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For the first time, scientists have documented whales assisting each other during birth, a behavior previously only observed in primates. A team from Project Ceti, an international effort to understand whale communication, captured the extraordinary footage off the coast of Dominica in the Caribbean on July 8, 2023.The team observed a pod of 11 whales, including a 19-year-old female named Rounder, who was about to give birth to her second calf. Over nearly five and a half hours, the scientists documented the group's behavior, filming them with drones and recording sounds underwater. This exceptional rarity in the history of science was published in the journals Scientific Reports and Science.Out of 93 species of cetaceans, only nine have been observed giving birth in the wild. What's even rarer is that unrelated whales were helping the mother. The birth lasted 34 minutes, during which other adult females dived under Rounder's dorsal fin, often on their backs with their heads facing her genital slit.Immediately after birth, the pod's behavior changed rapidly, with all adults touching and squeezing the newborn's body with their heads, pushing it around underwater and on their bodies above the surface. This behavior is believed to help the newborn calf, which sinks after birth, prevent drowning and facilitate its first breaths.The scientists also recorded significant changes in vocalization during the birth, suggesting that the group was coordinating to support the birth or protect the newborn. Sperm whales have one of the longest pregnancies in the animal kingdom, with a gestation period of up to 16 months, and calves rely on their mother's milk for at least two years.The newborn was spotted again on July 25, 2024, with other young members of the pod, indicating that it had survived its first year, a good sign of reaching adulthood.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has come under fire for its new guidelines on transgender athletes, which have been criticized by over 100 human rights, sports, and scientific groups. The guidelines, announced on Friday, mandate genetic sex tests for all athletes competing in women's categories and impose blanket bans on people who identify as transgender, intersex, or with sex differences.The new policy has been deemed 'a blunt and discriminatory response that is not supported by science and violates international human rights law.' Professor Paula Gerber, an international human rights lawyer at Monash University, stated that 'mandatory genetic sex testing and rigid biological criteria as a condition for participation in the women's category violates fundamental and universal human rights … including the right to equality, non-discrimination, dignity, privacy, and bodily autonomy.'The guidelines have also been criticized for their potential impact on intersex athletes and women of color, who may be disproportionately targeted due to their appearance. Dr. Ada Cheung, a professor of endocrinology at the University of Melbourne, noted that 'the best available data … shows that transgender women receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy are not meaningfully different from cisgender women in key performance-related measures.'The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) has expressed support for the new guidelines, with president Ian Chesterman stating that they provide 'clarity for elite female athletes who compete at the highest level and demonstrates a commitment to fairness, safety and integrity in Olympic competition.' However, Nikki Dryden, a human rights lawyer and former Olympic swimmer, argued that the guidelines 'will be unlawful in Australia' and 'create a culture where someone like a coach, an official, or even another parent, feels entitled to question whether your daughter 'looks female enough' to belong.'

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced a new eligibility policy for female category events at the Olympics, excluding transgender women athletes from competing in women's sports. This decision aligns with US President Donald Trump's executive order on sports, which aims to keep biological males out of women's sports.The IOC's policy, set to take effect at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, requires a mandatory gene test once in an athlete's career to determine eligibility. The test screens for the SRY gene, typically found on the Y chromosome, which initiates male sex development.According to the IOC, biological males have a performance advantage of 10-12% in most running and swimming events, and at least 20% in most throwing and jumping events. This advantage can be greater than 100% in explosive power events, such as punching sports.The policy change has been met with criticism from human rights experts and activist groups, who argue that the mandatory gender screening is invasive and discriminatory. The IOC has stated that the policy aims to protect "fairness, safety, and integrity in the female category."Caster Semenya, a two-time Olympic champion runner from South Africa, has been a prominent figure in the debate over female eligibility. The IOC's policy document details its research on the physical advantages retained by biological males, which it believes are retained even after transitioning.The US Olympic body has updated its guidance to national sports bodies, citing an obligation to comply with the White House's executive order. President Trump signed the order in February 2023, pledging to deny visas to athletes attempting to compete at the LA Olympics if they do not comply with the new rules.

A recent study conducted by researchers at Adelaide University has revealed that sperm in microgravity environments become disoriented and struggle to navigate through a simulated female reproductive tract. This finding has significant implications for the future of human reproduction in space, particularly as plans for lunar and Mars settlements gain momentum. The researchers used a machine to mimic microgravity, similar to the conditions experienced by astronauts on the International Space Station. They found that sperm tumble around like untethered astronauts, unable to determine their direction. This disorientation resulted in a 40% reduction in the number of microgravity-exposed human sperm that successfully navigated the maze compared to the control group. The study, published in the journal Communications Biology, highlights the challenges of reproduction in space. Dr. Nicole McPherson, the lead researcher, noted that understanding the effects of microgravity on sperm navigation is crucial for the success of future space missions. The study also found that adding progesterone helped overcome the sperm's disorientation, suggesting a potential solution for improving fertility in space. The research has broader implications for both space exploration and earthly reproductive science. As NASA's Artemis mission and private companies like SpaceX plan for human habitats on the moon and Mars, understanding the effects of microgravity on reproduction becomes increasingly important. The study's findings also contribute to the ongoing discussion about the feasibility of human settlements on Mars and the need for sustainable reproductive technologies. The Adelaide researchers collaborated with the university's Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources to conduct the study. Their work builds on a history of research into reproduction in space, including NASA's 2018 mission to study the effects of weightlessness on human sperm. As space exploration advances, the need for further research into reproductive health in space becomes increasingly urgent.

