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Incredible close-up of spider silk wins science photo prize

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Thursday, December 4, 2025

Spider silk threadsMartin J. Ramirez/Royal Society Publishing These twisting threads wrapped in thinner, looping strands are the silk of an Australian net-casting spider (Asianopis subrufa), a consummate ambush predator. Instead of building a web and waiting for prey to fall into it, this spider holds its net in its front four legs and throws it over a hapless insect. As this electron microscope image shows, its silk is specially adapted for this unusual hunting technique: it consists of an elastic core encased in a sheath of harder fibres of varying sizes, making it both strong and exceptionally stretchy. The photo, taken by Martin J. Ramirez at the Argentinian Bernardino Rivadavia Museum of Natural Sciences and his colleagues, is the overall winner of the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025. Jumping prairie-chickensPeter Hudson/Royal Society Publishing The winning photo in the behaviour category shows a fight between two male greater prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus cupido), snapped by Peter Hudson at the Pennsylvania State University. Like many grouse species, males gather at a so-called lek during the breeding season, where they compete for mates by leaping into the air and attempting to strike their opponent. TadpolesFilippo Carugati/Royal Society Publishing Filippo Carugati at the University of Turin, Italy, won in the ecology and environmental science category with this photo of tadpoles, taken during fieldwork in Madagascar. The tadpoles, thought to be the young of a Guibemantis liber frog, are swimming in a gelatinous substance hanging from a tree trunk. Atlas mothIrina Petrova Adamatzky/Royal Society Publishing This image by Irina Petrova Adamatzky, a UK-based photographer, is the runner-up in the behaviour category. It showcases the masterful mimicry of the Atlas moth (Attacus atlas), one of the largest moths in the world, with a wingspan of up to 30 centimetres. The tips of its wings resemble snake heads: a disguise that helps it avoid being eaten by birds. Fog in the Atacama desertFelipe Rios Silva/Royal Society Publishing In Chile’s Atacama desert, stratocumulus clouds drifting in from the coast are a valuable resource. Felipe Ríos Silva at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and his colleagues are exploring techniques for catching the fog and turning it into drinking water for communities living in one of the driest places on Earth. Ríos Silva’s photo was the runner-up in the earth sciences and climatology category. South Pole sunriseDr. Aman Chokshi/Royal Society Publishing The return of the sun after six months of darkness at the South Pole is captured in this image by Aman Chokshi at McGill University in Canada, the runner-up in the astronomy category. Chokshi had to heat up his camera and contend with the icy wind at -70°C (-94°F) for several minutes to take a 360-degree panoramic shot of the horizon as the sun rose. He then turned it into a stereographic image resembling a small planet, fringed by a green and purple aurora with the Milky Way above.

Duelling prairie chickens, a snake-mimicking moth and a once-a-year sunrise at the South Pole feature in the best images from the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025

Spider silk threads

Martin J. Ramirez/Royal Society Publishing

These twisting threads wrapped in thinner, looping strands are the silk of an Australian net-casting spider (Asianopis subrufa), a consummate ambush predator. Instead of building a web and waiting for prey to fall into it, this spider holds its net in its front four legs and throws it over a hapless insect. As this electron microscope image shows, its silk is specially adapted for this unusual hunting technique: it consists of an elastic core encased in a sheath of harder fibres of varying sizes, making it both strong and exceptionally stretchy.

The photo, taken by Martin J. Ramirez at the Argentinian Bernardino Rivadavia Museum of Natural Sciences and his colleagues, is the overall winner of the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025.

Jumping prairie-chickens

Peter Hudson/Royal Society Publishing

The winning photo in the behaviour category shows a fight between two male greater prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus cupido), snapped by Peter Hudson at the Pennsylvania State University. Like many grouse species, males gather at a so-called lek during the breeding season, where they compete for mates by leaping into the air and attempting to strike their opponent.

Tadpoles

Filippo Carugati/Royal Society Publishing

Filippo Carugati at the University of Turin, Italy, won in the ecology and environmental science category with this photo of tadpoles, taken during fieldwork in Madagascar. The tadpoles, thought to be the young of a Guibemantis liber frog, are swimming in a gelatinous substance hanging from a tree trunk.

Atlas moth

Irina Petrova Adamatzky/Royal Society Publishing

This image by Irina Petrova Adamatzky, a UK-based photographer, is the runner-up in the behaviour category. It showcases the masterful mimicry of the Atlas moth (Attacus atlas), one of the largest moths in the world, with a wingspan of up to 30 centimetres. The tips of its wings resemble snake heads: a disguise that helps it avoid being eaten by birds.

