Health & Science

A John Travolta with feathers

Dancing has just been removed from the dwindling list of activities of which only humans are capable. Birds, scientists say, can boogie, too. Researchers analyzed hundreds of YouTube videos of various kinds of parrots dancing to popular music, and then looked for proof that the animals really were moving their heads and feet in direct response to the beat, and not just imitating their owners. Aniruddh Patel at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego personally tested one dancing YouTube cockatoo, named Snowball, by changing the tempo of songs by Queen and the Backstreet Boys. Like a feathered John Travolta, Snowball quickly adjusted, stomping and head-bobbing in time to the new rhythms. “We were surprised by the degree Snowball could adjust his tempo,” Patel tells National Geographic News. Parrots can dance, he theorizes, because they have a brain structure for vocal learning, also found in humans, that helps them imitate sounds and respond to rhythm. Cats and dogs lack that structure and can’t dance; nor can chimps, man’s closest relative. Patel now plans to see if dolphins can move in time to music, since they “are vocal-learning mammals.”

Decoding the blueprint of a cow

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Scientists have completed mapping the 22,000 genes of a cow, paving the way for new techniques to improve the quality and quantity of cattle’s milk and meat. It took 300 scientists six years to decode the entire DNA message—the genome—of a female Hereford from Montana. The genome reveals strong influence over the cow’s evolution by mankind’s selective breeding. About 10,000 years ago, Europeans began domesticating aurochs, a now-extinct and fairly aggressive form of wild ox, to provide meat and milk, and gradually produced the docile creatures we recognize today. Researchers found one whole set of genes common to all cattle breeds that ensures that cows are the mild, passive creatures billions of people know, love, and turn into steaks or milk machines. “Are there signatures of the human hand in the cattle genome? The answer is plainly and clearly yes,” genetic researcher Harris A. Lewin tells The Washington Post. Now that the DNA code has been spelled out, big changes are in store for the cattle industry. Cattle breeders can now identify genes responsible for desirable traits and breed animals that require less feed and produce leaner meat and more milk.

A useful home remedy for eczema

It sounds like a crackpot home remedy, but regular baths in diluted bleach bring great relief to kids with chronic eczema, says The New York Times. Northwestern University researchers took two groups of eczema sufferers between 6 months and 17 years of age, and found that those who bathed in diluted bleach (a half-cup of bleach per 40 gallons of bath water) showed major improvement, with far less skin irritation, itchiness, and flaking. Only those parts of the body immersed in the bleach solution improved. Bleach doesn’t cure eczema, but it kills the bacteria that often gain access to the skin because of scratching and flaking, and thus greatly reduces “flares” of the disease. Bleach can be very caustic, so anyone interested in a bleach bath should first consult with a dermatologist.

Score one for slugabeds

Night owls stay more alert, longer, than people who get up at the crack of dawn, a new study has found. Previous research has shown that people are genetically hard-wired to prefer either going to bed early and getting up at around dawn, or staying up late and waking in mid-morning. When Belgian researchers tested groups of early and late risers at different times of the day, they found no difference in their ability to focus and react 90 minutes after they woke up. By 101/2 hours after a subject woke up (afternoon for the earlies, evening for the owls), late risers performed significantly better. In early risers, the internal drive to go back to sleep—which scientists call “sleep pressure”—builds up more quickly, dulling their response times and, presumably, their productivity as the day wears on. Sleep expert David Dinges tells Science that the study has “real-world consequences.” Identifying the early birds and night owls on any given job, he says, can help employers figure out when workers are most productive and most liable to make mistakes and have accidents.

Run, weaklings, run!

Nature takes pity on scrawny, unathletic geeks: They’re programmed to flee from threatening sounds more quickly than big, athletic people are, a new study finds. Researchers at the College of Wooster in Ohio played “looming” sounds that suggested the approach of some unknown threat for 50 test subjects, asking the participants to press a buzzer when they believed the sound was closing in. The more athletic the subject, researchers found, the longer he or she waited before pressing the buzzer. Women were generally faster to respond to a possible threat than men. The researchers believe that this quirk is evolution’s way of protecting physically weaker people, and may be found not just in humans but among the weaklings and bullies in nature. Evolutionary psychologist John Neuhoff tells LiveScience.com that predators probably wouldn’t react quickly to “looming” sounds, “but if you’re a bunny you need a larger margin of safety.”