An MIT Press Book by Sebastian Risi, Yujin Tang, David Ha, and Risto Miikkulainen.

Data-driven decisions that multiply your ecommerce sales.

Researchers from the University of Michigan and the Weizmann Institute develop the first-ever complete central nervous system on a chip; it faithfully emulates that of a human embryo, from the forebra...

Researchers from the University of Michigan and the Weizmann Institute develop the first-ever complete central nervous system on a chip; it faithfully emulates that of a human embryo, from the forebra...

Now some of the same researchers have shown that the circle of healers reaches beyond our nearest relatives to species that go much further back in our evolution: African elephants. “Every species on the planet self-medicates in some way or another,” Dr Michael Huffman, a primatologist at Nagasaki University, previously told IFLScience. However, the sophistication of self-medication varies between species, and accounts of medicating each other are much rarer. Elephant pharmacology Around 1,800 years ago, the Roman author Claudius Aelianus wrote in De natura animalium that elephants consume olive tree flowers and oil after being wounded by spears. Aelianus claimed that this practice healed their wounds, although there has since been some dispute about whether he meant to write "aloe" rather than "oil". Yet despite these early observations, Western science has barely expanded its knowledge of African elephant self-medication since. When it comes to Asian elephants, however, there are reports of self-medication, including a treatment for diarrhea which is probably appreciated by almost everyone. “Most of the time the people who live in close proximity to animals have known their secrets for generations,” said Dr Elodie Freymann, from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM), in a statement. “Our...

Evolution is the process through which the heritable characteristics of populations change over successive generations. In simple terms, it describes how populations of organisms change through time and how present-day organisms are related to organisms that lived in the past. The study of evolution can be approached at several levels. Changes may be observed in morphology, anatomy, behavior, populations, genes, genomes and molecules…

Make sure to take a look at part 1, where I summarized what we know about modern sea otter anatomy, behavior, geography, and molecular phylo...

Why do religious beliefs persist so robustly in the face of disconfirming evidence? Existing accounts focus on cognitive and motivational mechanisms, structural properties of belief systems, and th...

Ecology and Evolution, Volume 16, Issue 9, September 2026.

Opening in 2027, The Whale will explore the science, behavior, evolution and cultural history of whales through art, storytelling, sound and architecture

A study covering 23 African nations from 2008 to 2022 reveals that green taxes are reshaping logistics operations, not j... Read more