Fog in the Atacama desert

Felipe Rios Silva/Royal Society Publishing

In Chile’s Atacama desert, stratocumulus clouds drifting in from the coast are a valuable resource. Felipe Ríos Silva at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and his colleagues are exploring techniques for catching the fog and turning it into drinking water for communities living in one of the driest places on Earth. Ríos Silva’s photo was the runner-up in the earth sciences and climatology category.

South Pole sunrise

Dr. Aman Chokshi/Royal Society Publishing

The return of the sun after six months of darkness at the South Pole is captured in this image by Aman Chokshi at McGill University in Canada, the runner-up in the astronomy category. Chokshi had to heat up his camera and contend with the icy wind at -70°C (-94°F) for several minutes to take a 360-degree panoramic shot of the horizon as the sun rose. He then turned it into a stereographic image resembling a small planet, fringed by a green and purple aurora with the Milky Way above.

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The 13 best popular science books of 2025

Women's hidden extra work, positive tipping points and new thinking on autism – there's much to chew on in this year's best reads, says Liz Else

Holiday reading: our pick of the best popular science books of the yearhadynyah/Getty Images The challenge here is clearly highlighted on the book’s cover, where “positive” is coloured a bright shiny yellow. After all, we know how tipping points work – a small change makes a big, sometimes defining, change to a system or state. In climate terms, that could mean, for example, that major ice sheets melt, or the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation collapses. The order in which tipping points happen matters too, says Tim Lenton, who has spent years modelling them. But Lenton is after the positives in this excellent exploration of the possible. Pressure from small groups can galvanise change, he writes. Policy at the governmental level is essential, but usually needs the leverage of such groups, disruptive innovation or economic or environmental shock, he says. There are plenty of other factors that can come into play as forcing agents, including personal agency in the shape of individual behaviour, for example eating less meat or adopting electric vehicles. Science popularisers may seem like a wild card, but Clearing the Air by Hannah Ritchie is a bit of a stealth weapon, since it provides data-led answers on the road to net zero. And it helps us to dismiss nonsense claims, such as that heat pumps don’t work in cold weather, or questions like do wind farms kill birds. On the latter, the answer is yes, they do kill some birds, but that number is dwarfed by the annual kill rate of cats, buildings, cars and pesticides. Nevertheless, wind turbines pose a real threat to some bats, migrating birds and birds of prey. But Ritchie points out how to reduce the risk, such as by painting turbines black, and powering down blades during low wind. Lenton is also a realist, urging us to keep our eye on the bigger picture. It is very hard to imagine a time when burning fossil fuels is seen as backward or abhorrent, he writes, but that is “the nature of tipping points in social norms – what beforehand seemed impossible afterwards seems inevitable”.   What could be more stupid than writing a history of stupidity, asks Stuart Jeffries, author of, er, just such a book. Luckily for him and for us, there is a lot to like in this clever exploration of a slippery subject. After all, what do we really mean by stupidity? Ignorance? Foolishness? Inability to learn? As Jeffries says, stupid is a judgement, not a fact – science can’t measure it, except perhaps negatively, by measuring low IQ scores. Jeffries’s quest to understand stupidity is a historical, political and global take, so we’re off on a great philosophical adventure, through Plato, Socrates, Voltaire, Schopenhauer – and multiple obscure and less obscure thinkers. Also included are various schools of Eastern thinking (Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and more), which take a different view from the West, in that the pursuit of intelligence may get in the way of personal development or the enlightenment Buddhists call Nirvana. All in all, there are no signs of stupidity in this delightful and unexpected book.   Most of us will recognise this stream of consciousness running as a background to our lives: “Have the kids had enough protein this week?”; “What bedframe would look good in our bedroom?” and the like. This is “cognitive household labor”, the mental labour that keeps families afloat, and sociologist Allison Daminger says it is “missing from most studies of how we do gender via housework”. It is an excellent point in a book that should receive all the positive reviews it can get. Breadwinners by Melissa Hogenboom is a similar examination, exposing the hidden power dynamics and unconscious cognitive biases shaping our lives. As our reviewer wrote, it makes a compelling, evidence-based case for recognising these imbalances and identifying where and how to correct them. Perfect family reading over the holidays.   Unequal by Eugenia Cheng You might think things are either equal or they aren’t, but for mathematician Eugenia Cheng, some things are more equal than others – in maths and in life. Her clever exploration of the meaning of “equals” helps us grasp its mathematical complexities – and the everyday dangers of assuming, for example, two people who score the same on an IQ test are equally intelligent.   