Thanks to having the “chunkiest squid butt” ever seen on an ancient cephalopod, paleontologists have discovered a 160-million-year-old octopus cousin. The newly identified fossils are described by an international research team in their study recently published in Papers in Palaeontology, which also includes a potential explanation for Wyoteuthis linsterorum’s hefty proportions. Just like today’s tentacled ocean dwellers, the Mesozoic squid ancestor likely had no problem devouring its relatives—or even members of its own species.
W. linsterorum is a belemnite, a group of prehistoric cephalopods who left behind some of paleontology’s most common fossils. Examples of their bullet-shaped structures known as a rostrum have regularly shown up at dig sites around the world for over 200 years. This includes the Sundance Formation in present-day Wyoming, which was covered by an inland sea millions of years ago.
Most of Wyoming’s belemnites are comparatively tiny—usually about two-to-four inches long and less than one inch wide. But about 30 years ago, Wyoming Dinosaur Center founder Burkhard Pohl found a fossil that “stuck out like a sore thumb,” according to study co-author Bill Wahl. While the preserved belemnite rostrum was about as long as other examples, it measured about 2.4 inches wide. Based on what they knew of belemnite proportions, paleontologists estimated this specimen’s entire body probably reached nearly two feet long.
The two ‘W. linsterorum’ fossils were discovered over 30 years apart. Credit: Jessica Lippincott
Without any comparable examples, the thick squid butt remained in storage for nearly three decades. In 2019, fossil collector Cliff Linster finally discovered a similar cephalopod near Ten Sleep, Wyoming. He soon donated it to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, and researchers began analyzing this pair of mystery fossils.
Computed tomography (CT) scanning allowed the team to inspect the remains without damaging them. The results confirmed the ancient sea creatures were never-before-seen belemnites.What’s more, they belonged to a family researchers previously believed went extinct millions of years earlier.
“After spending years fossil hunting in Wyoming and collecting countless fossils of the common Pachyteuthis belemnites here in Wyoming, this one is unlike anything I have ever seen,” Jessica Lippincott, a paleontologist and study co-author, said in a statement.
But why did W. linsterorum evolve to reach such bulky proportions? The team believes the answer lies in the diets of many present-day cephalopods.
“A possible explanation is that their relatively large size gave them an advantage when hunting co-occurring smaller belemnites of the genus Pachyteuthis,” explained paleontologist Alexey Ippolitov, a study co-author now at New Zealand’s Victoria University. “Modern squid, after all, are hardly picky when it comes to prey: they readily hunt not only other species of cephalopods, but sometimes even their own kind.”
An unexpected and surprising species, W. linsterorum is named in honor of Cliff Linster, who died in June 2026. While he didn’t live to see the dedication, Linster was well aware that the team was working to describe the animal he helped discover.
“It goes to show that we are still finding new species of fossils all the time, and people who rockhound or collect invertebrate fossils can also contribute to science,” said Lippincott.
We humans love our mind-altering substances. Cultures around the world have discovered, ritualized, and simply experimented with alcoholic drinks and ingestible drugs for millennia. However, recent archaeological evidence indicates humanity possibly began utilizing psychoactive plantsmuch earlier than previously believed. Based on findings published in the journal Science Advances, some communities in present-day Indonesia enjoyed the effects of betel nuts as long as 25,000 years ago. This pushes the timeline over 23,000 years back from documented Neolithic and Bronze Age uses circa 1,500 BCE.
The areca nut (Areca catechu), better known as the betel nut, isn’t widely known in the United States, but it’s one of the world’s most popular intoxicants. Most frequently seen across southeast Asia cultures, its global usage only trails behind alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. Betel nuts are prepared by grinding and processing the plant seeds with slaked lime (calcium hydroxide). This fine powder is often combined with additional ingredients such as flavoring spices or tobacco to make a “quid,” that is then chewed as a stimulant. There are millions of betel users today, with some estimates putting the global total at 1-in-10 people.
Many researchers contend that most human intoxicant use began with fermented alcoholic drinks, amid the rise of farming during the Neolithic era about 13,000 years ago. Adam Brumm, one of the study’s co-author and an archaeologist at Australia’s Griffith University, believes otherwise.
“This theory fails to account for the possibility that very ancient drug-taking lies at the roots of our most commonly used psychoactive substances,” he explained in a university profile.
Brumm and his team cite evidence gathered from the extremely rare skeletal remains of two early human foragers discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The older of the two lived between 25,000 and 16,000 years ago, while the younger individual is 7,600 to 6,300 years old. Unlike many other documented skeletons from the region, these hunter-gathers both exhibit rarely seen dental damage in the form of deep, curved grooves in the teeth. Researchers theorized this unexpected deterioration stemmed from a never-before-identified practice of regularly sucking on entire betel nuts.
But there was a problem—this hypothesis contradicted earlier studies of betel nut usage. Many scientists believe the drug’s primary neuroactive alkaloid, called arecoline, is only noticeable after chewing betel nuts processed with slaked lime. Lab experiments conducted by Brumm’s group suggest this isn’t necessarily always the case. To test their theory, researchers soaked betel nuts in artificial saliva, then introduced the mixtures to exposed cloned human receptors grown from frog egg cells. These receptors included specific proteins that function as molecular switches overseeing neural activity.
The study authors discovered that even simply sucking on whole betel nuts is all it takes to release enough arecoline to elicit altered neural activity and physiological effects. To further bolster their findings, biochemists even flagged arceoline traces in the dental tissue of both hunter-gatherers.
However, the ancient humans living on Sulawesi didn’t necessarily ingest betel nuts for recreational use. Unprocessed nuts likely offer milder effects, but arceoline remains a natural analgesic. Knowing this, the study’s authors surmise these betel nut habits were self-reinforcing.
“Sucking these hard, abrasive seeds wore down the foragers’ teeth so badly that in some cases the inner pulp chamber became completely exposed,” explained Brumm. “So while this habit may have been a remedy for toothache, years of prolonged nut-sucking eventually caused much worse dental health problems, creating a cycle of continued habitual use.”
The implications go far beyond revising the timeline of humanity’s relationship with mind-altering substances. If true, this means at least some ancient hunter-gatherer cultures discovered psychoactive properties before the development of agriculture.
“The study implies that some modern drug-taking behaviors are deeply rooted in forager traditions,” added Brumm.
The salmon? Eaten. The days? Shorter. The bears? Fatter.
