NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Birdbrains

In a recent book, biologist Jennifer Ackerman noted the extraordinary intelligence of birds – attributed to the dense packing of neurons in their equivalent of humans’ cerebral cortex (according to an April Wall Street Journal review of Ackerman’s “The Genius of Birds”).

For example, the New Caledonia crow, among others, knows how to make and use hooked tools to hide food (and retrieve it from tricky-to-reach places), and the blue jay and others, which store many thousands of seeds during autumn, also steal seeds from less-vigilant birds – and they even return to re-hide food if they sense they have been spotted storing it earlier.

Additionally, of course, the birds’ equivalent of the human larynx is so finely tuned as to be regarded as the most sophisticated sound in all of nature.

Perspective

The president of the New England Organ Bank told U.S. News & World Report recently that she attributes the enormous upsurge in donations in recent years to the opiod “epidemic” that has produced a similarly enormous upsurge in fatal overdoses.

Now, one out of every 11 donated organs comes as a result of the overdosing that in 2014 claimed over 47,000 lives. (An organ-sharing organization’s chief medical officer reminds that all organ donations are carefully screened, especially those acquired from overdose deaths.)

Nature 2, Florida 0

Nicole Bjanes, casually zipping along Interstate 4 in Volusia County around noon, saw a red-eared slider turtle come sailing through the air and crash into her windshield, sending her car off the road.

The Florida Highway Patrol said the turtle had become airborne after being hit by another car. (It was apparently unhurt and swam away when a firefighter released it into a nearby pond.)