Blogs / Discoblog

Whatever our prehistoric ancestors were doing at Stonehenge, they were probably doing it to trance music, suggests a new study.  Researchers conducted the first mathematical analysis of Stonehenge’s acoustical properties and found that, at its prime, the Bronze Age structure would’ve been the perfect venue for fast-tempo jams.

Since only about a third of the original 80 monoliths that made up Stonehenge are still standing, researchers Rupert Till and Bruno Fazenda used the next best thing: a full-scale concrete replica of Stonehenge located in Washington state.  Acoustic tests at the replica site as well as computer simulations showed that a fast tempo of about 160 beats per minute—think trance, or samba, or your heartbeat after some energetic dancing—coincide with the echoes reflected by the stone structures.
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Scientists were stunned when they first heard Bonnie whistle. The 30-year-old female orangutan at the Smithsonian National Zoo had never been taught to whistle, but she figured out the trick all by herself back in the 1980s, according to her caretakers. That makes her the first documented case of a primate spontaneously mimicking the sounds of another species—in this case, humans.

Though she can’t carry a tune, Bonnie seems to enjoy whistling and will usually happily comply when asked to do it. You can even watch her whistle on Youtube. The researchers, who published a paper on Bonnie in the journal Primates [subscription required], say she also taught another orangutan, Indah, how to whistle. Bonnie and Indah dispel the theory that orangutan vocalizations are only involuntary reactions to stimuli, and are mainly determined by evolutionary factors.

Instead, whistling orangutans suggest that orangutans can learn and teach each other new vocalizations. This would explain why separate populations of orangutans in the wild seem to maintain different repertoires of sounds—which can include screams, grumbles, barks, raspberries, and kiss squeaks.

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Scientists have discovered two pounds of a dried plant that turned out to be the oldest marijuana in the world. Inside one of the Yanghai Tombs excavated in the Gobi Desert, a team of researchers found the cannabis packed into a wooden bowl resting inside a 2,700-year-old grave. It was placed near the head of a blue-eyed, 45-year-old shaman among other objects like bridles and a harp to be used in afterlife.

At first, the researchers thought the dried weed was coriander. Then they spent 10 months getting the cannabis from the tomb in China to a secret lab in England. Finally, the team put the stash through “microscopic botanical analysis” including carbon dating and genetic analysis, and discovered the stash was really pot.

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• It’s all in the hands: Did early humans stone the Neanderthals into extinction?

• “Debby was a great bear. She acted like a grumpy old bear a lot of times. It was great. She had a lot of life in her, a lot of feistiness.” The world’s oldest living polar bear is no more.

• The Great Ape Trust is having an auction of ape paintings—that’s paintings done by (non-human) apes—to raise money for conservation. Is it just us, or these look suspiciously like those elephant paintings?

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The fuzzy photos of a “lost tribe” in the Amazon released in May turned out to be somewhat of a hoax—the government had known about the tribe for decades—but they raised a real question: How do you protect uncontacted tribes without, well, contacting them? To answer this, the Brazilian government has come up with a way to track the tribes from a distance, using high-altitude planes equipped with body-heat sensors.

The “lost tribe” photos were released by Funai, a group dedicated to protecting isolated people from land encroachment by loggers and farmers. Antenor Vaz, the head of Funai, says the body-heat sensors will allow the government to identify tribal territories without exposing the tribes to Western infectious diseases. The government can then set up protected areas and leave them in peace. The Brazilian constitution stipulates that all Indian ancestral lands must be turned over the tribes; currently, about 11 percent of Brazil technically belong to Indian tribes.

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What are you going to be this Halloween? If you’re looking for costume ideas in the realm of science—or anything beyond the usual political candidates or scantily-clad cats/devils/pirates—you’ve come to the right place. Here we present DISCOVER’s official Top Ten Science-Related Halloween Costumes.


10) Quickie Squid: With little more than paper and a pair of CDs you can approximate these sensitive, intelligent, and sometimes colossal creatures of the deep. If you’re feeling really hardcore, you could even add a squid tattoo.

Image: Instructables/ Tool Using Animal

9) Operation man: Thinking about donating an organ? Bone up on your anatomy and surgical skills with a life-sized version of this childhood board game. No need to ask your fellow party-goers to punch you in the face.

Image: Instructables/ NavySWO91

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If you were setting sail for foreign lands, perhaps never to return home, what would you take with you? The first settlers of the Caribbean Islands, when faced with this decision, chose to take their bongs, which they passed down as heirlooms to future generations.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have dated the ceramic inhaling bowls and snuffing tubes found on the island of Carriacou to several centuries before the island was first inhabited—meaning the bowls were brought by settlers from South America or neighboring islands, and were already heirlooms when they made the trip.

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