NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks with Maria Godoy and Regina Barber of the Quick Wave podcast a few new Nipah virus outbreak, Australian pink diamonds and the mating lifetime of cockatoos.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
And it’s time for this week’s science roundup with our associates at NPR’s Quick Wave podcast – Regina Barber and Maria Godoy – within the studio. Hey there, you two.
MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: Hey.
REGINA BARBER, BYLINE: Hey.
KELLY: So you’ve introduced us three science tales – three that caught your eye this week. What have you ever acquired?
GODOY: Effectively, we have got an outbreak of the Nipah virus in Kerala, India…
BARBER: What mysterious pink diamonds in Australia at the moment inform us about what occurred on Earth tons of of thousands and thousands of years in the past…
GODOY: And the way cockatoos woo their lovers by moonlighting as drummers.
KELLY: (Laughter) OK, so virus, pink diamonds and romantic cockatoos. I acquired to go for the third one first. Maria, inform me in regards to the wild palm cockatoos. They’re drumming out love songs?
GODOY: Yeah. That is as fabulous because it sounds. So these palm cockatoos solely reside in distant elements of northern Australia and lowland New Guinea, some offshore islands. Feminine cockatoos solely lay one egg each two years.
BARBER: Which implies they must be tremendous choosy about selecting a male mate.
GODOY: Proper. And as TLC taught us all within the ’90s, they do not need no scrubs, which suggests…
BARBER: (Laughter).
GODOY: …The male palm cockatoos must go all-out to persuade the females to mate with them. Rob Heinsohn has been learning these birds for many years. He is a conservation biologist at Australian Nationwide College, and he says the males placed on a reasonably unbelievable present. They begin off by whistling and making a lot of calls and noises to catch her eye.
ROB HEINSOHN: And on the similar time, he is erecting his huge crest. And he is blushing his purple cheeks, and he is bobbing and dancing on the department, twirling, doing the whole lot he can to get her consideration.
KELLY: OK. I’ve purple cheeks imagining him erecting his huge crest…
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: …On his head, proper?
GODOY: On his head.
KELLY: Oh his head.
GODOY: Sure, on his head.
KELLY: OK.
GODOY: It is a household present.
KELLY: So fast-forward to the drumming – what occurs?
BARBER: Effectively, that is the large finale, proper? After he is been whistling and bobbing, the male cockatoo goes out on a limb and makes an enormous present of reducing off the largest tree department. And he does it together with his invoice to mainly present how sturdy he’s.
GODOY: After which he whittles that department down together with his beak and begins drumming. And in a brand new examine printed by the Royal Society, researchers report that every chicken really has his personal most popular fashion of drumstick. Some like them quick and fats. Others desire lengthy and thin. Typically they use seed pods, too. However they every have their very own signature instrument fashion.
BARBER: Not solely that – every chicken has its personal signature drumming fashion, too. Heinsohn says he can acknowledge which male palm cockatoo is drumming simply by listening – form of like folks say you possibly can inform when Keith Moon is drumming on a Who album.
(SOUNDBITE OF PALM COCKATOO DRUMMING)
KELLY: OK, I am unsure The Who’re dropping any sleep over that, however, Maria, inform me what the feminine cockatoos are doing whereas all this is happening.
GODOY: Yeah. Effectively, so Heinsohn says this entire elaborate musical mating show is how male palm cockatoos present they’ve the brains and creativity to be worthy as mates. So the females watch this intently the entire time, and the males do these shows time and again till they lastly get the lady.
KELLY: Till they get the lady – so a contented ending. That’s pleasant.
Talking of pleasant – pink diamonds. That is our subsequent subject – pink diamonds in Australia – Regina.
BARBER: Yeah. So for a very long time, the Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia loved a bounty of pink diamonds. Till they closed in 2020, they have been the main provider of them. However the entire time, geologists have been stumped by how the diamonds acquired there and when.
GODOY: Yeah. See, pink diamonds are stunning, however they’re very uncommon. Like, in case you scooped up 500 random diamonds from Argyle…
KELLY: As you do.
GODOY: Yeah, precisely – just one can be pink. They usually’re much more uncommon at different mines, which makes them fairly coveted stones. For those who’ll keep in mind, Ben Affleck gave J.Lo a pink diamond throughout their first engagement within the early aughts.
