 and 1000. Biwer calls them “the first example of an expansionary state in the Andes”, preceding the later Inca Empire. “There is no written record,” says Biwer, so we don’t know what they called themselves. But they left behind distinctive artefacts and structures including canals.Advertisement
Since 2015, Biwer and his team have been excavating a Wari site called Quilcapampa. He calls it “a waystation along a road” and says it was only occupied for a generation, between about AD 800 and 850.
In the centre of the site, the team found a pit filled with about a million seeds of Schinus molle: a kind of fruit known as molle, or sometimes Peruvian pepper. The molle fruits were used to make a fermented alcoholic drink, a bit like beer, known as chicha.

A few steps away, in a garbage pit, the team found seeds from vilca trees (Anadenanthera colubrina). Vilca seeds contain hallucinogenic substances and have been widely used in Andean cultures. “I haven’t tried vilca myself,” says Biwer, but ethnographic accounts often describe it causing “a sensation of flying”.
If you eat vilca seeds, your stomach enzymes deactivate the active compounds within them – so the seeds are more normally ground up and taken up the nose as snuff, producing a strong effect. However, chicha suppresses those stomach enzymes, so the combination of the two would allow “a very mild and controlled hallucinogenic effect”, says Biwer.
As the Wari state expanded throughout the Andes, its leaders needed ways to impress local people and create bonds with them. They often did so by holding feasts, says Biwer. Providing a hallucinogenic experience would have been an added selling point – especially as vilca doesn’t grow in the Quilcapampa area and must have been imported.
Journal reference: Antiquity, DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2021.177
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The characters used to write the Vai script, which was invented in Liberia in 1833, have become visually simpler over time, reflecting the evolutionary pressures acting on writing

Humans

11 January 2022

By Colin Barras
A character representing the syllable “bi” in Vai scriptKelly et al
The symbols we use to write words evolve to become visually simpler over time, and an analysis of a writing system from West Africa shows that they can do so over just a few generations.
The script used to write the Vai language was invented in Liberia in 1833 and is still in use today. Those who devised it may have had some awareness of the Latin and Arabic alphabets, but the Vai script isn’t modelled on either. Its characters denote … More

Cut marks on animal bones suggest ancient hominins butchered them for their meat, and that they were first on the scene instead of having to scavenge from carnivores like big cats

Humans

11 January 2022

By Michael Marshall
Notches on a bone left by human butchering activityJennifer A. Parkinson, Thomas W. Plummer, James S. Oliver, Laura C. Bishop
Ancient humans were regularly butchering animals for meat 2 million years ago. This has long been suspected, but the idea has been bolstered by a systematic study of cut marks on animal bones.
The find cements the view that ancient humans had become active hunters by this time, contrasting with earlier hominins that ate mostly plants.
The new evidence comes from Kanjera South, an archaeological site near Lake Victoria in Kenya. Kanjera South has been excavated on and off since 1995. It … More

By Colin Barras
Ancient Egyptians had a wide range of medical knowledgeAndrAfter virtually unwrapping the mummified body of a young girl who died 2000 years ago, archaeologists have found something unique: an ancient Egyptian bandaged wound.
The ancient Egyptians were no strangers to linen bandages, which they first used to wrap their dead more than 6000 years ago, about a thousand years before the first pharaohs rose to power. But until now, Egyptologists haven’t found bandages that were used to dress the wounds of living ancient Egyptians.
As part of a study … More

By Clare Wilson
GAP Photos/Tim Gainey
IN THE depths of the UK winter, most of my vegetable beds are bare, except for my star performer: purple sprouting broccoli. It is in the middle of its fabulous January growth spurt.
This giant of a broccoli plant is arguably the queen of the brassica family of vegetables. Also known as winter sprouting broccoli, it is very tolerant of cold, and requires several weeks of cold weather before it puts forth its flower buds and becomes ready to harvest.
Unlike ordinary broccoli plants, which have a single large head and are usually harvested by autumn, purple sprouting broccoli … More