More than a century ago, the zoologist Richard Semon coined the term “engram” to designate the physical trace a memory must leave in the brain, like a footprint. Since then, neuroscientists have made progress in their hunt for exactly how our brains form memories. They have learned that specific brain cells activate as we form [...]
Tag: Nature
Virtually Blind Mole-Rats Use Their Eyes to ‘See’ Magnetic Fields, Experiment Shows
In the gloom of subterranean tunnels, chonky little mole-rats build their nests, tucked safely away, deep inside the earth. Strangely, one species always carefully builds these nests in the south-eastern part of their den. — Read on http://www.sciencealert.com/almost-blind-mole-rats-use-their-eyes-to-see-magnetic-fields
Sounds of the Forest: A Free Audio Archive Gathers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World | Open Culture
Sounds of the Forest: A Free Audio Archive Gathers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World | Open Culture — Read on http://www.openculture.com/2020/09/sounds-of-the-forest.html
The ancient world teemed with birds; now we think with them | Aeon Essays
Birds have always been important ‘markers’, associated with particular seasons, times and places. In the ancient world, weather and seasonal changes were matters of vital consequence for agriculture, travel, trade and the rounds of domestic life, and birds served as a standard point of reference in calibrating and interpreting the cycles of the year. In [...]
How Fiction Allows Us to Inhabit Animal Consciousness | Literary Hub
For centuries, human thinking—at least in the West—has been dominated by the notion, said to have originated with Aristotle, of the Scala Naturae, or the Ladder — Read on lithub.com/how-fiction-allows-us-to-inhabit-animal-consciousness/
When did humans discover how to use fire? | Live Science
Whenever fire use did arise, humans' ability to capture and control wildfires — or create fires of their own — had massive impacts on the species' evolution. It probably lengthened life spans, made humans more social by giving them a place to gather around and, along with the invention of clothing, helped them move into [...]
How the geometry of ancient habitats may have influenced human brain evolution | Ars Technica
There's a pivotal scene in the 2012 film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey when Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, and a company of dwarves are chased by orcs through a classic New Zealand landscape. For Northwestern University neuroscientist and engineer Malcolm MacIver, the scene is an excellent example of the kind of patchy landscape—dotted with trees, bushes, [...]
Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World | IndieBound.org
Award-winning Chickasaw poet and novelist Linda Hogan explores her lifelong love of the living world and all its inhabitants. "We want to live as if there is no other place," Hogan tells us, "as if we will always be here. We want to live with devotion to the world of waters and the universe of [...]
The Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean • Earth.com
Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features an astronaut view of the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. On the western side of the islands, winds were pushing low-lying clouds against the shore. At the same time, ship wave clouds appear rippling over smaller outlying islands. In the bottom if the image, [...]
Overblown and under-loved: wind farms at the edge of beauty | Aeon Essays
In The Great Animal Orchestra, Bernie Krause defines soundscape by breaking it down into ‘geophony’ — the sounds made by the physical environment (wind, water, etc); ‘biophony’ — the sounds made by animals, birds and insects; and ‘androphony’ — the sounds made by human activities. A soundscape is the interaction and balance of these factors, [...]