KELLY: So many engagements in the past. OK, so pink diamonds – you mentioned they’re very uncommon. Why?
BARBER: It is as a result of they require a special type of physics to be made. So you’ve your traditional, colorless diamond, and that is constructed from pure carbon put underneath excessive strain. However one of many researchers, geologist Hugo Olierook, says pink diamonds are broken diamonds.
HUGO OLIEROOK: You may harm a diamond. You may really take that diamond and twist it and bend it a little bit. And in case you bend it and twist it simply the correct quantity, it turns pink.
BARBER: And the buildings inside a diamond get compressed, and the sunshine touring via the pink diamond makes it that shade.
GODOY: So geologists have lengthy identified that diamonds are typically fashioned deep down.
BARBER: Greater than 90 miles deep down.
GODOY: Contained in the Earth’s crust. They usually tended to kind again when there have been supercontinents on the floor of the earth.
KELLY: OK, dangle on, ‘trigger I am attempting to maintain up right here. Supercontinents – that is once they have been all smushed collectively, like a gazillion years in the past?
GODOY: Yeah, precisely. So Pangea is the newest one. There was one other supercontinent known as Nuna, and scientists suppose that these pink diamonds have been created throughout the formation of the Nuna supercontinent some 1.8 billion years in the past.
BARBER: Yeah. And Hugo and his colleagues wrote about this within the journal Nature Communications this week. And thru extra exact relationship, they have been in a position to determine that when Nuna broke aside 500 million years later, the diamonds spewed out. The subcontinents banged collectively and stretched, which brought about a volcanic eruption of diamonds.
KELLY: A volcano of diamonds.
BARBER: Sure.
KELLY: Wonderful.
GODOY: Signal me up.
KELLY: OK, now our last story that you’ve delivered to us – it is a little bit bit extra of a downer, however it’s an attention-grabbing detective story.
BARBER: Yeah.
KELLY: That is an epidemiological thriller. It’s in southern India. It is an outbreak of a virus known as the Nipah virus. Inform me extra.
GODOY: Proper. Effectively, so Kamala Thiagarajan wrote in regards to the outbreak for NPR’s Goats and Soda weblog. It is the fourth outbreak within the state of Kerala since 2018. There’s been two deaths – the primary one was on the finish of August – and 6 circumstances up to now.
KELLY: Six circumstances up to now – and what does it do to you?
GODOY: Effectively, this can be a virus that jumps from animals to folks. Fruit bats are the first hosts, and it is on the World Well being Group’s listing of viruses with pandemic potential. And the standard signs can embrace extreme respiratory issues like pneumonia, even encephalitis, which is mind swelling, and that may deliver fevers, complications, typically disorientation and even result in coma.
BARBER: And the virus may be lethal, too. There was an enormous outbreak in Malaysia within the late ’90s that killed over 100 folks.
KELLY: Ugh. OK, this sounds terrible. Do we all know how this present outbreak – the one in India – started?
GODOY: Effectively, scientists know that Nipah can unfold from bats to people when bats contaminate issues folks eat or drink. In some previous outbreaks in Bangladesh, that is been via the sap of date palm bushes. And when folks drank the palm sap, they acquired sick. Researchers are testing bats in Kerala for the virus to see if that is perhaps the case right here, however they have not found out but precisely how this outbreak began.
BARBER: However they do know that after this specific pressure of Nipah virus jumps from animals to folks, it will possibly unfold from human to human via bodily fluids or contaminated meals.
GODOY: And several other circumstances on this outbreak are linked to a hospital the place the primary one that died was getting handled. So it appears that evidently the contaminated individual went to the hospital, and it started to unfold from there. Now, containment measures have been put in place, and docs in Kerala are optimistic.
KELLY: Me too – very a lot wishing them luck in containing that specific outbreak. Maria Godoy and Regina Barber from NPR’s science podcast, Quick Wave, which is the place you possibly can find out about new discoveries and on a regular basis mysteries and all of the science behind the headlines. Regina, Maria, thanks.
GODOY: Oh, thanks.
BARBER: Thanks.
(SOUNDBITE OF SLVR SONG, “BACK N FORTH”)
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