This book offers a fascinating opportunity to see art and science reflect off each other in a richly illustrated tour of artwork about the ocean, starting at its coastlines and ending at its abysses. At school, the book’s author, marine biologist Helen Scales, was asked to choose between following an artistic life and a scientific one. Here she indulges both, aiming to select works that “celebrate the diversity of life in the sea”, and to show how artists and scientists working together have played an important part in describing and recording the biodiversity of our oceans. Drawings still play a key role, as Scales recalls a conversation with an ichthyologist, who knew he would need to use both sketching and scientific skills to achieve a true classification of an odd-looking female deep-sea anglerfish.   Discovering the true state of affairs about women, girls and autism – that the prevalence of autism in this group has been underestimated – can only be good. But for neuroscientist Gina Rippon, it is also bittersweet. In this excellent, state-of-the-art account of autism in girls, she admits that by accepting the mantra that autism was much more common in boys, “I have been part of the problem I’m hoping this book will solve”. One person’s story she shares makes the point. “Alice” was a woman with two young sons – one neurotypical, the elder autistic. She had mental health struggles at university, and after nearly three years of pleading for an assessment, she was finally confirmed to be on the spectrum. Alice’s path had been strewn with diagnoses, including borderline personality disorder with social anxiety. But the light-bulb moment came when she took her son, “Peter”, to his first day at nursery school, anxious to see how he would settle. Peter dived into the melee, as Alice watched, stunned. She told Rippon, “He was a native of the world I had been watching from the outside… He just seemed to automatically… belong.” She realised that she was “looking at what not being autistic meant”.   Earth scientist Anjana Khatwa unites science and spirituality in a gorgeous journey through deep time, a personal view of the world of rocks and minerals. She explains how geology is at the heart of today’s biggest issues, how the field itself isn’t known for its diversity – and the origins of the ivory-white Makrana marble that made the Taj Mahal, among other structures.   What is Barney? Why do we remember the Sycamore Gap? How old is ancient? The answers lie in a truly ambitious, very fat, glorious book of trees, complete with maps, photographs and travel notes. It is built round the unusual idea of setting out in search of the 1000 best individual trees that grow in the towns and cities of Britain and Ireland. The handsome book spun out of Paul Wood’s field trip feels like an appropriately slow way to honour organisms that can live to 3000 years and that shape or are shaped by the places where they grow. Savour during the colder months, while you plan your own tree trip.   To understand orchids, think like a matchmaker, writes Sandra Knapp, a senior botanist at London’s Natural History Museum. She is discussing the reproductive habits of Angraecum cadetti in this book, part of the Earth Day series. This is a clever conceit: take any living thing, describe one species at a given hour across 24 hours, and illustrate it (here the illustrator is Katie Scott). Mushroom Day and Tree Day are also in 2025’s crop; Shell Day and Snake Day are planned for 2026. Knapp introduces flowers from everywhere, of every hue, size and reproductive system. There is a nod to Carl Linnaeus: the European chicory’s blue flowers occupy the 4am time slot, in line with his suggestion to plant them early morning.   Wired for Wisdom by Eszther Hargittai and John Palfrey “Do you need help with that?” Few words are as guaranteed to send a 60-plus adult who seems to be struggling with technology into a rage. How refreshing to find a book prepared to sift science from stereotype in what the authors call an especially “unsettled” research area of older adults and tech. One reason for the authors to weigh in early is that even though older adults are an increasing portion of Earth’s billions, they feel ignored – and subject to negative preconceptions by younger people. A healthy and inclusive society, say the authors, needs this older population on board. Among the book’s great takeaways are that older adults are less likely to fall for fake news or scams. Their use of mobile tech is also rising fast, with the number of over-60s in the US with smartphones rising from 13 per cent in 2012 to 61 per cent by 2021. With such buy-in, can we afford to indulge stereotypes?   The two friends to whom I gave copies of this book when it first came out 10 years ago hadn’t heard of Carlo Rovelli, but they both ended up loving it. Now there’s a special hardback anniversary issue out, to remind us that in a mere 79 pages, Rovelli’s lessons managed to span the theory of general relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes, elementary particles and more. After 10 years of polycrisis, re-reading the final chapter now seems to capture the human dilemma perfectly. An ultra-curious yet dangerous Homo on the brink of self-wrought destruction can still marvel at the world, because, Rovelli writes, “on the edge of what we know, in contact with the ocean of the unknown, shines the mystery and the beauty of the world. And it’s breathtaking.” The ideal gift for anyone you know who hasn’t read it yet, in a lovely new package.

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Climate
Government

Here's What Makes Someone 'Sexy,' According To Science

Jonathan Bailey was voted People's "Sexiest Man Alive." Experts weigh in on what factors make up attractiveness.

