Quirks and Quarks

We may share a common ancestor with chimpanzees, but somewhere along the evolutionary line to us, our brains took a major detour. New research suggests that chimpanzees can rationally weigh evidence, a trait that used to be thought as uniquely human.

PLUS:

Why penguin-eating pumas live closer together in Patagonia
Ants sacrifice the strength of individual workers for quantity
Mapping the landmass beneath Antarctica's massive ice sheet
How deep sea ocean environments affect fish body shape

An unassuming fossilized slab in the basement of a museum in Brazil turned out to be 110-million-year-old dinosaur vomit, and inside that vomit were the bones of two strange, seagull-sized pterosaurs.

PLUS:
Loss of fresh groundwater is now the leading driver of sea level rise
How doubting your self-doubt makes you doubt less
A huge black hole in a peculiar galaxy may date from the universe’s earliest moments
Shining a light on where viruses hide out in our bodies, and how they make us sick

On this week’s episode of Quirks & Quarks, it's our ever-popular and always satisfying Holiday Listener Question Show that includes:

Why did a Canadian astronaut's eyesight change when she went to space?
How is the dust inside our homes changing?
Why do some professional athletes stick out their tongues when they play?
Why are most fruits round, but bananas and pineapple are not?
What would have happened if the dino-killing asteroid never struck Earth?

We'll satisfy all these scientific curiosities and many more!

In 2000, Quirks & Quarks celebrated its 25th anniversary by travelling forward in time — to 2025 — to find out how science had changed in the years since. In this fictitious future, our present, Zargon the robot, wakes up a Bob McDonald clone from the year 2000 to speak with scientists about 25 years of science. It's a mindbending audio time-capsule with predictions that were oddly prescient, sometimes unsettling or wildly wrong.

We talk to authors of some of this year’s most fascinating science books in our annual Holiday Book Show.

INCLUDING:

Questioning the purpose of whale song — for love or echolocation?
Journeying through deep geological time to better tackle problems of the future
Biological sex is complicated but that's what helps animals like humans thrive
Mini reviews of: The Martians by David Baron, Dinner With King Tut by Sam Kean and The Mind Electric by Pria Anand.