Scientists have identified two new contenders for the world’s loudest bird—the bare-throated bellbird and the red-legged seriema—both of which can exceed 120 decibels, which is louder than a jackhammer, according to a study published on Tuesday in Evolution. 

These two bird species are now in the same league as the white bellbird, which shattered the record for loudest bird in 2019 after its bizarre call was first measured and reported by Jeff Podos, a professor in the department of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It’s worth taking a moment to listen to the bellbird’s otherworldly call, which the males unleash over their remote habitat in the northern Amazon rainforest.

In the new study, Podos and former UMass Amherst graduate student João C.T. Menezes report that the bare-throated bellbird and the red-legged seriema occupy the same decibel range as the white bellbird. It's tough to declare a clear winner among the three birds due to differences in measurement techniques and individual variations within each species. 

Regardless, this trio is a special class that is much louder than the fourth runner-up, the screaming piha, which tops out around 116 decibels. In addition to identifying the ear-splitting avians, the team captured unprecedented measurements of vocal amplitude in 123 bird species, an effort that represents “a step forward in uncovering what enables birds to produce the loudest acoustic signals of all terrestrial fauna,” according to the study. 

“We were interested in a pretty basic question that's still out there because we know so little about amplitude,” said Menezes in a call with 404 Media. “We were basically interested in finding out why some species sing louder than others. For that, the more diverse the sample, the better.” 

“We wanted to know the softest species we could get, and the loudest species we could get, and everything in between,” he continued. “The more variation, the better for answering this type of question. Of course, along the way, we found the two new contenders for loudest species, and that's super cool. But every species in the sample has their value for us to answer the actual question.”

Given the remarkable diversity of avian calls, it is no surprise that birdsong is one of the most well-researched topics in behavioral ecology. But unlike call features like tempo or frequency, vocal amplitude has been notoriously difficult to measure in the wild because it is dependent on distance to the animal, which can be tough to figure out in remote field environments, such as the Amazon rainforest. 

Menezes and Podos were able to overcome this longstanding hurdle with the same laser rangefinders used by golfers to gauge the distance to holes.

“The laser rangefinders help us determine the distance between the recorder and the bird, which is important in our report as it allows us to correct our recordings of amplitude for distance,” Podos told 404 Media in an email. “But the actual recordings and thus readings of amplitude are made with another kind of device, a Sound Level Meter (normally used in industrial acoustics, but that can also serve in working with animals!).”

Using this new approach, the researchers were able to record the first clear amplitude measurements for dozens of species, from hummingbirds at the low end of the decibel range to the three loudest belters.  

“I've been a bird watcher since childhood, so it was just adding another layer to bird-watching.” Menezes said. “And since amplitude is known for so few species, we could basically go anywhere and we could have like a new amplitude for a new species, even from my window here in São Paulo, or Jeff's backyard” in Massachusetts. 

When they began their field research, Menezes and Podos predicted that the loudest birds in their measurements would have bigger bodies and wider beak openings, which proved true in the most deafening birds. But they were surprised to discover that there was no clear link between extreme loudness and ecological factors, like habitat or sexual behavior. 

The two bellbird species live in dense forest and are highly polygamous, so only the male bellbirds make loud calls to attract females. In contrast, the red-legged seriema lives in open habitats, including pastures, and forms long-term monogamous pair bonds.  

“If you look at the top three birds, we can see perfect counterexamples for each of those factors,” Menezes said. “That was definitely a surprise—those parallel routes to extreme loudness.” 

Menezes plans to keep delving into the particular ecological factors that lead to high vocal amplitudes in his future research. While he thinks that other birds may be capable of calls over 120 decibels, it would be unexpected to find even louder birds, as that volume seems to be an upper limit across terrestrial animals.

“There does seem to be a ceiling with terrestrial animals about the 120 to 125 [decibel] mark,” Menezes said. “Elephants can't go beyond that. There are really loud bats that use vocalization for echolocation, and they also don't go beyond that.”

“Based on that, my hunch is that we're not going to find a much louder bird, but I do think we'll find others that fall in that same category,” he concluded.

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that sailed alien seas, beat the heat, went retro, and got caught in the food web.

