How Asian elephants judge quantities by smell

Their noses can count?

Photo credit: Iswanto Arif on Unsplash
  • Asian elephants often leave protected areas to feed and come into conflict with humans.
  • The elephants, it turns out, can recognize the largest quantities of food by smell.
  • This insight could lead to keeping Asian elephants out of harm's way via redirection using olfactory cues.
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Too much Christmas music can damage your mental health

Did you know? Looped music has been used a means of torture.

(Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
  • It's that time of year again, when we start hearing Christmas music at every store we go to.
  • Studies show that hearing Christmas songs too many times increases stress.
  • Maybe wait a few weeks before you start playing "Frosty The Snowman" everywhere you go, if you value your sanity.
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People with superior sense of smell are better navigators, study reveals

Follow your nose all the way home.

A Star Is Born, Warner Bros Pictures
  • It has to do with two parts of the brain, both of which are thicker in those with better smell and spacial recognition.
  • Your nose can detect about 1 trillion smells.
  • While your nose isn't a full GPS, it can help you pick out a general direction.
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How Sound and Smell Cues Can Enhance Learning While You Sleep

Neuroscientists are now starting to put TMR to work.

Tilda Swinton, artist and actress famous for her role in the film 'Orlando', sleeps in a glass box as part of an exhibition called 'The Maybe' at the Serpentine Gallery 04 September in London.

My mother is one of five children, so she has plenty of stories about her and her siblings’ misadventures. One of my favourites revolves around my ‘weird’ Uncle Dorsey and his early scientific endeavours. When my mom was about eight years old, her older brother slipped a tape player under her bed every night to quietly play a reading of the poem ‘The Raven’ (1845) by Edgar Allan Poe. Night after night, he would play the tape, trying to test whether she would spontaneously recite the poem from all her exposure. The way she tells it, she woke up every time the recording started to play. Sure, she can still recite the first few lines, but only because she was awakened by the poem night after night.

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