Short Wave - Can't Match The Beat? Then You Can't Woo A Cockatoo

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Today on the show, All Things Considered co-host Mary Louise Kelly joins Regina G. Barber and Maria Godoy for our bi-weekly science roundup. They talk through some of the latest eye-catching science news, including the percussion-intensive mating life of cockatoos, what pink diamonds today tell us about the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Nuna and the latest on the Nipah outbreak in India. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, shortwavers, Regina Barber here. And me, Maria Godoy. And I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Mary Louise, thank you so much for stepping away from hosting all things considered to chat about some of the most recent science headlines that are grabbing our attention over here at Shortwave. My total pleasure to be here. Although I wish I were not here to learn about this virus outbreak.

We're going to talk about an outbreak of the NEPA virus in Kerala, India. Yeah, we also are going to be able to. to learn about mysterious pink diamonds in Australia and what they're telling us today about what happened on earth hundreds of millions of years ago. And my favorite, how cockatoos woo their lovers and set the mood by moonlighting as drummers. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Virus, pink diamonds, and romantic cockatoos. I got to go for the third one first.

Maria, tell me about the wild palm cockatoos. They're drumming out love songs. Yeah, this is as fabulous as it's. Sounds, so these palm cockatoos only live in remote parts of Northern Australia and Lohlin, New Guinea, some offshore islands. Female cockatoos only lay one egg every two years. Which means they have to be super picky about choosing a male mate. Right. And as TLC taught us all in the 90s, they don't want no scrubs.

A scrub is a guy that thinks he's flying is also known as a bus now. Which means the male palm cockatoos have to go all out to convince females to mate with them. Rob Hindstone has been studying these birds for decades. He's a conservation biologist at Australian National University. And he says the males put on a pretty incredible show. They start off by whistling and making lots of calls and noises to catch her eye. At the same time, he's erecting his massive crest and he's blushing his red cheeks, and he's bobbing and dancing on the branch, twirling, doing everything he can to get a very attention.

Okay, I have red cheeks imagining him erecting his massive crest. On his head, right? On his head, yes, on his head. Okay, so fast forward to the drumming. What happens? Well, that's the big finale, right? After he's been whistling and bobbing, the male cockatoo goes out on a limb and makes a big show of cutting off the biggest tree branch. And he does it with his bill to basically show how strong he is.

And then he whittles that branch down with his beak and starts drumming. And in a new study published by the Royal Society, researchers report that each person, bird actually has his own preferred style of drumstick. Some like them short and fat. Others prefer long and skinny. Sometimes they use seed pods, too. But they each have their own signature instrument style. Not only that, each bird has its own signature drumming style, too.

Heinzone says he can recognize which male palm cockatoo is drumming just by listening. Sort of like people say you can tell when Keith Moon is drumming on a Who album. I'm not sure the Who are losing any sleep over that. Maria, tell me what the female cockatoos are doing while all this is going on. Yeah, so that's what I wanted to know. When I first heard about all this, I really couldn't help but think of Ryan Gosling as Ken in the new Barbie movie, sort of, you know, earnestly, pathetically serenading Margo Robbie as Barbie. My nightmare.

But, you know, Rob Hindstone says, in reality, palm cockatoos are probably a lot smarter than Ken. Oh, ouch. Heinzown says this whole elaborate musical mating display is how male palm cockatoos show they have the brains and creativity to be worthy as mates. So the females watch this closely the whole time and the males do these displays over and over until they finally get the girl. Until they get the girl. So a happy ending that is delightful. Speaking of delightful, pink diamonds. This is our next topic.

Pink diamonds in Australia, Regina. Yeah, so for a long time, the Argyle diamond mine in Western Australia enjoyed a bounty of pink diamonds. Until they closed in 2020, they were the leading supplier of them. But the whole time geologists have been stumped by how the diamonds got there and win. Yeah. See, pink diamonds are beautiful, but they're very rare. Like if you scooped up 500 random diamonds from Argyll. As you do.

