Letters archive

When I qualified as a vet in 1981, I would have agreed with Marlene Zuk that we should question the trend of attributing human-like motivations and feelings to animals, such as bees "playing" with objects( 14 January, p 27 ). Now, after a 40-year career working on many continents and with many classes of animals, …

Another explanation for really ancient trees having twisted trunks and branches is that they are less attractive for harvesting for timber. In other words, artificial selection is at work( 14 January, p 11 ). I have speculated that this is why the Sydney red gum ( Angophora costata ) has such twisted branches. The ones …

You report that California is beset with longer periods of drought interspersed with ever heavier rainfall events. The heavier the rainfall, the more of this lovely water flows to the sea and is lost. Hence the various plans listed to try to save this water and allow it to recharge aquifers, where it is safe …

With the "anomaly" in the Virgin Orbit satellite deployment, would it not be of all-round benefit to develop a subsystem that could save the payload when missions like this run into trouble? Astronauts often have a separate escape system for when launches go wrong( 14 January, p 9 ). Couldn't a similar system be developed …

You recently carried an article on the development of supersized wind turbines with the potential for generating 50 megawatts of power from a single device. In the same issue – in "The limits of knowledge" ( p 38 ) – you say that "the behaviour of some systems are sensitive to even the tiniest difference …

The article "Sloths grip stronger than humans and other primates" states there is an unexplained left-side bias in their strength. Here is a possible explanation. If, like some animals , they favour using their right hands for fiddly tasks, then they would be hanging on a lot more with their left hands, which would get …

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's view on the sometimes overly narrow scope of some university science programmes made me reflect on my own experience( 7 January, p 22 ). As a natural sciences student, I started with a limited number of module options with lecture notes that mostly told us "how things are". As I progressed, module choices …

My colleague Alice Preston and I were delighted by your article on sonification of astronomical data( 31 December 2022, p 46 ). However, we were amused by the suggestion that this is new territory because we presented a range of sonification projects at a conference in 2004. In addition, the International Community for Auditory Display, …

, St Just in Roseland, Cornwall, UK In "How to be happy", Robert Waldinger says we evolved to be social animals and that "having warm connections with other people predicts how long you stay healthy". Yet now we live in an age of connection via smart devices, which could be viewed as less than warm. …

You report that "city-slicker" lizards are becoming genetically distinct from their rural relatives( 14 January, p 12 ). What goes for lizards may well go for us. How far are we along the evolutionary path to Eloi and Morlocks? When will humans start to diverge, perhaps along urban and rural lines?