Every year, pop culture fiends dissect (or dissent) People magazine’s selection of the “Sexiest Man Alive.” Many popular celebrities have donned the crown, including Harry Hamlin (1987), Brad Pitt (1995 and 2000), Jude Law (2004), Idris Elba (2018), Michael B. Jordan (2020) and Chris Evans (2022). This year, the magazine tapped actor Jonathan Bailey for the honor.Neil Mockford via Getty ImagesJonathan Bailey has been named this year's Sexiest Man Alive by People.In a 2012 interview about the selection process, editor Julie Jordan told USA Today said the magazine staff takes note of how the general public feels about potential options throughout the year while also asking celebrities for their opinions on the matter. So what makes up this “feeling” that someone is sexy? According to experts, there are several factors ― and they aren’t just physical attributes. In fact, it’s based on an interplay of elements that relate to both nature and nurture, making “sexy” a highly variable adjective.“Sexiness is in the eye of the beholder,” Blanca Cobb, a trained body language expert, told HuffPost. “Some people are drawn to physical attributes of the face, voice can be seen as sexy depending on pitch, tone, and intonation. Someone might find the way another person smells or their aroma as sexy. Additionally, warm, open, confident body language can be a turn-on.”Here’s what else makes a person attractive, according to science:Our biology plays a big role — perhaps even the most influential one.“There are many theories in terms of factors that can enhance level of attractiveness that are surrounded by cultural aspects, such as generational trends and ethnic differences of preferences, evolutionary factors such as ‘curviness’ in women noting fertility, and proximity factors indicting we are attracted to what we see most and what we are exposed to around us,” explained Kelsey Latimer, a psychologist based in Florida. “This suggests that attraction has both biological and learned factors.”When talking about appeal, it’s important to distinguish between traditionally defined “good looks” and “sexiness.” According to Merriam-Webster, the latter term refers to someone who is “sexually suggestive or stimulating, interesting.” Sexiness, it seems, invokes a bodily reaction in the eye of the beholder.Someone might be good-looking, for example, without necessarily eliciting a physical response within the average person. When referring to somebody as sexy, on the other hand, we usually mean that they make us physically tingle, to put it simply. “There are evolutionary theories that help us understand that physical attraction is important because it makes us want to reproduce, which keeps the species alive,” Latimer said. “There are certain physical features of men and women that are seen to be highly associated with fertility that might be sparked on an innate level.”Smell, physical similarity and face symmetry also spark our brain to feel a level of attraction toward someone as well. However, noted the experts, trying to use a “one-size-fits-all” approach when analyzing the topic isn’t right.“The reality is if something were ‘innately’ attractive or not attractive, then trends would never change over time and ‘natural selection’ would have boiled us down into all looking the same,” Latimer said. “There is a lot of variation about what is attractive.”Personality is a huge factor as well.Experts are adamant about this: a person’s character and the way he or she presents him or herself to the world influences the way fellow humans perceive their potential sexiness. “Consider this: have you met someone that you might have considered average in physical appearance and then, after getting to know them, you suddenly realized they have a great smile or beautiful eyes?” Latimer said. “That’s not a coincidence. Personality absolutely can change the initial feeling of attraction for the positive or negative.” Although the staff in charge of crowning the sexiest man alive for People magazine each year may not know the various candidates’ personality traits, perhaps asking fellow celebrities for their opinions is a way to account for the behavioral aspect of sexiness.Cobb goes a step further: not only does she acknowledge that personality traits can affect sex appeal, but specific attributes make a difference. “Confidence in the way one speaks and acts can be appealing,” she noted. “Charisma can captivate someone’s attention because it reflects charm, magnetism, and social intelligence. An undervalued characteristic of sexiness is kindness, which reflects compassion, empathy and sensitivity, where the other person feels cared for and loved, which helps strengthen an emotional connection.”A 2017 study led at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, confirms this theory. The researchers analyzed a speed-dating event and noticed that the participants who were considered funny were also rated as more attractive than they were deemed at the start of the date.Our environment also matters.“Trends vary a lot based on time, generation, culture location and age,” said Latimer, adding that what makes men sexy to the eyes of others isn’t necessarily the same thing that adds sex appeal to a woman’s character. Similarly, cultural and geographical differences usually birth a diverse set of standards when it comes to attraction. For example, preferences in the U.S. are generally different in Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands, Cobb said.What’s important to note is that environmental differences clearly affect what the general population may consider to be a favorable set of traits, making sexiness a pretty subjective characteristic that’s in constant flow. “What is sexy in America today might be what is seen as sexy in Asia tomorrow and vice versa,” Cobb said.So the conclusion? There isn’t one definitive marker for attractiveness; what gives one person a feeling that someone is sexy may be unappealing to another. But, that being said, we can certainly see the argument for Bailey.

