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<\/div>Chasing the tale<\/h2>\n
Silvia Leonetti and colleagues in the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, the US and Denmark don\u2019t quite explain why dogs wag their tails, but they do explain that it is hard to explain.<\/p>\n
In a paper called \u201cWhy do dogs wag their tails?\u201d in Biology Letters<\/i>, these dog-tail contemplators confront one, presumably easier, sub-question: \u201cwhy [do] dogs wag their tails more frequently and in more contexts than other closely related canids, such as wolves<\/a>\u201c?<\/p>\n This narrowed focus, they say, \u201cserves as a starting point to propose empirical low-hanging fruits, recommendations and suitable methodologies for future studies\u201d. They offer generalised guesses that the increased wagging could result \u2013 maybe directly, but maybe indirectly \u2013 from evolving while living with humans. Finding the real answer to even this little piece of the wag story, they conclude (leaving lots of waggle room), will require \u201cdedicated experiments that not only better quantify tail wagging in general but also explicitly consider how the behaviour is controlled\u201d.<\/p>\n Thus, as many people suspected, understanding why dogs wag their tails requires understanding why dogs wag their tails.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We are just a year away from the jubilee \u2013 the 50th anniversary! \u2013 of the publication of the most beloved technical report ever written by a deputy director of design and construction for the US Department of the Interior\u2019s Bureau of Reclamation. That report, which perhaps needs no introduction, is \u201cConstruction of Grand Coulee [Dam\u2019s] Third Power Plant\u201d. Published in the Journal of the Construction Division<\/i> in 1975, it was written by Donald J. Duck.<\/p>\n Duck, as his admirers well know, was based at the Bureau of Reclamation\u2019s facility in Denver, Colorado. (His name is familiar to many, perhaps due to the publicity from a lawsuit brought against Duck and the United States of America, and also against three of Duck\u2019s fellow government officials. The case concerned a directive to the plaintiff to repair a pipeline. A judge dismissed<\/a> that lawsuit in 1980.)<\/p>\n Feedback suggests that you not procrastinate in preparing yourself and your family for the grand celebration.<\/p>\n The story of tea is now, in tiny part, the story of an attack \u2013 an attack by inanimate bits of tea on a virus that attacks humans: the coronavirus.<\/p>\n It is the story of \u201cSARS-CoV-2 viral particles resuspended in saliva\u201d, where those particles are assaulted by one or another kind of tea commercially available in North America. Julianna Morris and Malak Esseili at the University of Georgia in the US mounted that tea onslaught. They describe this in their study, \u201cScreening commercial tea for rapid inactivation of infectious SARS-CoV-2 in saliva\u201d.<\/p>\n The Morris\/Esseili adventure, violent though it may be at a microscopic level, is part of a large, mostly placid, not especially coordinated international search to recognise and verify all the different effects that tea might have on\u2026 well, on everything.<\/p>\n Investigators are searching and testing for tea effects on the coronavirus in India<\/a>, Japan<\/a>, China<\/a>, Austria<\/a> and many other places. And the powers-of-tea quest grows ever wider in its hopes. Every new disease is a possible triumph-in-waiting for They Who Would Vanquish an Ailment with a Mighty Cupful or Potful.<\/p>\n Tea can invigorate, maybe. Tea can heal, maybe. Tea can rejuvenate, maybe. Tea can boost a person\u2019s intelligence. Maybe. Maybe tea can do anything. Maybe.<\/p>\n Every year, the world finds itself awash in thousands of new research studies about tea and its imagined effects. Where will it all lead? Morris and Esseili express their current, specific vision of how and why to deploy tea. They hope that someday \u201crapid at-home intervention (tea drinking or gargling) to reduce infectious SARS-CoV-2 load in the oral cavity\u2026 might also mitigate infection of the oral mucosa\u201d.<\/p>\n When the next new big disease comes down the turnpike, tea will be there to be hurled at it by researchers. Hope will brew eternal.<\/p>\n An ounce of prevention was not worth a pound of cure in Jorge Castro\u2019s attempt \u201cto find an easy to use, cheap, and universal substance to protect seeds against predators in forest restoration programs\u201d. Restoration Ecology<\/i> published Castro\u2019s explanation of what went wrong. It is called \u201cHuman urine does not protect acorns against predation by the wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus<\/i>): A field study with video recording\u201d.<\/p>\n Mark Benecke sent a copy to Feedback, who was relieved to learn that those videos \u2013 there are 1440 of them \u2013 deal mostly with the activity of the mice. Lots of pilfering of acorns, done artfully, quickly, efficiently.<\/p>\n Castro, at the University of Granada, Spain, came into this with two hypotheses. He came out of this deciding that only one of them is true: \u201cthat mice will be the main agent of acorn removal\u201d.<\/p>\n The experiment showed, he says, that the other hypothesis \u2013 \u201cthat human urine will repel wood mice\u201d \u2013 is false. Furthermore, he worries, it may be worse than false. Citing a 2002 paper, he warns that: \u201cIf the mice do not perceive humans as a danger, our scent could actually have the opposite effect than expected.\u201d<\/p>\n Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and\u00a0co-founded\u00a0the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is\u00a0<\/em>improbable.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Got a story for Feedback?<\/b> You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com<\/a>. Please include your home address. This week\u2019s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nDonald Duck dam jubilee<\/h2>\n
Anti-covid tea gargling<\/h2>\n
Just a wee experiment<\/h2>\n