The Week UK 01Feb2020

NEWS 19

Somewolfpups willspontaneouslyfetch

aballthrownby ahuman,researchers

in Swedenhavediscovered. This

quintessentially caninetrait was thought

to have been acquiredby dogs thro ugh

training andselectivebreedin g. The

findingthat it in fact comesnaturallyto

somewolves raisesthepossibility that

the traithelped determine which animals

were “adopted”by humans duringthe

early stagesofdomestication.

Between2014 and2016, theteamat

Stockholm Universityhand-rearedthree

wolf litters.Ateight weeks old, the pups

underwent several tests,oneinvolving an

unfamiliarhumantossingatennisball across the room.Whileno pupsfromthe first

twolitters showed muchinterest in theball, three outof si xfrom the2016 litter

chas ed it –and,whencoaxe d, return ed it to thehuman. “I literallygotgoosebumps,”

saidresearcherDr ChristinaHansenWheat,who waswatching from thenext room.

She added thatnaturalgenetic variationisthe probableexplanationfor why thelitt ers

differed: allthree were raised in identical conditions, but each had different parents.

Health &Science

1February 2020 THE WEEK

Sepsisisworld’s“biggestkiller”

Sepsisisthemostdeadlyconditioninthe

world,killingmorepeoplethancancer,

scientistshavefound.Accordingtothe

newestimate,therewere48.9millioncases

in 2017 ,anditwasafactorin1 1 million

deaths–or 19 .7%oftheglobaltotal.

(Cancerisresponsibleforsometenmillion

deathsperyear.)Alsoknownasblood

poisoning,sepsisoccurswhentheimmune

systemoverreactstoaninfection,leading

tosevereinflammationand,insomecases,

organfailure.Butasthesymptomsofthe

primaryinfectioncanmaskthoseofthe

sepsis,itoftengoesundiagnosed–making

itnotoriouslydifficulttoassessthenumber

ofsepsisdeaths.Previousstudieshave

tendedonlytolookatmiddle-andhigh-

incomecountries–whichgenerallykeep

betterrecords–andhaveconcentrated

onhospitaladmissions.Buttheteamat

theUniversityofWashington’sInstitute

forHealthMetricsandEvaluationbased

theirconclusionson data extracted

frommillionsof medical recordsin

195 countries. Accordingtotheirfigures,

more thanhalfofthecasesin 2017

involvedchildren.“We needrenewed

focuson sepsispreventionamong

newbornsand ontacklingantimicrobial

resistance,an importantdriver ofthe

condition,” saidProfMohsen Naghavi,

anauthorofthe Lancet-published study.

Human bodies are getting colder

In 1851 ,theGermanphysicianCarl

ReinholdAugustWunderlich set the

temperaturefor ahealthyhumanbody

at 3 7°C.Infact,most peoplehavea

temperatureslightly belowthis–a

discrepancy that has usually been put down

to faulty 19thcentury temperature-reading

techniques.Anewstudy, however, has

suggestedadifferentexplanation:the

humanbodyhasgotcolderovertheyears.

AteamatStanfordUniversitylookedat

threedata sets:oneinvolvingveterans

fromthe AmericanCivilWar,whose

temperatures were measured between 1860

and1940; asecond fromtheearly 1970s;

andathirdfrom 2 007 to 2017.These

suggestedthatmenborninthe early19th

centurytypicallyhad bodytemperatures

0.59°Chigherthanmen today.(Sincethe

earlier data setonlyfeatured men, afull

comparison betweenwomen wasn’t

possible.) Theteamareconfident thatthe

fallisreal,because youngerpeoplewere

foundto have lower temperatures than

older people; and because the decline was

evidentbetweenthe two late20thcentury

data sets.“Idon’tthink there’smuch

differenceinthethermometers between

the1960sandtoday,”saidsenior author

Dr JulieParsonnet. She and her colleagues

suspectthatavarietyoffactors–including

adeclineininfectiousdiseasesand

increasinglycontrolledindoorclimates–

havecausedourbodiestocooldown.

Foreignlanguages“protect”brain

Thetheorythatlearningaforeignlanguage

hasaprotectiveeffectonthebrainhas

beenboostedbyanewstudyshowing

thatpeoplewithmultiplesclerosis(MS)

experiencelesscognitivedeclineiftheyare

bilingual.WhenateamattheUniversityof

Readingcomparedthementalabilitiesof

bilingualandmonolingualMSpatients,

theyfoundthattheformerperformed

markedlybetter,andparticularlyinan

areaknownas“monitoring”,whichis

connectedwithpeople’sabilitytothink

laterally.Thatbilingualismprovidessome

protectionagainstneurodegenerative

declinewasfirstsuggestedbystudies

thatfoundevidencethatthesymptomsof

dementiadeveloplaterinbilingualpeople.

Bilingualpeoplehavealsobeenfoundto

bebetteratrememberingshoppinglists

andatdistinguishingquickly between

important and irrelevantinformation.

Whatacow’s moo reveals

Theirmoosmay allsoundthesame to

us,butaccordingtoanewstudy,cows

usethesoundsto communicate arange

ofemotions toeachother.Byrecording

thesoundsmade byaherdofHolstein

Friesianheifers indifferentcontexts,a

PhD studentat the UniversityofSydney

foundthat theyusetheirmoostoexpress

everythingfromexcitementand arousalto

distress.AlexandraGreenalsofound that

each heifer’smoowasdistinguishable, and

thattheir tone varied, dependingon the

topicthat appeared tobeunderdiscussion

within theherd:for example, inapositive

situation, such aswhentheywereeating,

their moos were far more sonorous. “Cows

are gregarious, socialanimals,”Greensaid.

Cows:gregarious

Last year was the second hottest year on

record, only narrowly pipped by 2016,

says The Guardian. The finding confirms

that the past decade was the warmest on

record, and that the five hottest years

on record have all occurred since 2015.

The analysis is the work of several

government agencies, including Nasa

in the US and the Met Office in the UK,

and is based on surface air temperature

readings from tens of thousands of

observation stations across the globe.

It found that the average temperature

in 2019 was about 1.1°C above the pre-

industrial average; many scientists have

warned that if global warming rises

above 1.5°C, extreme weather will

worsen, with devastating consequences

for millions of people. “These

announcements might sound like a

broken record, but what is being heard

is the drumbeat of the Anthropocene,”

said Nasa scientist Dr Gavin A. Schmidt.

2019 secondhottestyear

Three out of six hand-reared pups chasedaball

What the scientists are saying...

Wolf pups like to playfetch

©C

HRISTINA HANSEN WHEAT