humans

‘A History of Contact’: Geneticists Rewrite the Story of Neanderthals and Other Early Humans

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Detection of modern human-to-Neanderthal gene flow (H→N) and its consequences. Modern human-to-Neanderthal admixture causes a local increase in heterozygosity in the Neanderthal genome, a feature that enabled approaches to quantify and detect introgressed sequences. We used modern human-introgressed sequences in the Neanderthal genome to refine estimates of Neanderthal ancestry in contemporary humans by decomposing IBDmix-detected … Read more

Early humans left Africa much earlier than previously thought

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Hundreds of thousands of years ago, our species emerged in Africa. Research into the DNA of living humans has shown that early Homo sapiens remained on the continent for a long time, with a small group leaving only 50,000 years ago to populate the rest of the world. However, these findings raise a puzzling question: … Read more

While Once Human’s Terms of Service are prompting a flood of negative reviews, the survival game’s developers say they’ll only ask for your government ID on special occasions

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Once Human

After Human developer Starry Studios responded to player privacy concerns, many of the survival game’s anticipated “Mixed” Steam reviews focused on its aggressive End User License Agreement (EULA). Once Human is published by Chinese giant NetEase and collects personal information from players under the publisher’s privacy policy. The list of collected data is quite long … Read more

Brain size mystery solved as humans outpace evolutionary trend

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Rate of relative evolution of brain mass. Credit: Nature Ecology & Evolution (2024). DOI file: 10.1038/s41559-024-02451-3 The largest animals don’t have proportionally larger brains, and humans are an exception to this trend, according to a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has revealed. Researchers from the University of Reading and the University of Durham … Read more

These ants perform life-saving surgeries on injured nestmates, similar to humans

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Last year, one species of ant was caught using antibiotics. Now, another species has been spotted performing amputations. Researchers have recently confirmed experimentally that this operation and the other treatments ants give each other do indeed save ants’ lives. We’ve known for a few years that ants treat each other’s wounds, but we’re only just … Read more

Carpenter ants are the only other animals known to amputate besides humans, researchers say | CNN

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Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific developments and more. CNN — People are not the only ones who can perform amputations to save lives. A new study has found that carpenter ants in Florida bite off the injured limbs of nestmates, depending on the … Read more

Humans are to blame for the extinction of megafauna, new research finds

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Once upon a time, there were many giants living in our world. Actually, it wasn’t that long ago. Once the dinosaurs had had their day, our planet was home to a whole new range of gigantic animals, from human-sized sloths to woolly mammoths to enormous wombats and kangaroos to the magnificent giant goose. Between about … Read more

Wild bats have been shown to have high cognitive abilities previously attributed only to humans

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Bat. Credit: Yuval Barkai Researchers from Tel Aviv University have been tracking free-ranging Egyptian bats from a colony based in TAU’s I. Meier Segals Garden for Zoological Research to answer a long-standing scientific question: Do animals have high and complex cognitive abilities previously attributed only to humans? In particular, the study focused on the characteristics … Read more

Major Megafauna Mystery Solved? Humans Really Did Drive Ancient Giants to Extinction

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Prehistoric humans hunt a woolly mammoth. A growing body of research shows that this species—and at least 46 other megaherbivores—were driven to extinction by humans. (Source: Engraving by Ernest Grise, photographed by William Henry Jackson. Courtesy Getty’s Open Content Program) AARHUS, Denmark — Imagine a world where elephants roamed Europe, giant ground sloths lumbered across … Read more

The evidence is mounting: humans were responsible for the extinction of large mammals

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Prehistoric humans hunt a woolly mammoth. Mounting evidence suggests that this species, and at least 46 other megaherbivores, were driven to extinction by humans. Credit: Engraving by Ernest Grise, photographed by William Henry Jackson. Getty’s Open Content Program The debate has raged for decades: was it humans or climate change that caused many species of … Read more