First, scientists make the case that Saturn’s moon Enceladus could resolve one of humanity’s greatest questions—are we alone in the universe?—if only we would just send a spacecraft there already. Then: an amoeba in hot water, a backwards-ass planet, and the prandial ouroboros we call life on Earth.

As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files. 

Aliens in the moon mist

Helmbrecht, Vanessa et al. “Enceladus-like geochemistry fuels methanogenesis under extreme CO2 limitation.” Science Advances.

Postberg, Frank, Zou, Zenghui et al. “Cassini CDA observes compositional segregation of Enceladus’ ice grains from slow freezing and fragmentation of oceanic spray.” Science Advances.

In a double-whammy pair of studies, scientists have offered more proof that Enceladus—the tiny moon of Saturn—might host alien life, and that it would be relatively easy to find out for sure.

Enceladus is only 300 miles in diameter, but it contains marine multitudes. Underneath its outer ice shell, the moon hosts a subsurface ocean and hydrothermal vents on its seafloor, which are hotspots of life here on Earth. 

What’s more, Enceladus squirts out watery plumes from its ocean through geysers on the surface, which can be sampled by passing probes. Indeed, the Cassini spacecraft—which orbited Saturn from 2006 to 2017—ran through this space sprinkler several times, providing our first taste of an extraterrestrial sea. However, that mission was not equipped to detect signs of life, known as biosignatures.

In the first of two new studies, researchers created a simulated version of Enceladus’s “soda ocean” (meaning it is alkaline and carbonate-rich). The team then dropped the heat-loving microbe Methanothermococcus okinawensis to live in this earthly ersatz Enceladus. This species was selected because it lives on deep-sea hydrothermal vents on Earth.

It turned out that M. okinawensis fared even better in this habitat than expected, a discovery that potentially widens “the habitability window of Enceladus’ subsurface soda ocean,” said researchers led by Vanessa Helmbrecht of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

In the other study, a team revisited Cassini’s observations of ice grains sprayed out into space by Enceladus. They discovered that the ocean droplets freeze slowly in space, causing organic molecules to separate out into concentrations of similar compounds. If these droplets contain biosignatures, they may be conveniently pre-sorted for any instrument that captures them.

“In the plume grains, each separated compound can then be found at strongly elevated concentrations in a relatively small fraction of ice grains,” said researchers co-led by Frank Postberg and Zenghui Zou of Freie Universität Berlin. “This is good news for future plume sampling missions investigating Enceladus’ promising habitability provided that they can sample and analyze ice grains individually.” 

For years, mission concepts to Enceladus have been floated but never formally greenlit, including NASA’s Enceladus Life Finder or the European Space Agency’s L4 mission. Hopefully, something gets off the drawing board and into space eventually, because Enceladus is low-hanging fruit, astrobiologically speaking. 

In other news…

Some (amoebas) like it hot

Rappaport, H. Beryl et al. “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” Cell.

Speaking of weird heat-loving microbes, meet Incendiamoeba cascadensis, a newly discovered amoeba that has shattered the heat tolerance record for eukaryotic life. 

Scientists found this novel species simmering in water temperatures exceeding 64°C (147°F) inside Hot Springs Creek at Lassen Volcanic National Park in California (for reference, the average hot tub is around 100°F). While simple “procaryotic” organisms can survive much hotter water—the microbe Methanopyrus kandleri tops out at a balmy 252°F—the upper thermal limit for more complex “eukaryotic” lifeforms was previously thought to be 60°C (140°F). 

“Incendiamoeba cascadensis proliferates at temperatures beyond what was thought possible for any eukaryote,” said researchers led by Beryl Rappaport of Syracuse University. “This discovery raises questions about the true maximum temperature a eukaryotic cell can endure.”

If a human were exposed to these water temperatures, they would suffer third-degree burns in seconds—so let the amoebas have their win and leave the deadly hot springs to them.

Go Your Own Way (exoplanet cover)

Carteret, Yann et al. “Upside down: GJ 3090 b the first retrograde exoplanet around an M dwarf detected with NIRPS.” Astronomy & Astrophysics.