Science
Culture
Nature

Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded for Research on Science, Technology and Growth

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt share the Nobel economics prize for work that underlines the importance of investing in research and development

October 14, 20254 min readEconomics Nobel Honors Work Linking Scientific Research to ProsperityJoel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt share the Nobel economics prize for work that underlines the importance of investing in research and developmentBy Philip Ball & Nature magazine Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, winners of the 2025 Economics Nobel prize. Northwestern University, Patrick Imbert/Collège de France, Ashley McCabe/Brown UniversityThe 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize for Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded to three researchers who have shown how technological and scientific innovation, coupled to market competition, drive economic growth.One half of the prize goes to economic-historian Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the other half is split between the economic theorists Philippe Aghion of the Collège de France and the London School of Economics and Peter Howitt of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.“I can’t find the words to express what I feel,” Aghion said. He says he will use the money for research in his laboratory at the Collège de France.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The award “underlies the importance in investing in science for innovation and long-term economic growth”, says economist Diane Coyle of the University of Cambridge. “It's great to see the Nobel prize recognize the importance of this topic,” adds innovation policy researcher Richard Jones of the University of Manchester, UK. “It's important that economists understand the conditions that lead to technological progress,” he adds. The winners, says Coyle, “have long been on people’s list of potential candidates”.Old isn’t goldEconomic growth at a rate of about 1-2 per cent annually is the norm for industrialized nations today. But such growth rates did not happen in earlier times, despite technological innovations, such as the windmill and the printing press.Mokyr showed that the key difference between now and then was what he calls “useful knowledge”, or innovations based on scientific understanding. One example is the advances made during the Industrial Revolution, beginning in the eighteenth century, when improvements in steam engines could be made systematic rather than by trial and error.Aghion and Howitt, for their part, clarified the market mechanisms behind sustained growth in recent times. In 1992 they presented a model showing how competition between companies selling new products allows innovations to enter the marketplace and displaces older products: a process they called creative destruction.Underlying growth, in other words, is a steady churn of businesses and products. The researchers showed how companies invest in research and development (R&D) to improve their chances of finding a new product, and predicted the optimal level of such investment.Entrepreneurial stateAccording to economist Ufuk Akcigit of the University of Chicago, Aghion and Howitt highlight an important aspect of economic growth, which is that spending on R&D does not by itself guarantee higher rates of growth: “Unless we replace inefficient firms from the economy, we cannot make space for newcomers with new ideas and better technologies.”“When a new entrepreneur emerges, they have every incentive to come up with a radical new technology,” Akcigit says. “As soon as they become an incumbent, their incentive vanishes” and they no longer invest in R&D to drive innovation.Thus, because companies cannot expect to remain at the forefront of innovation indefinitely, the incentive for investing in R&D coming from market forces alone declines as a company’s market share grows. To guarantee the societal benefits of constant innovation, the model suggests that it is in society’s interests for the state to subsidize R&D, so long as the return is not merely incremental improvements.The work of all three laureates also acknowledges the complex social consequences of growth. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution there were concerns about how mechanisation would cause unemployment of manual workers – a worry echoed today with the increasing use of AI in place of human labour. But Mokyr showed that in fact early mechanization led to the creation of new jobs.Creative destruction, meanwhile, leads to companies failing and jobs being lost. Aghion and Howitt emphasized that society needs safety nets and constructive negotiation of conflicts to navigate such problems.Their model “recognizes the messiness and complexity of how innovation happens in real economies”, says Coyle. “The idea that a country’s productivity level increases by companies going bust and new ones coming in is a difficult sell, but the evidence that that’s part of the mechanism is pretty strong.”Timely messageThis year’s award comes at a time when funding for scientific research is under threat in the United States and around the world. “It’s a very timely message when we’re seeing the United States undermining so much of its science base,” says Coyle. Aghion said, “I don’t welcome the protectionist wave in the US” and added that “openness is a driver of growth. I see dark clouds accumulating”. to translate high-tech innovations into market value.Economic historian Kerstin Enflo, a member of the Nobel prize awarding committee, denied that the award was intended as a comment on the direction of US policies. “It is only about celebrating the work [the laureates] have done”, she said at the press conference.Green growthMore recently, researchers are questioning the ‘growth-at-all-costs’ narrative not least because of the ways to pursue growth has led to environmental degradation, including global warming.“How can we make sure we innovate greener?” Aghion asked. “Firms don’t spontaneously do this. So how can we redirect growth towards green?” Mokyr’s work showed that growth can sometimes be self-correcting in the sense of producing innovations needed to solve such problems. But that is not a given and requires well-crafted policies to nurture innovation without promoting inequality and unsustainability. “We need to harness the productivity potential and minimize the negative effects”, said Aghion.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on October 13, 2025.

