Jimi Hendrix was cleared of responsibility for the
proliferation of London’s non- native parakeet popula-
tion, whereas humans were found solely responsible
for the extinction of the United States’ only native
parrot. The collapse of Norse colonies in Greenland
was blamed on walrus depletion that in turn arose
from falling wholesale prices for walrus ivory. Eighty-
five- hundred- year- old human tooth pendants were
found at Catalhöyük. The earliest known use of lead-
tin- yellow pigment predating 1300 ad was found in
sixth- century bc limestone reliefs, which also contain
Egyptian blue, from the Palace of Apries. In a gold-
lined tomb next to that of the Griffin Warrior, ar-
chaeologists found a gold pendant of the Egyptian
goddess Hathor. Runologists determined that the
nine riddles of the Rök stone bespeak Vikings’ fear of
another Fimbulwinter, and a star- shaped magnetic
anomaly resulting from an ancient lightning strike
was discovered at the Calanais Standing Stones’
Airigh na Beinne Bige. Megadroughts encouraged
farmers to clear and cultivate Andean cloud forests.
The last remaining Pacific glaciers between the Hima-
layas and the Andes were expected to melt in the com-
ing decade. In the past two hundred years, American
men have cooled by a temperature of 1º F.Established brands are resilient against fake news,
which was also found to implant false memories. Fish
farmers freed a bald eagle from an octopus. In Austra-
lia, hypersaline effluent at the Sydney Desalination
Plant was found to have increased the local population
of one- spot puller. The sounds of underwater pile-
driving elicit signs of both alarm and habituation in
longfin squid, and the medium- term stress level of fish
can be determined by plucking their scales and testing
for cortisol. Illuminating bat caves disturbs bats. Euro-
pean zoologists urged the preservation of tree cavitieşto accommodate honeybees, and a reward remained on
offer for information leading to the poisoner of seven
million Florida bees. Military interrogators at the end
of Word War II were found to have improperly disre-
garded Nazis’ claims of having invented a form of DDT
much safer for mammals.Italic fonts were rated more liberal than boldface
ones, and a feeling of vulnerability to disease was
found to predict political conservatism. Liberals are
likelier than conservatives to experience caring emo-
tions in their chests, whereas conservatives are likelier
to experience them in their faces. Patients from the
McLean Hospital Obsessive Compulsive Disorder In-
stitute who each had one of their real hands and a
rubber hand stroked synchronously by Harvard doc-
tors who then dabbed fake feces on the rubber hand
before returning to stroking both hands displayed
nearly twice as much facial disgust as patients whose
real and rubber hands were stroked asynchronously. A
study in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision
Processes reported the stress- relieving effects of “en-
joyed flirtation” in the workplace. Sexually exploitable
men are less attractive to straight women than sexually
exploitable women are to straight men. Women, but
not men, experience better orgasms with worse socio-
economic circumstances. Female Chinese university
students who shift their vocal pitch up are perceived as
more attractive, whereas male counterparts who shift
their pitch down become less attractive. Baboons’
clear articulation of proto- vowels led scientists to con-
clude that speech could have begun developing twenty
million years earlier than was previously thought.
Mantled howler monkeys howl for longer in the
resource- rich interiors of forests than in areas impacted
by human activity. Japanese macaques were recoloniz-
ing the abandoned zone around Fukushima. Q88 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2020
“Moon Shadow 4” and “Moon Shadow 2,” photographs by Luca Missoni. Courtesy the artist and Benrubi Gallery, New York CityFINDINGS