Behold, the face of a Neolithic dog

He was a very good boy.

Image source: Historic Environment Scotland
  • A forensic artist in Scotland has made a hyper realistic model of an ancient dog.
  • It was based on the skull of a dog dug up in Orkney, Scotland, which lived and died 4,000 years ago.
  • The model gives us a glimpse of some of the first dogs humans befriended.
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Surprising Science

19th-century medicine: Milk was used as a blood substitute for transfusions

Believe it or not, for a few decades, giving people "milk transfusions" was all the rage.

Photo credit: Robert Bye on Unsplash
  • Prior to the discovery of blood types in 1901, giving people blood transfusions was a risky procedure.
  • In order to get around the need to transfuse others with blood, some doctors resorted to using a blood substitute: Milk.
  • It went pretty much how you would expect it to.
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Surprising Science

What evidence is there that animals are conscious beings?

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  • Consciousness has long been difficult to define, whether you're a biologist, neuroscientist, or philosopher.
  • So Frans de Waal looks at what actions humans take that require conscious thought.
  • Comparing them to actions in certain animals suggests consciousness is not a human trait alone.


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GPS data shows how wolf packs carve out territory

The map shows the movements of seven different wolves over the course of a season.

  • The Voyageurs Wolf Project has been tracking wolf packs in Northern Minnesota since 2015.
  • The team uses GPS collars to track the movements of different packs, which hardly ever cross into one another's territories.
  • Recently, the Voyageurs Wolf Project also captured what's likely to be the first-ever video of a wolf freshwater fishing.
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Surprising Science

Rats 'feel the distress' of other rats, Dutch neuroscientists say

They seem to have a mechanism for caring similar to ours.

Image source: Ukki Studio/Shutterstock
  • A new study demonstrates that a rat will respond to another's pain.
  • Freezing in place as another rat is shocked is one of empathy's visible indicators.
  • The rats' mechanism for feeling the distress of others seems to be similar to our own.
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Surprising Science