Yeah, exactly. Only one would be pink. And they're even more rare at other mines, which makes them pretty coveted stones. If you'll remember, Ben Affleck gave J-Lo a pink diamond the first time they got engaged in the early odds. So many engagements ago. Okay, so pink diamonds, you said they're very rare. Why? It's because they require a different kind of physics to be made.

See, you have your classic colorless diamond, and that's made from pure carbon put under extreme pressure. But one of the researchers, geologist Hugo Olirook, says pink diamonds are damaged diamonds. You can damage a diamond. You can actually take that diamond and twist it and bend it a little. And if you bend it and twist it just the right amount, it turns pink. The structures inside a diamond get compressed, and the light traveling through the pink diamond makes it that color.

And geologists have long known that diamonds are generally formed deep down. More than 150 kilometers deep down. In the Earth's crust. And they tended to form back when there were supercontinants on the surface of the Earth. Okay, hang on, because I'm trying to keep up here. Supercontinants, this is when they were all smushed together like a gazillion years ago. Yeah, exactly. So Pangaea is the most recent one.

there was another supercontinent called Nuna, and scientists think that these pink diamonds were created during the formation of the Nuna supercontinent some 1.8 billion years ago. Yeah, and Hugo and his colleagues wrote about this in the journal Nature Communications this week. And through more precise dating, they were able to figure out that when Nuna broke apart 500 million years later, the diamonds spewed out. The subcontinants banged together and stretched, which caused a volcanic eruption of diamonds. A volcano of diamonds. Yes. Amazing. Sign me up.

Okay. Now, our final story that you have brought to us, it's a little bit more of a downer, but it is an interesting detective tale. Yeah. This is an epidemiological mystery. It is in southern India. It's an outbreak of a virus called the NEPA virus. Tell me more. Right.

Well, so Kamala Thjajajan wrote about the outbreak for MPR's Goats and Soda Blog. It's the fourth outbreak in the state of Kerala since 2018. there's been two deaths. The first one was at the end of August and six cases so far. Six cases so far. And what does it do to you? Well, this is a virus that jumps from animals to people. Fruit bats are the primary host. And it's on the World Health Organization's list of viruses with pandemic potential. And the usual symptoms can include severe respiratory problems like pneumonia, even in cephalitis, which is brain swelling. And that can bring fevers, headaches, sometimes disorientation or evenly to coma. And the virus can be deadly too. There was a big outbreak in Malaysia. in the late 90s that killed over 100 people. Ugh. Okay. This sounds awful.

Do we know how this current outbreak, the one in India, began? Well, scientists know that NEPA can spread from bats to humans when bats contaminate things people eat or drink. In some past outbreaks in Bangladesh, that's been through the sap of date palm trees. And when people drank the palm sap, they got sick. Researchers are testing bats and carolive for the virus to see if that might be the case here. But they haven't figured out yet exactly how this outside. outbreak started. But what they do know is that once this particular strain of NEPA virus jumps from animals to people, it can then spread from human to human through bodily fluids or infected food.

Yeah. And several cases in this outbreak are linked to a hospital where the first person who died was getting treated. So it seems that the infected person went to the hospital and it began to spread from there. Well, which prompts a question. What are they doing to try to stop the spread to contain it? Well, health authorities created dozens of containment zones. They closed. some schools and public transit networks, and they isolated health workers. And since no other states have reported any cases, they're easing up on some of those restrictions now. And doctors and Kerala say they're optimistic. I certainly hope they are right and that this does not get any worse and spread any further.

Oh, me too. Mary Louise, thanks for letting us steal you. Come back anytime. I would love to. Thanks so much for having me. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and Noah Caldwell. It was edited by Christopher Intaliata and our managing producer Rebecca Ramirez. Our fact checker was Anil Olsa and our audio engineer was Maggie Luthor.

Beth Donovan is our senior director and Anya Grundman is our senior vice president of programming. I'm Maria Gavoy. I'm Regina Barber. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR. Adios.