After spending the summer eating the fatty pink salmon swimming through Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, it’s time to celebrate the park’s iconic brown bears (Ursus arctos). Fat Bear Week begins on Tuesday, September 22, and here is everything you need to know.
What is Fat Bear Week?
Think March Madness, just without the basketball and significantly more bears. Fat Bear Week is a single-elimination tournament, where bear enthusiasts from around the world can vote online for their favorite chunky bear. After each round, the bear with the most votes advances until the winner is announced on September 29. According to the Katmai Conservancy, the event began as a one-day event in 2014 with 1,700 votes cast. Only 10 years later, 1.2 million votes were cast from over 100 countries.
The brown bears return to Brooks Falls for the salmon migration every year in late June, where viewers can watch them on explore.org’s livestream. There, they will feast to fatten up for the long winter ahead. By late summer, the nutritious fish will spawn and then begin to die. The bears will then move to the lower Brooks River in September and October to eat the dead and dying salmon near the river’s mouth.
Eating all of this salmon is important because the heftier the bear, the better chance they will survive their long winter hibernation. Despite being the poster species for winter hibernation, bears are not “deep hibernators,” they way that squirrels, bats, and bees are. Bears enter a state called torpor, which is an involuntary state primarily triggered by lack of food. During this time, the bears rely on stored fat reserves for energy. A torpid bear’s eating, drinking, and waste functions will cease, as its body metabolizes these stores it put on over the summer.
Photographs comparing the bears from earlier in the summer and later in the summer will be shown, so voters can get an idea of just how much weight the bears put on during their salmon fest. An adult male bear can go from roughly 700 pounds in the early summer to over 1,200 pounds by fall.
Voters are also encouraged to get familiar with each bear’s life history and the unique challenges they face to survive.
Which bears are competing this year?
The 2026 Fat Bear Week Bracket will be released on Friday, September 18.
In 2025, Bear #32 (Chunk) took the crown, despite beginning the salmon run with a freshly broken jaw. He was likely injured while fighting with another bear for a mate, but he still managed to catch plenty of fish. Chunk is known for his dominance and size, but also narrow-set eyes, dark fur, a prominent brow ridge, and a distinctive scar across his muzzle.
Fat Bear Week 2025 champion Chunk. Image: NPS/ T. Carmack
How can I support Katmai’s bears?
Donations can be made to Katmai Conservancy’s Otis Fund. The Otis Fund is named after Bear #480 (Otis), who won four Fat Bear Week titles before his death around 2024. All donations made between September 22 and October 3 will be matched by explore.org.
What happened with the bears this summer?
This year’s livestream featured an example of how wild (and upsetting to humans) nature can be. On Tuesday, July 28, the live-cams captured a young brown bear cub being killed and eaten by an unrelated mother bear (Bear #806). The deceased cub was born this spring and the child of Bear #909, a 10-year-old brown bear. Bear #909 started the season with two cubs, but now lost both.
On Sunday, August 2, one of Bear #335’s (Jolly) cubs died, after following three unrelated cubs up a tree. The mother of the cubs already in the tree attacked Bear #335’s cub, who did not survive the encounter. The identity of the mother bear who killed the spring cub was not confirmed.
Following the first cub’s death, naturalist Mike Fitz and park rangers Christine Loberg and Sarah Bruce said this likely the first documented case occurring at Brooks River. While there is no one answer as to why mother bears are killing cubs, some experts suspect bear adoption, food scarcity, and fights for dominance all play a role.
In order to survive, the first humans to reach Mars will immediately need a safe and reliable place to set up shop. But building on Earth’s neighbor is immensely more challenging than construction projects at home. The Martian surface is a practically airless vacuum, constantly bombarded with radiation, and regularly reaches temperatures as low as -81 degrees Fahrenheit.
However, there is a very specific process on Earth that approximates similar conditions to the Red Planet: freeze-drying. According to researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the same method used to preserve perishable foods could also inspire sturdy and even recyclable 3D-printed houses on Mars. The secret ingredients? Everyday gelatin and yeast. The novel approach is detailed in a study published today in the journal Chem Circularity.
“My inspiration came from freeze-dried fruits that become harder. So I asked myself if we can take advantage of that and make some materials,” Jishen Qiu, a study co-author and civil engineer, said in a statement.
The combination of materials are simple: sand and an adhesive binder. Since gluing tiny rocks together requires specialized stickiness, Qiu’s team invented a new concoction from gelatin and lab engineered yeast. When mixed, the yeast microbes become coated with adhesive proteins similar to those used by mussels to anchor on stones underwater. The goop is then extruded through a 3D printer nozzle into an extremely cold, low-pressure environment, where it solidifies as the water instantly freezes and converts from ice to vapor. The final result is a light, porous, foam-like material that remains very resilient.
“This is actually strong enough to build a one- or two-story building on Earth—whose gravity is three times that of Mars,” explained Qiu. “So, you can probably easily build a multistory building on Mars with the material.”
Qiu and his collaborators know they must first start small before expanding to Martian neighborhoods. Their prototype domes are only about the size of a wine cork at this point, but their compressive strength is comparable to low-grade concrete.
Engineers have experimented with 3D-printed structures to use on the moon and Mars for years, but many of these still require steps like melting down rocks or lunar regolith. These methods usually require a lot of extra energy, which may limit their utility. Qiu’s technique requires comparatively little energy, although he admits it’s still unclear if yeasts can withstand life on Mars. That said, the team’s early results are a promising step towards simple, efficient, and sturdy buildings beyond Earth. If nothing else, yeast also lends itself to trial-and-error.
“As long as there’s one yeast that’s still alive, you can grow them again,” added Qiu.
True to its name, Iran’s spider-tailed horned viper (Pseudocerastes urarachnoides) has a rather novel strategy. It uses a tail that looks like a spider to lure birds trying to eat the decoy spider. When the time is right, the snake jumps into action and eats the bird.
The spider-tailed horned viper is a relatively new species to science, and a study published today in the journal The Anatomical Record is peeling back the layers of this master mimic. A team from the Field Museum in Chicago used X-ray computed tomography (XCT) scanners to take a look inside of the snake’s spidery tail and found that their tailbones appear rather normal.
“Scientists first collected a specimen of this snake in 1968, and when they brought it back to the Field Museum, people thought that it had some sort of deformity at the tip of its tail, like a tumor,” Sara Ruane, a study co-author and the Field’s Associate Curator of Herpetology and Director of the Core Laboratories, said in a statement. “It sat on the shelves of the museum for decades, but it wasn’t until another specimen with a similar tail was found in 2003 that people revisited it.”
Scientists described the snake as a new species in 2006, using the specimen housed in the Field Museum’s collections as the holotype. Holotype specimens serve as a main standard-bearer and reference point for the physical characteristics of a species, so that scientists can compare and contrast them to see if a specimen belongs to one species or another.
Shortly after naming the spider-tailed horned viper, researchers recorded video of the snake using the spider-like appendage at the tip of its tail as a way to lure in unsuspecting birds.
“I remember being a PhD student in about 2008 and first seeing the videos of this snake in the wild,” says Ruane. “The appendage at the end of its tail is so outrageous, I remember thinking it was so cool. It’s truly unique among snakes.”
In 2023, Ruane attended a conference with Georgios Georgalis, an associate professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków. Georgalis mentioned that he was interested in studying the Field Museum’s spider-tailed horned viper holotype specimen.
“I am primarily a paleontologist, so I try to use modern snake species to make sense of fossil remains,” said Georgalis, who is also a co-author on the new study. “In vipers, the vertebral column unfortunately doesn’t give us very many clues about what kind of snake we’re looking at. When we find fossils, we often just find individual bones rather than the entire skeleton, and the individual vertebrae are so different from each other along the snake’s body that it’s hard to use them to identify a species.”
The spider-tailed horned viper offered a unique opportunity to study snake vertebrae. Georgalis said that viper vertebrae in particular have not been very well studied. They also wanted to know more about this species’ unusual tail.
To take a closer look, they used the Field Museum’s XCT lab. With XCT, scientists can scan objects and take thousands of X-ray images. These images are then stacked together to produce a 3D rendering of the object’s interior. It essentially allows scientists to study rare or one-of-a-kind specimens in detail without cutting them open or and risking damage.
“With the spider-tailed horned viper, we were particularly interested in seeing what the vertebrae at the tip of the tail look like, because the exterior of this snake’s tail is so unusual, and because it’s used for this unusual bird-luring behavior,” says Georgalis. “In some other snakes, like sand boas and rubber boas, the vertebrae at the tip of the tail have extreme shapes that look really alien. We wanted to investigate if the spider-tailed horn viper’s tail was similarly strange inside.”
Surprisingly, the scans revealed that the inside of the viper’s tail looked quite normal. The spider-tip tail is only visible on the outside of the snake and the vertebrae were the same as they would be in other vipers.
“There was nothing in the snake’s skeleton that would suggest how extreme its tail looks on the outside,” said Georgalis.
XCT scan showing the normal bones inside the snake’s bizarre tail. Image: Sara Ruane and Stephanie Smith.
Findings like these show how fossil skeletons only tell one part of the story of what an animal looked like and how it behaved. Nothing in the spider-tailed horned viper’s skeleton would suggest it has such a unique tail, or that the tail twitches in a way that tricks birds.
“It’s one of the, let’s say, frustrations of the life of a paleontologist,” says Georgalis. “We work with beautiful animals, but most of the time, we’re trying to put together puzzles with some of the pieces missing, and in the end, we can’t be 100% sure of what the animal actually looked like.”
It’s also a reminder that prehistoric life may be even stranger than we can imagine by looking at bones alone. These findings also lay some groundwork for scientists studying how tissues evolve and develop and underscores the value of museum collections.
“Specimens that were collected 50, 100, 200 years ago are still being used all the time to learn new things,” said Ruane.
A new virus emerges in rural China. Although those who contract it initially display moderate, flu-like symptoms, their health quickly declines. The mortality rate is unclear, but one aspect is immediately obvious—it’s very contagious. Within three months, nations around the world are planning lockdown protocols and quarantine measures. Politicians seem completely out of their league and ill-equipped.
The world eventually recovers from the ordeal, but consequences of the virus linger for decades.While society pushes forward, there’s no promise that an even deadlier virus isn’t already lurking out of sight.
This isn’t about COVID-19, by the way. It’s the plot to the novel World War Z—arguably the most realistic depiction of a zombie apocalypse ever created. Released 20 years ago this week, the horror novel by Max Brooks quickly became one of the undisputed cornerstones of walking dead canon. Readers and critics devoured the book (no pun intended), but their responses often worry Brooks. Much like the reception to his first book, The Zombie Survival Guide, many fans seem to misunderstand his intentions. These projects weren’t simply intended to entertain. Max Brooks was trying to warn everyone about the looming threats we would prefer to ignore.
While the 54-year-old writer ostensibly writes books about zombies, Sasquatch, and (soon) an alien invasion, his attention to disaster details and hyperrealism has earned him a parallel career as a security and threat analyst for some of the world’s most respected geopolitical think tanks.
To celebrate World War Z’s 20th anniversary, Popular Science recently spoke with Brooks about the book’s massive impact.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Andrew Paul: Did you anticipate World War Z attaining the legacy it now has in popular culture?
Max Brooks: Oh, God no. Of course not. Especially because I’m never tapped into pop culture. I don’t know what anybody else is doing—even when it was my job writing for Saturday Night Live! I’m good at thinking about what I think about.
AP: Before World War Z, you wrote an actual preparedness handbook called The Zombie Survival Guide. What prompted you to take a hyperreal approach to such a seemingly outlandish subject?
MB: The reason I wrote [them] was because all the zombie stories, even to this day, tend to focus around small groups. To me, it’s like trying to understand World War II from watching Saving Private Ryan. I had big picture questions nobody was answering.
I think the best zombie movie ever made was Dawn of the Dead. To me, the most interesting part was when they’re holed up in the mall watching the news. That window into the wider world was so fascinating, and I wanted more.
AP: But there was a time when World War Z almost never happened, right?
MB: [The publisher] didn’t know what to do with The Zombie Survival Guide. Their marketing strategy almost killed my career before it even launched. They thought, “Well, no one is clearly that much of a loser that he’s actually spent this much time thinking about [zombies]. Clearly, he’s a cool guy making fun of those losers. And because he’s Mel Brooks’ son and he’s coming off SNL, we’re gonna position him as Mel Brooks, Jr. writing Younger Frankenstein.”
But The Zombie Survival Guide really is a disaster preparedness manual. It’s why [soldiers] took it to Afghanistan; people told me it saved their lives when they were lost in the woods. I didn’t make anything up. It’s not Hollywood stuff—it’s all about dehydration and dry socks and shelter.
But [these books were] legitimately the product of years of thinking, “If I was in a zombie world, how would I survive?”It really set me on this path of asking, “What happens when the grown-ups drop the ball?”
AP: And now it’s your job to worry professionally.
MB: I’ve now been part of three military and national security think tanks—the Atlantic Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Modern War Institute at West Point. I’m a non-resident senior fellow at all three of them, and it’s my job to study real threats.
For some reason, I was not blessed with the wall of denial. Like, I can’t just say, “That would never happen and I’m just going to go about my merry way.” I’m already terrified! And the way to reduce my anxiety is to study the threat so that it’s not nebulous.
AP: What was the most difficult part in preparing to write World War Z?
MB: You don’t know what you don’t know, so you don’t know what you’re missing. There’s always a fear of groping around in the dark; of not even knowing who to talk to. That was a real struggle, because I’m an insular guy. I’m not a social guy. Part of it was talking to experts, but part of it was reading books—and I’m fully dyslexic. So that was a real slog.
It was also about never trusting the internet. I used it once or twice, like, to research laser weaponry. I literally went to a company’s website, saw their demonstration video, and was like, “Yeah, okay. That is not a practical weapon for hunting zombies. I see how long it takes to burn through something.”
AP: Obviously humanity’s most terrifying challenge in the last 20 years was the COVID-19 pandemic. How do you view that real-world horror in the context of World War Z?
MB: COVID was scary because I knew it was coming thanks to my friends in the military and biodefense community. I was part of what was called the Blue Ribbon Biodefense Panel for germ attacks way before COVID. So I already had at my fingertips the ability to tell the difference between panic porn in the media and the real deal. I also had to study diseases enough to write about a zombie plague. But also, it came from being on the receiving end of a bioterror attack. When I worked at SNL [from 2001 to 2003], we had the anthrax letters delivered to our building [in October 2001].
So, I knew this was coming, but the question was how to warn people. I had people laughing at me. Ironically, the people who are the worst minds to reach are the smarty-smarts because they think they know everything.
AP: Were you expecting COVID to be much worse than it was?
MB: Oh, much worse. It got me into trouble, because I was prepping for, like, tanks on the street, you know? I was ready for that. I stocked my home with food that would last the longest as opposed to food that my wife would actually eat.
But the irony is, had it been worse, we might have actually done better. Studying diseases over the years—it’s sort of like the slow zombie versus the fast zombie. The fast zombie is so scary you have to react. The slow zombie gives you the false sense of security. Like, “Oh, I can take ‘em out.” COVID was the slow zombie. It allowed us to be arrogant and dismiss it: “Oh, it’s no worse than the flu.”
AP: How did you see that play out during the quarantine?
MB: It goes back to when COVID hit New York City. I had written a book called The Harlem Hellfighters, which was a true story of African American soldiers in World War I. They’re still an active unit in the National Guard, and I’m friends with their chief medical officer. Their job was to pick up the dead bodies around New York.
He said to me, “If those bodies had been stacked up on the street for everyone to see them, there would have been no argument about masking or distancing or taking the vaccine.” The hiding of it is what allowed naysayers to get way more people killed.
AP: Where did the grown-ups “drop the ball,” as you say?
MB: I think the greatest failure on the part of leadership at every level was not publicizing the dead. Maybe they were afraid of angry letters and backlash and didn’t want to cause a panic, but that’s exactly what they should have done.
A doctor in Los Angeles told me they converted hospital rooms into morgues. He said, “You don’t believe the amount of bodies. We’ve got pyramids of body bags.” And I’m like, “Well, then why is this not on the news every night?”
AP: After experiencing an actual global plague, how do you feel about World War Z’s overall accuracy?
MB: I think it was accurate for the time. I would still have the plague coming from China, 100 percent. I would love to say that was my genius futuristic prediction, but no. I based it on SARS. And this is why it’s unforgivable that it happened again. If I wrote it today, I would really highlight why it was allowed to be [downplayed]—and the reason is our greed. All of our stuff is made in China.
I would also really change the politicization of information. We’re living in a time where all facts have become tribalized. We’ve had 20 years of such dumbing down that I think it would be a central tenant of the book.
AP: Would you change how the United States responded to a zombie outbreak?
MB: I still firmly believe we are a moderate country, but I don’t know how brave we are. In order for a crime to be committed, you don’t need 100 bullies. You just need one bully and 99 cowards.
The psycho fanatics have a microphone now, which was inconceivable 20 years ago. They are hate merchants, and the erosion of our education system has created a demand that the merchants supply.
AP: So you think we would have handled COVID differently in 2006?
MB: If COVID happened 20 years earlier, we would all have gotten vaccinated, because of all the grandmas and grandpas who grew up before the polio vaccine.
AP: What else has changed?
MB: When I talk to people in power, I try to educate them about what I call “uphill influence” versus “downhill influence.” Downhill influence is when there’s a pre-existing bias that you just need to hijack and ride downhill. There’s gravity already there, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It was an established fact 20 or 30 years ago that vaccines kept you safe. So, if you were rolling out a vaccine, you could already just ride that existence acceptance downhill. The gravity was with you.
Uphill is when you have to educate before you can even start to persuade. You first have to educate people about just the world that you’re trying to explain. Vaccines have gone from downhill to uphill. The [subjects] we all had to try to stay awake through in seventh grade science class aren’t even there anymore.
I understand [MAHA supporters] want a clean planet, food, and water, and all of that will make you healthier. However, in 1491, the people who lived on this continent had all that, right? The moment the first Javier Bardem-looking Spaniard coughed on them, whole civilizations died.
Max Brooks and Mel Brooks at the Los Angeles premiere of HBO Documentary Films’ Mel Brooks: 99 Year Old Man! on January 20, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. Credit: Chad Salvador/Variety via Getty Images Chad Salvador
AP: Both of your zombie books hinge on public education, and that’s now a major aspect of your threat analysis work. Do you know why you keep returning to this theme?
MB: I think one of the reasons I’m so obsessed with education is because I was not a good student. I have such ferocious learning disabilities. I never felt instantly comfortable learning, and I’ve always had to find workarounds. My mother had to help me find workarounds so I could learn. So when I research, it takes so much time and effort and [there’s] so much insecurity. I understand how hard it is to teach something to someone who doesn’t naturally pick it up.
I’m very lucky that I come from two parents who had no formal education, but were both very smart. Most importantly, they were very curious. I became very comfortable with the idea of approaching something as an absolute beginner.
AP: It took 14 years between World War Z and your follow-up sci-fi novel, Devolution. Your next book, The First Hundred Hours: A Story of Alien Invasion, comes out in 2027. Is there a reason for such long pauses between these projects?
MB: I’m not a natural scientist. The amount I’ve had to study for this new book has been excruciating. But it’s very humbling having to talk to the experts and say things like, “Please talk to me like I’m a third grader—and not a smart third grader.”
AP: Would you end World War Z the same if it was set in 2026?
MB: I would still end it on a positive note, and I think that has to do with being an American. We don’t have the luxury of abandoning our ideals, because that’s all we are. We’re not a nation-state—the ideals in America are all that hold this mutt [of a] nation together. We all come from different places and tribes, and we all agree to live under a certain set of guidelines. It’s really critical that we fight for those guidelines.
If there is one takeaway, it’s the central reason I wrote the book in the first place. We’re all stuck on the same planet together, and that planet is not that big anymore. What affects some of us could potentially affect all of us. I think America has some amazing cultural strengths, but one of our weaknesses is our isolationism. That’s built on an outdated notion that we are somehow protected by two oceans and our geography. That’s not true anymore.
Growing up, many of us remember dutifully taking a few more bites of protein (and, of course, vegetables) to appease our moms before we were allowed to progress to the sweet, carb-heavy goodness of dessert. Lately, it seems hard to say whether our moms would be delighted or horrified to see what has happened to protein since.
Just walk into any grocery store right now, and protein is everywhere. Protein water. Protein chips. You can even request protein foam on your favorite fancy latte. Somewhere, a bodybuilder is chugging a protein shake the size of a fire extinguisher as you read this. It’s safe to say this is not your mother’s protein.
To be fair, protein deserves at least some of its mom-and-jock-endorsed reputation. It helps build muscles, keeps you feeling full, and is an essential nutrient we truly can’t live without. Older adults, especially, have been told to eat more of it as they age.
“We think of protein as beneficial,” Dr. Dudley Lamming, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead researcher of the review, told Popular Science, “but a number of studies have started to come out showing that when you look at large populations over the course of decades, people who were eating more protein over the course of these decades were having higher rates of age-related diseases.”
A pattern in the data sparked new questions
Lamming didn’t set out looking for a problem with protein. If anything, he was surprised by a contradiction he was noticing between population data and the conventional wisdom about protein—people who ate more protein over time were showing higher rates of cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
“The question is, how can this be?” he remembers wondering.
Proteinmaxxing is spiking prices for whey protein. Video: ‘Proteinmaxxing’: How this trend is spiking whey protein demands, @WKYCChannel3
But a smaller slice, about five or six randomized trials, tested protein restriction directly in people. Those human trials showed consistent short-term benefits: People lost weight, their fat mass declined, and in one study of people with type 2 diabetes, insulin sensitivity improved.
Lamming adds that these results do not appear to be associated with mere calorie reduction.
“In fact, because dietary protein is satiating, people in our studies and others actually ate more calories when they were on a protein-restricted diet,” he says. “But they lost weight, and that’s because energy expenditure increases.”
One hormone may explain what’s happening
To understand the potential connection between protein restriction and increased energy expenditure, Lamming’s review explored existing mouse studies on the topic. Findings from these studies indicate that when protein intake drops, the liver releases a hormone called FGF21. That hormone signals the brain, which in turn triggers what researchers call “beiging.”
“This is a process that essentially tells your fat tissue to stop simply storing fat, but actually to start metabolizing it and burning it for energy,” says Lamming.
In practice, protein restriction doesn’t mean cutting protein out altogether. Most people get about 16 to 17 percent of their calories from protein; in the studies Lamming and his team reviewed, that’s typically cut by around half, down to roughly seven to nine percent.
“We’re not talking about restricting to an unhealthy level where you’re protein insufficient,” he says. “What we’re really talking about, in most cases, is restricting down to the recommended daily allowance as reported by the World Health Organization, which is about 0.8 grams per kilogram [of body weight].”
You don’t necessarily have to restrict protein as a whole to achieve these benefits, either; mouse studies found that cutting back on specific amino acids, including methionine, isoleucine, and valine, may provide some of the same benefits in terms of fat mass, blood sugar control, and longevity.
This doesn’t necessarily mean everyone should be in a hurry to throw away their protein waffles. Lamming is careful to note that people who exercise routinely may be an exception.
“We actually think that dietary protein has negative metabolic health outcomes for sedentary people, like the general population, since most of the population is fairly sedentary,” he says. “But maybe people who are exercising need more protein to help build muscle, and maybe it wouldn’t have these negative metabolic outcomes.”
Although these findings are based only on mouse studies so far, they may suggest that working out might protect against the downsides of higher protein intake, Lamming says.
“Fortunately,” he says, “a lot of the people who are very pro-protein are also people who are exercising.”
Lamming says his team plans to test these ideas—specifically, whether protein supplementation genuinely benefits those who exercise, and whether restriction benefits those who don’t—more directly in both mice and people over the next few years.
“For your typical person who’s not engaged in exercise, we would suspect, based on our research, that eating more calories in the form of protein would be detrimental,” he says.
Lamming’s own suggestion for sedentary people: Consider skipping the protein-added version of a product when a regular option is available.
He was quick to add, however, that those who can safely exercise certainly should.
“No one’s going to argue that more exercise would be bad,” he says.
In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.
Apple’s first folding phone is real. The iPhone Duo opens from a 5.4-inch outer screen into a 7.6-inch inner one, and it starts at $1,999. It runs the same A20 Pro chip as the new iPhone 18 Pro inside a grade 5 titanium enclosure, and it goes on sale October 23 with preorders opening October 16 at 5 a.m. PT. And there’s a lot more to cover.
The rest of the hardware arrives together on Friday, September 18: the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max at $1,199 and $1,299, Apple Watch Series 12 from $399, Apple Watch Ultra 4 at $799, and AirPods 5 at $129. Apple also rebuilt the Health app around a new Longevity tab and added a way to schedule and pay for a $119 blood panel inside the app. Last September’s event was about thinner phones and better telephoto lenses. This one is about a hinge and a heart rate sensor.
Product
Starting price
Preorder
On sale
iPhone Duo
$1,999
Oct. 16
Oct. 23
iPhone 18 Pro
$1,199
Sept. 12
Sept. 18
iPhone 18 Pro Max
$1,299
Sept. 12
Sept. 18
Apple Watch Series 12
$399
Sept. 9
Sept. 18
Apple Watch Ultra 4
$799
Sept. 9
Sept. 18
AirPods 5
$129
Sept. 9
Sept. 18
Prices are U.S. list.
1. iPhone Duo is Apple’s first foldable, and the crease is the claim to watch
The Folio case has a built-in kickstand. Apple
The iPhone Duo unfolds to a 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR display with a nano-texture finish, folds down to a 5.4-inch outer screen, and both panels run ProMotion and peak at 3,000 nits outdoors. The big question we all have right now is how it will handle the crease at the fold. The nano-texture finish minimizes how visible the crease is, and custom adhesives relieve bend stress in the display layers. A visible or tactile crease remains common on foldables, and it will be very interesting to see how effectively Apple has been able to hide it.
The rest of the durability story is easier to check. The enclosure is grade 5 titanium and the hinge cover is 3D-printed titanium. Ceramic Shield 2 protects the outer display, Ceramic Shield covers the back, and the inner display uses a polymer cover layer with a scratch-resistant coating. The whole phone is rated IP68 to six meters for up to 30 minutes, which is a harder engineering problem on a device with a hinge than on a slab.
During the demos, we saw some pretty slick dynamic screen movements, including its ability to move content away from the fold itself to make it easier to tap. You can make windows bigger in full-screen mode, or run a pair of apps or windows next to each other at the same time. Apple clearly wanted the experience to feel intuitive right from the start.
2. The Duo’s outer screen is a camera accessory
You can get a folding case for the folding phone.
Most folding phones treat the outer display as a shrunken home screen. Apple built four camera features around it instead. Duo Preview turns the outer screen into a live viewfinder facing whoever you’re photographing, so the person being shot can see the frame they’re standing in. Kid Cue plays animations on that same screen to pull a toddler’s eyes toward the lens. Smart Take watches the frame and fires the shutter when it decides everyone is ready. Duo FaceTime lets someone standing next to you join the call on the outer panel.
The camera hardware behind those features is a 48MP Dual Fusion system: a 48MP Fusion Main that also delivers a 2x optical-quality zoom, and a 48MP Fusion Ultra Wide alongside it. A 12MP Center Stage camera handles selfies, and an under-display FaceTime camera sits behind the inner screen. The Fusion Main is the camera that records 4K at 120 fps. Battery is split across two cells, and Apple rates it at up to 31 hours of video playback on the inner display, 44 hours on the outer one, and up to 24 hours of usage on the real-world model Apple now quotes alongside video figures. Getting to 50 percent takes around 20 minutes, which requires a 60W-capable cable and a compatible USB PD adapter. Storage runs 256GB to 2TB, the colors are Night Sky and Star White, and there is no physical SIM tray anywhere in the world.
3. iPhone 18 Pro adds a variable aperture and Apple’s first 2nm chip for $100 more
Apple
Every iPhone camera until now has had a fixed-size aperture (the opening through which the camera actually lets in the light). The iPhone 18 Pro puts six laser-cut blades inside the 48MP Fusion main camera that physically change the size of the opening, with four settings and a developer API that exposes the range to third-party apps. Wide open, it can produce shallower depth of field optically instead of by algorithm, though the difference won’t likely be all that pronounced. Stopped down, it can keep more of a group sharp without portrait mode guessing where the edges are. If you want to put that to work, our iPhone photography guide covers the fundamentals that still apply.
Underneath, A20 Pro is Apple’s first 2nm phone chip. The GPU goes from six cores to seven with up to 40 percent more speed, memory bandwidth climbs 50 percent, and the Neural Engine doubles up into two 16-core engines running at once. Apple moved the memory off the top of the processor and beside it, the arrangement it uses on Mac silicon, which freed room for a vapor chamber with three times the surface area of the one in the iPhone 17 Pro. The payoff Apple quotes is up to 40 percent better sustained performance, which is what determines whether a long 4K export slows down halfway through.
Battery is the other real gain. Apple rates the Pro at up to 36 hours of video playback and the Pro Max at 45, up from 33 and 39 on the 17 Pro, though both figures apply to the eSIM-only models sold in the U.S. and eleven other markets where the SIM tray became battery. The Pro Max also gets a second rating, up to 30 hours of usage, which Apple derives from a model built on real-world data rather than looping video. Both phones start at 256GB and now climb to 2TB. Colors are black, silver, glacier, and a new burgundy. Both cost $100 more than last year’s models.
4. Apple Reference Image works like a “digital negative”
The reference image feature is a clever idea. Apple
Turn on Reference mode and the 18 Pro’s main sensor captures signed sensor data, which the phone hands to Private Cloud Compute to develop into what Apple calls an Apple Reference Image. That file lands in Photos next to the normal shot and can’t be altered. Hold the two side by side and every change between them is visible. Apple is publishing APIs in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 27 so third-party apps can display reference images too.
Photographers have had a version of this for decades in the raw file, which sits untouched while every adjustment lives somewhere else. What raw never solved is proving the original came out of a camera at all, and that’s the question that matters now that a convincing fake takes a text prompt. Camera makers have been working the same problem from the hardware side, with Leica and Nikon shipping bodies that write content credentials at capture. A reference image doesn’t stop anyone from editing a photo. It makes the editing obvious, which for anyone shooting news, sports, or documentary work is the more useful outcome anyway.
The limits matter before anyone treats this as proof of anything. Reference mode is opt-in, so it does nothing until you switch it on, and it only applies to photos captured in that mode. Apple’s footnotes say China won’t get the feature for regulatory reasons, and that EU buyers of the 18 Pro can view reference images without being able to capture them at launch. Apple also says it will adopt SynthID, the watermarking standard Google built for AI-generated imagery, in a software update later this year. Apple picking up a competitor’s standard rather than writing its own is rare enough to note.
5. Apple Watch Series 12 reads your heart rate every five seconds and turns it into a readiness score
Improved health sensors will let you be neurotic more effectively. Apple
Apple Watch Series 12 starts at $399 and its headline change is a new Health Sensing System that samples heart rate every five seconds all day and measures heart rate variability up to 24 times more often than the previous generation, roughly every five minutes. Apple splits HRV into two readings, an overnight Recovery HRV and an all-day overall figure. Apple says its study of more than 1,000 participants, run in July and August of 2026, found this to be the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable. That’s the company’s own testing rather than an independent result.
All that sampling feeds a daily readiness score from 0 to 10 that sorts your day into Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready, or Go For It, updating as the day goes on. Readiness is the metric many wearable makers have converged on, and the scores rarely agree with one another, so the question is whether Apple’s version, built on the Apple Heart and Movement Study, moves when you’d expect it to. Our Apple Watch comparison is where we’ll sort out which model to buy once we’ve worn one.
Apple
The S11 chip runs it, battery holds at up to 24 hours of everyday use, and outdoor workout time climbs 25 percent to 10 hours. Fifteen minutes on the charger now buys up to 12 hours, a 50 percent improvement, which is enough to top off while you shower and still sleep-track. Aluminum models get Ceramic Shield 2, which Apple rates 60 percent tougher than the Ion-X glass it replaces. Ceramic models return to the lineup in pearl white and night blue alongside aluminum in dark bronze, black, light gold, and space gray, and titanium in radiant gold and natural.
6. Apple Watch Ultra 4 runs 50 hours on a charge and 45 in max workout mode
I regret to inform everyone that I really like this fancy Hermes band that’s made of titanium. Apple
The $799 Apple Watch Ultra 4 is rated for up to 50 hours of normal use, and Low Power Mode stretches that to 84. In workout modes, Extended Workout runs up to 25 hours, a 25 percent gain over the Ultra 3, and Max Extended Workout runs up to 45. Apple says that’s typically enough for a 100-mile race. I will not personally be testing that one. Fifteen minutes on the charger adds up to 18 hours of general battery life.
The case is 3D-printed from 100 percent recycled titanium in natural and black, and the watch carries the same S11 chip and Health Sensing System as Series 12, so the readiness score and five-second heart rate sampling arrive here too. Satellite Emergency SOS, Find My, and Messages carry over. Band options include a new translucent silicone Ocean Band in gray, kelp, and black, and the Hermès collection adds a Grand H titanium bracelet with a built-in extension sized for a wetsuit cuff. If you’re weighing this against a Garmin or a Coros, our best fitness watches guide has the field.
7. AirPods 5 put noise cancellation in the $129 pair
Active noise canceling is now available across the entire AirPods line. Apple
Last year, active noise cancellation on AirPods 4 cost $179. AirPods 5 start at $129 with ANC included, and Apple says the new pair removes up to 50 percent more external noise than the more expensive model it replaces. Apple credits that gain to a multiport acoustic architecture borrowed from AirPods Pro 3 and to improved computational-audio algorithms, with a next-generation Adaptive EQ working on sound quality rather than isolation. These are still open-ear buds with no silicone tip, so the ceiling is lower than a sealed design, and Apple scopes its best-in-class claim specifically to the open-ear category.
Spending $149 instead of $129 gets the Wireless Charging Case, and with it a stem force sensor that responds to a swipe for volume, which Apple says is a first for an open-ear design. That configuration tops up on an Apple Watch puck, any Qi pad, or USB-C, and it’s the one Apple quotes in the release: five hours of playback with ANC on, one hour more than AirPods 4 with ANC, and 22 hours total with the case. Live Translation works across the whole AirPods lineup now, subject to compatibility and regional limits. Apple’s press release doesn’t name the chip, publish an IP rating, or give a battery figure for the $129 model. Apple’s separate specifications fill in all three: an H2 chip, IP57 dust, sweat, and water resistance, and up to four hours of ANC playback with 20 hours from the case on the cheaper pair.
8. The Health app rebuild adds Health Age, at-home movement tests, and $119 lab work
The quietest announcement of the day is the one Apple will still be talking about in five years. A redesigned Health app arriving later in 2026, in U.S. English first, adds a Longevity tab built around Health Age, a figure that compares your VO2 max, resting heart rate, sleep, and HRV against your actual age and can pull in lab values like A1c and LDL. A new Insights tab surfaces summaries across heart, sleep, readiness, fitness, and cycle tracking.
Two additions go further than anything Apple has done in health before. Movement evaluations use the iPhone camera together with an Apple Watch to assess flexibility, strength, balance, and movement mechanics at home, with real-time audio and visual coaching. Apple says the whole thing runs on device and that no video is ever recorded, stored, or shared. Separately, Labs lets you schedule and purchase a blood panel through the Health app, 50 or more biomarkers for $119, drawn at roughly 2,000 Quest Diagnostics locations in the U.S. Booking lab work from inside a phone’s health app is new territory.
Cycle Tracking now supports perimenopause and menopause logging, and it will notify users age 40 and over when cycle deviations suggest perimenopause and flag any bleeding logged after menopause. Apple’s standing warning still applies there, that Cycle Tracking should not be used as a form of birth control. Workout Buddy can run on the watch without an iPhone nearby, though it still needs Wi-Fi or cellular, Bluetooth headphones, and a paired Apple Intelligence iPhone. GymKit expanded so heart rate from AirPods Pro 3 can reach a compatible treadmill or indoor bike by way of your iPhone. The Vitals app carries its own label: for wellness purposes only, not for medical use.
9. Siri AI arrives September 14 in beta, with daily usage caps and a paid tier coming
The rebuilt Siri Apple previewed at WWDC in June ships with iOS 27 and watchOS 27 on Monday, September 14, labeled a beta and available in English first. French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish follow in October. It isn’t available on iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch in the EU at launch, and it isn’t available to anyone under 13. The feature set matches the June demo: personal context across Messages, Mail, and Photos, awareness of what’s on screen, and a Siri mode inside the Camera app.
Apple says features that run on its server-side models, including Siri AI, the new photo editing tools, and Image Playground, are subject to daily usage limits that vary by feature and system demand, and that expanded access to those features will be available for a fee in the future. Apple laid out daily limits and broader access through most iCloud+ plans back in June, so the concept isn’t new, but the fee language is more explicit than anything the company has said before. It still hasn’t put a number on either the limits or the price.
10. Where to preorder everything Apple announced
Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5 are up for preorder now and arrive Friday, September 18. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max open for preorder at 5 a.m. PT on Saturday, September 12, and ship September 18 in more than 65 countries, with 20 more following September 25. The iPhone Duo waits until October 16 for preorders and October 23 for delivery. iOS 27 and watchOS 27 land as free updates on September 14, which is when most of the software on this list reaches the hardware you already own.
Apple’s first foldable is also the only phone in the lineup with two screens doing different jobs. The 7.6-inch inner display handles everything a phone normally does, and the 5.4-inch outer one runs Duo Preview, Kid Cue, and Duo FaceTime, all of which exist because someone is standing in front of the camera. Dual batteries are rated for up to 31 hours of video on the inner screen. There’s no telephoto lens and no SIM tray anywhere in the world.
Skipping the Max costs you nothing photographically. The 6.3-inch iPhone 18 Pro gets the variable aperture, Apple Reference Image and its signed sensor data, the Pro controls layer with a live histogram, and the same A20 Pro chip and the vapor chamber with three times the surface area of last year’s. Apple rates the eSIM-only version at 36 hours of video playback, three more than the 17 Pro. Pick this one if 6.9 inches has always been more phone than your pocket wanted.
Battery is the reason to spend the extra $100. The eSIM-only Pro Max is rated at 45 hours of video playback, six more than last year, and it’s the only iPhone 18 Pro model carrying Apple’s real-world usage rating: up to 30 hours. Five minutes on a 60W charger is supposed to return about seven hours of video. Cameras and chip are identical to the 18 Pro, so this is a size and endurance decision rather than a capability one.
This is the cheaper of the two watches carrying Apple’s new Health Sensing System. The Series 12 samples heart rate every five seconds and HRV roughly every five minutes, which is what makes the readiness score possible, and the S11 chip runs the new audio features including Live Rewind and Siri Recap. Sizes are 42mm and 46mm, aluminum cases get Ceramic Shield 2, and a 15-minute charge returns up to 12 hours.
Endurance is what separates the Ultra 4 from the Series 12: 50 hours of normal use and 45 hours in Max Extended Workout mode, along with satellite messaging and a 3D-printed recycled titanium case. The Health Sensing System and readiness scoring are identical to the cheaper watch, though the Ultra adds outdoor and depth capabilities Series 12 doesn’t have, so the $400 buys endurance, ruggedness, and the ability to text without a cell tower. The new Ocean Band comes in translucent gray, kelp, and black.
Noise cancellation used to be the $179 upgrade. Now it’s standard on the $129 pair, and Apple rates it 50 percent stronger than the model it replaces. The $149 Wireless Charging Case version is the one worth the upgrade, since it adds the stem swipe for volume, charges on an Apple Watch puck or any Qi pad, and carries the quoted five hours of ANC playback and 22 hours total. These stay open-ear, so treat the noise cancellation as a commuting improvement rather than a replacement for AirPods Pro.
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is back to business after months flying in a stripped-down mode while it waited for a rescue mission that ultimately failed. On August 26, the agency switched Swift’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope and X-ray Telescope back on. A third instrument, the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), remains offline while a team works to return it to data collection in the coming weeks.
Earlier this month, Link, the Katalyst Space spacecraft that was originally set to rescue Swift conducted in-space tests and maneuvers to test its capabilities for future, and hopefully successful, missions.
“Katalyst continues to demonstrate as many of LINK’s capabilities in space as possible, to collect data to inform future spacecraft servicing technology and operations,” per a statement from NASA on September 4.
It also snapped a few photos of Swift from about 9 miles away. “We got so close, but so far,” Katalyst’s CEOGhonhee Lee told the Associated Press.
LINK fires all three of its xenon-fueled thrusters simultaneously in this image captured by the spacecraft on August 30, 2026. Image: Katalyst Space.
The shutdowns, put in place in February, were part of an effort to give Swift more time. The observatory has studied powerful explosions called gamma-ray bursts since 2004. Unlike other low-orbit satellites, Swift does not have a propulsion system that can counteract the pull of the Earth orbit. At the same time, increased solar activity has caused the Earth’s upper atmosphere to expand, increasing the atmospheric drag on Swift faster than anticipated.
That force would eventually cause the satellite to fall into the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. So, in 2025, NASA enlisted Katalyst Space to build Link to capture Swift and lift it into higher orbit. However, those plans were scrapped on August 19 after Link went into an uncontrollable spin.
With science operations now resumed, NASA believes Swift will reach an altitude 185 miles (300 kilometers) for the next one to two months. After that threshold, “operating the telescope becomes difficult, and the spacecraft’s rate of descent quickly increases,” the agency explained in a statement.
At that point, the satellite’s 22-year observation of the cosmos will finally come to an end. It’s expected to fall back to Earth sometime between October and late December. One thing is for certain, Swift served us well.
Like humans, elephants are famously social creatures. But unlike teenage humans, Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) can think before they act.
Scientists in Thailand discovered this after 16 Asian elephants at the country’s National Elephant Institute successfully participated in a detour test. In this sort of challenge, the animal has to resist an obvious but ineffective strategy (an impulse) to get a treat and follow an effective but indirect alternative—an ability called inhibitory control.
“Although we are beginning to understand how intelligent elephants are, we still know very little about their capacity for inhibitory control,” Sydney Hope, a postdoctoral researcher at Hunter College in New York, tells Popular Science. “Understanding elephant inhibitory control will help us understand how this aspect of cognition may have evolved across species, including humans. It will also help us understand how elephants may cope with environmental—including anthropogenic—changes.”
Experiment Setup. (A) An elephant enters the “over” opening to gain access to food in a familiarization trial. (B) An elephant enters the “under” opening to gain access to food (apple) in a test trial. Photos were cropped to remove extraneous background material; the left image was mirrored. Image: Photos by Sangpa Dittakul/Hope et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0.
In their new study published today in the journal PLOS One, Hope and her colleagues presented Asian elephants with a transparent box filled with fruit. The box also had small holes, so that the elephants could see and smell the goodies inside. The temptation here was to reach directly through the barrier, whose holes were presumably too small for the elephants’ trunk to fit through. The elephants could consistently resist this impulse, and instead used an opening on the side of the box, as they had previously been taught to do.
In a second version of the trial, the researchers rotated the box. Initially, the elephants gave in to the urge to reach for where the opening used to be, but then rapidly amended their behavior. This fix came slower in older elephants. That’s potentially because of cognitive decline with age, though the team says that further research is necessary on this point.
More broadly, the study shows that elephants are able to resist an impulsive, ineffective action (like reaching through a perforated, transparent barrier or continuing a no longer successful approach) in favor of e indirect effective behaviors, even if they must change a previously effective strategy. And they’re in good company—inhibitory control is important for humans’ and other animals’ decision-making and cognitive flexibility. For elephants, it might play a significant role in their famous problem-solving and socializing capabilities, according to the researchers.
“These results may also help conservation efforts,” Hope points out. “One major threat to Asian elephants is human-elephant conflict, often occurring when elephants navigate around barriers (e.g., electric fences) to enter agricultural lands. Understanding how elephants detour around barriers in controlled experiments may help with developing new techniques to mitigate conflict.”
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