Science
Technology
Nature

What humans might learn from nature’s real-life zombies

Zombies, it turns out, are real — and science journalist Mindy Weisberger can give you plenty of examples of them. She’s read up on the fungi that take over flies’ bodies, partially digesting them from the inside out before forcing them to climb up blades of grass, so that fungal spores can explode out from […]

Cicadas can be infected by a fungal parasite that turns them into zombies. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Zombies, it turns out, are real — and science journalist Mindy Weisberger can give you plenty of examples of them. She’s read up on the fungi that take over flies’ bodies, partially digesting them from the inside out before forcing them to climb up blades of grass, so that fungal spores can explode out from their swollen corpses and claim new victims.  She’s considered the hairworms that grow inside of crickets before inducing their hosts to toss themselves into a nearby body of water, where the worms emerge from the crickets’ exoskeleton in a miniature but all-too-real imitation of the alien in Alien.  She’s even researched the snails that fall victim to certain flatworms. The flatworms’ larvae need to be eaten by birds to reach the next stage of their lifecycle, so broodsacs full of larvae take up residence in the snails’ eyestalks and turn them into pulsing, colorful, caterpillar-like bird-lures. The parasite also manipulates the snails into wandering into the open in order to increase the odds that a bird will spot the snails and devour both their eyestalks and the larvae within them.  Weisberger dug into these specific nightmare-inducing examples of parasitic mind-control — and many others — as part of her effort to understand real-life “zombification” in her book, Rise of the Zombie Bugs. What she found was that these natural zombie stories are not only sources of inspiration for horrifying fiction — they could also inspire researchers who are trying to better understand everything from immune responses to pest control.  So we spoke to Weisberger about research on real-life zombies for Unexplainable, Vox’s science podcast. What follows is a version of our conversation, edited for clarity and length. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Unexplainable wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Let’s start by just defining some terms. What do we mean when we say “zombifier,” or “zombie?” Sure. A zombifier is an organism that manipulates the behavior of its host, and a zombie is an organism that is being manipulated to behave in a way that it normally would not, and which only benefits the parasite that’s manipulating it.  Let’s say you catch a cold — you’re gonna change your behavior because you’re feeling sick. You feel like you need to rest more, you need to drink more water. These are all things that help you recover, that help you fight off the infection. So in a certain sense, that’s the cold virus generating a change in behavior, but it’s a behavioral change that actually benefits you.  For a zombie, the changes to its behavior are not something that benefit the host. They only benefit the parasite. That’s what makes it a zombie. So it’d be like if I got sick and instead of going into my room and trying to sleep it off, I went and I licked everybody that I could lick in order to spread it.  Yeah, exactly. There are zombifying viruses; there are zombifying fungi; there are insects that are able to zombify their hosts. There are worms that can zombify their hosts. Most of the organisms that they infect are arthropods — bugs. (I do have to apologize to entomologists, because as far as entomologists are concerned, bugs are only insects with sucking mouth parts. However, as we all know, colloquially, “bugs” covers a much broader range.) What are some of the biggest categories of mysteries about how [zombifiers do what they do]? Some of the biggest mysteries start with the moment that the host is infected, because obviously a body’s first response to any kind of infection is going to be an immune response. The first thing that a zombifier needs to do is to somehow get past that. That’s a big question for zombifiers, from viruses to wasps to fungi to worms: When they get inside an organism where they’re not supposed to be, how exactly are they telling their host immune system, “No, there’s nothing to see here! Just go about your business! You don’t need to worry about me!”  Another one is, once it gets to the point of manipulation, what are the cues? How does it decide “OK, now’s the right time to get this host moving to a place where I need to be”?  The third big question is obviously the nuts and bolts of: How is it manipulating behavior? The thing about this field is that there is still so much that scientists are piecing together about the precise mechanisms of how this works. Behavior is something that is just super complicated, even in insects.   So, when we look at, for example, the wasp that parasitizes orb-weaving spiders, scientists have found that in the spiders that are zombified, what the wasp does — it lays an egg on the spider. The egg hatches, and the wasp larva essentially piggybacks on the spider and drinks from it like it’s a living juice box.   And the spider just goes about its business until the larva is ready to reproduce. And then somehow the wasp larvae is manipulating the spider to think that it’s time to molt, so that the spider makes a different type of web than it normally does, something called a resting web. It’s reinforced, and it’s meant to support the spider and protect the spider while it’s molting.  