Mountain gorilla menopause & your pet raccoon🦝🦍Science Unscripted

#scienceunscripted #podcast

That’s according to a new study showing how the bodies of raccoons (and their minds) are changing as they come into increasingly closer contact with human beings 🤯

Amazingly, the study was based entirely off photos taken by citizen scientists around the world 🌍 – and if you listen in, Gabe and Conor will let you know how you, too, can contribute to ongoing research🔍

Also, mountain gorillas 🦍 have joined human beings on the (shockingly short) list of animals that have significant post-menopausal lifespans are therefore part of the ‘grandmother hypothesis’ 👵

That work was done in Uganda, on wild mountain gorillas high up in the Bwimdi Impenetrable National Park, and it leads to very big questions about why mammals menstruate in the first place – and why so few have significant ‘post-reproductive’ lifespans.

Finally, ultra processed foods (or UPFs). They’re bad for you in all sorts of ways, but… what are they, exactly? And how would you recognize them at a grocery store? 🛒

All that and more on this week’s Science Unscripted with Conor and Gabe!🎙️

Questions? Comments? Random thoughts and no to tell ‘em to? 📩 [email protected]
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📄Gorilla study (open access): https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas...
📄Highly-processed foods study (paywalled): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/la...
📄Raccoon snout study (open access) https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcent...

Chapters:
00:00 – 04:10 Listener emails: Sleep tips from Science unscripted fans
04:10 – 07:30 Female mountain gorillas go through menopause and can live significant ‘post-reproductive’ lives, putting them on a very short list of other mammals (including humans) that do so
07:30 – 14:27 Ultra processed foods are associated with 12 different chronic diseases and lead to premature deaths
14:27 – 27:18 Raccoons that live close to humans are undergoing morphological changes to their snouts that suggest they’re on their way toward domestication as a housepet (like dogs or cats)
27:18 – 30:00 The citizen science app iNaturalist is what lead to this scientific study on raccoon snouts and domestication… and you can contribute, too!