The decision has garnered mixed reactions. The charity Sex Matters has welcomed the guidelines, calling them a necessary measure to secure a safe and fair female category. However, others, such as Dsdfamilies, have expressed concern that the proposed processes may cause harm to transgender and DSD athletes.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has made a significant U-turn on its policy regarding transgender athletes, effectively banning them from competing in female events at the Olympics. This decision marks a major shift from their previous stance, which allowed transgender women to compete with certain conditions.In 2020, the IOC permitted Laurel Hubbard, a transgender weightlifter, to compete at the Tokyo Olympics, issuing a framework that stated transgender women “should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage” over biological women. However, in a recent policy document, the IOC has stated that the female category must be protected for fairness and safety reasons, and will use SRY screening – a sex test using saliva or a cheek-swab – to determine biological sex.This new policy means that transgender women and athletes with differences in sex development (DSD), who were reported as female at birth but have internal testes and have undergone male puberty, are now banned from the female category at all future Olympics. The decision has caused anger among some groups and joy among others.According to Kirsty Coventry, the newly elected IOC president, this policy change was a priority for her, and she had set up a working group to examine the issue shortly after taking office. Coventry emphasized that the decision was based on scientific consensus and the need to protect the female category.The IOC's decision is based on scientific research showing that males have a performance advantage in sports, even after hormone treatment. The policy document states that the advantage is 10-12% in most running and swimming events, and greater than 100% in events that involve explosive power. This has led to sports such as athletics, swimming, and boxing introducing policies to protect the female category.While this decision applies only to elite sport, there could still be future challenges at the Court of Arbitration for Sport if transgender or DSD athletes decide to appeal. Nevertheless, the IOC's U-turn marks a seismic shift in the ongoing debate about transgender athletes and their participation in sports.

A garden log pile is a surprisingly vibrant ecosystem, teeming with life. The pile, composed of various tree species like apple, walnut, and oak, attracts a diverse range of insects and fungi. The diversity of logs supports a greater variety of life, with different species inhabiting different parts of the pile.The log pile is home to frogs, wrens, and other animals, and even supports the growth of fungi like jelly ear. The arrangement of the wood also plays a crucial role in attracting different species, with buried wood attracting stag beetles and wood at height attracting wasp beetles.The author of the article, Kate Bradbury, carefully dismantles the log pile to make room for a hedgehog box, uncovering a variety of creatures like beetles, springtails, and centipedes in the process. The log pile is then rebuilt, with softer logs on the soil and drier ones around the box, creating a new home for a female hedgehog and other animals.

A second set of mountain gorilla twins has been born in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), marking what conservationists are calling an extraordinary event for these endangered primates.Just two months after twin mountain gorillas were discovered by rangers in the Virunga massif in eastern DRC, another rare twin birth has been found by park wardens. This time, an infant male and female have been spotted in the Baraka family, a troop of 19 mountain gorillas that roam the region's high-altitude rainforests.Park rangers have placed the young primates under additional monitoring to help them through the critical initial months, as the infants face significant challenges to becoming fully grown adults. Twins are extremely rare in mountain gorillas, accounting for less than 1% of births, and place extra demands on the mother.The gorilla subspecies, found in only two isolated pockets of the Virunga massif and the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in southwest Uganda, has high rates of infant mortality, with about a quarter falling victim to disease, trauma or infanticide.In January, Virunga National Park announced that a female mountain gorilla called Mafuko had given birth to twins. The infant males are now 11 weeks old and said to be thriving, with other gorillas in the troop taking extra care of the mother to support her caregiving, according to rangers. Park authorities believe that twin births are more likely when females are in particularly good physical condition.Jacques Katutu, the head of gorilla monitoring at Virunga, said: "Two instances of twin births within three months is an extraordinary event and provides another vital indicator that dedicated conservation efforts, which have continued despite the current instability in eastern Congo, continue to support the growth of the endangered mountain gorilla population within Virunga National Park."Specialist veterinary care has played a leading role in the revival of the subspecies. In Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC, organizations such as the Gorilla Doctors have prevented dozens of deaths by helping animals affected by human behavior, such as by releasing gorillas accidentally caught in poachers' traps. One study attributes half of the mountain gorillas' population increase to the vets.Barely 250 mountain gorillas were left in the 1970s, and many thought the animals faced extinction. Decades of intense conservation work helped population numbers surpass 1,000 in 2018, and conservation authorities have since downgraded the subspecies' status from critically endangered to endangered.The DRC section of the Virunga mountain range remains one of the most dangerous places in the world for wildlife rangers. Over the past 20 years, more than 220 rangers have been killed in the park, where rebel groups such as M23 and other militias, as well as bandits, operate with impunity.

Crispin Odey, a 67-year-old hedge fund tycoon, appeared in a London courtroom on the first day of a three-week trial to challenge the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) decision to ban him from the UK's financial services industry. The ban was imposed due to allegations of sexual harassment made by several women. Odey testified that he did not recall cornering a female employee after a boozy lunch and saying to her 'I could attack you now'. However, the employee's diary entry, dated January 24, 2020, confirmed the incident, stating: 'Comes back from boozy lunch and corners me in the corridor. Him: I could attack you now. Me: Please don’t. Him: You could sue me for that.' Odey admitted to having groped a colleague's breasts without her consent in 2005, which he attributed to being under sedatives after root canal treatment. He claimed the woman accepted his apology and continued to work for the firm for another eight years. The FCA alleges that Odey showed a 'lack of integrity' by attempting to frustrate an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment. Odey denied these allegations, stating that he had attempted to have the FCA rule on whether he was fit and proper first. Odey is also facing a £79m libel lawsuit against the Financial Times and civil personal injury claims by five women, including one who accused him of rape. The hearing continues.