And then once that web is done, the wasp larvae drains the spider dry, the spider’s empty husk of a corpse drops to the ground, and the wasp larva builds its cocoon and sets itself up in the spider’s final web to hang out until it becomes an adult wasp. What scientists found is that when spiders start making that final web, their little spider brains are being flooded with ecdysteroids, which is the hormone that the spider naturally releases when it’s ready to build a molting web. And scientists aren’t sure yet: Is the larvae actually producing the ecdysteroids? Is it somehow triggering its production in the spider through another compound? That’s something that they’re still figuring out. Why is it important to understand how this behavior manipulation works? In a lot of ways, this is looking at sort of really big questions about how behavior works, which is something that scientists are still piecing together, on so many levels for all different types of organisms, because there are so many factors that shape behavior. Some of them are genetics; some of them are biochemical; some of them have to do with environments; some of them have to do with social relationships. So, this is one way of trying to understand behavior writ large.  You mentioned that these insects suppress the immune systems of their hosts. Is there stuff that we could learn from that about how immune systems work in general? Oh yeah. Looking at the immunosuppressive aspect of zombifiers is definitely something that is a huge area of interest, because that could inform the development of immunosuppressive drugs, which is something that is just something that would be hugely beneficial to people.  Not that this should be all about what’s in it for me, but that is usually a consideration for scientific research: Could there potentially be applications for this that have medical applications? And so, there is not yet a direct line between any research into how zombifiers evade their host’s immune system and the development of some kind of pharmaceutical immunosuppressive. But that’s definitely something that is part of the mix when scientists are following that line of investigation. I think about all the insects that invade homes, some of which are beneficial, some of which are less so. Could we potentially borrow from this to fight off pests? Pest control is definitely one avenue that scientists have explored. Is there some way that we can take what we’re seeing these zombifiers do to insects and apply it to insects that we don’t like?  So baculoviruses — which are these viruses that infect caterpillars and make them climb and then dissolve their bodies into goo — this is something that has been deployed as a strategy for pest control in China and in Europe, in the US, in Brazil.  These types of viruses are an interesting alternative to traditional insecticides because they are very targeted. They’re less toxic to the environment. They’re not harmful to insects that are not their host species and they’re not toxic to people. But they’re also not as quick as I think the insecticides that people have gotten used to. And people like things to be quick and they like them to be absolute.  So what seems like the best way is perhaps to incorporate this alongside insecticides, and use this along with other approaches, because there are a lot of benefits to just going full-on zombie warfare to get rid of our agricultural pests. Could humans be zombified this way? Like, are we also susceptible to this? Well, there are some types of pathogens that are known to manipulate behavior in mammals and indeed in humans too. So rabies, of course. There have been medical cases of rabies-infected humans that are thousands of years old with documentation of heightened aggression. So there is already a virus among us that can manipulate human behavior.  And recently, there have been studies into Toxoplasma gondii, which is the pathogen that causes toxoplasmosis. Its definitive host is cats. It’s very entrenched amongst human populations. And in fact, many, many people, millions of people, carry Toxoplasma gondii, but it doesn’t cause any symptoms. It tends to be dangerous in people that are pregnant or in immunocompromised people. Most of the people who are carrying Toxoplasma gondii have no symptoms.  However, there have been studies recently in the last 10, 15 years or so, that have looked at people who are carrying the parasite and have found that there does seem to be evidence of certain types of behavior: of being more risk-taking, of being bolder. And what’s interesting about it is that Toxoplasma gondii is known for manipulating behavior in rodents. And what it does is it makes them bolder and less afraid of cats.  What? Because Toxoplasma gondii needs to reproduce inside cats. So it infects rodents, and then to get back into a cat, it makes the rodent less afraid of and attracted to the smell of cat pee. And that brings the rodent closer to a cat than it would normally go. And then once it’s eaten, then the parasite is back inside the cat.  And scientists have found that this is true for other animals too. So hyena cubs that are infected with Toxoplasma gondii are bolder around lions and are more likely to be eaten by lions. Chimpanzees that are infected with Toxoplasma gondii lose their fear of jaguars. And some studies found that people who are infected with Toxoplasma gondii are more likely to make risky business decisions or be bolder in traffic. There’s still a lot of work to be done because obviously human behavior is its own form of complicated. But there is some evidence that seems to suggest that Toxoplasma gondii can shape human behavior, too. What?  Did I just blow your mind? So there could literally at this moment be zombifiers within us shaping us in some way? It’s entirely possible. There are so many things that make us who we are that shape how we behave. There are environmental factors; there are social factors. But, you know, there might also be zombifiers.

