AMY STOCK PHOTO;PRESSING NEWS
Hugs really
do make us
feel better
Hugs, a casualty of
the pandemic, have
measurable effects,
judging from two
research studies. In
Japan, researchers
monitoring infants
four to 12 months
old found their
hearts beat less
rapidly during hugs
from parents, but
not from other
people. And in Lon-
don an experiment
with blindfolded
subjects found that
longer hugs are
considered more
pleasant. Ranking
hugs by strangers,
subjects liked
five- or 10-second
embraces better
than one-second
squeezes. —HWt you nearly mistook it
en your eyes to a world
ding to a Yale University
rs imaged the brains of
days before the animals’
imulate vision and dis-
dom in direction, these
le toward its nose—the
n a mouse is scurrying
xplains, this dreamlike
it will experience after
o perceive and navigate
ibit some visual ability
otion. This suggests, as
y of these behaviors, at
ANNS, JUST
EY’LL SEE
Produce sans plastic labels
A Dutch produce distributor
has devised an eco-friendly way
of labeling fruits and veggies
as organic: Harmless markings are
lasered into foods’ skins with a
method called natural branding.
It reduces plastic packaging and
food waste, since marked pieces
can be sold individually. —HWBREAKTHROUGHS (^) | EXPLORE EXPLORE | DECODER
SURFING
MOUNTAINS
BY EVE CONANT
GRAPHIC BY DIANA MARQUES
MYSTICAL. UNRULY. The feeling of
endless water. Big-wave surfer Maya
Gabeira has no small words for the
giant waves off Nazaré, Portugal. It’s
hard to find a single wave’s peak, where
it will break. “It just comes from every-
where,” she says. One bone-snapping,
breath-stealing wave nearly killed her.
Another wave landed the Brazilian the
women’s world record for the largest
ever surfed—and she then set a new
record by conquering a 73.5-foot beast.
“It was just so much water,” she
recalls, “and would shift so much,
even when you were in it, that it just
felt like you were going down forever,
like a mountain.”
The waves roiling atop Europe’s larg-
est underwater canyon—some three
miles deep and over 120 miles long—
have mesmerized and terrorized the
PHOTO: HÉLIO ANTÓNIO
Justine Dupont, a
big-wave surfer fromFrance, rides a Nazaré (^)
behemoth during
a 2020 competition.
24 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC