What's in a name?
Apparently, quite a lot if you are a dolphin. Published in the latestProceedings of the Royal Society B, a study has shown that bottle-nosed dolphins are able to identify themselves and each other by "signature whistles".
The research was done at the University of St. Andrews Sea Mammal Research Unit (collecting data in the more dolphin-friendly waters of Florida), and is the first evidence for animals other than humans using identifying names for each other.
The ability to call each other by name probably plays a key role in dolphin social structure. The ocean is a massive place and a dolphin whistle can travel up to 20km through the water. This allows family members and close friends to find each other across great distance and locate each other.
Captive dolphins (both bottle-nosed and other species) have also been seen to create new sounds to apply to objects that they have been recently introduced to, and to identify keepers.
It is the size that counts
In research published in Mammalian Biology , it has been shown that Female Hottentot Golden Moles select mates with larger penises, whereas the appearance of the female genitalia seems to have no impact on the males' choice of mates.
The night-before pill
A new technique to assemble biomimetic enzyme nanocomplexes has been used to create complexes of enzymes that have been used to reduce blood alcohol levels and liver damage in mice that have been given high levels of alcohol.
The technique allows enzymes to be positioned in such away to increase their activity in living systems, by mimicking the way that they are organised within living cells.
Mice treated with aspecially designed nanocomplex containing alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes as they were given alcohol showed a significantly greater reduction in blood alcohol content after three hours when compared to thier untreated counterparts.
However this is not yet any sort of practical anti-hangover treatment as the breakdown of alcohol in the body produces a toxic intermediate called acetaldehyde. There is not yet an enzyme nanocomplex produced to degrade this, so superefficient alcohol breakdown will just result in a different kind of poisoning.
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