Science
Animals
Chemicals

Laurent Demanet appointed co-director of MIT Center for Computational Science and Engineering

Applied mathematics professor will join fellow co-director Nicolas Hadjiconstantinou in leading the cross-cutting center.

Laurent Demanet, MIT professor of applied mathematics, has been appointed co-director of the MIT Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CCSE), effective Sept. 1.Demanet, who holds a joint appointment in the departments of Mathematics and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences — where he previously served as director of the Earth Resources Laboratory — succeeds Youssef Marzouk, who is now serving as the associate dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.Joining co-director Nicolas Hadjiconstantinou, the Quentin Berg (1937) Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Demanet will help lead CCSE, supporting students, faculty, and researchers while fostering a vibrant community of innovation and discovery in computational science and engineering (CSE).“Laurent’s ability to translate concepts of computational science and engineering into understandable, real-world applications is an invaluable asset to CCSE. His interdisciplinary experience is a benefit to the visibility and impact of CSE research and education. I look forward to working with him,” says Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.“I’m pleased to welcome Laurent into his new role as co-director of CCSE. His work greatly supports the cross-cutting methodology at the heart of the computational science and engineering community. I’m excited for CCSE to have a co-director from the School of Science, and eager to see the center continue to broaden its connections across MIT,” says Asu Ozdaglar, deputy dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, department head of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and MathWorks Professor.Established in 2008, CCSE was incorporated into the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing as one of its core academic units in January 2020. An interdisciplinary research and education center dedicated to pioneering applications of computation, CCSE houses faculty, researchers, and students from a range of MIT schools, such as the schools of Engineering, Science, Architecture and Planning, and the MIT Sloan School of Management, as well as other units of the college.“I look forward to working with Nicolas and the college leadership on raising the profile of CCSE on campus and globally. We will be pursuing a set of initiatives that span from enhancing the visibility of our research and strengthening our CSE PhD program, to expanding professional education offerings and deepening engagement with our alumni and with industry,” says Demanet.Demanet’s research lies at the intersection of applied mathematics and scientific computing to visualize the structures beneath Earth’s surface. He also has a strong interest in scientific computing, machine learning, inverse problems, and wave propagation. Through his position as principal investigator of the Imaging and Computing Group, Demanet and his students aim to answer fundamental questions in computational seismic imaging to increase the quality and accuracy of mapping and the projection of changes in Earth’s geological structures. The implications of his work are rooted in environmental monitoring, water resources and geothermal energy, and the understanding of seismic hazards, among others.He joined the MIT faculty in 2009. He received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the U.S. Air Force Young Investigator Award in 2011, and a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in 2012. He also held the Class of 1954 Career Development Professorship from 2013 to 2016. Prior to coming to MIT, Demanet held the Szegö Assistant Professorship at Stanford University. He completed his undergraduate studies in mathematical engineering and theoretical physics at Universite de Louvain in Belgium, and earned a PhD in applied and computational mathematics at Caltech, where he was awarded the William P. Carey Prize for best dissertation in the mathematical sciences.

Science
Education
Water

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Unacceptable Risk: Dr. Margaret Kripke on Cancer and the Environment

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Mayday Terranean

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Water
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The Connection Between Bats and Coronavirus: Wildlife is not to blame

What exactly is the connection between bats and coronavirus? And how has sheltering-in-place disrupted field research in California and beyond? State and local governments have set restrictions on bat research and rescue in an effort to curtail the spread of the coronavirus. Dr. Winifred Frick, chief scientist of Bat Conservation International, describes how the new restrictions have affected conservation efforts.

Animals
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Changing Seas: "Eagle Rays: Soaring on Spotted Wings"

Despite its designation as globally “endangered,” relatively little is known about the whitespotted eagle ray’s ecology and life history. Now Florida scientists are combining cutting-edge technology with creative approaches to gain deeper insights into the movement and diet of this elegant fish - allowing them to experience the world from a ray’s point of view for the first time.

Technology
Science
Animals

BlackWater

BlackWater is a documentary about protecting Florida Springs, focusing on the Ichetucknee River. The Florida Springs have been displaying a decline in quality and will continue to if we do not make a change. I encourage you to visit and experience the Florida Springs system, as it truly is a religious experience. Produced by Ethan Beckley, Annick Joseph, and Jiahui Shen.

Water
Conservation
Science

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