Monkey business
FOUR baboons staged a breakout from a secure research facility in San Antonio, Texas, through an ingenious use of their feed barrels. The baboons were kept in an open-air enclosure holding 133 monkeys at the Southwest National Primate Research Center. The centre houses more than 1000 baboons, which are used in research into obesity, heart disease and more.
Several large bright blue drums had been provided to enrich the baboons鈥� open-air pen. By rolling the barrels, they could release food from small holes, mimicking foraging behaviour.
Advertisement
But according to the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, the enterprising baboons rolled the barrel to the enclosure wall and stood it upright. Climbing on top of this gave them enough height to leap over the wall, making their escape.
One baboon 鈥� perhaps getting cold feet 鈥� returned soon after, but the three other escapees continued on past the perimeter fence into the surrounding countryside. Their taste of freedom was short-lived: within an hour all were apprehended and returned to the facility.
鈥淩eading Alice Klein鈥檚 article on sexual dimorphism, Debbie Phelan says she was 鈥渕omentarily uncertain whether 鈥楪ene Hunt at the Smithsonian鈥� was a person or a research project.鈥濃��
Holey cow
A 5000-year-old cow skull recovered at a Neolithic site in France bears signs of the earliest recorded animal surgery. Found at Champ-Durand, the skull appears to have had a small hole drilled in it, through to where the right frontal lobe would be.
Writing in Nature, researchers Fernando Ramirez Rozzi and Alain Froment report that the skull is otherwise intact, indicating that the hole was meticulously carved out rather than being the result of a traumatic injury.
Unfortunately for this patient, there are no signs that the injury healed, implying that this Stone Age surgery may have been fatal. Alternatively, the work could have been performed on a dead animal, perhaps by someone who (understandably) wanted to practise the technique before carrying it out on a human.
Humans skulls with holes drilled in them have been found from as long ago as 10,000 BC. Yet evidence of animal experimentation is rare, because animals were an important food source and skulls were often cracked open to retrieve the brain and tongue to eat 鈥� a practice frowned on in most laboratories these days.
Traffic fowl
POLICE in Switzerland are on a duck hunt, after a feathered felon was photographed by speed cameras flying down the road at almost twice the legal speed limit. The duck is suspected to be a repeat offender, because a similar-looking duck was caught on camera in K枚niz a few days earlier, travelling at 52 kilometres per hour in a 30 zone.
Typically, road users can expect to earn a one-month driving ban for such an offence, plus a fine calculated according to the offender鈥檚 wealth. It isn鈥檛 clear if police would be able to collect their bread, however: the K枚niz local authority posted the photos of the speeding duck on its Facebook page, asking users for suggestions on where to send the tickets.
I want to believe
SHE has bested aliens, swamp monsters and clandestine spies while investigating The X-Files, but Dana Scully鈥檚 greatest victory may be encouraging more women to follow in her footsteps.
A study from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media suggests that the medical doctor and FBI agent, played by Gillian Anderson, inspired a generation of women to enrol in careers related to science, technology, engineering or medicine (STEM), a pattern they are calling the Scully Effect.
Two thousand women aged 25 and over were asked how frequently they watched The X-Files and what influence it had on their career aspirations. Half of those familiar with Anderson鈥檚 character said she increased their interest in STEM careers. Women who watched the show regularly were more likely to have considered a STEM career, studied these subjects at college and entered these professions.
Of course, those with a budding interest in science may well have been a natural fit for a prime-time science fiction TV show, and it remains to be seen whether the Scully Effect is one of causation or simple correlation. As Scully herself might say: the truth is out there.
Human organs
YOUR childhood theories continue to brighten our inbox. Presaging a future in engineering, John Roberts was thinking about mechanics from an early age. 鈥淲hen about 5 years old, I was told that you had a pipe to breathe down in your throat and one for food. But I misheard and thought you had different pipes for different foods.鈥� John says he was unsure how many tubes he had and worried what might happen if he encountered a new food 鈥� would he have the right pipe to eat it?
One rib short
AND Jane Cope offers a famous example found in Francis Crick鈥檚 memoir What Mad Pursuit. Here, the author writes how as a child, the biblical story of Eve being created from Adam鈥檚 rib led him to the assumption that all men have one less rib than women.
鈥淗e lost his religious faith at a young age,鈥� says Jane, 鈥渂ut the erroneous belief about human anatomy persisted. It was only in his undergraduate years that he was put straight by a medical student friend who 鈥榓lmost fell off his chair laughing鈥�.鈥�
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week鈥檚 and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.