If you’ve been feeling like the vibes are off, it’s probably because the planet GJ 3090 b is in retrograde—permanently. This world, which is about 4.5 times as massive as Earth, is the “first planet on a retrograde orbit discovered around an M dwarf,” a type of small star more commonly known as a red dwarf, according to a new study.

In our solar system, the concept of a planet being “in retrograde” refers to the optical illusion of planets appearing to move backwards in their orbits from our perspective on Earth. But GJ 3090 b is actually orbiting in the opposite direction of the rotation of the star, which is located 60 light years away. 

Exoplanets with similar retrograde orbits have been observed before, but GJ 3090 b is distinct because there is no massive object (a star or planet) in the system that seems to have set it into reverse. Most retrograde orbits are caused by gravitational disruptions from such colossal companions, but this exoplanet may have just been born this way—meaning that it formed from a disk of material that was out-of-whack from the jump.

“Whereas highly misaligned orbits are commonly attributed to gravitational interactions with a massive companion, the architecture of the GJ 3090 system instead favors a primordial misalignment of the protoplanetary disk,” said researchers led by Yann Carteret of the University of Geneva.

 The discovery is a reminder that star systems take on a wild variety of configurations shaped by countless interactions and factors. Contrary to the proverb, there is something new under every sun.

Eat, or be eaten, or all of the above

Allf, Bradley C. et al.  “Who Eats Whom? A global food web derived from citizen science.” PLOS Biology.

From the simplest microbe to the mighty blue whale, all life on Earth has one thing in common—we gotta eat. But given the dazzling complexity of food webs around the world, it can be tough to track what species end up in what bellies (or belly-equivalent) out in the wild. 

That’s a problem that scientists are now inviting the public to help solve with the new online database: Who Eats Whom? In a partnership with the popular platform iNaturalist, the tool has catalogued some 14,000 observations of food-web interactions captured by nearly 2,000 observers from more than 100 countries, according to a new study about its progress.

“Who Eats Whom is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to create a global food web derived specifically from verifiable citizen science photographs,” said researchers led by Bradley C. Allf of Colorado State University. “Beyond our scientific goals, we are designing the project as a tool for education and public engagement in science.”

You can search for specific animals in the database (for example, searching for the red fox reveals a brave Australian python-eater, as well as this excruciating picture of the last moments of an Eastern chipmunk in Ontario with the caption: “not a great day”). I was also delighted to learn that coyotes, in addition to chasing down prey, apparently go on persimmon binges that leave behind seed-filled scat. 

To get a sense of the bigger picture, you can check out this interactive global food web of species. We are, after all, what we eat—and what we eat eats, and so on forever.

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

Scientists have discovered that the removal of Earth's magnetic field influences the lifespans of fruit flies in complex ways, a finding that sheds light on the aging process as well as the risks of future human space travel, according to a study published in the journal Aging on Wednesday. 

All life on Earth has evolved under the planet’s geomagnetic field, a vast bubble lined with electrical currents that is generated in the core and extends out into space. This protective magnetic shield is a major factor in Earth’s habitability, as it wards off harmful radiation from space, allowing life to flourish on the surface. 

Many migratory animals—including fish, birds, and insects—can clearly sense Earth’s magnetism and use it for navigation. But much less is known about how the field interacts with living cells and their components, such as mitochondria, the famous “powerhouses” that generate most of the energy that fuels life.

To better understand this mystery, scientists observed two populations of fruit flies in a “hypomagnetic” shield system, a cylindrical benchtop apparatus that essentially blocks the influence of Earth’s magnetic field. One group contained “wild-type” healthy flies, while the other was made up of “mutant” flies carrying a gene defect called Pink1, which is associated with early-onset Parkinson’s disease in humans and specifically involves mitochondrial dysfunction.

The removal of the magnetic field’s effect extended the lifespan of the Pink1 group by 20 percent but reduced their mobility, whereas the healthy flies experienced just the opposite—reduced lifespan, but improved mobility. 

“We had an idea that there would be a difference just based on the fact that we know that every organism has developed under a magnetic field,” said Jacob Reed, a PhD student in bioscience at the University of Nottingham who co-led the study, in a call with 404 Media. “But we didn't really plan that there would be this difference in the experiment.”

“I think we're the first to show that there's an effect in an organism that has a disease phenotype,” added co-lead Lisa Chakrabarti, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Nottingham, in the same call. “We're really drilling into what the differences are between having that applied pressure or relieving it.”  

While there is a lot of research into the effects of hypermagnetic fields on life—meaning magnetic fields that are stronger than Earth’s—the “biological consequences of hypomagnetic fields remain poorly understood,” according to the new study.

To fill in this research gap, Reed developed an initial pilot study of diseased and healthy flies using the magnetic shielding apparatus, and was surprised to find that the Pink1 population of flies seemed to live longer.

“I was really confused at first,” Reed recalled. “I was thinking: ‘Why are these Parkinson's flies living longer than some of the wild-type flies?’ I had to double-check all of my data. From that, we realized that was what's happening and developed the experiment.”

The team observed dozens of diseased and healthy flies living in these hypomagnetic spaces over the course of their lives, which normally last about two months. In particular, they monitored shifts in the energy metabolisms and chemical outputs of mitochondria using quantum diamond sensors. 

The experiment showed that the absence of Earth’s magnetic field changes how cells age and produce energy, producing clear and measurable effects on longevity. The researchers also saw shifts in locomotion by tracking how far flies climbed upward against gravity in their containers. However, it will take more research to unravel the complex mechanisms that underlie these observable changes.

“This is the early stage, where we can say there is a very real effect,” Chakrabarti said. “As soon as you take off the geomagnetic field, there are physiological effects that we can measure in the mitochondria, in the cellular physiology, and in big things like lifespan and climbing as well. It's a definite interaction between Earth's magnetic field and physiology.” 

The researchers plan to build on their work by studying different organisms in hypomagnetic fields to see if they experience similar mitochondrial and behavioral changes. This work could eventually inspire therapeutic treatments for humans with various conditions, and could also help prepare astronauts for deep space missions beyond Earth’s magnetic field. It is already well-known that astronauts are exposed to harmful radiation outside of the magnetic field, but little is known about the specific impact of the absence of the field itself on human physiology.

“The link with interplanetary space travel is absolutely key,” said Chakrabarti. “There could be subtle differences that we don't really notice while we're on Earth. Unless we know what those parameters are to measure, we're going to be sending astronauts up there that are potentially going to really suffer over the short, or even or the longer, term.”

“All of this is out there at the moment, but what we're saying is that we definitely see a really reproducible and startling effect of removing the geomagnetic field,” she concluded.

Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that ate well, moved mountains, grew brains, and saved medieval texts.

First, scientists set out to understand why Venus doesn’t have a moon and discover even more unnerving stuff about this delightfully nightmarish planet. Then: a hidden range of primordial supermountains, a literal brain-space, and evidence of Tudor-era subterfuge.

As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files. 

I’m so hungry I could eat my own moon

Kane, Stephen R. et al. “Tidal Demise: The Evolution and Fate of a Hypothetical Venus Moon.” The Astrophysical Journal.

Venus is a bizarro world with a year that is shorter than its day, a surface shaped by diabolical heat and pressure, and skies soaked in sulfuric acid. Frankly, this planet is metal enough as it is, but scientists have now suggested that Venus is also a moon-eater.  

For years, researchers have pondered why Venus lacks a moon, in contrast to all other planets except Mercury. One possibility is that Venus was once orbited by a primordial satellite that it ultimately tore apart and swallowed, according to a new study. And honestly, that sounds like something Venus would do. It’s in character.

To reach this conclusion, scientists ran simulations of Venusian moons ranging from half to ten times as massive as Earth’s Moon. Because Venus has a very slow rotation rate equal to 243 Earth days, most of the modeled satellites were drawn inward, ultimately crashing into Venus. Earth’s fast rotation rate, in contrast, has pushed the Moon to recede farther from our world, at a rate of about 1.5 inches each year.

“The absence of a Venusian satellite can be understood as a natural consequence of tidal evolution alone,” said researchers led by Stephen Kane of the University of California, Riverside. The researchers added that the obliteration of a past moon around Venus may offer one reason why the planet became so aggressively inhospitable, while Earth evolved into a comfy haven for life. 

“The fate of a Venus moon carries direct implications for early Venus habitability,” the team said. “The eventual destruction of the moon…would deliver a massive energy pulse to the Venusian surface and atmosphere, with potential implications for the loss of surface water and the onset of a runaway greenhouse state.”

It’s possible that NASA’s DAVINCI orbiter, which is due for launch to Venus in 2029, could search for the chemical signatures of an ancient obliterated moon, according to the study. In the meantime, my takeaway is that Majora’s Mask is based on a true Venusian story. 

In other news…

If it’s not Gondwana, I don’t wanna

Chen, Bei and Campbell, Ian H. “Do Himalayan-style mountains lie under the Antarctic ice: Implication for the Gondwana Supermountains, the rise of oxygen and the Cambrian explosion?” Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Shout out to my fellow Gondwana-heads! Just a week after a study came out minting Gondwana as a bonafide “supercontinent,” another work has probedthe remnants of Himalaya-scale “Gondwana supermountains” buried deep under Antarctica’s ice sheet.

Both studies argue that the geological upheaval associated with Gondwana’s formation directly led to the Cambrian “explosion” of complex life that began about 538 million years ago. But the new study focuses on the role of Gondwana’s colossal mountain range and the massive submarine “fan” system underneath it.

“It is unlikely to be a coincidence that Earth’s most dramatic period of evolution correlates with the planet’s most important period of mountain building: the formation and erosion of the Gondwana Supermountains,” said authors Bei Chen and Ian H. Campbell of the Australian National University. 

By studying 1,700 zircons—hardy minerals that can be used to reconstruct continental timelines—the researchers found a disproportionate spike in Antarctic zircons dating from 650 and 450 million years ago, consistent with the formation of Gondwana. The supermountains and their underlying fan systems provided the necessary nutrients for the meteoric rise of animals and other complex life in the Cambrian period, according to the study.

“Analyses of detrital zircons from Antarctica show that its tectonics were dominated by Himalayan-style mountains, the roots of which now underlie the ice sheet,” the team concluded. 

Gondwana broke apart during the age of dinosaurs, but as these studies show, its body parts live on, scattered under ice and dispersed across new continents. This has been Gondwana News.

Occupy Mouse Brain

Konstantin Kaganovsky, Kevin W. Kelley, Tilo Gschwind, Paul M. Harary et al. 

“Developmental xenocortication using human-derived organoids in mice.” Nature.

It is notoriously challenging to study human brain tissue in vivo on both practical and ethical levels. It’s not as if you can just cut open someone’s noggin and rummage around in there like you’re Victor Frankenstein.  

But scientists have now discovered a promising workaround by transplanting human brain “organoids”—lab-grown structures based on human stem cells—into the heads of mice that have been engineered to have open space in their brains instead of a cortex. Scientists who developed this new experimental technique of “xenocortication” report that the human organoids grew to occupy the cavities in the rodents’ heads, and showed analogous development to real brain tissues. 

The xenocortical (abbreviated XCX, no relation to Charli) mice seemed to behave more or less normally, despite having millions of human-derived neurons in their heads.

“We envision that xenocortication will be useful for obtaining circuit- and behaviour-level readouts using human neurons to study neurodevelopment, model disease and develop therapeutics,” said researchers co-led by Konstantin Kaganovsky, Kevin W. Kelley, Tilo Gschwind, and Paul M. Harary of Stanford University.

“Generating XCX mice with more mature and canonical cortical organization will require early and proactive engagement to establish ethical guidance,” the team emphasized.

Talk about living rent-free in someone else’s head. 

Hard to Gage his motivation

Walter, Katie and Wade, James. “Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A missing fragment from Takamiya MS 20 in the holdings of The Keep.” Notes and Queries.

King Henry VIII, the English monarch notorious for disposing of wives and Catholic hegemony, relied on the courtier Sir John Gage to dissolve and plunder monasteries during his consequential reign. 

But the discovery of long-lost pages that were once possessed by Gage reveals that this royal ally may have saved an outlawed manuscript from destruction, hinting at a dangerous act of subterfuge. 

 Katie Walter of the University of Sussex and James Wade of Girton College, Cambridge identified a six-page fragment of a popular medieval text that had been misplaced within Gage’s belongings. The fragment came from Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, which was popular in the 15th century, but had fallen out of favor by Henry VIII’s reign. It seems that Gage nonetheless saved a copy, despite orders to destroy such texts.

“One consequence of this puzzle is that the fragment, hereafter referred to as The Keep fragment, has gone undescribed,” said Walter and Wade in their new study. “John Gage possibly acquired the book at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries” and it later became “hidden in plain sight” in his belongings.

And Gage would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling historians!

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

A digital fly brain has been trading bitcoin, parallel parking, exploring bisexuality, cutting doner kebab, playing games—including Minecraft, Doom, and Beat Saber—and generally lighting up social media timelines since it was released earlier this month.

The simulated brain, known as a connectome, is a complete map of more than 166,000 neurons that make up the nervous system of an adult male Drosophila fruit fly. Developed by HHMI Janelia Research Campus in partnership with Google Research, the connectome (dubbed MaleCNS v1.0) was unveiled earlier this month, following the release of the first adult female fruit fly connectome in 2024.

“We present the first finished connectome of an entire male Drosophila central nervous system, encompassing the central brain, optic lobes (analogous to mammalian retina) and the ventral nerve cord (analogous to the spinal cord),” the team announced in a press release on September 3. “Together with existing female connectomes, this resource enables the first comprehensive, synaptic-resolution comparison across sexes of an adult animal with complex anatomy and behaviors.”

The humble fruit fly is a powerhouse species in science for the same reason they might plague your kitchen—they reproduce quickly and are highly adaptable to different environments, distinguishing them as cheap and versatile model organisms. By virtually recreating their brains, researchers aim to make breakthroughs in neuroscience, pharmacology, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and many other fields.

In the meantime, however, MaleCNS v1.0 has been enthusiastically received by online modders who have dropped the brain into a wide range of virtual environments and tasked it with different activities. Evan Sinclair Smith, a graduate student in computer science at Georgia Tech, pioneered the viral trend after he programmed the fly brain to play Minecraft. Within a day of releasing the results on September 4, the Minecraft fly had accumulated millions of views.

“It's just been amazing how big this has gotten, and how many other people are just taking this idea and just making so many different creative projects,” Smith told 404 Media in a call. “That's been just really cool to see.”

In addition to playing video games, the fly has been trained to trade bitcoin (becoming “stonkfly”), write LinkedIn posts, and to retire to a virtual “fruit fly heaven.” Nico Christie, an entrepreneur and AI researcher, programmed the fly to be attracted to other males (becoming “bi fly”).

 In an email, Christie told 404 Media that he came across the trend on X and found it funny, but hoped to make “the science behind it more rigorous.”

In addition to fueling a wave of giddy online experimentation, the connectome has sparked moral and ethical debates on Reddit and other forums. However, it’s worth emphasizing that MaleCNS v1.0 is only a digital map of the brain that is not capable of sentience or conscious perception in any tangible biological sense. The connectome recreates a fly’s neural wirings and overall structure, but it does not contain any of the complex biochemical makeup of the real organism upon which it is based. 

Though the connectome has inspired a literal brain wave of online content, it is intended to be a resource for the scientific community. The female fruit fly brain that was released in 2024, known as FlyWire, has already been used in a host of studies about motor control, sensory systems, fly sociability, and more, according to the neuroscience publication The Transmitter. The completion of both the male and female fruit fly connectomes has also allowed researchers to assess differences in the neural wirings of this sexually dimorphic species.

 Smith, who made the Minecraft fly, hopes that these models will ultimately pave the way toward connectomes of the full human brain within his lifetime. Since the human brain contains 86 billion neurons, orders of magnitude more than the fruit fly brain, it would take an enormous amount of effort to create a digital copy with the same resolution as MaleCNS v1.0 or FlyWire. 

But Smith speculates that such an achievement could unlock new approaches to brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, or enable human intelligence to navigate space missions without having to haul along our cumbersome meatbag bodies. 

“I think it has so many implications for understanding ourselves,” Smith said.