Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that scratched the sweet spot, extended a hand, went over the hill, and ended up on Mercury.First, a clever cow single-hoofedly upends assumptions about bovine intelligence. Next, we\u2019ve got the oldest rock art ever discovered, the graying of modern zoos, and the delightfully named phenomena of bursty bulk flows.As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.\u00a0Cows use tools? You herd it here first\u00a0Osuna-Mascar\u00f3, Antonio J. et al. \u201cFlexible use of a multi-purpose tool by a cow.\u201d Current Biology.Veronika, a Swiss brown cow that lives in a rural mountain village in Austria, is the first cow to demonstrate tool use. How udderly amoosing!Veronkia\u2019s owner Witgar Wiegele, who keeps her as a pet companion, noticed years ago that she likes to pick up sticks with her mouth in order to reach hard-to-scratch places on her body.\u00a0The hills were soon alive with word of Veronika\u2019s tool-using prowess, attracting the attention of researchers Antonio Osuna-Mascar\u00f3 and Alice Auersperg of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.\u00a0Tool use is a sign of advanced cognition that has been observed in many animals, including primates, orcas, and birds. But cows, with their vacant expressions and docile nature, have been overlooked as likely tool users, except as a joke in Gary Larson\u2019s Far Side cartoons.\u00a0\u00a0In their new study, Osuna-Mascar\u00f3 and Auersperg presented Veronika with a deck brush, which she proceeded to use as a scratching tool in a variety of configurations.\u201cWe hypothesized that she would target difficult-to-reach body regions and use the more effective brushed end over the stick end,\u201d the researchers said. \u201cVeronika\u2019s behavior went beyond these predictions, however, showing versatility, anticipation, and fine motor targeting.\u201d\u00a0\u201cUnexpectedly and revealingly, Veronika\u2019s tool-end use depended strongly on body region: she predominantly used the brush end for upper-body scratching and the stick end for lower areas, such as the udder and belly skin flaps,\u201d they added. \u201cImportantly, the differential use of both broom ends constitutes the use of a multipurpose tool, exploiting distinct properties of a single object for different functions. Comparable behavior has only been consistently documented in chimpanzees.\u201dI recommend reading the study in full, as it is not very long and contains ample video footage demonstrating Veronika\u2019s mastery of the deck brush. The authors seem genuinely enraptured by her talents and, frankly, it\u2019s hard to blame them for milking the discovery. Overall, the findings serves as a reminder not to cowtow to stereotypes of braindead bovines, a point made by the study\u2019s bullish conclusion:\u201cDespite millennia of domestication for productivity, livestock have been almost entirely excluded from discussions of animal intelligence,\u201d Osuna-Mascar\u00f3 and Auersperg said. \u201cVeronika\u2019s case challenges this neglect, revealing that technical problem-solving is not confined to large-brained species with manipulative hands or beaks.\u201d\u00a0\u201cShe did not fashion tools like the cow in Gary Larson\u2019s cartoon, but she selected, adjusted, and used one with notable dexterity and flexibility,\u201d they concluded. \u201cPerhaps the real absurdity lies not in imagining a tool-using cow, but in assuming such a thing could never exist.\u201dNow that\u2019s something to ruminate on.In other news\u2026Hands of ancientsOktaviana, A.A., Joannes-Boyau, R., Hakim, B. et al. \u201cRock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi.\u201d Nature.Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known rock art, which are very faint hand stencils made by humans 68,000 years ago on a cave wall on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.For comparison, the next oldest rock art, located in Spain and attributed to Neanderthals, is roughly 66,000 years old. The newly-dated hand stencils were made by a mysterious group of\u00a0 people who eventually migrated across the lost landmass of Sahul, which is now submerged, and reached Australia.https:\/\/youtu.be\/PRNL329dZ9Y?si=GB669R7KajqivlzZThe find supports a \u201cgrowing view that Sulawesi was host to a vibrant and longstanding artistic culture,\u201d said researchers co-led by Adhi Agus Oktaviana and Budianto Hakim of Indonesia’s National Agency for Research and Innovation, and Renaud Joannes-Boyau of Southern Cross University.\u00a0\u201cThe presence of this extremely old art in Sulawesi suggests that the initial peopling of Sahul about 65,000 years involved maritime journeys between Borneo and Papua, a region that remains poorly explored from an archaeological perspective,\u201d the team added.Though the stencils are extremely faint and obscured by younger paintings, it\u2019s still eerie to see the contours of human hands from a long-lost era when dire wolves and Siberian unicorns still roamed our world.Zoo animals get long in the toothMeireles, Jo\u00e3o Pedro et al. \u201cAging populations threaten conservation goals of zoos.\u201d Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Speaking of really old stuff, there has been much consternation of late about falling birth rates and aging populations in many nations around the world. As it turns out, similar demographic anxieties are playing out in zoos across Europe and North America, where mammal populations \u201chave, on average, become older and less reproductively active\u201d according to a new study.\u00a0\u00a0On the one hand, this is good news because it signals improvements in the health and longevity of mammals in zoos, reflecting a long-term effort to transform zoos into conservation hubs as opposed to sites of spectacle. But it also \u201cfundamentally jeopardizes the long-term capacity of zoos to harbor insurance populations, facilitate reintroductions of threatened species, and simply maintain a variety of self-sustaining species programs,\u201d said researchers led by Jo\u00e3o Pedro Meireles of the University of Zurich.\u00a0This story struck me because of my many childhood visits to see an Asian elephant named Lucy, who was the star of the Edmonton Valley Zoo when I was young (I am now old). I recently learned Lucy is still chilling there at the ripe old age of 50! This is positively Methuselan for a zoo elephant, though it is not an unusual age for them in the wild. Lucy is the perfect poster child (or rather, poster senior) for this broader aging effect. Long may she reign.Bust out the bursty bulk flowWilliamson, Hayley N. et al. \u201cBepiColombo at Mercury: Three Flybys, Three Magnetospheres.\u201d Geophysical Research Letters.We\u2019ll close with a reminder that the planet Mercury exists.\u00a0It can be easy to overlook this tiny rock, which is barely bigger than the Moon. But Mercury is dynamic and full of surprises, according to a study based on close flybys of the planet by BepiColombo, a collaborative space mission between Europe and Japan, which is tasked with cracking this mercurial nut.BepiColombo zoomed just over 100 miles above Mercury\u2019s surface in October 2021, June 2022, and June 2023, but each encounter revealed distinct portraits of the planet\u2019s magnetosphere, which is a magnetic bubble that surrounds some planets, including Earth.\u201cThese flybys all passed from dusk to dawn through the nightside equatorial region but were noticeably different from each other,\u201d said researchers led by Hayley N. Williamson of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. \u201cSpecifically, we see energetic ions in the second and third flybys that are not there in the first.\u201d\u201cWe conclude that these ions are part of a phenomenon called bursty bulk flow, which also happens at Earth,\u201d the team concluded. Bursty bulk flow, in addition to being a fun phrase to say outloud, are intense, transient jets in a magnetosphere that drive energetic particles toward the planet, and are driven by solar activity.\u00a0BepiColombo is on track to scooch into orbit around Mercury this November, where it will continue to study the planet up close for years, illuminating this world of extremes. In my hierarchy of Mercurys, the planet sits above the Ford brand, the 80th element, and the Roman god, with only Freddie surpassing it. So, it\u2019s good to see it getting the attention it deserves.\u00a0\u00a0Thanks for reading! See you next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"